1632–1704

Political philosopher

Early Years.

Although John Locke was born in a quiet corner of the English county of Somerset, his youth was shaped by the calamitous events of the English Civil Wars. His father was a solicitor who served in the Parliamentary Army. In 1652, during the chaotic years of the Puritan Commonwealth, Locke entered Oxford, where he appears to have been a diffident student. He was drawn at the time to the exciting ideas of René Descartes, but the traditionalism of the English university of his day meant that Oxford's curriculum was still largely taught in the mold of Aristotelian scholasticism of previous centuries. As a result, Locke drifted, although he indulged his curiosity by undertaking medical and scientific studies outside his course of study, an endeavor that paved the way for his eventual election to the Royal Society in 1668. He may have considered a clerical...