John Locke was a British born philosopher, physician, and writer that played a significant role in the framework of The United States. He was born in Wrington, England on August 29th, 1632. A father, also named John, who was a country lawyer, and his mother Anges Keene, raised Locke. Both his parents were Puritans, which influenced his later work immensely ("John Locke"). Locke’s parents sent him to the famous Westminister School in London where he was led by Alexander Popham, a member of Parliament. He later did his studies in philosophy at prestigious Oxford University, while also gaining some medical background. Locke did not enjoy the curriculum at Oxford, as he was more interested in the works of modern philosophers. Locke received his bachelor of medicine in 1674, and was a physician for much of his early life after college ("John Locke"). He was put to learn medicine under Thomas Sydenham, who had a major effect on John Locke’s philosophical thinking. Locke’s medical awareness was tested when Sydenham had a liver infection and Locke undertook a life-threatening operation to remove the cyst. The operation was successful and Locke was credited with saving Sydenham’s life. After that experience, Locke decided that the medical field was not for him so Locke became more fascinated with philosophy as he joined the Whig movement ("John Locke"). He traveled across Europe gaining new ideas that would later turn be featured in two of his major publications, A Letter Concerning Toleration and Two Treatises of Government.
John Locke got A Letter Concerning Toleration published in 1689 and it was first published in Latin. What made him put pen to paper and write this was the increased fear that Catholicism could very well be taking Eng...
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Works Cited
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"John Locke." 2014. The Biography.com website. May 07 2014 http://www.biography.com/people/john-locke-9384544.
Kramnick, Isaac. "Lockean Liberalism and the American Revolution." The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. History Now, n.d. Web. 07 May 2014. http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/road-revolution/essays/lockean-liberalism-and-american-revolution
Tuckness, Alex, "Locke's Political Philosophy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Web. 07 May 2014 URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/locke-political/
John Locke was an English philosopher who lived during 1632-1704. In political theory he was equally influential. Contradicting Hobbes, Locke maintained that the original state of nature was happy and characterized by reason and tolerance; all human beings were equal and free to pursue "life, health, liberty, and possessions." The state formed by the social contract was guided by the natural law, which guaranteed those inalienable rights. He set down the policy of checks and balances later followed in the U.S. Constitution; formulated the doctrine that revolution in some circumstances is not only a right but an obligation; and argued for broad religious freedom.
John Locke, one of the leading philosophers of the European Enlightenment was very important when it came to political thought in the United States. His ideas of the reasons, nature, and limits of the government became especially important in the development of the Constitution. In one of his most famous writings of that time, Two Treatises on Government (1689), Locke established a theory where personal liberty could coexist with political power ; meaning that the people would agree to obey the government and in return, the government would have the responsibility of respecting the people’s natural rights. In other words, he laid out a social contract theory that provided the philosophy and source of a governing author...
John Locke - Two Treatises of Government - “life, liberty, and property” - consent of the governed (people are giving permission to the government to rule)
...artin Luther King’s writings how he relates back to John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau making his writing very well rounded towards the audience.
In Locke’s essay, Book II called Second Treatise he explains his philosophical approach to the state of nature and how men are bound to a social contract giving consent to the government to protect their unalienable rights.
Locke and Rousseau present themselves as two very distinct thinkers. They both use similar terms, but conceptualize them differently to fulfill very different purposes. As such, one ought not be surprised that the two theorists do not understand liberty in the same way. Locke discusses liberty on an individual scale, with personal freedom being guaranteed by laws and institutions created in civil society. By comparison, Rousseau’s conception portrays liberty as an affair of the entire political community, and is best captured by the notion of self-rule. The distinctions, but also the similarities between Locke and Rousseau’s conceptions can be clarified by examining the role of liberty in each theorist’s proposed state of nature and civil society, the concepts with which each theorist associates liberty, and the means of ensuring and safeguarding liberty that each theorist devises.
...d (Locke, 4). By exploring these two ideas of the social contract between a government and its people, as well as the natural rights of man, Locke created many waves in England, as well as impacted several important intellectuals who would later be responsible for the American and French Revolutions.
What John Locke was concerned about was the lack of limitations on the sovereign authority. During Locke’s time the world was surrounded by the monarch’s constitutional violations of liberty toward the end of the seventeenth century. He believed that people in their natural state enjoy certain natural, inalienable rights, particularly those to life, liberty and property. Locke described a kind of social contract whereby any number of people, who are able to abide by the majority rule, unanimously unite to affect their common purposes. The...
Wright, John Samuel Fletcher. Liberty in Key Works of John Locke and John Stuart Mill. Thesis Deakin University, 1995.
Thomas Jefferson wrote his Draft of the Declaration and was influenced by many of the ideas and concepts of John Locke. He did modify some of Locke’s ideas but most of them were the product of Locke’s belief in the Law’s of Nature and the fundamental unalienable rights of all human beings. As a result, their writings influence and demonstrate basic rights of people and make up our government. The world in which we live in is a product of the ideals of these men, who lived over 200 years ago; we are a representation of a republic
...tainly possessed these qualities of life even with all is idiosyncrasies Locke believed we were all created equal that this was “self-evident”. Locke’s’ reason was to abide by the laws of God as well as the government. He thought that we should be mindful of how we treat ourselves and others at all times for as long as we live. . As a result of Locke’s views, he established “New liberties that would be enshrined in civil, social, and political rights”. (Biblical Politics pg. 95) “Although Locke’s new political order left individuals free from subjection to authority and helped overcome gender and similar barriers to personal and social advancement, this order also became problematic: a new-found emphasis on reason ultimately led to a disruption in the human spirit and to new forms of social isolation”.( Biblical Politics pg. 95-96)
In the Letter Concerning Toleration, John Locke engages readers with the idea of a toleration. This was based on the premise that “neither single persons nor churches nay nor even commonwealths have any just title to invade the civil rights and worldly goods of each other upon pretence of religion” ( Locke 1689, pg. 15). According to Locke, the toleration of religion is important to upkeep civil
John Locke was a British philosopher and Oxford academic and medical researcher. Locke was regarded as one of the most influential thinkers and was known as the “Father of Classical Liberalism”. Locke was considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, and was equally important to social contract theory. His work significantly influenced the development of epi...
Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke are all great thinkers who were greatly influential in forming philosophies that would affect the future of politics. By analyzing each philosopher’s ideology, we can identify which thinker’s theory reflected modern era liberalism the most. For this paper I will be arguing that, John Locke provides a more compelling framework of modern era liberalism because of his perception of the state of nature, the social contract and the function of government.
Locke, John. The Works of John Locke in Nine Volumes. 12th ed. Vol. 4. London: Rivington,