Locke's Empiricism

After the great focus on Descartes and his ideas - the most relevant of them being that our mind is God-given and contains innate knowledge of God - Locke has been a rather large break away from his idealism. Locke had a number of ideas that I'll recap, but the first, still fresh in my mind after the lengthy discussion in our seminar, is tabula rasa: the idea that everyone is born a blank slate - Locke calls us 'white paper' - and that everything we know and believe is given to us through our physical senses. It's clear why he was not welcome during James II's brief, four-year rule, as with this single idea he contradicts the fundamental Christian idea of 'Original Sin' - basically, that all of us are born tainted due to Adam & Eve's crime against God's Will.

Tabula rasa makes a lot of sense to me. Locke, in his writings, challenges the reader to give him one thought that has not been drawn from some experience or another. My own, slightly different take to Locke's challenge would be to ask of someone to create a purely original image. By this I mean an image that is 100% new, taking nothing from anything and having no comparable properties to anything we know. Try to imagine an alien - not just some animal, but a creature with the capacity to think equal to humans. It can't be humanoid. It also can't be some space-cockroach either. And it can't have legs or arms or a head and supports its body in an entirely different way to any creature on earth. Its skin is a colour you've never perceived and its texture has never been felt before. It can't be classified under any label we have created for the animal kingdom. It bears no similarities to mammals, reptiles, fish, birds, amphibians, insects, arthropods. It does not adhere to the dichotomy of vertebrate/invertebrate.

I can broadly describe this alien creature, but I could never be more specific about it. I can't describe what this creature is, because it's beyond my imagination and most likely, yours too (if you can picture it though, I'd like to see what you come up with). My point is that we can only picture things when they have a basis in the reality we've experienced. Even in the case of this theoretical creature, I could only describe its impossibility by saying what it isn't like - it just isn't possible to have a thought not rooted in the observable world. To use more relatable examples, this is why a privileged person can never fully understand the hardships of those less fortunate, why the capitalist may call the poor lazy if they cannot improve their situation or why, even knowing that people have different tastes, we may still be boggled when someone hates our favourite food. It can be difficult to relate to people when our personal realities are so far apart.

To put it simply, the idea of tabula rasa supports the fact that each of us has a different reality, built of experiences unique to us, and that we cannot perceive something beyond what we have experienced. In that way, tabula rasa forms the basis of empiricism. It would also explain why cultures are so different - surely, if the knowledge of God was innate, then there would only be a single religion the world over? The first men to land in America would have been greeted by Christian brethren, and surely there would be no conflict of interest between Christians, Jews and Muslims, who all believe in the same God? Tabula rasa gives an explanation to such diversity that Descartes's ideology denies.

I think it'd be true to say that if we take the very best of Descartes and Locke - that is, doubting everything and requiring empirical evidence of everything - we end up with the scientific method, which is highly relevant to journalism as it is, at its core, about searching for truth.

Moving on from tabula rasa, Locke's other idea was a new take on the social contract. Hobbes had already laid the foundations down in his Leviathan, explaining that in a theoretical state of nature that existed before government, societies would collectively decide to give up all their rights for a leader and in return for their loyalty, be given safety and prosperity. Hobbes' look is highly cynical and put into practice, gives us dictatorship. Locke finds this irrational, question men would "take care to avoid mischeif of foxes... then are devoured by lions." The lions being, of course, these dictators. He suggests instead that in a state of nature, humans would enjoy their natural freedom and live in harmony with one another, and that government is created for the purpose to govern over the people's right of property.


A third idea of Locke's is that every man has the right to life, liberty and property, an idea that would have gone down well with the founders of America, though communists would be less than thrilled with his idea of property as a right. He states that the government and law should be there to protect, mainly, the one's right to their property. He also states that the public must agree on the taxes levied - which I think also goes against Machiavellian politics, as it suggests that the government must be liked and accepted by the citizens. His final idea is that of the right to revolution should the government cease to respect the law or their three rights, a rather dangerous idea that could only have been acceptable in the light of the Glorious Revolution that removed King James II.


It's easy to see Locke's philosophical influence in today's culture. We consider today that life and freedom are two of our most fundamental rights as human beings and have these ideals protected by the Human Rights Act. We no longer even live in a society with capital punishment - even the vilest crooks have a right to live, if locked away from the outside world. And we wouldn't be where we are now had it not been for the enlightenment and the rise of science, which is thoroughly grounded in empiricism, Locke's most important ideal.