Tilly: Locke and Locke's question

John Locke (1632–1704) studied philosophy, natural sciences and medicine at Cambridge. He resented the teaching methods of scholastic philosophy that were still prevalent in universities at the time, but found great satisfaction in Descartes' writings. For many years (1666-1683) he served counts of Schaafzbury as secretaries to the counts' sons and grandsons, and for a time followed his patrons into exile in the Netherlands. After james II's depose and Orange's William ascended the throne, he returned to England, held several important government positions, and spent the rest of his life (1700–1704) at the home of Sir Francis Masham. Sir's wife was the daughter of the philosopher Kudworth.

Collection of philosophical works edited by St. John at the Bern Library, 1853. The Theory of Human Reason, edited by a .c.fraser, in two volumes, 1894; Treatise on Government and Letters on Tolerance, edited by Charles L. Sherman, 1937; John Locke: AnThology, edited by M.W. Calkins, 1917; John Locke: Anthology edited by S.P. Lamprecht, 1928.

H.R. Fox Bourne's The Life of Locke, two volumes, 1876; T. Fowler's Locke, 1880; A. .c. Fraser's Locke, 1890; S. Alexander's Locke, 1908; M..m curtis's Introduction to Locke's Philosophy of Ethics, 1890; F. Thilly's The Relationship Between Locke and Descartes, in Philosophical Review; v. Cushing's Philosophy of Locke, 1861; J. Gibson's Theory of Knowledge and Its Historical Relations, 1917; R.I. Aaron's John Locke, 1937; W. Kendall's John Locke and the Doctrine of Moral Law, 1941; C.R. Morris's Locke, Bakeley, and Hume, 1946.

We see that Hobbes was a rationalist in his ideal of knowledge, and like Descartes, he believed that mere experience could not provide us with certainty. At the same time, he endorsed his compatriot Bacon, who believed that feeling was the source of knowledge. In Hobbes's philosophy, these two threads seem incompatible; the sensory origin of knowledge undermines the rational validity of knowledge and also undermines the certainty of knowledge. Hobbes himself found it difficult, sometimes leading to skeptical conclusions about physics. In John Locke's view, this question became the most important; in Locke's case, philosophy became a theory of knowledge and set out to inquire into the origin, essence, and validity of knowledge; his philosophy was indeed "a treatise on human reason," as the title of his major work indicates.