Introduction
The life of John Locke was one of the most interesting lives of the philosophers of the enlightenment. His education, political career, social entourage, and public controversies were reflected in his many writings, giving the world a better understanding of how things should be studied and why politics should not favor faith over reason. This short essay aims to show how Locke developed his ideas for writing his most famous works, and the social and political contexts in which those texts came into being.
The Works of John Locke
John Locke had to endure the English civil war of 1642 when he was still a child, so he knew about the terrors of a lawless society and that must have played its part in his ideas of a pre-state way of life and the need of a social contract for the formation of a state.
In his youth, Locke did a variety of studies, he made great progress in medicine but could not pursue that profession due to his frail health condition , he then went to study classical literature and philosophy at Oxford, but was not comfortable because of their “Aristotelian scholastic philosophy” . Nonetheless, he read great part of the works of Francis Bacon, which surely modeled his thoughts about the way humans acquire knowledge and the limits of the mind, adopting the empiricist viewpoints that would forever characterize his thought and that would later lead him to write his famous Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
He was later offered a position in the clergy by the Irish Church, but he rejected it because he thought it could have limited him in the pursuit of excellence in his profession .
It was in 1666 when Locke started being interested in political and economic philosophy, the life in the public service and revolutionary intrigue . He had become the personal secretary of Lord Ashley, who was later named the first Earl of Shaftesbury . Lord Ashley fought against the campaign of religious intolerance, and was openly against an eventual accession of James Stuart, who was a Catholic . Was then when Locke became a close confidant for Ashley, and possibly the main reason for writing his Two Treatises of Government . According to Huyler, these treatises served to support Shafterbury´s cause, which were “toleration toward religious dissent and resistance to Stuart absolutism” . To understand why Locke, a Christian, would write so much about the need to separate the church and the state, and the natural rights of men , one must see that for him, as for Shaftesbury and the Whigs, the Catholic Church represented the monarchical absolutism of Louis XIV of France (Rothbard, 2006). They saw that in Europe, the most prosperous country was Protestant Holland, and it was also the freest of all, while the rest of them were under economic controls, arbitrary taxes and constant conflict under Catholicism and monarchical tyranny .
During the following years Locke witnessed how religion and political figures often struggled for power. The Earl of Shaftesbury fell in disgrace and was exiled, and so they fled to Holland . From there Locke wrote his Letter Concerning Toleration in which he clearly criticizes the church and proposes the separation of state and religion, where the state should be the only one who could exert violence to disobedient subjects, and the church should only care for their subject’s souls. Cromwell´s revolution in 1688 finally allowed John Locke to go back to England, and was regarded highly for having being a victim of the deposed regime .
But Locke was not only concerned about purely political ideas. During the previous decade, he had been working on one of his more prominent works and the one that had the most impact on sciences in general. In 1690 he published his Essay on the Human Understanding, where he finally expresses his view on epistemology and the way humans see the world. It was clearly influenced by the earlier empirists, such as Francis Bacon. According to him, these ideas struck his mind during one of his many conversations among friends and acquaintances, when the difficulties that arise from differing points of view gave place to question their own abilities to understand the world and each other .
Locke´s thoughts were among the most influential ideas in many areas of modern knowledge. His epistemology considerations are considered a milestone for modern empiricism. His ideas about the natural laws, are among the most important foundations of liberalism, and his views on the State were of utmost importance for the founding fathers of America.
Works Cited
Huyler, J. (1997). Was Locke a Liberal? The Independent Review, 1(4), 523-542.
Locke, J. (1980). Second Treatise of Government. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
Rothbard, M. (2006, October 21). Economic Thought Before Adam Smith. Auburn: Ludwig Von Mises Institute. Retrieved December 9, 2013, from http://mises.org/daily/4695
The Illustrated Magazine of Art. (1853). John Locke. The Illustrated Magazine of Art, 1(4), 225-227.
