Thinker · TH-0248
John Locke
John Locke was an English philosopher and physician, educated at Oxford, who spent several years in exile in the Netherlands before returning after 1688.…
1632 – 1704 · Wrington, Somerset; Oxford; London; the Netherlands; Oates, Essex
Traditions: Modern European
Schools: Empiricism
John Locke was an English philosopher and physician, educated at Oxford, who spent several years in exile in the Netherlands before returning after 1688. His Essay Concerning Human Understanding argued that all ideas come from experience, and its chapter on identity located personal identity in sameness of consciousness extending back to past actions and thoughts, illustrated by the prince and the cobbler. His Two Treatises of Government defended natural rights and government by consent.
Key ideas
- There are no innate ideas; all ideas derive from sensation and reflection.
- A person is the same person as far as consciousness extends back to past actions and thoughts; if a prince's consciousness entered a cobbler's body, the prince would be there.
- People have natural rights to life, liberty and property, and acquire property by mixing their labour with things.
- Legitimate government rests on consent, and the people may resist a government that violates its trust.
Major works
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689, dated 1690)
- Two Treatises of Government (1689, dated 1690)
- A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689)
- Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)
In the conversation
- Question Every cell in my body is replaced every seven years, so am I even the same person?
- Question Bundle theory or bare particulars: which embarrassment would you rather live with?
- Question I have forgotten most of my childhood. On Locke’s view, am I still that child?
- Question I never agreed to obey the state. Why do I owe it anything?
- Question Is my red your red? Where does the inverted spectrum come from?
- Reading group Reading group: Berkeley’s Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, one dialogue at a time
- Discussion Thirty years of coaching while colour-blind: whose experience of red is the accurate one?
- Question Wang Yangming stared at bamboo for seven days and fell ill. Was he refuting empiricism?
- Debate Locke was right that the mind starts without ideas, and the argument from the newborn’s hunger fails
- Debate Ibn Khaldun’s question, what keeps power alive, matters more than Locke’s question of what justifies it
In the Journal
On the map
The questions in The Coordinates of Thought where John Locke takes a place.
- 1.3.2 Personal Identity Are you the same person you were at five?
- 2.2 Sources of Knowledge Which ways of finding things out actually work?
- 6.4 Political Philosophy When is political power legitimate, and what may it rightly do?
- 6.4.2 Rights and Liberty Are you free when nobody stops you, or when you could actually do it?