In Conversation With Accession No.  JL–1632–2026
Tom Tower · Christ Church · Oxford · 1681 Great Hall Perpendicular Gothic Battlements ELEVATION Christ Church, Oxford Tom Tower · Wren, 1681 Locke resident · Christ Church, 1658��1684 Censured by Dean · exiled 1684 cf. Wren · Baroque Gothic Perpendicular tracery Oxford limestone · Headington N

John
Locke

1632  —  1704
Historical Archive  ·  Portrait Study
John Locke
John Locke
Wrington, Somerset, 1632  ·  High Laver, Essex, 1704

Physician, empiricist philosopher, political theorist — the intellectual architect of 1776. He lived through four regime changes in one lifetime: Civil War, Interregnum, Restoration, Glorious Revolution. He fled to the Netherlands in 1683 when his patron, Lord Shaftesbury, was suspected of treason. He returned with William of Orange in 1689 and published three of the most consequential books in English in a single year.

His Second Treatise argued that natural rights — to life, liberty, and property — precede government and cannot be taken away. That government exists by the consent of the governed. That when a government violates the trust placed in it, the people have the right — and the duty — to dissolve it.

Thomas Jefferson read him closely. The Declaration of Independence is, in substantial part, Locke's Second Treatise translated into the language of colonial grievance. He finds this gratifying, and complicated.

Consultation

Question
the Empiricist.

Locke speaks from 983 chunks of his own writings — the Two Treatises, the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the Letter Concerning Toleration, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, and the Reasonableness of Christianity.

He is careful, methodical, and genuinely modest about the limits of what any mind can know. He has watched his ideas be applied, misapplied, and stretched beyond recognition for three centuries. He has thoughts about this.

Ask him about natural rights, the social contract, what "property" really meant in his usage, why he excluded Catholics from toleration, or what he makes of the republic his ideas helped build.

He will give you evidence. He always does.

Natural Rights Consent of the Governed Right of Revolution Toleration Tabula Rasa Labor Theory of Property Empiricism The Glorious Revolution
Tom Quad Tom Quad Hall · Library Plan  ·  Christ Church, Oxford  ·  Locke's Residence 1658–1684
"Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."
— John Locke  ·  Second Treatise of Government  ·  1689
Corpus Sources
Two Treatises of Government · 1689 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding · 1689 A Letter Concerning Toleration · 1689 Some Thoughts Concerning Education · 1693 The Reasonableness of Christianity · 1695