John Locke

John Locke (1632-1704) was perhaps the greatest of the British Empiricists. Against Descartes' Rationalist doctrine of innate ideas he argued that our knowledge comes to us through the five senses only. And contrary to Hobbes, he believed in God-given rights of man, and his political philosophy found its way, through Jefferson, into the American Declaration of Independence. Locke's thought was a formative influence on the Enlightenment.