Enlightenment philosopher Essay Example for Free

Enlightenment philosopher EssayJohn Locke (1632-1704) was an Enlightenment philosopher. Some authors arrange him as the philosopher of freedom and the father of English empiricism and liberalism. His ideas and concepts about brotherly structure, social consent and clement natural rights determined increase of political school of thought and republican democracy. John Locke was an Oxford scholar. His teachers were famous British scientists including chemist Robert Boyle who probably taught him about atomism. John Locke was medical researcher and physician, philosopher and pedagogue, economist and ideologue for a rotatory movement. His vocation was associated with name of the First Earl of Shaftesbury who was a Lord-Chancellor of England. When Locke emigrated to the continental Europe he studied Cartesian philosophy in France and be conform to acquainted with William of Orange who later became English King. Locke came back to England only in 1689 and took up m any(prenomin al) official posts just devote much more time to his scientific studies. Contemporaries k virgin Locke as an economic writer and opposition political activist. Locke was an ideologue of constitutional monarchy and division of powers.He was an opponent of theories of divine channel of the royal power. He was a friend of Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle and an early member of the Royal Society. The principles of Lockes philosophy were the ideological basement for Great French and American Revolution. John Locke to put upher with Francis Bacons was a founder of empiricism theory. He assumed that human mind at the birth is like blanc paper and only experiences by dint of trials and errors remains ideas and knowledge. This theory was described in Lockes Essay Concerning charitable Understanding and had impact on the development of behaviorism.Lock started to write his main work Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1671, but promulgated it only in 1690. Why he wrote it? Essay presen t the fundamental principles of his philosophy, its the culmination of his verbalism on the origins of human knowledge. Essay contains of four books Of innate(p) nonions, Of ideas, Of words and Of knowledge and probability. This philosophic treatise is create verbally in archaic style but it still easy to read beca engross of the use of dialogue form and clear argumentation. Locke devoted much of the Essay to an extended argument that human ideas and understanding argon lastly derived from experience.Before scientists suggested that some ideas could be innate. Actually, Locke proposed new theory of knowledge. Essay is an answer to the question Where do we get ideas which are the content of our knowledge? The first chapter of the first book is named as No innate inquisitive Principles. It consists of twenty eights paragraphs. The name of chapter reflects its content. The chapter is opened with discussion how men, barely by the use of their natural facilities, may puddle to all the knowledge they pass without the help of any innate impressions.Locke wrote about the importance of speculative and interoperable principles and gave examples of them to show that universal content proves naught innate. He use humor to show that nothing on the mind is naturally imprinted when speak about children understanding. To show impossibility of innate concepts and sensations he used dialectic that helped reader to understand that only experience could generate ideas. Just some examples of his logic. In the paragraphs 6-12 he explained that if all people have innate ideas but later they will come to know things upon the use of own reason then innateness is loosing its sense.He wrote about peculiarities of childs mind after they come to the use of reason, those general abstract ideas are not framed in the mind, about which those general maxims are, which are mistaken for innate principles, but are indeed discoveries made, and verities introduced, and brought into the mi nd by the same way, and discovered by the same steps, as several other propositions, which nobody has ever so extravagant as to sound off innate In 15th section of the chapter author outlines his theory of knowledge origin.He showed the sketch of new theory and how it could be applied to the particular and general ideas, to the memory, names, abstraction and language. He noted that universal concepts came from self-evidence, not innateness (Ch. 1, 18) and that less general ideas (he called them propositions) are known before. universal maxims. He insists that theory of innate ideas is fruitless because innateness cannot be applied to mathematics and other complicated fields of human knowledge. In 24-27th sections he wrote that ideas cannot be innate because they are not universally accorded to.In the last paragraph of the chapter Locke wrote Upon the whole matter, I cannot see any ground to think speculative Maxims innate since they are not universally assented to and the assent they so in the main find is no other than what several propositions, not allowed to be innate, equally partake in with them and since the assent that is given them is produced another way, and comes not from natural inscription, as I doubt not but to support appear in the following Discourse. And if these first principles of knowledge and science are found not to be innate, no other speculative maxims can (I suppose), with better right pretend to be so. Locke is a disseminator of ideas that abstract speculative principle cannot be innate. He attacked the theory that human mind is born penetrating certain things. It was revolutionary for the late XVII century and John Lockes Essay Concerning Human Understanding have had great impact on the history of philosophy and society. His studies of the nature and grounds of knowledge especially with credit rating to its limits and validity and his polemics with adherents of stagnant views on the nature of knowledge stimulated development not only of epistemology but all fields of science.Lockes ideas played at least some part in the formation of revolutionary thought in France and American colonies. Of course, not only Essay Concerning Human Understanding influenced on social history of those and many other countries but this trait liberated mind of other researchers.References1. Essay Concerning Human Understanding http//oregonstate. edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Book1a. htmlChapter%20I 2. Johne Lock Wikipedia on-line http//en. wikipedia. org/wiki/John_Locke 3. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http//plato. stanford. edu/entries/locke