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Locke

Original nameJohn Locke

English Philosopher, Founder of Empiricism and Liberal Political Philosophy

Those Who Reanswered "How Should We Live" · Modern & Contemporary Thinkers

EmpiricismThe Blank SlateSocial Contract Theory

Who they are

John Locke (1632–1704) was an English philosopher and an important founder of empiricist epistemology, who in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding proposed the famous "blank slate" (tabula rasa): the human mind at birth is like a blank slate, with no innate "inborn ideas," and all knowledge must be gradually accumulated through later sensory experience and reflection — a stance in sharp opposition to that of continental rationalists such as Descartes and Leibniz who held there are innate ideas, the difference forming one of the core issues of the debate between the "empiricist" and "rationalist" camps in early modern philosophy. In political philosophy he proposed that "life, liberty, and property" are natural rights inborn in a human being that no government may arbitrarily infringe, and that a government’s legitimacy derives from the consent of the governed (the social contract) — a thought that profoundly shaped the later formulation of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in the American Declaration of Independence, one of the most important founding texts of the liberal political-philosophical tradition.

Primary sourcesLocke, An Essay Concerning Human UnderstandingLocke, Two Treatises of Government

Key stories

The Empiricist Stance of the "Blank Slate"

Locke opened An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by refuting the theory of "innate ideas," arguing that if ideas were truly inborn, infants and the uncultivated of mind should know them just as clearly, but this is not so — all complex ideas are gradually built up from simple sensory impressions through the mind’s reflection, combination, and abstraction; this "blank slate" fundamentally established the basic empiricist stance that "all knowledge springs from experience."

Government Power Derives From the Consent of the Governed

In the Second Treatise of Government Locke held that a government’s legitimate power comes not from divine right but from free and equal individuals who, to protect their own life, liberty, and property, voluntarily make a contract to cede part of their rights and so form it — and that if a government departs from this contract and infringes the people’s basic natural rights, the people have the right to overthrow it, a thought that later became an important theoretical basis of both the American and the French Revolutions.

Relationships

Nemesis

🐉Hobbes　The two were both important representatives of social contract theory, but held utterly different views of human nature and government power

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

The American Declaration of IndependenceThe formulation "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" was directly inspired by Locke’s natural-rights theory of "life, liberty, and property."

Appears in

The Beginning of Modern Philosophy: Reason vs. ExperienceHobbes and Locke: Two Directions of Social Contract Theory

⏳ Who lived at the same time as Locke? →🔬 Empiricism →🔗 Who taught whom →

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