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John Locke

In: Philosophy and Psychology

Submitted By jamventura
Words 1920
Pages 8
Notes: John Locke, 1632-1704, Essay on Human Understanding

• a British philosopher • Oxford academic and medical researcher • his association with Anthony Ashley Cooper (later the First Earl of Shaftesbury) led him to become o a government official charged with collecting information about trade and colonies, o An economic writer, opposition political activist, and o finally a revolutionary whose cause ultimately triumphed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. • Much of his work is characterized by opposition to authoritarianism. • This opposition is both on the level of the individual person and on the level of institutions such as government and church. • Locke's monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understanding concerns itself with determining the limits of human understanding in respect to God, the self, natural kinds and artifacts, as well as a variety of different kinds of ideas. • It thus tells us in some detail what one can legitimately claim to know and what one cannot. • Locke also wrote a variety of important political, religious and educational works including the Two Treatises of Government, the Letters Concerning Toleration, The Reasonableness of Christianity and Some Thoughts Concerning Education.

Essay on Human Understanding • Locke is often classified as the first of the great English empiricists (ignoring the claims of Bacon and Hobbes). • This reputation rests on An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. • In writing An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke adopted Descartes' ‘way of ideas’; though it is transformed so as to become an organic part of Locke's philosophy. • Yet, while admiring Descartes, Locke's involvement with the Oxford scientists gave him a perspective which made him critical of the rationalist elements in Descartes' philosophy.

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