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John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding

1929 Words8 Pages

Locke feared, as is still a concern today, that without a clear distinction between the two, the care of the commonwealth will be distorted by personal beliefs and will not be the priority, as it should be. Without the acceptance of God, or any supreme and omnipotent being, as a basic truth, one’s morals and ethics were questionable at best. Morals are truths which are revealed to us once we are intellectually capable of comprehending them. Locke explains this clearly in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding; “They lie not open as natural characters engraved on the mind; which, if any such were, they must needs be visible by themselves, and by there own light be certain and known to everybody. Locke describes the responsibility of the government …show more content…

Because man is free and equal in the state of nature, he must be assured that he will still be so when he enters society, thus for Locke the establishment of the state occurs on the basis of assured equality without which there would be no incentive to enter into society. In support of this severance he says; “I esteem it above all things necessary to distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion and to settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other” (Locke, Toleration, 2). Every member of the commonwealth, regardless of affiliation, merits equality under the law. In spite of legislation protecting each individual, conflict will inevitably erupt, if not between a government and its people then among the people themselves. In Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he discusses the progression of man’s thought process; how we develop opinions and ideas, as well as the role religion plays in our general understanding of life. Moreover, the violent tactics that were used and the punishments inflicted on those unwilling to convert were wholly unchristian and would lead to a state of war between the parties

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