John Locke was an English philosopher and physician. He was born on 29 August 1632 in Wrington, Somerset, England. His father, who was a country lawyer, died when he was young, and his mother was a Puritan.
Locke went to Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied medicine. He became a Fellow of Merton College in 1656 and worked as a medical adviser to Lord Ashley until 1672. In 1667 he published his Essay concerning Human Understanding.
John Locke is widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and contributors to classical liberalism. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. In particular, he argued for the separation of church and state, the equality of individuals, the rule of law and religious tolerance; the importance of protecting natural rights above property rights; the theory of property being derived from labor; and that political power derives from popular consent rather than divine right or conquest.
In 1690 he published his Two Treatises of Government. The first treatise argued that political authority is founded in the consent of the governed, while the second treatise introduced a theory of property ownership based on natural law.
He died on 28 October 1704 and is buried in an unmarked grave in St John’s College Chapel, Oxford.
