In which a modest English physician argues that we are born knowing nothing and that kings rule only because the people allow it
♦ ♦ ♦Aquinas believed in natural law written into the nature of things. How did Locke's thinking differ from Aquinas's vision?
Descartes claimed we are essentially thinking things and that some ideas are innate. What will Locke say instead?
John Locke was born on August 29, 1632, in Somerset, England. He was born the same year as Spinoza. But where Spinoza was excommunicated, Locke moved quietly through English society, changing it through ideas rather than provocation. He was a physician, a political thinker, and a philosopher. He was friends with Newton, adviser to the Earl of Shaftesbury, and in exile from England during dangerous political times.
Locke studied medicine at Oxford, but he never practiced as a full-time physician. Instead, he became a physician of the intellect. He began to question the received wisdom of philosophy. He was struck by how little humans seemed to know, how much they disagreed, and how much of this disagreement came from accepting unexamined assumptions.
In 1667, he had a profound insight. He began writing reflections on knowledge and understanding. These reflections would eventually become his masterwork, the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (published 1689). His goal was simple but radical: to understand the nature and limits of human knowledge.
Locke begins the Essay by challenging the dominant assumption of his age: that we are born with innate ideas. Plato believed in recollection of eternal forms. Descartes believed some ideas are built into the mind by God. But Locke proposes something revolutionary:
The mind begins as a blank slate. All knowledge comes from experience. We begin knowing nothing. Everything we know — colours, shapes, tastes, emotions, mathematical truths — comes from either sensation (the five senses) or reflection (the mind's awareness of its own operations).
Locke makes a crucial distinction. Some properties of objects exist in the objects themselves: shape, size, motion, solidity. These are primary qualities. Other properties exist only in our minds: color, taste, smell, sound. These are secondary qualities. The apple's shape is really in the apple. Its redness is not really in the apple; it is the apple's ability to produce the sensation of redness in our minds.
Locke's political philosophy transformed the world. He published Two Treatises of Government in 1689, the same year as the Essay. This was no coincidence. He was defending the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when the English people had deposed James II and elected William and Mary.
Locke argues that humans have natural rights: life, liberty, and property. These rights do not come from government. They come from human nature itself. Government exists for one purpose: to protect these rights. Government is a contract between people.
Here is where Locke departs radically from Hobbes. Hobbes said once you surrender power to the sovereign, you cannot take it back. Locke says if government violates your natural rights, you have the right to rebel.
This idea shaped the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. Thomas Jefferson, writing the American Declaration, directly echoed Locke: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
The mind begins empty. All knowledge comes from experience.
Locke challenges the assumption of innate ideas. We are not born knowing anything. Not God, not mathematics, not morality. Everything must be learned through sensation and reflection. This grounds knowledge in the real world and in the actual experiences of human beings.
It also raises a problem: if all knowledge comes from experience, what about knowledge of God? How do we experience the infinite? How do we know what we have never sensed?
Some properties are in objects; others are only in our minds.
The apple's shape is objectively real. Its redness is not. The redness is the power the apple has to cause a certain sensation in our mind. This distinction allows Locke to ground our knowledge of the material world in real properties while acknowledging that perception is subjective. It is the beginning of modern scientific realism.
Government exists only to protect our natural rights to life, liberty, and property.
Unlike Hobbes, who grounds government in fear, Locke grounds it in the rational consent of the governed. We have natural rights not because government grants them, but because we are human. Government exists to secure these rights. If government fails to do so, we have the right to withdraw consent and establish a new government. This is the foundation of modern democracy and constitutional government.
Think: If all knowledge comes from experience, and we cannot experience God, how do we know God exists? How do we know anything beyond sensation?
Locke wanted to ground knowledge in experience. But he also believed in God and the soul. How can empiricism make room for these? This tension between empiricism and religious belief will run through the rest of philosophy. Hume will push empiricism to its logical conclusion and find no evidence for God. Kant will try to save both empiricism and religious knowledge through a revolution in epistemology.
