John Locke (1632-1704) was born in Lingeton, southwest England. At the age of 14, he went to a secondary school in London, and at the age of 20 entered Oxford University, where he stayed behind to teach Greek and rhetoric, while beginning to study medicine, chemistry and meteorology. At the age of 36 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
In 1667, Locke became acquainted with the most famous political activist in England at the time, as a result of curing Lord Ashley's illness. He cured Ahirahy of a strange disease that had long been incurable and was hired as the lord's family doctor and secretary. Ashley admired Locke, saw his talent not only in medicine, and regarded him as his political adviser. Ahilah was later made Earl of Sheftsbury, held many important positions such as justice, was the leader of the Whig Party, and played a pivotal role in politics. Locke followed him into the center of the whirlpool of Political Struggle in Britain.
In 1683 Locke fled into exile in the Netherlands to escape political persecution, where the Earl of Sheftsbury had fled a year earlier after a failed political struggle. While in the Netherlands, Locke had more time to think and write. About 4 years later, he completed his philosophical masterpiece The Theory of Human Reason.
After the Glorious Revolution, Locke became an important theoretician of the Whig Party and became well-known in British politics and academia. In one or two years, "On Religious Tolerance", "On Government" and "On Human Reason" have had a great impact on academia and society, and laid the foundation for Locke's important position in the history of Western philosophy and social thought. Locke's social thought is mainly reflected in his treatise On Government, especially in the next part.
After Locke's death, his tombstone bears an inscription that he himself wrote in Latin before his death: "John Locke is buried here." If you ask him who he is, the answer is: a man who is content with the fate of a well-off, a man of training, a man who has devoted himself to the pursuit of truth. You can tell this from the writings. His writings, more faithfully and reliably tell you all the comments about him than the questionable words of praise on the inscriptions. His virtues, if only some, are neither enough to speak of his prestige nor worthy to be your example. Let his sins be buried with him! Examples of virtue are already in the Gospels; examples of sin are still better than nothing; examples of mortality (from which you may benefit) are everywhere. He was born on 29 August 1632 and died on 28 October 1704. This stone stele, which is about to be eroded in itself, is a clear proof. (Quoted from Lü Daji: "Locke", The Third Volume of Commentaries on Famous Western Philosophers, Shandong People's Publishing House, 1984 edition, pp. 343-344, with slight changes in text)
The text is like its own person. The inscription, as Locke's self-description, first affirms his worth as a scholar; a very pertinent evaluation of his life in a humble and humorous style.
Locke's social thought had a huge impact in later generations. His critique of monarchical absolutism, his emphasis on human freedom, democracy, and equality, and the establishment of the basic principles of civil society were all inherited by later progressive thinkers. Rousseau's ideas of "public will" and "popular sovereignty" are in line with Locke's "the people have supreme power." Montesquieu's theory of separation of powers has a more obvious relationship with Locke's idea of separation of powers and checks and balances of power.
Marx and Engels said that during the French Revolution, "free thought was imported into France from England." Locke was the progenitor of this free thought. (The Complete Works of Marx and Engels, vol. 7, p. 249; reproduced from Xu Datong: A History of Western Political Thought, Tianjin Education Publishing House, 2000, p. 164) Locke can be said to be the founder of modern Western civil society theory.
[This article is excerpted from the book "History of Western Social Thought" (Huang Zhongjing et al., Mass Publishing House, 2004 edition)]
Spinoza: Is the will free?