fuss:philosophy:thinkers:john_locke [Wizardry and Steamworks]

John Locke

contributions to three great issues:
- how should we educate children?
- who is to rule over us?
- what should we do about people with different religious ideas?
known for freedom of belief
- argues that Earthly judges, particularly the state cannot be considered adequate judges to evaluate truth claims of competing religious standpoints,
- people cannot be coerced into belief,
- belief is a personal trait,
demolished the idea that God created Kings,
takes on the Hobbes' "state of nature" idea, arguing contrary to Hobbes, that in a state of nature, human beings would have been broadly peaceful and that humans possessed a set of inalienable rights that no rule could compromised,
- individuals relinquish power to a leader in order to better preserve their rights,
- in case the ruler started to acted like a tyrant by infringing on their right of property then the individuals were legitimately entitled to withdraw their consent, overthrow the ruler and set up a new form of government,
first and foremost influencer of the US amendments to the constitutions, namely the first and second amendments, the separation of church and state and the right to bear arms, both of which represent a Lockian influence on Thomas Jefferson,
- separation of church and state as derived from the principle that Earthly judges cannot be deemed competent enough to evaluate the Divine,
- the right to bear arms following from the violation of the Lockian "social contract" where individuals should always bear the power to remove tyrants,
on education, as a response to Edward Clarke,
- all our minds start out in life as a tabula rasa devoid of ideas,
- everything you think, believe, perceive is a result of external influences or internal processes of understanding,
- education is absolutely crucial on how people turn out,
- children being vulnerable to the ideas being placed in their mind,
- association of ideas are more important in the early stages of development than those made later since they are the foundations of ourselves,
- everything that happens to a child plays an enormous role in future life,
- explicitly hated the following self-labeled "useless subjects": Greek, Latin, music or poetry and favored the subjects that could provide a practical assistance later in life such as "science", "ethics", "business" and "psychology"