JOHN LOCKE

At this time the English Civil War was in full bloom--and though the Puritan party was in the ascendancy, there was little consensus within England about the proper direction of English society.  The political and religious divisions within English society were deep--and in bitter opposition.  Locke, despite his own Puritan upbringing, began to develop at Oxford strong "centrist" feelings--desiring a cooling of the over-heated political and religious passions.  In his own life Locke was uncertain about many of the things that everyone else seemed so certain about.  This reflected itself in the breadth of his scholastic reach at Oxford--where he studied Greek, philosophy, rhetoric, chemistry, meteorology--and, as was expected of him, theology.

But it was medicine that most attracted him as a possibility of a life work.  Here he underwent training in the new empirical methods of experimentation--a methodology that was growing up rapidly alongside the older intellectual discipline of logic.  Through his studies of medicine he became friends with Robert Boyle, one of the foremost of the new English scientists of the Royal Academy.    In 1656 he received his B.A. degree from Oxford, then his Master's degree, and in 1664 he received the appointment as censor of moral philosophy at Oxford.

It was during this time that he began putting his thoughts on a wide range of subjects to writing--producing manuscripts such as Treatise on Civil Magistrates (1660), Essays on the Law of Nature (1663), and An Essay concerning Toleration (1667).

He was now facing the decision as to what to do with his life.  In 1665 he accompanied Sir Walter Vane on a diplomatic mission to the Elector of Brandenburg in Germany--and briefly considered diplomacy as a field of endeavor, though when given an offer he declined.  He returned to Oxford to resume his studies (in philosophy)--meeting Lord Ashley (the first earl of Shaftesbury) and becoming close friends with him.  They quickly discovered that they both shared in common a love of the concept of personal liberty--in all fields of human life.  Their friendship was thus deep--and intellectually stimulating.  Eventually (1667) Locke went into personal service as a personal physician and secretary to Shaftesbury at his home, Exeter House in London.

Indeed, Exeter House during the 8 years that Locke lived there was the scene of an active round of philosophical gatherings centered on the major questions of the day--especially the issue concerning where Truth originated from and how man was to gain access to such Truth.  The old Christian truisms were rapidly crumbling and it was a time of trying to assemble a new post-medieval, even post-renaissance and post-reformation, world view.  It was these discussions that years later would promompt Locke in to write his famous Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690).

In 1675 Shaftesbury suffered both a fall from political favor and from declining health, compelling Locke to move to France (Montpellier and Paris).  Here his circle of deeply intellectual friends broadened considerably, from physicians, to astronomers, to lawyers, to linguists.

In 1679, with Shaftesbury once again restored to favor, Locke returned to London.  But the times were still very unstable politically, with Shaftesbury again arrested, placed in the Tower of London, then acquited, then accused again.  Finally in 1682 Shaftesbury fled to the Netherlands--dying there early the following year.  All this intrigue also cast shadows over the fortunes of Locke--confirming in his mind all the more the urgent need for tolerance in the affairs of state.

These were very difficult times for Locke.  Even in the Netherlands he had to hide out to avoid the reach of English royal displeasure.  He was forced to stay on the move, hiding out first in Amsterdam (barely escaping arrest), then moving to Rotterdam to live among other English exiles.  Nonetheless he found time to write--and publish--a number of articles for the Bibliotheque universelle et historique.  He also began serious work on his Essay concerning Human Understanding--finally in 1688 bringing out in French a summary version of his work.

It was now the time of the "Glorious Revolution" in England.  In 1688 Parliament finally grew weary of King James II's antics and once again overthrew the monarch--though not the monarchy.  They called from the Netherlands to the English throne--as joint monarchs--James's sister, Mary, and her Dutch Protestant husband, William of Orange.  During his own exile in the Netherlands, Locke had been introduced to William--who arrived in England in late 1688.  Locke himself returned to England in early 1689--on the same ship with the new Queen.

