Portal:Politics/Selected article/2007, week 17

John Locke (August 29, 1632 – October 28, 1704) was an English philosopher. In epistemology, Locke is often classified as a British Empiricist with David Hume and George Berkeley, but is equally important to social contract theory. He developed an alternative to the Hobbesian state of nature and argued that government was only legitimate if it received the consent of the people, and protected natural rights of life, liberty, and property. Locke believed consent formed the social contract of governance. If such consent was not given citizens had a right of rebellion.

Locke's ideas had enormous influence on the development of political philosophy, and is widely regarded as one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers and contributors to liberal theory. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. This influence is reflected in the American Declaration of Independence.

Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin for modern conceptions of identity and "the self"; it figured prominently in the works of later philosophers such as David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first philosopher to define the self through a continuity of "consciousness." He also postulated that the mind was a "blank slate" or "tabula rasa"; that is, contrary to Cartesian or Christian philosophy, Locke maintained that people are born without innate ideas.