John Locke, English empiricist and early defender of liberty

A vastly influential moral and political thinker, and some would argue he made possible the revolutions in both America and France

Locke was one of the first with the view that knowledge comes not from innate ideas but from experience (Getty)

John Locke (1632–1704) concerned himself primarily with society, where his views are often contrasted with those of Thomas Hobbes, and with epistemology, where he is usually placed alongside David Hume and Bishop Berkeley in a group known as the British Empiricists.

Locke is regarded as one of the foremost proponents of the view that knowledge comes not from innate ideas but from experience. He was also undoubtedly a vastly influential moral and political philosopher, and some would go so far as to say that his thinking made possible the revolutions in both America and France. It is hard not to think of him as the greatest philosopher of the modern period in England – he did much to disentangle the philosophy of his day from scholastic and ancient Greek thinking. Some are willing to go further, arguing that he is the greatest philosopher England has ever produced. Certainly he shares a property with many others at the very top of the pantheon: those in power put him in fear for his life at least once.

Locke was born in Wrington, Somerset, to stern parents of the Puritan faith. His father arranged for his early education at Westminster School in London, where he eventually boarded, finally leaving to take up a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1652. It was at Christ Church that Locke began the odd practice of writing in codes and using invisible ink to keep his work secret. Many of Locke’s papers and books were first published anonymously, and he seems to have been extremely secretive and suspicious of certain apparently blameless friends throughout his life.

Political upheavals

He was much taken by the successes and the observational methods of what was then the new science, no doubt influenced by his colleague and friend at Oxford, Robert Boyle. His greatest friend at this time was Baron Ashley, who was eventually the Earl of Shaftesbury, who took such a liking to him that he made Locke his personal physician and quartered him in his London home. Locke assisted the Earl in a number of ways, and his friend seems to have had him appointed to several public boards. He became secretary to the Council of Trade and Plantations, which by all accounts he handled admirably and efficiently – he would eventually become its commissioner. Locke was getting on well in the world.

His fortunes changed, however, when his patron became one of the leaders of parliamentary opposition to the Stuarts. Shaftesbury was tried and acquitted of treason in 1681, but given his “close association, Locke feared that he might be in danger too. He was right. Locke fled to Holland in 1683, and James II insisted that the Dutch return him to England, possibly to be tried as a traitor. Little was made of this demand in Holland, but Locke was nevertheless forced to hide with supporters for a time. If his decade-long exile was sometimes harrowing, it nevertheless afforded Locke both the time and the intellectual stimulation he required to focus on two books he had been writing intermittently for perhaps a decade. By 1687, Locke was among the advisers of William of Orange, and when William was finally crowned, Locke returned, escorting the future Queen Mary. He was offered and took a number of posts, but devoted at least some of his time to completing his books.

Two treatises of Government

Locke argues that we are born with minds like blank tablets and experience alone is the source of our ideas

One of these books, Two Treatises of Government, sets out Locke’s political philosophy, and it is certainly a product of his times. The first treatise is an attack on the very idea of the divine right of kings, but it is the second which is most widely read. In it Locke argues that people living without a civil government in an imagined state of nature have certain duties to God not to harm the body, property or liberty of another, as well as corresponding rights to defend themselves, their property and liberty. In contrast to Hobbes’s claim that only an absolute ruler can save a person in the state of nature from the brutality of others, Locke argues that people form a government as a matter of convenience, designating a judge or set of judges to defend their natural rights.

Although reason dictates that certain laws must be obeyed, not everyone has an equal share in rationality, and anyway it is possible for people to have reasonable disagreements. What is needed is a disinterested judge or set of judges, and this is the principle motivation for political obligation, for the social contract itself. In further contrast to Hobbes, the “social contract is between the people and their appointed or otherwise chosen defenders. This makes possible a kind of contractual set of duties on the part of both the government and the people, and it has large implications. In virtue of their tyrannical conduct, for example, those in power might warrant their own overthrow.

Concerning human understanding

The other book is An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which Locke claims was inspired by a perplexing discussion he had with some friends while in the service of Shaftesbury – according to one source who probably was there, the topic was morality and revelation. They found themselves unable to make any headway and concluded that before progress could be made ‘it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were or were not fitted to deal with’. At the heart of this enquiry is the notion of an idea, because for Locke an idea is ‘whatsoever is the object of the understanding “when a man thinks’. What our minds are fitted to deal with depends on the nature of our ideas, and for Locke this question turns on how our ideas actually arise.

