Western1632–1704

John Locke

England

English founder of empiricism and liberalism, theorist of natural rights and government by consent.

Biography

John Locke — physician, Oxford don, political exile, and after 1688 the house philosopher of England's Glorious Revolution — built the empiricist framework within which English-language argument about religion still moves.

The Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) demolished innate ideas: the mind begins as white paper, and all knowledge derives from sensation and reflection. Yet Locke was no skeptic about God. He held a demonstrative proof from our own existence back to an eternal cogitative being, and in The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) argued that the gospel's essentials are few — Jesus is the Messiah — and its morality reason's own, delivered with an authority plain men could receive.

His signature category was the boundary line. Above reason (revelation may teach what reason cannot discover), according to reason, and contrary to reason (which no alleged revelation can be, since the credentials of revelation are themselves weighed by reason). "Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything," the Essay concludes — a sentence that made enthusiasm and infallibility equally suspect and set the terms for a century of debate about miracles and testimony that Hume would radicalize.

The Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) is his most consequential religious text: the state exists for civil goods, the soul cannot be saved by force, and churches are voluntary societies. He notoriously stopped short — no toleration for atheists (whose oaths, he thought, bind nothing) — and his line was redrawn by his heirs. American disestablishment and the First Amendment are, in large part, applied Locke; so is the two-treatise doctrine that legitimate government rests on consent, written against the divine right of kings.

Works

"Swingin round the cirkle" : $b His ideas of men, politics, and things, as set forth in his letters to the public press, during the year 1866.John Locke

"Swingin round the cirkle" : $b His ideas of men, politics, and things, as set forth in his letters to the public press, during the year 1866.

Campaign literature -- Republican; United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1869 -- Humor

John Locke

Biography

Works

"Swingin round the cirkle" : $b His ideas of men, politics, and things, as set forth in his letters to the public press, during the year 1866.

30,000 locked out : $b the great strike of the building trades in Chicago

A Christmas Mystery: The Story of Three Wise Men

A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II.

A Selection from the Works of Frederick Locker

A Study In Shadows

A Virginia Girl in the Civil War, 1861-1865: being a record of the actual experiences of the wife of a Confederate officer

Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiography

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 3 and 4

At the Gate of Samaria

Barry Locke, half-back

Belle Powers' Locket

Billie Bradley and Her Classmates; Or, The Secret of the Locked Tower

Deepfreeze

Derelicts

Dixie After the War: An Exposition of Social Conditions Existing in the South, During the Twelve Years Succeeding the Fall of Richmond

Doris Force at Locked Gates; Or, Saving a Mysterious Fortune

Far-away Stories

G-r-r-r...!

Idols

Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of William J. Locke

Jaffery

Lefty Locke, pitcher-manager

Locke

Locked Doors

London Lyrics

Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories: Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas

Milk Run

Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel

Next Door, Next World

Political thought in England from Locke to Bentham

Second Treatise of Government

Septimus

Simon the Jester

Stella Maris

The Belovéd Vagabond

The Book of Daniel Unlocked

The Demagogue and Lady Phayre

The Fortunate Youth

The Glory of Clementina Wing

The golden journey of Mr. Paradyne

The House of Baltazar

The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol

The Life of Benjamin Franklin: With Many Choice Anecdotes and admirable sayings of this great man never before published by any of his biographers

The Life of General Francis Marion

The moon hoax : $b or, A discovery that the moon has a vast population of human beings

The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne : a Novel

The Mountebank

The Red Planet

The Rough Road

The Tale of Triona

The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi

The White Dove

The Wonderful Year

Viviette

What the Blackbird said: A story in four chirps

When Canada was New France

Where Love Is

Second Treatise of Government

Books by & about John Locke