John Locke
Part of a series on John Locke Social contract Limited government Tabula rasa State of nature Right to property Labor theory of property Lockean proviso Works (listed chronologically) Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina A Letter Concerning Toleration Two Treatises of Government An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Some Thoughts Concerning Education Of the Conduct of the Understanding People Robert Filmer Thomas Hobbes 1st Earl of Shaftesbury David Hume Jean-Jacques Rousseau Adam Smith Immanuel Kant Thomas Jefferson Related topics Empiricism Classical liberalism Polish Brethren v t e John Locke's Kit-cat portrait by Godfrey Kneller, National Portrait Gallery, London John Locke FRS (/ˈlɒk/; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704), was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and known as the "Father of Classical Liberalism". Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence. Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as Hume, Rousseau, and Kant. Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Contrary to Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing concepts, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception.