جون لوك .. كتاب المائة الأوائل

John Locke

John Locke

1632 - 1704

John Locke was the first writer to collect the basic ideas of constitutional democracy, and his ideas influenced the founders of the United States and many philosophers in the French philosophical Enlightenment movement in the eighteenth century.

John Locke was born in 1632 in Rington, England. He was educated at Oxford University and was interested in science in his youth. At the age of thirty-six, he was elected a member of the Royal Society and became friends with Newton.

A turning point occurred in John Locke's life when he got to know (Earl Shaftesbury), who embraced and supported free political ideas. He was hard because of these thoughts, as King Charles II imprisoned him because of his free political activity, and he fled to Holland, and John Locke followed him there.

The book that caused John Locke's fame is (His Essay on the Human Concept) in which he discussed the origin, nature, and limits of human knowledge. Locke's views were purely experimental, and his ideas clearly showed the influence of Francis Bacon and Descartes, and his ideas, in turn, influenced many later thinkers such as George Berkeley and David Hume and Immanuel Kant, and although the book (The Article) was the most original book written by John Locke, and it is one of the most important classic books in philosophy, it was less important on historical developments than his political writings. In his book (A Treatise on the Policy of Religious Tolerance), Locke emphasized that the state should not interfere in the practice of religious rituals, and Locke's persistence in presenting these ideas was a reason for the growth of public opinion for this idea, and Locke had the idea of ​​religious tolerance! Non-Christians too, he said: Neither pagans nor Muslims nor Jews. To be excluded from civil rights because of their religions, but he had excluded Catholics because they owe allegiance to a foreign ruler (the Pope) as well as atheists.

Thanks to Locke's writings, religious tolerance was extended even to those groups that Locke excluded.

Of equal importance and fame are his two treatises on "Government", which appeared in 1689. Through them, he showed the main ideas underlying free constitutional democracy, and the impact of that was great and profound. Locke declared that every human being possesses natural rights that do not only include his right to life, but his personal freedom and the freedom of personal ownership. He emphasized that the duty of the state is to protect the freedom and property of its citizens.

Locke rejected the right of the divine king (which was prevalent in Europe) and declared that governments derive their authority from the approval of the peoples they rule. Locke believed in the principle of separation of powers and believed that the legislative authority should be higher than the executive authority and higher than what he considered part of the executive authority, and therefore he opposed giving courts the right to object to legislative laws and consider them unconstitutional. It is clear that John Locke had a great impact on the American Revolution a century before it took place, and he had an influence on Jefferson and on the thinkers of France before the French Revolution, which makes him an indirect impact in the ignition of the revolution.
French .