John Locke
by This was an assignment for school on enlightenment. I chose John Locke for the Philosopher I was to write about.
Enlightenment Assignment
John Locke
John Locke states that if a ruler breaks the rules that people have let him enforce, the people have the right and the responsibility to eject the ruler from rule.
I fully support that statement because I believe that a person assigned with such power and the ability to rule over others, should respect and obey the rules that they are supposed to support and enforce. If they break those rules and remain unpunished, I would consider the ruler corrupt. In my opinion, I think the only way to deal with corrupt people is to remove them from any source of power over society, and as John Locke says, I must have the right and responsibility to do so.
What I think John Locke meant by saying that the people have the “right and responsibility” is that once they see that the ruler is corrupt, not only should they work together to remove the corrupt ruler from power, but they are also obligated to doing so.
John Locke states that a ruler should protect the rights of the people and that the ruler’s power should be limited. I agree with this because, when a ruler supports the rights of the people, a sense of fairness and equality is formed with the ruler and the people which would necessarily prevent conflict between the ruler and the people from occurring. I agree that a ruler’s power should be limited, because unlimited power often ends up into corruption, and corruption is unfairness, and unfairness creates conflict and that is the least wanted thing. If power is limited for the ruler, and power is shared among the people as well, there is likely to be no conflict.
John Locke also supports the Tabula rasa which is another word for “blank slate” which refers to the epistemological thesis that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception. I agree with this theory because, I realized, that most things that I learn that really stick with me forever, are the things that I do several times. That is learning from experience. I learn those things from experience and I was not born with it. For example, I was not born with the knowledge on how to play soccer, but I learned to play it by experience.
In conclusion, John Locke has the most reasonable theory out of all the enlightenment philosophers we have looked at because of his views on how rulers should be treated, and how they should treat the people, and his support of the tabula rasa. He was also a liberal and believed in reform and progress.
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