John Locke
(1632-1704)
The British philosopher John Locke was especially known for his
liberal, anti-authoritarian theory of the state, his empirical theory of
knowledge, his advocacy of religious toleration, and his theory of
personal identity.
In his own time, he was famous for arguing that the divine right of
kings is supported neither by scripture nor by the use of reason. In
developing his theory of our duty to obey the state, he attacked the
idea that might makes right: Starting from an initial state of nature
with no government, police or private property, we humans could
discover by careful reasoning that there are natural laws which
suggest that we have natural rights to our own persons and to our
own labor. Eventually we could discover that we should create a
social contract with others, and out of this contract emerges our
political obligations and the institution of private property. This is how
reasoning places limits on the proper use of power by government
authorities.
Regarding epistemology, Locke disagreed with Descartes‘ rationalist
theory that knowledge is any idea that seems clear and distinct to us.
Instead, Locke claimed that knowledge is direct awareness of facts
concerning the agreement or disagreement among our ideas. By
“ideas,” he meant mental objects, and by assuming that some of
these mental objects represent non-mental objects he inferred that
this is why we can have knowledge of a world external to our minds.
Although we can know little for certain and must rely on probabilities,
he believed it is our God-given obligation to obtain knowledge and not
always to acquire our beliefs by accepting the word of authorities or
common superstition. Ideally our beliefs should be held firmly or
tentatively depending on whether the evidence is strong or weak. He
praised the scientific reasoning of Boyle and Newton as exemplifying
this careful formation of beliefs. He said that at birth our mind has no
innate ideas; it is blank, a tabula rasa. As our mind gains simple ideas
from sensation, it forms complex ideas from these simple ideas by
processes of combination, division, generalization and abstraction.
Radical for his time, Locke asserted that in order to help children not
develop bad habits of thinking, they should be trained to base their
beliefs on sound evidence, to learn how to collect this evidence, and
to believe less strongly when the evidence is weaker.
We all can have knowledge of God‘s existence by attending to the
quality of the evidence available to us, primarily the evidence from
miracles. Our moral obligations, says Locke, are divine commands.
We can learn about those obligations both by God’s revealing them to
us and by our natural capacities to discover natural laws.
Regarding personal identity, Locke provided an original argument that
our being the same person from one time to another consists neither
in our having the same soul nor the same body, but rather the same
consciousness.
Locke’s interest centers on traditional philosophical topics: the nature
of the self, the world, God, and the grounds of our knowledge of
them.
The closing chapters of Book IV of the Essay are devoted to a
consideration of that kind of apprehension of reality which Locke calls
“judgment,” as distinguished from “knowledge.” “The faculty which
God has given man to supply the want of clear and certain
knowledge, in cases where that cannot be hand, is judgment:
whereby the mind takes its ideas to agree or disagree; or, which is
the same, any proposition to be true or false, without perceiving a
demonstrative evidence in the proofs”. So-called “scientific” truths
being generally of this kind, one would have expected Locke to give
here some account of the procedure of inductive science, some
directions for the careful and methodical study of the facts, and
cautions against the temptations to hasty and unwarranted
generalization. But instead of this, he contents himself with general
observations on the degrees of assent, on reason (and syllogism), on
faith and reason, on “enthusiasm,” and on wrong assent, or error. The
treatment of, that is to say, is limited to general considerations
regarding the function of faith and the relations of faith and reason as
guides of the human mind.
Background
John Locke, widely known as the Father of Classical Liberalism, was
an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most
influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the
British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is
equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great
impact upon the development of epistemology and political
philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many
Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American
revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and
liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of
Independence.
Epistemology – The theory of knowledge with regard to its
methods, validity and scope. The investigation of what
distinguishes justified belief from opinion.
Empiricism – The theory that all knowledge is derived from
sense-experience.
Enlightenment Period – European intellectual movement during
the late 17th and 18th centuries, emphasizing reason and
individualism rather than tradition.