Locke, John

John Locke (1632–1704) was an English philosopher, physician, and educator who was a major founding figure of the Enlightenment. His theories of empiricism, consciousness, and political liberalism influenced thinkers as diverse as Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. Born into a family of Puritans near Bristol, his father an attorney, he attended the prestigious Westminster School and then Oxford University, where he studied medicine and science. He became personal physician to the First Earl of Shaftesbury, a founder of the Whig movement, and later Lord Chancellor. He later traveled in France and the Netherlands as a tutor and physician, returning to England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 ushered in the English Bill of Rights limiting the powers of the monarchy. It was ...