short philosohy of John Locke

1. John
Locke(1632-1704)
Br. Mel Archie Vergara

2. Short Biography
• John Locke was born in 1632 into a Puritan
home.
• At Oxford University Locke studied theology,
natural science, philosophy, and medicine.
• A contemporary of his said that as an
undergraduate Locke was “a man of turbulent
spirit, clamorous and never contented.”

3. Short Biography
• During the years of 1667–1683 he was the
personal physician and adviser to Lord
Ashley (later to become the Earl of
Shaftesbury).
• Before doing any work in political
philosophy, Locke acquired a good deal of
practical, political experience through his
association with Shaftesbury.

4. Short Biography
• In addition to holding a number of political
positions, Locke helped draft a
CONSTITUTION FOR THE AMERICAN
CAROLINAS IN 1669.
• In 1691 recurring ill health sent him into
partial retirement. He moved to the country,
twenty miles out of London, to seek more
tranquil surroundings.

5. Short Biography
• The last years of his life were spent enjoying
the quiet companionship of close friends and
studying the Scriptures. There, in the home of
friends, he died quietly in 1704.

6. The Major Works
of Locke

7. Major Works
1. Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1690)
• In his Essay, Locke tries to determine the limits of our
understanding, discussing the sources of human
knowledge and what can and what cannot be known.
• He argues that people are not born with innate
knowledge, but rather that their mind is a TABULA
RASA, a blank slate, on which the thread of
experience writes.

8. Major Works
• All of humanity is born equal in
the realms of natural intelligence.

9. Major Works
2. Two Treatises of Government
(1689)
• It strive to disprove the idea of the divine rights of
kings. Locke argues for the natural rights of man,
insisting that government is a social contract in
which we submit some of our rights to a central
administration while keeping others.

10. Major Works
• The Two Treatises of Government was written
during the times of plotting against Charles II.
• They were published later, after the Glorious
Revolution of 1688, and are often taken as Locke's
attempt to justify revolt.

11. Major Works
3. Letters on Toleration
(1689)
• Locke was a firm believer in the separation of
church and state as he felt that the government
should have no say in the business of the soul.
• He may have had a degree of private religious
conviction, but it did not play a large role in his
political philosophy.

12. Major Works
4. Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)
• Originally intended as friendly advice on child-
rearing to a friend, this essay may have been
Locke’s most influential in Europe.
• Not a work of political philosophy or really of
philosophy at all, it gives advice on how to raise
and educate children.

13. • Locke believes that children should not be
coddled, and that they should develop a
sound body in addition to a sound mind.
• He also argues that they have the same
capacity for rationality as adults, and that
they should be treated as such.

14. John Locke’s
Theory of
Knowledge

15. Tabula Rasa
• Our minds at birth are a blank slate that
experience writes upon.
• All knowledge begins with sensory
experience on which the powers of the mind
operate.

16. First, Locke argues that even if this were true, it
would not prove that the principles were innate.
There could be some other reason why people
come to have some ideas in common. For
example, all cultures have ideas corresponding to
fire, sun, heat, and numbers, but these ideas are
universal because human experience is uniform,
not because they are innate.
Locke’s Critique on the Innate
Ideas

17. Second, Locke points out that not all people know
the preceding logical principles. Many children,
mentally deficient people, and people in pre-
scientific cultures do not exhibit knowledge of
these truths. But if these principles really were
“naturally imprinted” on the mind, everyone
would know them.

18. It is important to note that he does
not reject the existence of universal
moral principles, but he merely
rejects the claim that they are innate.

19. Simple Experiences and Ideas
• Our mind begins with simple experiences and
develops simple ideas from these experiences.
• It can refer you only to the elements of your
experience to make the idea clear.
Examples:
 A color that is being seen.
A sound that is being heard.

20. Complex Ideas
• These ideas are combinations of simple
ideas that can be treated as unities and
given their own names, such as “beauty,
gratitude, a man, an army, the universe”

21. • In the fourth edition of his Essay, Locke
classifies complex ideas according to
the three activities of the mind that
produces them: COMPOUNDING,
RELATING, AND ABSTRACTING.

22. The first sort of complex ideas are formed
by COMPOUNDING or uniting together two or
more simple ideas. We can combine several
ideas of the same type.
For example, several observations of space
can be combined together in our minds to form
the idea of immense space.

