Colegiul National Elena Cuza

-John Locke-Life and Activity

Candidat:
Dinu Andreea-Cornelia

Coordonator:
Profesor Laura Anton

2012
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Table of Contents

Argument .. 4 Introduction... 6 I. Biography Who was John Locke? .. 7 II. About knowledge 1. 2. 3. 4. The Limits of Human Underestanding .. 8 Simple and Complex Ideas 9 Primary and Secondary Qualities 10 The Self .... 11

III. Politics 1. The Two Treaties Of Government .. 12 2. Theory Of Value And Property 13 3. Human Nature And Gods Purposes 14 Conclusion ,,.. 15 References ... 16

Argument
Of all the philosophers John Locke caught my attention.Why him and not Rene Descartes? To tell you the truth,the first one helps me understand the world better because we share the same thoughts about the way we form ourselves as personalities while Descartes says:Dubito ergo cogito,cogito ergo sum puting the rationalism at the base of the process of how we think,Locke ,on the other hand, puts a wide emphasis on experience and discovery. I would agree more to learn things through experience and discovery than to learn things and take them for granted within the silence of ones room. Philosophy means learning through questioning yourself and whether you reach a conclusion is hard to say thanks to the fact that there are more than just one explanation concerning life.At least,it offers different views of the world that make you want to know more.
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However,I should advise you that after you will read one philosopher,you will definitely want to know more about who inspired his thinking,what was the starting point,who opposed to his thinking,thus forming a continuance that will also help one make connections and parallels. What is more,his conception of social contract had a great contribution to one of the most important document in the history of the USA,The Declaration of Independence. I hope I will succeed in stirring your interest and make you think of the philosophers as your friends who can help you understand life better.

Introduction
Within these pages you will encounter information concerning the early life of the philosopher along with his ideas. This work is devided into 3 sections which are mentioned at the begining in the table of contents The first chapter is exclusively dedicated to John Lockes life and education. Second chapter presents and extends the concept of idea and qualities and the last but not least the third chapter exposes some of his theories concerning the social contract,the value of labour and the natural state of human.

I. Biography
Who was John Locke?
John Locke (b. 1632, d. 1704) was a British philosopher, Oxford academic and also medical researcher. Locke grew up and lived through one of the most extraordinary centuries of English political and intellectual history. It was a century in which conflicts between Crown and Parliament and the overlapping conflicts between Protestants, Anglicans and Catholics swirled into civil war in the 1640s. Locke's father, who was also called John Locke, was a country lawyer and a clerk .His mother was Agnes Keene. Both parents were Puritans. In 1647, Locke was sent to the prestigious Westminster School in London under the sponsorship of Alexander Popham, a member of Parliament and his father's former commander. After completing his studies there, he was admitted to Christ Church, Oxford. He was awarded a bachelor's degree in 1656 and a master's degree in 1658. He obtained a bachelor of medicine in 1674, having studied medicine extensively during his time at Oxford. In 1666, he met Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, who had come to Oxford seeking treatment for a liver infection. Cooper was impressed with Locke and persuaded him to become part of his retinue.Locke had been looking for a career and in 1667 moved into Shaftesbury's home at Exeter House in London, to serve as Lord Ashley's personal physician. Locke's medical knowledge was put to the test when Shaftesbury's liver infection became life-threatening. Locke coordinated the advice of several physicians and was probably instrumental in persuading Shaftesbury to undergo an operation (then life-threatening itself) to remove the cyst. Shaftesbury survived and prospered, crediting Locke with saving his life. Locke fled to the Netherlands in 1683, under strong suspicion of involvement in the Rye House Plot, although there is little evidence to suggest that he was directly involved in the scheme. In the Netherlands, Locke had time to return to his writing, spending a great deal of time re-working the Essay and composing the Letter on Toleration. Locke did not return home until after the Glorious Revolution. Locke accompanied William of Orange's wife back to England in 1688.
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II. About Knowledge