The first book of the Essay is an extended argument against the possibility that ideas are innate. This doctrine consists in the claim that the mind contains at least some ideas or principles which are not delivered by experience: some ideas are simply part of our factory specification. The view is first clearly expressed in Plato’s thinking, but it is evidently accepted by many of the schoolmen, as well as both Descartes and, with some qualifications, Leibniz in the modern period. Locke almost single-handedly derails this line of thinking.

The doctrine of innate ideas

Locke’s early books were first published anonymously (Getty)

Locke takes it that the doctrine of innate ideas implies that there must be ideas or principles assented to by everyone, and he argues that there is no such universal assent. To use Locke’s example, even a rock-bottom logical principle apparently required for reason to get off the ground is not assented to universally. “Whatsoever is, is” might be such a principle, but the principle is not even known, let alone assented to, by “children and idiots”.

It might be replied that anyone who is able to employ reason, or, in the case of a child, anyone who eventually comes to reason, “will assent to such principles, and this proves that the principles are themselves innate, imprinted on the mind, waiting for discovery. Locke argues that this is no proof of innate ideas. First of all, it proves too much: it makes anything reason discovers, even truths of mathematics, innate. Second, even if everyone assents to some principle or other on coming to reason, this does not prove that the principle is innate. Another explanation or view of the origin of ideas fits this bill too. It is Locke’s formulation of empiricism, his account of the opposing view, that is perhaps the best argument against the notion that some ideas are innate.

Locke argues that we are born with minds like blank tablets (tabula rasa), and experience alone is the source of our ideas. Ideas of sensation issue from our sensory experience, when our sensory apparatuses come into contact with the world, while ideas of reflection result from introspection, when we note the operations of our minds on ideas acquired by sensation. Ideas, considered generally, are of two types: simple and complex. A simple idea is “nothing but one uniform appearance or conception in the mind, and is not distinguishable into different ideas”. Complex ideas are themselves composed of simple ideas. The mind is incapable of generating simple ideas, but it can furnish itself with complex ones by combining and shifting its store of simple ideas.

Primary and secondary qualities

It is easy to wonder about the relation between our ideas, the objects of knowledge according to Locke, and the real things in the world. Here Locke introduces a second distinction between the primary and secondary properties of objects. The former are “utterly inseparable” from material objects; remain the same throughout all changes; and are a part of “every particle of matter”. Locke identifies solidity, extension, figure, bulk and motion as primary properties of objects. Secondary properties, however, are ‘nothing in the objects themselves but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities’. Here Locke has in mind colours, tastes, touches, smells and sounds. Our idea, say, of the shape of a lemon really does tell us something about the way the world is, but not so, or not exactly so, with the taste of a lemon.

Both the distinction between simple and complex ideas and the distinction between primary and secondary qualities have large implications for the limits of human understanding. At the end of the Essay, Locke’s consideration of true and false ideas more or less outlines these limits from the empiricist point of view, and the fallout from his conclusions has been extensive. Locke maintains, for example, that there is a sense in which our complex ideas can lead us astray. We might combine simple ideas in such a way that nothing in nature answers to them. Hume argues that this is the case with such philosophical fictions as the enduring self, necessary causal connections and external objects “– all are ideas which seem to lack a corresponding and legitimizing sensory impression. There also arises the question of the relation between our ideas of the qualities of objects and those objects themselves, which is a question pressed home by Berkeley. Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities requires that at least some of our ideas do not represent the way the world really is. It is a short step from here to wondering whether any of our ideas do.

Locke’s influence

Locke was much troubled in his lifetime by critics who thought that his empiricism could lead only to scepticism. However, with hindsight, we know that Locke’s work led to much more. His thinking made not just Hume and Berkeley possible, perhaps even inevitable, but Kant and the tradition which followed him, not to mention the many manifestations of empiricism both within and without philosophy ever since. Locke’s influence is evident most recently in the work of the pragmatists, the logical positivists and those who argue that philosophy ought to be informed by the empirical sciences, philosophers who are hard at work in the present day.

Major works

Two Treatises of Government (1690) contains Locke’s best political writing. The first treatise gives an account of Locke’s critique of the divine right of kings. The second proposes Locke’s alternative, the view that political obligation consists in the consent of the governed.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) is Locke’s greatest philosophical achievement. His aim in it is to determine exactly what the human mind is fitted to understand, and the book contains considerations of knowledge of the self, the world, and God. The book might be best known for Locke’s annihilation of the doctrine of innate ideas. It gave empiricism a new start in the 17th century.