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Empiricism
Locke's empiricism emphasizes the importance of the experience of the senses in pursuit of knowledge rather than intuitive speculation or deduction. The empiricist doctrine was first expounded by the English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon early in the 17th century, but Locke gave it systematic expression in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). He regarded the mind of a person at birth as a tabula rasa, a blank slate upon which experience imprinted knowledge, and did not believe in intuition or theories of innate conceptions. Locke also held that all persons are born good, independent, and equal.
Political Theories
Locke's views, in his Two Treatises of Government (1690), attacked the theory of divine right of kings and the nature of the state as conceived by the English philosopher and political theorist Thomas Hobbes. Note: Here's the absolute biggest difference between Hobbes and Locke. In brief, Locke argued that sovereignty did not reside in the state but with the people, and that the state is supreme, but only if it is bound by civil and what he called 'natural' law. Many of Locke's political ideas, such as those relating to natural rights, property rights, the duty of the government to protect these rights, and the rule of the majority, were later embodied in the U.S. Constitution.
Locke further held that revolution was not only a right but often an obligation, and he advocated a system of checks and balances in government, which was to comprise three branches, of which the legislative is more powerful than the executive or the judicial. He also believed in religious freedom and in the separation of church and state.
Locke's influence in modern philosophy has been profound and, with his application of empirical analysis to ethics, politics, and religion, he remains one of the most important and controversial philosophers of all time.
How does Locke describe the state of nature?
Locke's state of nature is a lot nicer than Hobbes's, but then again, whose wouldn't be? Locke claims that for all men it's "a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of the possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending on the will of any other man." He's saying that you can do anything you want, within the bounds of the law of nature. What's the law of nature? "The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions." A mouthful, but fairly straightforward if you read it carefully. What Locke is saying is that we are all, by nature, reasonable beings, and the law of nature is our rationality. And further, as rational people, it makes sense to do unto others as you want them to do unto you -- the Golden Rule. (A lot of philosophers are proponents of the Golden Rule, but usually they give it a fancy name to disguise the obvious. But the G.R. does make sense, and Locke does base much of his thinking on it. If all judgments we make are based on how we would like to be judged ourselves, and we're all rational to boot, we're on our way to designing a pretty decent way of life.)
In his state of nature, Locke allows one to contract for "truck," i.e., to bargain for goods without having to first agree to a social contract. That is, you can get on with other people without a social contract, at least to some degree. Mostly his state of nature comprises family groups. In fact, Locke goes to great lengths theorizing that the sources of the social contract were family ties, with a patriarchal chieftain, which eventually led to non-familial societies, and that if we had the written records, we could track this down. This attempt to rationalize the social contract as a historical reality may be the biggest crock in Locke, but you can make your own judgments on that.
Locke also does throw out state of nature = state of war, which he claims some men have "confounded" (he's very gentle about saying that Hobbes was full of it -- he was "confounded." I wouldn't recommend accusing your opponents of a like confounding -- "My opponent seems 'confounded' in his understanding of my value."). In Locke's state of nature, peopled by rational beings, if men are living together according to reason, they will not be in a state of constant warfare; however, they will lack arbitrary judges of disputes. This is a key idea for Locke, who claims that a political society only exists when people give up their natural power to preserve their property into the hands of the community; it is the community that will punish offenses and handle disputes. "Those who are united into one body, and have a common established law and judicature to appeal to, with authority to decide controversies between them and punish offenders, are in civil society one with another; but those who have no such common appeal, I mean on earth, are still in the state of nature." Note the "on earth" -- Locke's inarguable common authority over all mankind is God.
So what else did Locke do for a living?
John Locke is the author of An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government, familiarly known as the second treatise (for original read "origins"). This book is the bible of social contract theory (Hobbes is merely a precursor); freshmen will immediately begin reading this book tomorrow. Buy it, don't borrow it, as you'll need to underline it every time you reread and consult it in the future. It is short, but neither nasty nor brutish as these things go (although for my money the easiest philosophical read of all remains Mill's On Liberty, which we'll get to later).
Who is John Locke?
Locke, John (1632-1704), English philosopher, who founded the school of empiricism.
Locke was born in the village of Wrington, Somerset, on August 29, 1632. He was educated at the University of Oxford and lectured on Greek, rhetoric, and moral philosophy at Oxford from 1661 to 1664. In 1667 Locke began his association with the English statesman Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st earl of Shaftesbury, to whom Locke was friend, adviser, and physician. Shaftesbury secured for Locke a series of minor government appointments. In 1669, in one of his official capacities, Locke wrote a constitution for the proprietors of the Carolina Colony in North America, but it was never put into effect. In 1675, after the liberal Shaftesbury had fallen from favor, Locke went to France. In 1679 he returned to England, but in view of his opposition to the Roman Catholicism favored by the English monarchy at that time, he soon found it expedient to return to the Continent. From 1683 to 1688 he lived in Holland, and following the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the restoration of Protestantism to favor, Locke returned once more to England. The new king, William III, appointed Locke to the Board of Trade in 1696, a position from which he resigned because of ill health in 1700. He died in Oates on October 28, 1704.