John Locke
The mind is born a blank slate; power comes from consent.
John Locke (1632 – 1704, England) : empiricism, liberalism and social contract. We are born without ready-made ideas: everything we know comes from experience. The same demand holds in politics: nobody is born a king's subject. On AskPhilosophy: 6 reconstructed arguments, 4 quotes checked word for word against the original texts, and 5 common beliefs examined; every text carries an authenticity badge (written by the author, posthumous, student notes, reported, apocryphal).
Why he matters
He gave empiricism its programme (Berkeley, Hume) and political liberalism its grammar: natural rights, government by consent, the right of resistance. His echo is heard in the American Declaration of Independence. His account of personal identity through consciousness is still the starting point of today's debates on the self.
His times
A physician and secretary to the Earl of Shaftesbury, an opponent of King Charles II, he went into exile in Holland (1683-1689). He returned after the Glorious Revolution and published almost everything at once in 1689-1690: the Letter concerning Toleration and the Two Treatises anonymously, the Essay under his own name.
His positions
click a row to see the evidenceHe holds that God's existence can be demonstrated from our own existence, with a certainty "equal to mathematical certainty". But he rejects an innate idea of God: we reach it by reasoning.
All the materials of thought come from experience: sensation (the outer world) and reflection (the mind observing itself). Nuance: once ideas are acquired, reason can draw certain demonstrations from them, in mathematics and perhaps in ethics.
Our knowledge is limited but sufficient: the mind's "candle" gives enough light to live by. Certainty for a few truths (our existence, God, mathematics), mere probability for most things. Neither dogmatic nor sceptical.
He leans toward an immaterial soul, but admits we cannot prove that God has not given matter the power to think. This caution caused a scandal in his day.
Asking whether the will is free makes no sense: liberty belongs to the person, it is the power to act or not as the mind chooses. He adds a power to suspend one's desires in order to examine them: readers debate whether this goes beyond compatibilism.
There is a law of nature known by reason, and he thinks ethics could be demonstrated like mathematics. But he defines moral good in relation to a law and its sanctions: a moral realism grounded in God. Readers debate whether, for him, goodness comes from God's will or from reason.
What God reveals is true, but reason must judge whether a revelation really comes from God. Nothing contrary to the clear evidence of reason can be believed in the name of faith. Faith remains possible for what is above reason.
The highest perfection of an intelligent being is the pursuit of true and solid happiness, which for him includes the life to come. Meaning is given (by God), but must be told apart from imaginary pleasures.
More optimistic than Hobbes: the state of nature already has a law, reason, which forbids harming others. But people are biased in their own cause: hence the need for government.
People are born free, equal and independent; nobody is subject to political power without their consent. Government exists to protect rights, and the people may take back power if it betrays them.
Divine law, known by reason (the law of nature) or by revelation, is "the only true touchstone" of moral good and evil.