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John Locke and Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Introduction
John Locke was an Oxford scholar, a medical researcher and
physician, a political functionary, economist and ideologue for
a radical movement, and one of the exalted philosophers of the
late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. His historic
Essay Concerning Human Understanding aspires to find out the
confines of human understanding. Previously, Chillingworth had
argued that human understanding was restricted, where as Locke
tries to determine what that confines are. He thinks that we can
know with confidence that God exists and that with the same
precision we know about mathematics, as we are ourselves the
originators of moral and political thoughts. With respect to
natural matters, we can identify only the exteriors and not the
internal actualities, which create those exteriors. And the
atomic hypothesis is the most credible available hypothesis.
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Locke’s other renowned writings
Two Treatises of Civil Government was published after the
Revolution of 1688 that brought William of Orange and Mary to
the throne, though they were overthrown in the Whig
revolutionary plots against Charles II in the early 1680s. In
this work Locke gives us a theory of natural law and natural
rights that he employs to differentiate between legitimate and
illegitimate civil governments, and disagree for the legitimacy
of revolt against tyrannical governments.
Another important piece of
writings of Locke is toleration. The political scenario is that
the Henry VIII had created a Church of England when he broke
with Rome and declared the Church as the official religion of
England. In the course of events, Catholics and rebel
Protestants, e.g Quakers, Unitarians, were subjected to legal
prosecution. In that time there were debates, negotiations and
scheming to include dissenting Protestants within the Church of
England. Locke’s "Letter Concerning Toleration" argues for a
severance between church and state.
Events during Locke’s time (1632-1704)
John Locke was born in 1632 on 29th of August. In 1642 the
English Civil War begun and in 1649 January 30, King Charles I
was executed, the House of Lords abolished and England was
declared a Commonwealth. In 1959 Locke wrote his first
dissertation on the Civil Magistrate. In 1660 Charles II
returned to England and was restored to the throne. (Richard
Ashcraft,) In 1664 Locke wrote "Censor of Moral Philosophy" at
Christ Church and the Essays on the Law of Nature. In 1665 Locke
read Descartes and found in him the first practical alternative
to Scholasticism that he had came across. In 1667 Locke joined
Ashley’s, who later became Shaftsbury, home in London as Lord
Ashley's personal physician. From this time until 1675 Locke
lived regularly in London and wrote an Essay concerning
Toleration.
In 1670 Locke wrote the Fundamental Constitution of Carolina and
in 1671 the first draft of the Essay Concerning Human
Understanding. In 1678 he went to France and remained there
until 1678. In the same year Titus Oates charges that there was
a Popish plot to kill King Charles II and put his Catholic
brother James on the throne. Following year Shaftsbury becomes
Lord President of the King's Council and Locke returned to
England. A bill to exclude the Catholic Duke of York from the
Throne was passed by the House of Commons but failed in the
House of Lords. In 1682 Shaftsbury fled to Holland where he died
on 21 January 1683. In the same year, the Rye House Plot to kill
Charles II was exposed, following the consequences, Locke fled
to Holland and Essex, Russell and Algernon Sydney, leaders of
the Whig party, got arrested. In the subsequent year Locke was
expelled from his studentship at Christ Church College, Oxford,
by Royal command. In 1685 Charles II died and the Catholic Duke
of York ascended the throne as James II. In 1685 Lord Monmouth,
who was one of Charles II's illegitimate sons, started
rebellion. Monmouth invaded England from Holland and Argyle
raised a rebellion in Scotland, but both were defeated. In 1688,
the Bibliotheque Universelle published a fifty page abstract of
Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and in the same
year William of Orange invaded England and accomplished the
"Glorious Revolution of 1688”, and James II fled to France. In
the next year Locke returned to England accompanying the
princess of Orange, who later became Queen Mary. In the same
year he met Sir Isaac Newton and became friends. In the same
year The Epistolia de Tolerentia was published, and translated
by William Popple as A Letter Concerning Toleration and also the
Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In 1690 The Two Treatises
of Civil Government were published in concurrence with The
Argument of the 'Letter of Toleration' Briefly Considered and
Answered. In 1691 Locke makes Oates, the residence of Sir
Francis and Lady Masham, his permanent home. Two years after,
Some Thoughts Concerning Education was published.
