John Locke

John Locke John Locke was an English philosopher whose Two Treatises of Government (1689) articulated the foundational principles of liberal political theory: natural rights to life, liberty, and property; government by consent of the governed; and the right of revolution against tyranny. His Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) established empiricism — the doctrine that knowledge derives from sensory experience — as the dominant British epistemological tradition. Locke's political ideas directly inspired the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man.