John Locke (1632 - 1704) was an English philosopher and physician widely regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of the Enlightenment and a founder of the empiricist tradition. In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) he argued that the mind begins as a blank slate and that knowledge derives from experience [1]. His Two Treatises of Government (1689) advanced the ideas of natural rights, government by consent, and the right of revolution, principles that later shaped liberal and constitutional thought [1][2].
Early life and education
Locke was born on 29 August 1632 in Wrington, Somerset, into a Puritan family; his father served as a captain in the parliamentary cavalry during the English Civil War [1]. Through his father's connections he was admitted to Westminster School in London, and in 1652 he went on to Christ Church, Oxford [1]. There he grew dissatisfied with the prevailing scholastic curriculum but engaged closely with medicine and the new experimental science, forming a lasting friendship with the chemist Robert Boyle [2].
Physician and public life
Locke trained in medicine and became attached to the household of Anthony Ashley Cooper, later the first Earl of Shaftesbury, whom he served as physician, secretary, and adviser [1]. His involvement in Shaftesbury's political circle drew him into the constitutional struggles of the era, and the risks of that association led him to spend several years in exile in the Dutch Republic during the 1680s [1]. He returned to England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 [2].
Major works
Locke's principal writings appeared in a remarkable burst around 1689. In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding he set out an empiricist account of knowledge, rejecting innate ideas and arguing that understanding is built from sensation and reflection [1]. In the Two Treatises of Government he criticized theories of absolute monarchy and grounded legitimate authority in the consent of the governed, holding that individuals possess natural rights to life, liberty, and property [3]. His A Letter Concerning Toleration argued for the separation of civil government from religious belief [1].
Legacy
Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, Locke spent his final years at Oates in High Laver, Essex, where he died on 28 October 1704 [1]. His empiricism influenced later philosophers such as Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, while his political theory informed the American and French revolutions and the broader development of liberalism and constitutional democracy [2].