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In 1694 the second edition of the Essay Concerning Human
Understanding was published following the Reasonableness of
Christianity along with the answering of criticisms by
Reasonableness in A Vindication of the Reasonableness of
Christianity. During 1697-99 Locke got in to an extensive
controversy with Edward Stilling fleet, Bishop of Worcester.
From 1700-1704 Locke remained at Oates until his death on 28
October 1704 (On Line Biographies)
John Locke’s philosophy in the Essay Concerning Homan
Understanding
An Essay Concerning Homan Understanding was first published in
December of 1689 and from then on went through four editions in
Locke's lifetime. Only few books have had as great an effect on
the history of thought and the nature of human consciousness as
John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. (On Line
Biographies)
The Essay is a complete and detailed analysis of the mechanisms
of human thought, which Locke thought had the prospective to
cast new light on social and religious thoughts. Locke himself
tries to use his model to elucidate many philosophical
quandaries, such as the associations between the material world,
subjectivity and the celestial. The Essay’s most sustained
impact on British thought was, though, not a result of his
philosophizing about these relationships and associations, but
somewhat of his early momentum to classify and explain the
relationship between diverse types of human thoughts. It is the
character of the model of cognition that Locke developed that
directed John Stuart Mill to name him the "unquestioned founder
of the analytic philosophy of mind." However, many
afterward-British thinkers would argue with Locke, but many
would be able to abstain from making their own cognitive models
as rationalizations for their social, aesthetic, or religious
philosophies in the countenance of the impact of Locke's Essay.
(John Mackie, 1976)
The basis of Locke's cognitive model is his division of human
thinking into a progression of unified but separate processes,
where each is within its own strictures and functions. Locke
opinions that, all thinking can be tacit to fall in either of
two broad categories: “Selection” or “Reflection”.
Sensation is the way in which "our senses, conversant bout
particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several
distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways
wherein those objects do affect them", and Reflection is the
"perception of the operations of our own mind within us, as it
is employed about the ideas it has got". Considering that the
mind is, at birth, an “empty cabinet” or a sheet of "white
paper, void of all characters, without any ideas", he maintains
that these two forms of thinking are "the only originals from
whence all our ideas take their beginnings”. However, reflection
cannot take place except for, as there are thoughts present to
reflect upon. Thus, all thinking starts with Sensation, that is
the "perception is the first operation of all our intellectual
faculties, and the inlet of all our knowledge". (Nathan Tarcov,
1984)
Locke explains the process by which the senses provide the mind
with its first thoughts as a function of arbitration. Locke
asserts that "the ideas of primary (material) qualities of
bodies are resemblances of them, and their patterns do really
exist in the bodies themselves, but the ideas produced in us by
these secondary qualities have no resemblance of them at all".
According to Locke the material world does exist, but we only
have entrée through the mediation of particular secondary
material qualities, like motion, refraction, heat, etc. and
consequently have an 'idea' of its materiality but no real
information of it. It is these "ideas" that are, in Locke’s
opinion, the primary building blocks of all human thought. Thus,
Locke strictly speaks neither a pure skeptic nor materialistic,
but supports a place which arbitrates between the two.
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Locke comments that while sensation is at its origin a passive
process, i.e., a sound wave hits the eardrum and produces an
automatic response, reflection can be active or passive and can
in fact interfere into the function of Sensation. Further, Locke
goes on to look at and identify numerous sub-classes of thought,
which exist under the class of reflection. According to Locke,
all ideas fall into one of the two general categories of simple
or complex ideas. The simple ideas being those that are "not
distinguishable into different ideas", such as hot, cold, white,
etc., and complex ideas are those that are shaped by the
comprehension of "repeat [-ing], compare [-ing], and unit [-ing]
"simple ideas. Further, Locke divides complex ideas into the
sub-categories of modes, substances and relations. Modes are
what we today would think of as qualities, as power, identity,
etc. Substances are things, such as the idea of a Man, and
relations are terms of mathematical relational properties such
as squared, triangular, etc.
