John Locke
1632–1704 2 entries
Biography
John Locke was an English philosopher and physician, often called the father of liberalism. Born in 1632 in Wrington, Somerset, he studied at Westminster School and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took up medicine and the new experimental science. In 1667 he became the physician and adviser of Lord Ashley, later the Earl of Shaftesbury, a leading opponent of the king, and in 1683, when his patron’s circle fell under suspicion, he fled to the Netherlands, where he lived in exile until 1689.
Back in England after the Glorious Revolution, he published within a year his main works: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which held that the mind at birth is like white paper and that all our ideas come from experience; Two Treatises of Government, which defended the natural rights of man to life, liberty and property and government by consent of the governed; and A Letter Concerning Toleration. His ideas shaped the Enlightenment and the American Declaration of Independence. He died in 1704 at Oates, in Essex.
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