John Locke
1632 – 1704 English philosopher, physician
English philosopher whose blank slate theory of mind reframed education as the shaping of character.
- Religion
- Anglican.
- Affiliations
- Wrote Some Thoughts Concerning Education; associated with the University of Oxford.
John Locke held that the mind begins as a blank slate and that character and knowledge are built through experience and habit. In Some Thoughts Concerning Education he advised tutors to cultivate virtue, reason, and self control rather than rote memorization. His views shaped Enlightenment thinking about childhood and influenced later reformers including Rousseau.
Connections
- influenced Immanuel Kant — Kant responded to the empiricist tradition Locke began.
- influenced Jean-Jacques Rousseau — Locke's ideas on childhood shaped Rousseau's Emile.