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John Locke
John Locke’s somewhat humble beginnings were in Wrington, where he was born
in 1632. He studied at Oxford as a student and worked administrative positions after completing
his degree. Here he started on some of his earlier major works. He left Oxford for London where
he befriended and worked for Anthony Ashley Cooper, who would later become Earl of
Shaftesbury and his family. As a political figure, he started on the Essay Concerning Human
Understanding and Two Treatises Concerning Government. Cooper would later come out of
favor in politics and Locke left the country following his death to avoid persecution. During his
escapade, he continued his work on the Essay and starting another project called Epistola de
Tolerantia, which concerned religious tolerance of governments. Locke settled down in England
and would work on theology until he died on October 28, 1704, due to poor respiratory health.
John Locke was an important leading figure and set the stage for a new view of empiricism.
One of John Locke’s foundational claims was that the human mind was a blank slate, or
“tabula rasa”. In his work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he addressed the
question of epistemology in that no ideas were innate. All knowledge must be derived from the
experience of the senses, which he explains to be the typical examples of sight, smell, and the