23. The second activity of the mind produces
ideas of RELATION. These are produced by
comparing one idea with another.
For example, the idea of “taller” could only
come about by relating our ideas of two other
things.

24. Finally, the process of abstraction
gives us a very important set of ideas
called ABSTRACT OR GENERAL
IDEAS.

25. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY
QUALITIES
• Unlike Descartes, Locke never doubted that
there was an external world and that we could
know it.
• He introduces the term QUALITY to refer to a
power in matter to produce ideas in our mind.

26. • Those qualities / properties that an object of
sensation (physical objects) have within
itself.
• Examples of primary qualities would be
solidity, extension, shape, motion or rest,
and number.
PRIMARY QUALITIES

27. • Those qualities / properties that are not in
the Objects of Sensations but are produced
in the perceiver by the primary qualities.
• Examples would be the sensations of
colors, sound, tastes, odors, warmth or
coldness, and so forth.
SECONDARY QUALITIES

29. Degrees of
Knowledge

30. • This occurs when the connection between ideas
is seen immediately. Thus, we know that “white
is not black, that a circle is not a triangle, that
three are more than two, and equal to one and
two” by merely examining these ideas.
• The knowledge the mind perceives immediately
(at first sight).
Intuitive Knowledge

31. • Here, the connection between ideas is not
immediate but is established by forming a chain
of logical steps as in a mathematical proof.
• Demonstrative knowledge also gives us
certainty, if we are careful in forming each link
in the logical chain.
Demonstrative Knowledge

32. Sensitive Knowledge
• is when our sensory ideas are caused by
existing things even when we do not know
what causes the idea within us. For example, I
have know that there is something producing
the odor I can smell.

33. Sensitive Knowledge
• Apart from our own existence and God’s, all
judgments concerning the existence and nature of
objects in the external world falls into this
category.
• Locke is unrelenting in maintaining that
experience is the source of all our ideas.

34. The Political
Philosophy of
Locke

35. John Locke had a positive view of
Human Nature
He believed that mankind is
•Good
•Moral
•Honest
•Reasonable

36. Humans in Nature
•Humans born with natural rights to:
•Life
•Liberty
•Property
•Rights came from God not from the government,
so the government can not take them away,
which makes them inalienable.

37. Social Contract
•Gov’t gets its authority to rule from the
people.
•Gov’t exists to protect your natural rights
(life, liberty, and property).
•If it fails the people have a Right to
Revolution

38. Reasons why government and laws
would make life better
•First, even though there is the natural law,
we need a written and agreed-on law to
resolve controversies among individuals. In
this way, human bias will not enter into
judgments concerning individual cases.

39. • Second, even though each individual in
nature may punish wrongdoing, an officially
appointed, indifferent judge could apply the
laws in a manner more equitable than a
person whose personal interests were at
stake.
• Third, we need a government to enforce the
laws on behalf of the powerless.

40. The Limits of Government
• Locke’s vision of government was one of the early
formulations of classical liberalism. He stated that
the power of government may not extend beyond
that required by the common good.
• He states that the government must rule by laws and
not simply by force or an arbitrary will.

41. • Locke suggested that the government should be
divided into separate branches, each serving as a
limit on the power of the other units. He called these
the EXECUTIVE, LEGISLATIVE, AND
FEDERATIVE BRANCHES. The latter would
supervise the relations between the government and
foreign nations.

42. • Locke provides the grounds for a right to revolution.
If a government should exceed its legitimate
authority, the social contract is broken, and the
citizens may replace it.
• His view is very balanced, for he cautions there
should not be a call for revolution “upon every little
mismanagement in public affairs.”

43. Our country was founded on the idea that if
our government fails to protect our rights
we have the right to get rid of it or change
it to make it better
•Right to Revolution-people have the right or duty
to rebel if gov’t fails to protect their rights
--This is the driving force of our Political system--

44. It can happen in two ways:
Peaceful Change-
government changes as
citizens recognize
problem(s) and correct
them w/o changing
gov’t. Citizens vote to
change the gov’t.

45. •When the system fails to react
to problems or when gov’t
becomes unjust citizens will
RIOT OR START OPEN
REBELLIONS.
•During Revolutionary War
period people tried to
peacefully change system
when it failed they started the
war.

46. John
Locke(1632-1704)
Br. Mel Archie Vergara