John Locke example essay topic

John Locke was born in 1632 in Somersetshire, in England. In this Puritan family, his father was a lawyer and a minor landowner and a participant in the Civil War on the side of the Parliament party. In 1646 he was hired in the Westminster School and in 1652, he entered the college of Christ Church at Oxford University, where he studied Greek, philosophy, rhetoric, chemistry, meteorology and theology under the direction of a high Puritan leader, John Owen. But it was medicine that he was most attracted to as a possibility of a life work.

Through his studies of medicine, he became friends with Robert Boyle, one new English scientists of the Academy. In 1656 he received his 'B.A. ' degree from Oxford, then his 'Master's degree'. It was during this time that he began to put his thoughts on subjects like: 'Treatise on Civil Magistrates' (1660), 'Essays on the Law of Nature' (1663), and 'An Essay concerning Toleration' (1667). In 1665 he followed Walter Vane on a diplomatic mission at Brandenburg in Germany. After that, he returned to Oxford to continue his studies in philosophy. While he was in the studies, he met Lord Ashley and both of them became close friends.

They discovered that they both shared in common, a view of personal liberty of human life, a view of democracy. In 1667 Locke went into personal service as a personal physician and secretary to a men named Shaftesbury at his home, in London. During the 8 years that Locke lived there was the time where he gain many knowledge of 'philosophical information' concentrated on the major questions: the issue concerning where the Truth originated from and how a person gained access to the Truth. Based on these points, John Locke decided to write his famous work known as 'Essay concerning Human Understanding' in 1690.

Locke gained a wide variety of friends, from physicians to astronomers when he moved to France in 1675, where at the same time, Shaftesbury faced political and health problems. In 1679, when Shaftesbury was restored to favor, John Locke returned to London. But that time was very unstable politically, with Shaftsbury arrested, placed in the Tower of London, then the charges are dismissed, and then accused again. In 1682, Shaftsbury fled to the Netherlands and then died there in the following year, in 1683. After that, John Locke did a vast number of works such as 'an essay concerning human understanding' in 1689, 'Two Treatises of Government' in 1690 and others. 'Locke argued that each person possesses the rights to life, liberty and property, that these rights exist in nature prior to the formation of government, and that the only legitimate government is one whose function is limited to protecting these rights'.

In other words, Locke favors the power of the people, the democracy. Several years later, in October 1704, his last work, before his death, was Fourth Letter on Toleration. Also his work 'Discourse on Miracles', written in 1702, was published after his death.