John Locke

Le livre IV est un des livres importants au sein de l’Essai sur l’entendement humain. Il répond aux questions posées dans le livre I au sujet des limites précises de notre connaissance. On y retrouve l’examen de la validité de la croyance compris comme une modalité du savoir. Aussi le livre IV comporte-t-il deux parties : connaissance et probabilités. Dans la première, les analyses sur les propositions identiques et les propositions d’existence, ainsi que les preuves de l’existence de Dieu, sont absolument incontournables. Quant à la seconde partie, Locke y est très novateur, évoquant la croyance en des termes dont les débats contemporains sont aujourd’hui très proches

« Voici, cher lecteur, ce qui a fait le divertissement de quelques heures de loisir que je n’étais pas d’humeur d’employer à autre chose. Si cet ouvrage a le bonheur d’occuper de la même manière quelque petite partie d’un temps où vous serez bien aise de vous relâcher de vos affaires plus importantes, et que vous preniez seulement la moitié tant de plaisir à le lire que j’en ai eu à le composer, vous n’aurez pas, je crois, plus de regret à votre argent que j’en ai eu à ma peine. »Nous reproduisons ici la traduction de Coste, celle-là même que Leibniz a sous les yeux en composant ses Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain. Elle a été faite en présence de Locke et avec son aide et acquiert ainsi la valeur d’un texte original

Notes and Introduction by Mark G. Spencer, Brock University, Ontario John Locke (1632-1704) was perhaps the most influential English writer of his time. His _Essay concerning Human Understanding _(1690) and _Two Treatises of Government _(1690)_ _weighed heavily on the history of ideas in the eighteenth century, and Locke’s works are often? rightly? presented as foundations of the Age of Enlightenment. Both the _Essay _and the _Second Treatise _(by far the more influential of the _Two Treatises_) were widely read by Locke’s contemporaries and near contemporaries. His eighteenth-century readers included philosophers, historians and political theorists, but also community and political leaders, engaged laypersons, and others eager to participate in the expanding print culture of the era. His epistemological message that the mind at birth was a blank slate, waiting to be filled, complemented his political message that human beings were free and equal and had the right to create and direct the governments under which they lived. Today, Locke continues to be an accessible author. He provides food for thought to university professors and their students, but has no less to offer the general reader who is eager to enjoy the classics of world literature.

John Locke (29 August 1632 - 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism". Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence.Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as David Hume, Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Contrary to Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing concepts, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception. This is now known as empiricism. An example of Locke's belief in Empiricism can be seen in his quote, "whatever I write, as soon as I discover it not to be true, my hand shall be the forwardest to throw it into the fire." This shows the ideology of science in his observations in that something must be capable of being tested repeatedly and that nothing is exempt from being disproven. Challenging the work of others, Locke is said to have established the method of introspection, or observing the emotions and behaviors of one's self.Locke's concept of man started with the belief in creation. We have been "sent into the World by order, and about his business, are his Property, whose Workmanship are, made to last during his, not one anothers Pleasure." Like the two other very influential natural-law philosophers, Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf, Locke equated natural law with the biblical revelation, since in their view both had originated in God and could therefore not contradict each other. "As a philosopher, Locke was intensely interested in Christian doctrine, and in the Reasonableness he insisted that most men could not hope to understand the detailed requirements of the law of nature without the assistance of the teachings and example of Jesus."

John Locke's _Second Treatise of Government_ (c. 1681) is perhaps the key founding liberal text. _A Letter Concerning Toleration_, written in 1685 (a year when a Catholic monarch came to the throne of England and Louis XVI unleashed a reign of terror against Protestants in France), is a classic defense of religious freedom. Yet many of Locke's other writings--not least the Constitutions of Carolina, which he helped draft--are almost defiantly anti-liberal in outlook. This comprehensive collection brings together the main published works (excluding polemical attacks on other people's views) with the most important surviving evidence from among Locke’s papers relating to his political philosophy. David Wootton's wide-ranging and scholarly Introduction sets the writings in the context of their time, examines Locke's developing ideas and unorthodox Christianity, and analyzes his main arguments. The result is the first fully rounded picture of Locke’s political thought in his own words.