JOHN LOCKE-EMPIRICISM

Empiricism like Materialism is a major field in Philosophy and it has flowered under the great John Locke the English philosopher, Bishop Berkeley the Irish genius and David Hume the Scottish intellectual. These 3 together form the triumvirate of British empiricism. This trend culminated in the philosophy of Hume which is very difficult to accept and equally difficult to refute. I am just giving the philosophy of Locke here in simple terms and hope to come out later with those of Berkeley and Hume.

JOHN LOCKE.

John Locke can be taken as the founder of empiricism in Western Philosophy. 

Materialism says that all the knowledge we acquire comes from the mind and reasoning whereas empiricism says that knowledge only comes from senses and experiences.

Locke was born in the year 1632 at a place called Rington near Bristol and was a philosopher for the Bourgeoisie that was rising fast then.

When the American constitution draft was prepared by Thomas Jefferson, he was strongly influenced by the theories of Locke. The declaration stating “……that all men are created equal, and they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…” is but a reflection of Locke’s views.

Locke studied at Oxford but the medieval philosophy that was being taught there did not satisfy him and slowly he came under the influence of Rene Descartes. He studied Physics, Chemistry and Medicine and became a fellow of the British Royal Society in 1668.

Locke became friendly with Lord Ashley who later became the Earl of Shaftsbury. The Earl was dead against King Charles II of England, and is close to the Parliament. During that time the Parliament got split into the Tories that are loyal to the King and the Whigs who are the representatives of Liberal Bourgeois. Earl Shaftsbury was the leader of the Whigs. The Earl was imprisoned by the King and ultimately ran away to Poland and died a year later. Locke’s career followed that of the Earl. He too ran away and when William became the King of England Locke returned back and settled in his home country. He was an advisor to the Whigs and became famous. The book that brought him fame was his “Essay concerning Human Understanding”. This is a key book for empiricism.

Locke says that when man is born his mind is like a clean slate( tabula rasa) without any ideas. He says that even ethics are not absolute and there is no universal morality. Qualities like good and bad change from country to country and even from time to time. Good for one is bad for another. For example if Bhagat Singh is a hero for us, he is a terrorist for the British. Therefore there are no universal values. Even the concept of God is not uniform with different communities.

If there are no universal truths then where are we getting the knowledge from? Locke says only through experience. We get all our ideas only through sensory experience. We get knowledge through sensations and reflection.

We tend to generalize things. For example beauty. One thing makes us happy and we like it and we define it as something beautiful. Therefore beauty depends on our perception which is generalized and there is no absolute beauty. Similar is the case for all other ideas too.

One thing is absolutely sure. We get many different sensory perceptions and there has to be something that is creating these perceptions. Locke calls it ‘Substance”. We perceive the substance only through the sensations we experience but it is only appearances and not the reality. What we experience is not the reality but what our sense organs present to us. Locke says that when we hear a song we feel that it is nice to hear. But this is only a creation of our mind and a deaf man hears nothing. The fragrance of a flower is recognized only by our mind. It is dependent only on the mind.

Thus Locke says that there are limits to such knowledge and this opinion is the foundation to his Liberalism.

Locke supports liberal democracy. His political views are set forth in two books on Civil Government. In the first book he proved that Kings did not have any divine rights. It is amazing that a book had to be written to prove this then. In his second book Locke described the crux of governance and its qualities.

Locke believed that in the ancient times man was in the natural state. In this natural state everything was perfect. Although there was no Government there is a law of nature amongst the people. All men are equal and all had equal liberties, but this liberty is not unbridled. Whatever they did towards their own benefit, they did not impinge on the others rights nor caused harm to others. But at the same time some of them violated the law of nature and tried to grab others property and harm others. For stopping such violators everyone had a right to punish them and everyone is their own judge. But in such a situation certain problems arose. Everyone is King; he is the accuser, judge and the enforcer of the punishment as well. This led to indiscriminate use of such powers which led to strife and disturbance. For solving this problem men forsook some rights and gave those rights to the Government which they established. They came together and formed a society and a Kingdom. This is the social contract of Locke. However, the government does not have the right to take the fundamental rights of the people. It only has the powers to protect those inalienable rights. In fact the Government has been formed only to protect those rights. Locke felt that the primary responsibility of the Government is to protect the properties of the people. If a Government does not perform that duty well, the people have a right to rebel against the Government and elect another.

Power should never be concentrated in a single person or a single institution. The people who make laws and those who enforce them should not be the same or else it would deteriorate into a dictatorship. Therefore a Government has to abide by some written rules (constitution). If any Government violates the written law the people have every right to remove it.

His theory points out that there are limitations to knowledge and it is very relative. Therefore each has their own right to believe whatever they want and is entitled to it. Therefore one should never affirm that he is in the right and then try to force it on the others. So people should respect each others views and religious and freedom of thought is essential. Good is something that is greatest good of the greatest number.

As can be seen Locke's philosophy is exactly reflecting the democratic governments of the present day.