At this point his career blossomed.  In rapid succession he published the Letter on Toleration (1689), Two Treatises of Government (1689) and the Essay concerning Human Understanding in its full version (1690).  The first two expressed his long-term interest in the establishment of a system of government that allowed completely free intellectual inquiry and personal protection from vindictive partisan politics.  The Essay was focused on a scientific explanation of how it is that we humans come to know what we know (epistemology).

But the level of toleration that Locke hoped for in the Glorious Revolution did not prove forthcoming and Locke left London in early 1691 for the greater security of the countryside in Essex at the Oates house of Sir Francis Masham.  There he lived out the remaining 13 years of his life in a degree of relative peace and security that had so long evaded him.  From there he corresponded with Lord Shaftesbury, Isaac Newton, and others.

But now his writing provided a number of storms in his life--though none of these even approached the crisis level of his years prior to the Revolution.  His Letter concerning Toleration got him in a publishing controversy in the early 1690s with Jonas Proast of Oxford, in which answers and counter-answers went back and forth to publication.  His publication in 1695 of The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures as an effort to liberate the Christian faith of Jesus from what he saw as subsequent human revisions and editings embroiled Locke in a number of controversies with parts of the Christian commuinity.  His efforts to answer their complaints with Vindication and Second Vindication (both in 1697) only seemed to stir matters up even more.

His Essay also stirred up reactions from fellow scholars, leading Locke to answer with tracts he entitled An examination of Pere Malebranche's Opinion of Seeing All Things in God and Remarks upon some of Mr. Norris's Books (not published until after Locke's death.)  Among his critics was Bishop Stillingfleet who in his Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity attacked Locke's materialistic theory of learning.  Published letters between Stillingfleet and Locke continued back and forth until Stillingfleet's death in 1699.

Nonetheless his Essay remained very popular--on the European continent as well as in England--and went through a second, revised edition in 1694, a third edition in 1695 and a fourth, revised edition in 1700.  Also, the publication by John Wynne of an abridged edition served to make the book even more widely accessible and popular.

The breadth of Locke's learning is well illustrated in his publication in 1695 of Short Observations on a Printed Paper in opposition to the printing of paper currency, and a similar work Further Considerations concerning Raising the Value of Money.  Indeed, in 1696 Locke was commissioned to the Board of Trade in London and held that position until he retired in 1700.

In his retirement Locke now turned to religious matters.  He undertook the critical study of the writings of the apostle Paul, employing some of the same mental disciplines outlined in the Essay.  A Paraphrase and Notes on St. Paul to the Galatians and A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles to the Corinthians were published posthumously in 1705 and 1706.  Also his Discourse on Miracles, written in 1702, also was published after his death.

His last work, underway at the time of his death in October 1704, was the Fourth Letter on Toleration, intended again as a reply to Jonas Proast.

Thus to Locke there was no such things as innate ideas which we are born with and which come into action as we mediate on them.  This had been the classic understanding of how we came to know our world.  But Locke now made that learning entirely dependent on our empirical relationship with the surrounding physical world.  To Locke, ideas arose from external stimulae--not from sources internal to the human mind.

This had the net effect of distancing the realm of the knower from the realm of the known.  The human mind really could not know directly about the fact or truth of anything--only what the senses brought into the mind from outside through the sensory channels.  And even here caution needed to be exercised because what was known by the mind was not the thing in itself--which stood separated from the observed--but only the representation of the thing which the mind was able to assemble. In short, we could not have sure and absolute knowledge about anything--only impressions about things.  Thus we should be quite cautious in our claims to hold absolute truth.  All we had, in fact, was a very subjective impression of the truth--not the truth itself.

Needless to say, Locke's intellectual relativism was widely attacked by many who still held to the principle that ideas were organic to the human mind--placed there by the hand of God.  Besides, Locke's theory had a number of logical weaknesses that his opponents were quick to point out--especially in his effort to explain exactly how it was that sensory data from outside was turned into ideas that the mind could use.  In the development of his empirical theory of knowledge Locke in a way had to fall back to the principle of some kind of innate powers of the mind to cause such data to develop into full ideas.  Thus in fact there were elements of human knowledge that were innate.