John Locke

John Locke (1632-1704) believed that Experience is the true way to gain knowledge, an idea that compared to the farfetched theories of Aristotle, sounds relatively believable. He believed that these “experiences” shaped the people we are or become. Well, again, surely that’s relatively straight forward. As is virtually everything Locke has said in his essay. . .  Finally, a philosopher I can actually understand!

The perceptions we have of many things are due to how our mind conveys them. Locke named these “sensations”. These are only one part of the process we go through to gain knowledge but our sensations contribute to everything we experience on a day to day basis. Locke is basically telling us here those things we experience shape our lives but how we react to them shapes our personality and who we are. I believe Locke is definitely talking sense but I think he is missing something rather crucial. I believe that we gain some of our knowledge and traits from what we see and hear from our parents during our upbringing.

Locke disagreed with Hobbes, particularly his theory or idea that god chose one person to be a “leader” and that person can do whatever they want, a dictatorship.  Locke suggested the concept of ‘Government’. That the country has a collection of people, voted for by the community, to make decisions for the country together, with the King present to lead, protect and rule. He suggested there be laws to dictate how much power the Government have mainly to stop them doing something the people disagree with and to stop them exploiting their power. Locke also established that the citizens can rebel against their government if they let them down or don’t respect the set laws. He suggested this mainly to prevent conflict over property.

One of Locke’s ideas that particularly stood out to me was his theory that when we are born, we are born like a clean slate, a tablet of innocence. This idea however conflicted with that of the church. The church believed everyone was born with an imprinted ability to sin. I sort of think this could be true, everyone has the ability to sin but when you’re young or new born you are unable to determine what is right and what is wrong. Locke was okay with this belief but felt that it was wrong for the church to pressure people to believe it as well. He believed that individuals should be guided by a private belief system, possibly made up of several religious beliefs not just from Christianity. He said what you want to believe is okay and entirely down to the individual, have it as a personal guide and don’t try to make everyone else believe it too. This phrase, I feel, also applies today.

I will end on what I believe is the most important idea that Locke established; ‘everyone as the right to life, the right to liberty and the right to property, each never conflicting with the other’.