John Locke

(1632 - 1704)

Timothy H. Wilson

Portrait of John LockeGodfrey Kneller (1646-1723)Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

John Locke stands as one of the foundational pillars of the modern revolution in thinking that has guided the West for the past few centuries. His epistemology laid the foundations for the Enlightenment and for the empirical sciences of the modern world. Likewise, his political philosophy, especially as articulated in his Second Treatise of Government, forms the basis of classical liberalism.

For these reasons, Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1689) finds a place on my list of 101 Greatest Books of the Western Canon. In addition, three of his other works are included in my list of 1001 Great Books of the Western Canon:

A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689)
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)

Course Materials

- Locke and the First Wave of Modernity

Part of an undergraduate course on the history of the "Self" in Western literature, it includes lecture notes on the modern revolution in thinking, including an overview of the Straussian interpretation of modernity as having "three waves". Locke's epistemology is explored as forming the foundation of the conception of the self within this first wave of modernity.