Thinker · Empiricists
Locke
1632 – 1704 · Empiricists · The rationalists & empiricists · 1 works
The founder of two modern things at once, from the same desk in the same year. Empiricism: the mind comes into the world empty, white paper, and every idea written on it is written by experience, so knowledge has a ceiling and an honest one. And liberal politics: there is no divine right and no all-powerful sovereign, only free and equal people who hand a government limited powers on trust and may take them back when the trust is broken. The quiet physician who never married, fled into exile under a false name, and would not put his own name on the most explosive book of the age turned out to have written the operating system for the modern mind and the modern state.
What changed
Before
Knowledge is built in; authority comes down from above
After
Knowledge is built up from experience; authority comes up from consent
Inside the walk-through
The physician who ran the revolution from the library
White paper: the mind starts empty
The two kinds of quality, and the honest ceiling
Free, equal, and owed nothing: the state as a trust
The wall between the sword and the soul
The blank page and its blind spot
The works
