John Locke: biography of this British philosopher.

A review of the life of John Locke, a philosopher very influential in liberal thought.

Many consider John Locke to be the father of liberalism since he was a strong advocate of individual rights, equality among citizens and the separation of powers. According to him, the state and the laws that regulated it should be the result of an agreement among its citizens, not because their sovereign had decided so.

Considered one of the greatest representatives of English empiricism, his philosophy, his desire to change the world and his fight for the recognition of individual liberties have made Locke one of the greatest British thinkers.

Let's discover the interesting figure of this philosopher through a biography of John LockeIn it we will know his life and his revolutionary way of thinking in an England that was upside down with proclamations of monarchies and failed republics.

Brief biography of John Locke

John Locke was born on August 29, 1632 in Wrington, England.. In his childhood he studied at Christ Church, Oxford, and at the end of his studies he remained there teaching Greek and rhetoric. The political context in the England of his time was very convulsive, with tyrant kings in power and a power struggle between the intellectuals and the established power that shaped Locke's thinking.

Given the political situation in his country it is not surprising that already in his teens he felt an interest in public affairs..... He was a multifaceted man who studied at Oxford University, where he earned his doctorate in 1658. Although his specialty was medicine and he maintained relations with great scientists of the time, such as Isaac Newton himself, John Locke was also a diplomat, theologian and economist.

From conservatism to liberalism

In 1662, he joined the Royal Society he joined the Royal Society, an organization dedicated to the promotion of knowledge about nature.. Thanks to this, Locke was gaining some fame in the academic context of his time, becoming one of the most important scientists of the time, especially when it came to dealing experimentally with nature. He made empiricism in the scientific field his hallmark.

In this way Locke was gaining fame as one of the most important scientists of his time, especially in the experimental sciences. It was during this period that Locke began to modify his political point of view, moving from conservatism to more liberal and innovative policies.

His approach to liberal ideas is thanks to having worked as secretary to the Earl of Shaftesbury, leader of the Whig party.leader of the Whig party. This party was an opponent of monarchical absolutism in the England of Charles II and James II. Although his thinking was initially conservative, Locke would end up firmly believing in the need for reforms and defending the power of parliament.

Exile and final years.

His new, revolutionary views, although supported by many intellectuals and a people increasingly fed up with royal abuses, were strongly persecuted. This is why he he would end up taking refuge in Holland between 1683 and 1689..

Locke was one of the most fervent supporters of the Glorious Revolution, with which William of Orange would succeed in reaching the English throne by overthrowing James II. Thus, with this triumphant revolution, England became a parliamentary monarchy and was configured as a liberal regime, the first in Europe.

Upon returning to his country, John Locke was recognized as one of the most important intellectual personalities of the new British political system. It was during this period that he began to devote himself fully to his he began to devote himself fully to his philosophical activity.publishing works such as Letter on Toleration (1689), Two Treatises on Government (1690) y Essay on the Human Intellect (1690).

He would die shortly after publishing his great works, on October 28, 1704 at the age of 72 in Oates Castle, near Essex, where he spent the last years of his life.

His political thought

The figure of John Locke has left a deep mark on Western political and economic thought, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world. In his works this philosopher becomes a staunch defender of individual liberties and religious tolerance.. It is in his work Two Essays on Civil Government of 1690 in which he established the basic principles of liberal constitutionalism, postulating that every man is born endowed with natural rights that the State has the mission to protect. These rights are life, liberty and property.

Drawing on the thought of Thomas Hobbes, Locke based himself on the idea that the State is born of an original social contract, rejecting the traditional doctrine that the State is born of an original social contract.rejecting the traditional doctrine that power comes from the divine will and that the king holds it as God's envoy. However, he differs from Hobbes in arguing that such a pact did not lead to absolute monarchy, but was revocable and could only lead to limited government.

The authority of the States was to result from the will of the citizens, who would be freed from having to obey their sovereigns if the latter did not respect fundamental rights or exceeded their powers. It is the people, negotiating with the sovereigns, who have the right to modify the legislative power according to their criteria. according to their criteria. This is the idea behind modern periodic elections in liberal states.

If the sovereign behaves tyrannically, the people have the right to overthrow him or change the system, an idea that was taken up by Thomas Jefferson and the American revolutionaries in 1776, gaining independence from Great Britain. This would also be the argument that would be championed by the French in 1789, staging the French Revolution and ending the absolutism of Louis XVI.

Locke defended the separation of powers as a way of balancing them against each other and thus preventing any of them from degenerating into despotism. No power, however legitimate it might be, should exceed certain limits.This idea would be materialized in written form through a constitution.

Religious freedom

John Locke was characterized by being an advocate of the principle of tolerance and religious freedom, something truly uncommon in his time. He He went so far as to affirm that the state should not intervene in matters of faith, since they are individual and intimate aspects of the individual's life.He argued that the state should not intervene in matters of faith, since they are individual and intimate aspects, not a public matter.

He defended respect for all sects of Protestantism, understood as distinct faiths, and even defended the right to profess non-Christian religions. Ironically, he was not very much in favor of respecting either Catholicism or atheism.

John Locke's empiricism

In terms of his philosophy Locke was inspired by Francis Bacon and René Descartes.. John Locke delved into empiricism and rejected the Cartesian theory of innate ideas, a refutation to which he dedicated the first part of his "Essay on Human Understanding" (1690). According to Locke, the human mind is a tabula rasa at the beginning, that is, at the moment we are born our mind lacks ideas and impressions: it is a blank canvas. This was contrary to the thought of Descartes who did affirm that it contained innate ideas, such as the idea of God.

For Locke all ideas ideas had to be the result of our experience and through it all our knowledge would emerge.. When Locke refers to "experience" he does not speak only of external experience, which can be seeing a tree or listening to a melody, but also comes from within us, as would be the emotions. Thus Locke distinguished two realms of experience: the inner world and the outer world. The exterior is grasped by sensation, and the interior or that of consciousness is grasped by reflection.

When Locke and other empiricists speak of ideas, they do not refer to ideas as synonymous with concepts, but rather to the contents of consciousness, that is, the imprint that a sensation or reflection has left on it. There are simple ideas that are acquired by sensation, such as seeing the color red, or by reflection, such as doubt or desire. These simple ideas are organized into complex ones by the subject's own mental activity. There is a great variety of complex ideas, but they can be reduced to those of substance, mode and relation.

It is not possible to know the substance of things through sensation alone since, according to Locke, everything that reaches our understanding passes through the senses and, whether we want to or not, we cannot grasp absolutely everything that must be the substance itself. By sensation we only perceive the qualities of things, which can be primary or secondary. The primary qualities are those that refer to extension and movement with their respective properties and are grasped by the senses.. Secondary qualities are those perceived by a single sense, such as color, sound or taste.

The primary qualities have a real objective value, since they exist as we perceive them. Secondary qualities, on the other hand, although caused by external things, are subjective, they depend on how we have perceived them. Rather than qualities, the secondary qualities are reactions of the subject to stimuli received from them. Thus, Locke considers that substance is not cognizable, although it is possible to admit its existence as that which sustains the primary qualities and as the cause of the secondary ones.

Bibliographical references:

• Locke, John (1991). Introduction. In Horton, John; Mendus, Susan, eds. A Letter Concerning Toleration. New York: Routledge. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-415-02205-7. OCLC 613448161.
• Ruiza, M., Fernández, T. and Tamaro, E. (2004). Biography of John Locke. In Biographies and Lives. The online biographical encyclopedia. Barcelona (Spain). Retrieved from https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/l/locke.htm on September 30, 2020.