John Locke

John Locke (August 29 1632 – October 28 1704) was a 17th-century English philosopher concerned primarily with society and epistemology. Locke's notions of a "government with the consent of the governed" and people's natural rights—life, liberty, and property—had an enormous influence on the development of political philosophy. His ideas, which formed the basis for the concepts used in American law and government, allowing the colonists to justify revolution, are often contrasted with his practice of investing in the English slave-trade. Locke's epistemology and philosophy of mind also had a great deal of significant influence well into the Enlightenment period. Locke has been placed in a group called the British Empiricists, which includes David Hume and George Berkeley. Locke is perhaps most often contrasted with Thomas Hobbes.

Locke's epitaph

(translated from the Latin)

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"Stop Traveller! Near this place lieth John Locke. If you ask what kind of a man he was, he answers that he lived content with his own small fortune. Bred a scholar, he made his learning subservient only to the cause of truth. This thou will learn from his writings, which will show thee everything else concerning him, with greater truth, than the suspected praises of an epitaph. His virtues, indeed, if he had any, were too little for him to propose as matter of praise to himself, or as an example to thee. Let his vices be buried together. As to an example of manners, if you seek that, you have it in the Gospels; of vices, to wish you have one nowhere; if mortality, certainly, (and may it profit thee), thou hast one here and everywhere."

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