John Locke is yet another significant personality in the American history. He was an English philosopher and also a political theorist. Similar to Thomas Jefferson, he was also one of the most active contributors to the Age of Enlightenment in America and Europe. He is even regarded as one of the most influential thinkers in the early enlightenment phase. His works are considered to be extremely significant for the development of Political Philosophy (Nuovo 2011).
John Locke was born on 29th August, 1632 in England (Biography.com n.d.). He was born in a well to do family and his father was a lawyer and also a military captain. John Locke had a good educational background and he even went to the Oxford University to study medicine later on in …show more content…
This common perception of people is based on many of John Locke’s works, especially his book, “The Reasonableness of Christianity”. This book created a lot of controversy and unrest among the people. The people misinterpreted his works and assigned him the title of being a deist. For example, John Locke mentions in his book that in order to be addressed as Christian it is necessary that a person believes in the existence of God and also believes in Jesus Christ being the Saviour of humankind. However, his statement got misinterpreted as ignoring or not acknowledging the various other religious principles that existed, for example, concept of the Holy Trinity. Since, this these misinterpretations made John Locke’s statements quite similar to the Deism philosophy, he was given the title of being the Founder of English Deism, by many people (Locke 1824).
However, contrary to the common belief, John Locke was actually against Deism and it is evidently mentioned in his book as well. He was also a strong proponent of the equality of rights of all the people in the society and therefore also argued that nobody, not even the churches, should have any coercive power over the people to convert their religion (plato.stanford.edu
John Locke was born on 29th August, 1632 in England (Biography.com n.d.). He was born in a well to do family and his father was a lawyer and also a military captain. John Locke had a good educational background and he even went to the Oxford University to study medicine later on in …show more content…
This common perception of people is based on many of John Locke’s works, especially his book, “The Reasonableness of Christianity”. This book created a lot of controversy and unrest among the people. The people misinterpreted his works and assigned him the title of being a deist. For example, John Locke mentions in his book that in order to be addressed as Christian it is necessary that a person believes in the existence of God and also believes in Jesus Christ being the Saviour of humankind. However, his statement got misinterpreted as ignoring or not acknowledging the various other religious principles that existed, for example, concept of the Holy Trinity. Since, this these misinterpretations made John Locke’s statements quite similar to the Deism philosophy, he was given the title of being the Founder of English Deism, by many people (Locke 1824).
However, contrary to the common belief, John Locke was actually against Deism and it is evidently mentioned in his book as well. He was also a strong proponent of the equality of rights of all the people in the society and therefore also argued that nobody, not even the churches, should have any coercive power over the people to convert their religion (plato.stanford.edu