An engaging and important text in the history of philosophy. Locke's essays are lucid and provide a contrast to the thought of Rousseau among others. ( )

One of the greatest political philosophers, he is a joy to read. Clear and concise. His ideas still apply today. ( )

John Locke attended Lord Ashley as his tutor and personal physician. The relationship continued the rest of their lives. When the Lord became the (first) Earl of Shaftesbury and eventually a Prime Minister, prisoner and exile, Locke accompanied him as his personal secretary and amanuensis.

Although Locke never married nor had children of his own, he was well-loved in the community, even proposing successful match-making and modestly selecting the wedding clothes for his friends.

Locke's reputation is based on writings which influenced the rise of liberalism as the basis for an ascendant middle class. His immediate influence in England through the Earl of Shaftesbury no doubt resulted in the latter's efforts to abolish child labor, promote "modern" public school curricula, create a degree of latitudinarian religious tolerance, and commission business ventures in the New World. Locke wrote on these subjects in detail. The Unitarian Universalist views of Locke are fully ventilated in the Essays on Toleration, Government, and Education -- tolerance, reason, and a liberal concept of freedom as something with which individuals can be trusted.

In 1690, when he was 58, Locke published his first work in English, "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding". This had been written, unpublished, for over five years during the political hysteria of the competing factions. "An Essay on Toleration" and notes on Two Treatises on Civil Government" were subsequently published with the encouragement of Locke's patron who had become a liberal "Whig" in the Parliament and on the Cabinet. ( )