Locke in addition describes the numerous ways in which the mind
goes about creating and influencing these ideas. Further Locke
defines several sub categories of thought, which come beneath
the category of reflection, each with its individual exclusive
characteristic. As maintained by to Locke, all reflective
thought falls into one of the sub-categories, that are: Memory,
which is the ability to recall an absent idea back into
consciousness; Retention that is the ability to hold a thought
in the consciousness; Discerning is the ability to recognize the
differences between things; Comparing is the ability to
recognize the similarities between things; Composition that is
the ability to construct new ideas from the building blocks of
other ideas; Abstraction which is the ability to discern
abstract relational principles, such as mathematical proofs,
which lie behindhand other ideas and then create an idea of the
general. Human thought is explained by these divisions according
to Locke (On Line Biographies)
Locke’ philosophy also deals with the Will. Locke demonstrates
for the existence of the human will by declaring that humans are
on the whole “hardwired” to knowledge the sensations of pain and
pleasure and that all action is the outcome of a sketch towards
the one or moving away from the other. "Pain has the same
efficacy and use to set us on work that pleasure has, we being
as ready to employ our faculties to avoid that, as to pursue
this". Afterwards in the work, though, the creator inexplicably
drops out of the scene and man turn out to be capable of
deciding for himself what is enjoyable or sorrowful, and only
the methods that forces man towards pleasure and a way from pain
remains a product of the Creator. Regrettably, Locke never
sufficiently explains where precisely the force to will such an
alteration initiates. (James Tully, 1980)
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Critical aspects and philosophical impact
Alexander Fraser has pointed out that "The art of education,
political thought, theology and philosophy, especially in
Britain, France, and America, long bore the stamp of the Essay,
or of reaction against it, to an extent that is not explained by
the comprehensiveness of Locke's thought, or by the force of his
genius". Further he points out that Locke's thinking is
remarkable, but not adequately so to account for his popularity
as an influence. However, there is something exceptional about
Locke's tactic which is structurally echoed in his philosophical
supporters and which could report for his fame. Hobbes was the
first to propose that the laws of politics and religion could be
put in plain words by the same logic that was used to discover
mathematical truths, but Locke was the first to use this logic
absolutely to the study of human subjectivity. Locke often
initiates questions of subjectivity with debates of mathematical
proof. Like, in his discussion of the question of the existence
of inborn moral principles Locke narrates, "But this is no
derogation to their truth and certainty; no more than it is to
the truth or certainty of the tree angles of a triangle being
equal to two right ones because it is not so evident as the
'whole is bigger than a part; nor so apt to be assented to at
first hearing. It may suffice that these moral rules are capable
of demonstration". (John Yolton, 1969)
Indeed, Locke's whole technique is one of introducing the rules
of geometric 'demonstration' to the dominion of social
psychology. Locke's complete dissertation is in truth nothing
terse of a geometric 'proof' in which a series of theorems are
proved using a series of inferences founded upon rational maxims
or theorems, which have formerly in the book been verified to be
true. (On Line Biographies)
It is for this reason alone, that we consider Locke as the
father of empirical psychology. Any person after him who desired
to go into the field of conventional philosophical thought would
have to deal with the emblematic influence of this methodology
either by encountering Locke on his conditions or by plainly
declining to contribute.
Works Cited
On Line Biographies, See The Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, Time Line. See, http://www.orst.edu/instruct/phl302/philosophers/locke_sources.html
Mackie, John, “Problems from Locke”, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1976
Ashcraft, Richard, “Revolutionary Politics and Locke's Second
Treatise of Civil Government”
Tarcov, Nathan, “Locke's Education for Liberty”, The University
of Chicago Press, 1984.
Tully, James, “A Discourse on Property”, Cambridge University
Press, 1980.
Yolton, John, “John Locke: Problems and Perspectives”, Cambridge
University Press, 1969
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