John+Locke

John Locke- Will Andrew & Skyler Aspergen

cites used quotes- [] youtube- [] bio and other- [] sophie's world- (p.262-266)

John Locke (1632-1704)
 * Biography
 * o John Locke was born on August 29th, 1632 in England. He attended Westminster School and London, and was later admitted to Christ Church, Oxford. He studied medicine, which would later serve an important role in his life. He began writing about topics such as epistemology, education and political philosophy. He died in October of 1704
 * Key Teachings and Ideas
 * oEpistemology
 * § Tabula Rasa
 * § The idea that every human being is born with their minds completely empty; essentially, their minds are a blank slate.
 * § There is no human nature; each of us is the author of our own character.
 * § He spilt all types of knowledge into two parts: Simple and Complex
 * Simple knowledge is a basic understanding that cannot be further reduced. For example the idea of “shiny.”
 * Complex Knowledge is a combination of Simple Knowledge. For example, if we know something is round, shiny, gold and solid, we can conclude that it is a coin.
 * Simple Knowledge is like an Atom; Complex Knowledge is like a molecule.
 * Education
 * Body and Mind
 * Locke warns parents to take care of their children’s health before their academic education.
 * Quotes Juvenal’s //Satires// “A sound mind in a sound body.”
 * Unsurprising, because Locke studied medicine.
 * § Virtue and Reason
 * Also promoted being virtuous and logical
 * “That a man is able to deny himself his own desires, cross his own inclinations, and purely follow what reason directs as best, though the appetite lean the other way.”
 * “Children love to be treated as rational beings.”
 * Locke wants children to become adults as soon as possible.
 * § Academic Curriculum
 * He claims that parents should be more concerned with teaching their children how to learn and enjoy learning rather than actual learning.
 * His academic curriculum is based primarily on utility
 * oPolitical Philosophy
 * § All Men Are Created Equal
 * § He believed that all men were born with natural rights to life, liberty and Property.
 * § The Government should allow these rights rather than order their civilians around.
 * § Disagreed with Hobbes by thinking that no one person should have absolute power.
 * § Locke Proposed the Separation of Powers in the hope that no one person could commit a crime and get away with it.
 * § Strong influence on the American Constitution.
 * Key Works
 * o A Letter Concerning Toleration – Proposes religious Toleration as the answer to Catholic and Protestant fighting
 * o Two Treatises of Government – People are born with unalienable rights, and it is the government’s duty to protect them.
 * o An Essay Concerning Human Understanding – Tabula Rasa, the concept of simple and complex knowledge
 * o An Essay Concerning Human Education – How to properly educate the mind
 * o The Reasonableness of Christianity – Men cannot find God by themselves, therefore God Revealed himself through Jesus Christ, and the revelation is reasonable to the common mind.
 * Quotes
 * o There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.
 * o We are like chameleons; we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.
 * o A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else
 * o Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself
 * Connections
 * o Thomas Hobbes was his primary “philosophical adversary”
 * o
 * Influence
 * o Heavily influenced the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States
 * § Thomas Jefferson
 * o Promoted Empirical Learning over the traditional scholastic method
 * o Heavily influenced the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States
 * § Thomas Jefferson
 * o Promoted Empirical Learning over the traditional scholastic method

Who cares? Why does this matter? ‘His influence in the history of thought, on the way we think about ourselves and our relation to the world we live in, to God, nature and society, has been immense’ (Aarsleff, 1994, 252) []

**Gamble Endnotes: **
===**Epistemology:** The study of how we know what we know, how we can know what we know. See Will and Skyler's points under this heading. The implications of "tabula rasa"are huge. It suggests that what we are is all nurture, not nature. It's all about upbrin ging. This is fully consistent with **Empiricism**, that knowledge comes through experience / experimentation (related terms, of course). Yet Locke says we ARE born with certain rights (not knowledge) when he says that we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights like life, liberty and the right to own property. ===

=== **Locke's view of the role of government** reflects this in an important way. He would say it is designed to protect these, people's rights to life, liberty and the right to own property. Any government that goes beyond this might well be bordering on tyranny, which must be throne off by the people. Here is how Locke then influenced Jefferson and others with respect to the American Revolution (as well as the French Rev, which you will remember took place in 1789). The sovereignty, or ultimate control, remains with the people, for Locke, not in the government.===

=== For this reason, Locke uses the term "Social Contract," an agreement among the governed about how to be governed. Hobbes version of this had the same name, but a different ephmasis because of his diffferent view of human nature. See Hobbes. ===

There are important **connections** between Locke's prioti
=== zation of and belief in virtue which connects with Aristotle's Golden mean. “That a man is able to deny himself his own desires, cross his own inclinations, and purely follow what reason directs as best, though the appetite lean the other way.” (Hobbes had much to say about appetites as well, though his view is that they are much more out of control than Locke would agree with.)===

=== **Another element of Locke is that he left room for his own error, promoting a truly Socratic ("All I know is tha I know nothing...) kind of humilty.** A good passage to quote: "Where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns, or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others..." ===