John Locke was the author of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, as well as A Letter Concerning Toleration. He is looked upon as one of the great philosophers in history.
On August 29, 1632 John Locke was born in Wrington, Somerset. John's mother died while he was an infant. He was raised by his father in Pensford, which is near Bristol. He was tutored at home, due to his delicate health. His father had hoped for John to become a minister, but John had other plans and began to study medicine. He entered the Westminster School when he was fourteen and stayed there for six years. Following this he went to the Christ Church, Oxford. When he was elected to senior student in 1658, he taught moral philosophy and Greek. Normally he would have needed to be ordained in order to keep his fellowship, so he changed departments. Now in medicine, he worked and received his license and was able to practice. John was taken under the wing of Robert Boyle, who was in the field of natural science. Locke became a member of the Royal Society in 1668.
Locke had acted as secretary to the English ambassador, traveling to the Brandenburg court in 1665. When he had returned home he took care of Lord Ashley, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury. The friendship grew between them and motivated Locke to join in to political affairs. He had gone to Shaftesbury as an adviser and physician. From his trips he had drafted The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, as well as serving on the Board of Trade. Locke traveled to France in 1676 to receive his inheritance that made him financially independent. After staying in Montpellier for three years, he rejoined Shaftesbury's service and went with him to Holland.
Most of Locke's writing was composed from 1683 to 1689 while he remained in exile. Through his exile he had been deprived of his studentship as an order of Charles III. Once the revolution had ended in 1689 he returned to England. For the next eleven years he worked as commissioner of trade. In 1690 Locke brought out his two major works: Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treaties. The Essay was a compilation of 20 years of his work. His admitted that around 1670, he was talking with a few friends about morality and religion. Together they were still not able to come to any conclusions.
The method that he came up with was made of observations from the sensations and the reflection or introspection from these. This method was shifting the normal thoughts of philosophy to analysis of reality to exploring the mind. This new thought was Locke's and he had dominated the European thoughts on philosophy for at least two centuries. Locke believed that if knowledge is made up of the experience we have then the objects of cognition are ideas. The only problems with Locke's ideas were that people could argue what is in the mind. Locke fought with the ideas and dilemma about the definition of what is in the mind and the validity of their objectiveness.
Locke returned to England in 1689 when he first began to publish his works. By March of 1689 he had his Epistola de Tolerantia published in Holland. The English version was published later that same year, yet the corrected version was released in 1690. With all the confusion, Locke decided to release his Second Letter, followed by his Third Letter. Then in February of 1690 the Two Treatises of Government were published, this same year his Essay concerning human understanding was also released. Locke replied to the critics in A Letter to the Bishop of Worcester in January of 1697. The letter was answered by Stillingfleet in May, and Locke responded with another letter by August. The same year the bishop had died, which put an end to the controversy. In 1694 the second edition of the Essay was published, the third in 1695, and the forth in 1700. Inside the second and forth editions were important additions. Later in 1696 an abridgement appeared by John Wynne that was translated into Latin and French after the forth edition was released. Isaac Newton and Anthony Collins were visiting Oates during the later years. Locke saw the financial problems of the government in 1691 and this lead to his publication of Some Consideration of the Consequences of Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of Money, an of Further Consideration. Then in 1692 he released Some Thoughts concerning Education. He later published his letters in 1695 as The Reasonableness of Christianity, followed by A Vindication.
Locke had always been a very religious person and towards the end of his life a lot of his ties were given to theology. After he had died on October 28, 1704 many more works of his were published. Among these works were a Discourse of Miracles, along with a fragment of a Fourth Letter of Toleration, An Examination of Father Malebranche's Opinion of Seeing all thing in God, Remarks on Some of Mr. Norris's Books, and finally The Conduct of the Understanding, which was actually meant for a chapter in the Essay.
