JOHN LOCKE

All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.

John Locke, 1632-1704, Englishphilosopher, political theorist, and founder of Empiricism.

After studying medicine at Oxford,Locke served the Earl of Shaftesbury as a physician, and followed him toFrance in 1675. There he spent four years studying Continentalphilosophy, especially that of Descartes.

On his return, Locke worked with Shaftesbury to block thesuccession of James, Duke of York, later James II, from thethrone -- a controversial issue since the Restoration of Charles II. They were unsuccessful, andboth were forced to flee England: Locke lived in Holland from1683 until James II's overthrow in 1689.

In the following year appeared Locke's most important work, AnEssay Concerning Humane Understanding. The central concernof the Essay is epistemology, the means by which we cometo knowledge. Locke argued against the idea of "innate ideas,"arguing instead that the mind is analogous to a blank slate, atabula rasa, on which the senses make impressions: theimportance of such experience in his philosophy is the origin ofthe term empirical.

Sensory experience, though, provides only one kind of idea,sensation; reflection, the other, is the mind'scombination and comparison of the various sensory impressions. Asa result, one has no direct knowledge of the physical world, butonly of the ideas (whether sensations or reflections) produced bythem. Locke devotes much of his Essay to the relationshipbetween ideas and objects. His philosophy was a development of  Bacon’s methods, and provided the firstsystematic account of an empiricist philosophy and psychology.

His most important political work also appeared in 1690, theTwo Treatises of Government; there he argues that thefunction of the state is to protect the natural rights of itscitizens, primarily to protect the right to property. Though hechallenged Thomas Hobbes on the nature of primitive society --for Hobbes it was "nasty, brutish, and short," while for Locke itwas more rational, tolerant, and cooperative -- he agreed withhim on the origin of thesocial contract, an implicitagreement between everyone in a society to respect a legalauthority, a supreme sovereign, so as to enable the pursuit ofhappiness.

During the next few years of relative retirement, Locke continuedhis involvement in political affairs, and hosted many importantvisitors, including Sir Isaac Newton. In 1693 he wrote an influential tract, SomeThoughts Concerning Education.

Locke's influence on the philosophy and political thought of theeighteenth century was without rival. His Two Treatises of Government,by advocating the removal of a ruler who fails to live up to hisend of the social contract, made him an important figure amongthe intellectuals of the American war of independence.