Early modern · 1632–1704
Who influenced John Locke?
Influences and legacy
Mind as blank paper, government by consent — the philosophical source of liberalism.
John Locke was influenced by René Descartes, and went on to influence George Berkeley, Montesquieu, Voltaire, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot and 2 others. That is 9 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: Godfrey Kneller, Public domain See the whole map
Who was John Locke?
An English philosopher and physician, Locke is often called the father of liberalism. He lived through the Civil War, the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution, spent fifteen years at Oxford, served the statesman Lord Shaftesbury and spent five years in exile in the Netherlands before returning to England in 1689 and publishing his major works.
His Essay Concerning Human Understanding holds that the mind starts as a blank slate, a tabula rasa, and that knowledge comes only from sense experience, which makes him one of the first British empiricists. His Two Treatises of Government ground legitimate government in the consent of the governed and defend the right to revolt against tyranny, and his Letter Concerning Toleration rules out religious coercion. His ideas are reflected in the US Declaration of Independence.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced John Locke?
1 direct influence on this map, earliest first.
- René Descartes 1596–1650
Who did John Locke influence?
8 thinkers on this map draw directly on John Locke.
- George Berkeley 1685–1753
- Montesquieu 1689–1755
- Voltaire 1694–1778
- David Hume 1711–1776
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712–1778
- Denis Diderot 1713–1784
- Étienne Bonnot de Condillac 1714–1780
- Robert Nozick 1938–2002
The line of teachers behind John Locke
The longest documented line of influence ending at John Locke runs 15 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
Two steps away from John Locke
Indirect influences
- Through René Descartes: Augustine of Hippo, Anselm of Canterbury, Al-Ghazali, Thomas Aquinas, Michel de Montaigne
The second generation
- Through David Hume: Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham
- Through Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Mary Wollstonecraft, Leo Tolstoy, Claude Lévi-Strauss
- Through Montesquieu: Auguste Comte, Alexis de Tocqueville
- Through George Berkeley: Thomas Reid
- Through Denis Diderot: Ludwig Feuerbach
Contemporaries of John Locke
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of John Locke, with no direct line between them.
- Baruch Spinoza 1632–1677
- Anne Conway 1631–1679
- Nicolas Malebranche 1638–1715
- Blaise Pascal 1623–1662
- Margaret Cavendish 1623–1673
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1646–1716
- Pierre Bayle 1647–1706
John Locke by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 1
- Direct followers
- 8 — #9 of 279 on this map
- Thinkers upstream
- 56
- Thinkers downstream
- 119
- Wikipedia languages
- 150 — #8 of 36 among early modern philosophers
- Card rarity
- Legendary
Schools and lineages
- Empiricists: John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume
Questions about John Locke
- Who influenced John Locke?
- René Descartes.
- Who did John Locke influence?
- George Berkeley, Montesquieu, Voltaire, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac and Robert Nozick.
- When did John Locke live?
- 1632–1704. The map files John Locke under the early modern period.
- How rare is the John Locke card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on John Locke in 150 languages, which makes it a Legendary card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More early modern philosophers
- René Descartes 1596–1650
- Immanuel Kant 1724–1804
- Voltaire 1694–1778
- Adam Smith 1723–1790
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712–1778
- Niccolò Machiavelli 1469–1527
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1646–1716
- Blaise Pascal 1623–1662