Born in Somerset, England. The same year as Spinoza. But while Spinoza was cursed, Locke moved through society quietly, changing minds through ideas. Encode "16" and "32". Link to a baby being born in an English country house, a physician attending the birth.
Locke publishes both his great works the same year. The Essay claims the mind is blank. The Two Treatises claim government rests on consent. Also the year of the Glorious Revolution. Encode "16" and "89". Link to two books rising from a blank white page, light filling it.
Locke dies at 72, having lived to see his ideas reshape English government and European thought. Encode "17" and "04". Link to an old philosopher's last breath, and ideas spreading like light across the world.
1. When was Locke born?
2. When did he publish his great works?
3. When did he die?
You have 35 locations now. You are halfway through the first half of philosophy. Location 35 holds Locke: the physician, the quiet revolutionary, the man who said we are born knowing nothing and learn everything through experience.
1. A perfectly blank white page, enormous, hanging in the air — the tabula rasa. The mind at birth. Empty, waiting to be filled with experience.
2. Experience writing on the page with a quill made of light — sensation and reflection. The five senses and the mind's awareness of its own operations filling the blank slate with knowledge.
3. An apple: half real (shape, size, solidity) and half painted (color, taste) — primary and secondary qualities. What is really in the object versus what is only in our mind.
4. A king handing his crown to a crowd of citizens — government by consent. The sovereign does not have absolute power. The people choose their government and can withdraw that choice.
5. Locke and Spinoza back-to-back, born the same year but looking in opposite directions — one looks at the mind and experience, the other at God and necessity. Two visions of human nature and knowledge, radically different.
Describe where you place each image.
Choose 2–3 questions to reflect on.
Locke says all knowledge comes from experience. But what about instincts? Temperament? Innate desires? Is the mind truly blank?
If all knowledge comes from experience, how do we know God? You cannot see or taste God. Can empiricism make room for faith?
Locke says government rests on the consent of the governed. But did you consent to your current government? Can you withdraw that consent?
Hobbes says we surrender all rights to the sovereign. Locke says we have natural rights the government must protect. Who is right?
Locke says if government fails to protect our rights, we can overthrow it. Does this justify any revolution? Any uprising?
Locke says an apple's shape is real but its color is not. Is this distinction actually true? Where is the line?
Retrieve from memory alone.
1632 — Locke born in Somerset, England (same year as Spinoza)
1689 — Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Government published
1704 — Locke dies at age 72
Tabula Rasa — The mind begins as a blank slate. All knowledge comes from experience.
Primary and Secondary Qualities — Some properties are objectively in objects; others are only in our minds.
Natural Rights and Government by Consent — We have natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Government exists to protect them and rests on the consent of the governed.
What is Locke's image for the blank mind?
"White paper, void of all characters" — the tabula rasa. Locke's foundational metaphor for the mind at birth.
Walk through Location 35. List the 5 images:
Locke says we begin as blank slates. Augustine says we begin restless, already longing for God. Jesus says we begin beloved. Three different starting points. Which is true?
Locke says humans begin blank. Augustine says we begin restless, longing for God. Jesus says we begin beloved. Three different visions of human nature. Locke grounds knowledge in experience. But what about the knowledge that we are known? The knowledge that we matter? The knowledge that we are forgiven? These cannot come from sensation. They can only come from being told, from relationship, from grace.
In Lesson 36, we reach the height of the Enlightenment. Voltaire, Montesquieu, and the philosophes spread Locke's ideas across Europe. The age of reason becomes the age of revolution. Ideas about natural rights, consent of the governed, and freedom of thought begin to reshape the world.
This lesson's content returns in: Lesson 38 (+3), Lesson 42 (+7), and Lesson 49 (+14). Note: Lesson 49 is The Garden and The Kingdom.
Hobbes says humans need fear. Spinoza says humans need understanding. Locke says humans need freedom — freedom to think, freedom to consent to government, freedom from the chains of assumed beliefs. But is freedom enough? What about love? What about forgiveness? What about being known by another, as Augustine knew himself known by God? The philosophers are asking the right questions. But the deepest answer may lie outside of philosophy.