1. The Limits Of Human Underestanding

Locke is often classified as the first of the great English empiricists. [Someone who is an empiricist means that he/she considers the sensations the true source of knowledge.] Some philosophers before Locke had suggested that it would be good to find the limits of the Understanding, but what Locke does is to carry out this project in detail. In the four books of the Essay Locke considers the sources and nature of human knowledge. Book I argues that we have no innate knowledge. (In this he resembles Berkeley and Hume, and differs from Descartes and Leibniz.) So, at birth, the human mind is a sort of blank slate on which experience writes. In Book II Locke claims that ideas are the materials of knowledge and all ideas come from experience. The term idea, Locke tells us stands for whatsoever is the Object of the Understanding, when a man thinks.

Experience is of two kinds, sensation and reflection. One of these sensation tells us about things and processes in the external world. The other reflection tells us about the operations of our own minds. Reflection is a sort of internal sense that makes us conscious of the mental processes we are engaged in. Some ideas we get only from sensation, some only from reflection and some from both.

2.Simple and Complex Ideas

Locke's investigation into human knowledge began by asking how we acquire the basic materials out of which that knowledge is composed, our ideas There are no innate ideas stamped upon the mind from birth; and yet impressions of sense are not the only source of knowledge: The mind furnishes the understanding with ideas (Bk. 2:1:5). No distinction is implied here between mind and understanding, so that the sentence might run, the mind furnishes itself with ideas. As to what these ideas are, we are not left in doubt: they are ideas of its own operations. When the mind acts, it has an idea of its action, that is, it is selfconscious, and, as such, is assumed to be an original source of our knowledge. According to Locke, reflection is an original, rather than an independent, source of ideas. Without sensation mind would have nothing to operate upon, and therefore could have no ideas of its operations. It is when he first has any sensation that a man begins to have any ideas (Bk. 2:1:23). The operations of the mind are not themselves produced by sensation, but sensation is required to give the mind material for working on. The ideas which sensation gives such as hunger,memories,the multiplication table etc,enter by the senses simple and unmixed (Bk. 2:2:1); they stand in need of the activity of mind to bind them into the complex unities required for knowledge. The complex ideas of substance, modes, and relations are all the product of the combining and abstracting activity of mind operating upon simple ideas, which have been given, without any connection, by sensation or reflection. Even if the simple ideas of sensation provide us with ample material for thinking, what we make of them is largely up to us. Knowledge involves relations, and relations are the work of the mind; it requires complex ideas, and complex ideas are mental formations. Simple ideas do not, of themselves, enter into relation and form complex ideas.

3.Primary and Secondary Qualities

His view is that the simple idea is the test and standard of reality. Whatever the mind contributes to our ideas removes them further from the reality of things; in becoming general, knowledge loses touch with things. But not all simple ideas carry with them the same significance for reality. Colours, smells, tastes, sounds, and the like are simple ideas, yet nothing resembles them in the bodies themselves; but, owing to a certain bulk, figure, and motion of their insensible parts, bodies have a power to produce those sensations in us. These, therefore, are called secondary qualities of bodies. On the other hand, solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number are also held by Locke to be simple ideas; and these are resemblances of qualities in body; their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves; accordingly, they are primary qualities of bodies. In this way, by implication if not expressly, Locke severs, instead of establishing, the connection between simple ideas and reality.

The only ideas which can make good their claim to be regarded as simple ideas have nothing resembling them in things. Other ideas, no doubt, are said to resemble bodily qualities (an assertion for which no proof is given and none is possible); but these ideas have only a doubtful claim to rank as simple ideas. Lockes prevailing tendency is to identify reality with the simple idea, but he sometimes comes close to the opposite view that the reference to reality is the work of thought.

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4.The Self

Locke defines the self as "that conscious thinking thing, (whatever substance, made up of whether spiritual, or material, simple, or compounded, it matters not) which is sensible, or conscious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends". He does not, however, ignore "substance", writing that "the body too goes to the making the man. The Lockean self is therefore a self-aware and self-reflective consciousness that is fixed in a body.

