John Locke Rationalism

John Locke is known as the father of classical liberalism because of his core political ideas and doctrines are considered to be the makings of constitutional law and Anglo-American jurisprudence. British philosopher John Locke was born on August 29th 1632 in the county of Somerset England. After attending schools in London and Oxford he received his masters of arts from the prestigious Christ college. In 1668 he was elected into the Royal society where he studied medicine and graduated as a physician and 1684. While Locke was studying medicine he met Anthony Ashley Cooper who persuaded Locke to move to London and be his personal physician. lord Ashley would later become the 1st earl of Shaftesbury. As lord Shaftesbury stature grew Lockes
Locke followed a year later, and there wrote his philosophical work and essay concerning human understanding. Locke formulates one of his most famous notions, that there are no innate ideas that man is born a blank slate. This notion known as empiricism directly challenges the idea that learned things are through reason alone. After what later became known as the glorious revolution of 1688 Locke returned to England and published 2 treatises of civil government which became one of history's most famous works on social contract theory. John Locke introduced the idea of personal sovereignty, he said that each human being should have powers of self determination. Locke rejected divine rights of kings theory instead he argued that God gave rights to individuals against the government's. Tot that God gave the king power John Locke was an intellectual hero for the American founding fathers in particular James Madison Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. In his later years John Locke wrote other important works promoting religious tolerance and new approaches to education John Locke died at the age of 72 on October 28th 1704 and Essex England. Lockes legacy is a defiance of our political vocabulary to this day. We still talk endlessly about individual rights and natural rights, about limited government and a separation of church and
His contributions can be broken down into three main areas. The ideas include epistemology, political philosophy and religious toleration. Firstly epistemology, Locke following in the tradition of the likes of Francis Bacon, was an empiricist. Probably his best known work an essay concerning human understanding 1689 is one of the first great defenses of empiricism and concerns itself with determining the limits of human understanding in respect to a wide spectrum of topics. As he argues, no man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience. He tells us in some detail what one can legitimately claim to know and what one cannot. Linked to this is Locke's so called “theory of mind” which is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self. Locke was the first define the self through a continuity of consciousness, arguing that the mind was a “tabula rasa” a blank slate which became filled with knowledge deriving from experience observation and experimentation. This was in contrast to the pre existing Cartesian philosophy we stated that we are born with and innate