John locke accomplishments
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John Locke’s Early Life and Education
John Locke was born in 1632 in Wrighton, Somerset. His father was a lawyer and small landowner who had fought on the Parliamentarian side during the English Civil Wars of the 1640s. Using his wartime connections, he placed his son in the elite Westminster School.
Did you know? John Locke’s closest female friend was the philosopher Lady Damaris Cudworth Masham. Before she married the two had exchanged love poems, and on his return from exile, Locke moved into Lady Damaris and her husband’s household.
Between 1652 and 1667, John Locke was a student and then lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford, where he focused on the standard curriculum of logic, metaphysics and classics. He also studied medicine extensively and was an associate of Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle and other leading Oxford scientists.
John Locke and the Earl of Shaftesbury
In 1666 Locke met the parliamentarian Anthony Ashley Cooper, later the first Earl of Shaftesbury. The two struck up a friendship that blossomed into full patronage, and a year later Locke was appointed
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Locke’s Importance
This essay first appeared as an editorial in the journalLiterature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought, Spring 1980, vol. 3, No. 1.
John Locke (1632–1704) was identified by Joseph Schumpeter (History of Economic Analysis) as among the “Protestant Scholastics” of whom his forerunners were Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, and Samuel Pufendorf. This natural law tradition (Cf. Literature of Liberty, I, 4) was paralleled by René Descartes’s Discourse on Method (1637). Descartes’s emphasis on the principle of the uniformity of natural law had awakened Locke’s interest in philosophy. Succeeding Descartes as the leading philosopher of the eighteenth century Enlightenment, “le sage Locke” remained a critical heir of Cartesian thought, and his philosophical growth drew inspiration from a wide range of other sources. The Scholastic Aristotelianism of Puritan Oxford, including Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, stimulated Locke’s interest in scientific investigation, and in addition he sought to synthesize the best elements of the
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John Locke
(1632-1704)
Who Was John Locke?
John Locke went to Westminster School and then Christ Church, University of Oxford. At Oxford, he studied medicine, which would play a central role in his life. He became a highly influential philosopher, writing about such topics as political philosophy, epistemology, and education. Locke's writings helped found modern Western philosophy.
Early Life
Influential philosopher and physician John Locke, whose writings had a significant impact on Western philosophy, was born on August 29, 1632, in Wrington, a village in the English county of Somerset. His father was a country lawyer and military man who had served as a captain during the English civil war.
Both his parents were Puritans and as such, Locke was raised that way. Because of his father's connections and allegiance to the English government, Locke received an outstanding education.
Education
In 1647 he enrolled at Westminster School in London, where Locke earned the distinct honor of being named a King's Scholar, a privilege that went to only select number of boys and pa
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