In his Essay, Locke explains the gradual unfolding of this conscious mind. Arguing against both the Augustinian view of man as originally sinful and the Cartesian position, which holds that man innately knows basic logical propositions, Locke posits an "empty" mind, a tabula rasa, which is shaped by experience; sensations and reflections being the two sources of all our ideas

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III.Politics
1.The Two Treatises Of Government-(Political theory)-

Locke's political theory was founded on social contract theory. Unlike Thomas Hobbes, Locke believed that human nature is characterised by reason and tolerance. Like Hobbes, Locke believed that human nature allowed men to be selfish. This is apparent with the introduction of currency. In a natural state all people were equal and independent, and everyone had a natural right to defend his Life, health, Liberty, or Possessions". This became the basis for the phrase in the American Declaration of Independence: "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". The introduction of the work was written later than the main text, and gave people the impression that the book was written in 1688 to justify the Glorious Revolution.Supposing that the Two Treatises may have been intended to explain and defend the revolutionary plot against Charles II and his brother, how does it do this? Locke assumed that the sole right to defend in the state of nature was not enough, so people established a civil society to resolve conflicts in a civil way with help from government in a state of society. Locke also advocated governmental separation of powers and believed that revolution is not only a right but an obligation in some circumstances. These ideas would come to have profound influence on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States
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2.Theory of value and property

Locke uses the word property in both broad and narrow senses. In a broad sense, it covers a wide range of human interests and aspirations; more narrowly, it refers to material goods. He argues that property is a natural right and it is derived from labour. In Chapter V of his Second Treatise, Locke argues that the individual ownership of goods and property is justified by the labour exerted to produce those goods or utilise property to produce goods beneficial to human society. Locke stated his belief, in his Second Treatise, that nature on its own provides little of value to society; he provides the implication that the labour expended in the creation of goods gives them their value. This is used as supporting evidence for the interpretation of Locke's labour theory of property as a labour theory of value, in his implication that goods produced by nature are of little value, unless combined with labour in their production and that labour is what gives goods their value. Locke believed that ownership of property is created by the application of labour. In addition, he believed property precedes government and government cannot "dispose of the estates of the subjects arbitrarily." Karl Marx later critiqued Locke's theory of property in his own social theory.

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3.The Human Nature and Gods Purposes

According to Locke, God created man and we are, in effect, God's property. The chief end set us by our creator as a species and as individuals is survival If one takes survival as the end, then we may ask what are the means necessary to that end. On Locke's account, these turn out to be life, liberty, health and property. Since the end is set by God, on Locke's view we have a right to the means to that end. So we have rights to life, liberty, health and property. These are natural rights, that is they are rights that we have in a state of nature before the introduction of civil government, and all people have these rights equally. Locke does not intend his account of the state of nature as a sort of utopia. Rather it serves as an analytical device that explains why it becomes necessary to introduce civil government and what the legitimate function of civil government is. Thus, as Locke conceives it, there are problems with life in the state of nature. The law of nature, like civil laws can be violated. There are no police, prosecutors or judges in the state of nature as these are all representatives of a government with full political power. The victims, then, must enforce the law of nature in the state of nature. In addition to our other rights in the state of nature, we have the rights to enforce the law and to judge on our own behalf. We may, Locke tells us, help one another.

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Conclusion

I think that philosophy is a great tool in forming a personality.How can you develop yourself without any questions as regards to the world? You stop evolving if you are not an inquiring mind and dont experience new things. John Locke realised that and put an emphasis on reflection,the process we should pay more attention to. The more we know the more we seem to get close to the world. As a conclusion I have just realised how vast the world can be and that every moment of our lives should be written down on a tabula rassa.

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References

www.wikipedia.com www.plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke.com
Manual pentru clasa a XIIa de Elena Lupsa,Gabriel Hacman.Ed didactica si pedagogica

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