biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1632–1704)
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| biography:
| Philosopher, born in Wrington, Somerset. He studied at Oxford, and in 1667 joined the household of Anthony Ashley Cooper, later first Earl of Shaftesbury, gaining through him a succession of official appointments and meeting the leading intellectuals of the day, including Robert Boyle. In 1672, Locke became secretary of the Board of Trade, lived in France for health reasons (1675–9), then moved to Holland. He returned to England in 1689, and became a commissioner of appeals, retiring in 1691 to Oates, Essex. His major work, the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) is a systematic enquiry into the nature and scope of human reason, very much reflecting the scientific temper of the times in seeking to establish that ‘all knowledge is founded on and ultimately derives from sense...or sensation’; the work was the starting point of the British empiricist tradition which led from Locke to Berkeley and Hume. His Two Treatises of Government (1690) were also influential, and his sanctioning of rebellion in defence of natural rights and constitutional law had a powerful influence on the American and French revolutionaries. |
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