British Empiricism: Locke, Newton, and Hume

John Locke laid the foundations of modern philosophical empiricism in his "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (1689), arguing that the human mind is born as a blank slate, or tabula rasa, filled with knowledge only through sensory experience — a position that led him explicitly to reject the innate ideas defended by Cartesian rationalism. That same year, in his "Two Treatises of Government," Locke provided a theoretical justification for the right to resist tyrannical rulers, grounding legitimate political authority in the consent of the governed rather than in the divine right of kings. His theory of natural rights to life, liberty, and property would decisively shape later Enlightenment political thought, and his theory of property, based on labor mixed with nature, would go on to influence later liberal economic thought; he also sketched an early separation of governmental powers into legislative, executive, and federative functions that directly influenced Montesquieu's later and more developed theory.