John Locke, English empiricist and early defender of liberty

A vastly influential moral and political thinker, and some would argue he made possible the revolutions in both America and France

Locke was one of the first with the view that knowledge comes not from innate ideas but from experience (Getty)

John Locke (1632–1704) concerned himself primarily with society, where his views are often contrasted with those of Thomas Hobbes, and with epistemology, where he is usually placed alongside David Hume and Bishop Berkeley in a group known as the British Empiricists.

Locke is regarded as one of the foremost proponents of the view that knowledge comes not from innate ideas but from experience. He was also undoubtedly a vastly influential moral and political philosopher, and some would go so far as to say that his thinking made possible the revolutions in both America and France. It is hard not to think of him as the greatest philosopher of the modern period in England – he did much to disentangle the philosophy of his day from scholastic and ancient Greek thinking. Some are willing to go further, arguing that he is the greatest philosopher England has ever produced. Certainly he shares a property with many others at the very top of the pantheon: those in power put him in fear for his life at least once.

Locke was born in Wrington, Somerset, to stern parents of the Puritan faith. His father arranged for his early education at Westminster School in London, where he eventually boarded, finally leaving to take up a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1652. It was at Christ Church that Locke began the odd practice of writing in codes and using invisible ink to keep his work secret. Many of Locke’s papers and books were first published anonymously, and he seems to have been extremely secretive and suspicious of certain apparently blameless friends throughout his life.