Name-dropping:
John Locke (pronunciation: like Master Lock, not like Ton Loc) (1632–1704).
British philosopher, political scientist, and guy from whom Jefferson borrowed extensively in the Declaration of Independence.

When to Drop Your Knowledge:
When party conversations get excessively political, it’s sometimes wise to steer the group toward something you can all agree on. Like “You know what’s a bad idea? Slavery.” And “I sure like having liberty. Remember back in the 17th century when liberty hadn’t even really been invented?”

The Basics
John Locke was a complicated figure about whom it is difficult to say anything with much authority. His belief in “government with the consent of the governed” and the inherent liberty of all people formed the cornerstone of democracy, particularly in the United States, and his philosophy and morality were hugely important in the Enlightenment and forever after. But paradoxically, he embraced slavery, and his philosophy at times reads like mere hedonism.

But before he was famous as the forefather to the American forefathers, Locke studied medicine. Although he was never licensed as a medical doctor (not that it meant much in 17th-century Britain), his medical studies led him to take up residence with the (later) earl of Shaftesbury. Locke successfully treated the earl for a liver infection, and the earl was so grateful that he agreed to patronize Locke, which would now be an insult but back then meant “I will give you money and you don’t have to do any work.”

In the coming years, Locke would write two books that have been forced upon college students ever since. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, written over a period of 18 years, is a philosophic treatise concerned in part with the differences between how we learn simple ideas (like “red”) and how we learn abstract ones (like, for instance, “liberty”).

Two Treatises on Civil Government, his most famous book, was concerned with that very liberty. It was here that Locke expressed his belief that all human beings—whether serf or king—were born with the right to life, liberty, and property. This wasn’t the sort of thing that one ought to say when living under the rule of a king, so Locke didn’t acknowledge his authorship of the treatises for many years. But it’s a good thing that he did—his excellent reputation as the man who paved the way for the democratic revolutions in Europe and America is due entirely to that one short book.

His Cheating Heart
Locke believed that the primary point of a marriage was to bear and raise children. Locke himself never married or had children, but he may have participated in some cheating. Locke fell for Damaris Cudworth (who, although you wouldn’t know it to look at her name, was a woman), one of the first British women to publish philosophical writings. John and Damaris exchanged love poems, and later they lived together (with Damaris’s then husband, Sir Francis Masham, and his eight children, oddly enough) for a number of years, leading to speculation that Locke might have cuckolded Mr. Masham.

In the Course of Human Events…
…it sometimes becomes necessary to plagiarize. Thomas Jefferson toed the line between inspiration and outright theft in the Declaration of Independence. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with borrowing Locke’s conceptions of liberty and freedom. But Jefferson’s famous assertion that people have a natural right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” comes perilously close to Locke’s assertion that people have a natural right to “life, liberty, and property.”

THE PHILOSOPHICAL FRAT
Along with a small group of fellow Oxford students, John Locke formed the Experimental Philosophy Club, which sounds like a really dumb club. That is, until you consider that some of the other member included Robert “Father of Chemistry” Boyle, Christopher “Architect of St. Peter’s Cathedral” Wren, and Robert “Inventor of the Modern Microscope” Hooke.

Conversation Starters
◆ Locke’s theories on childhood, as outlined in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, might not fly with today’s child labor laws. For instance, he expressed regret that poor children’s labor “is generally lost to the public until they are 12 or 14 years old,” and believed that kids from families on welfare ought to attend a sort of vocational school for toddlers, so as to be “from infancy inured to work.”

◆ In the 1660s, Locke contributed to the text of the “Fundamental Constitutions” for the territories of the Carolinas in the New World. Although Locke professed to believe in the natural freedom of all people (well, men) and that enslavement created a “state of war,” the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina granted slave owners total ownership over their slaves. Like we said, he wasn’t the most consistent of moral philosophers.

◆ Although his most famous books are short, college students everywhere complain that Locke had a tough time expressing a thought succinctly. Take this famous quote, for example: “I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.” Just come out and say it, Johnny: People can know right from wrong.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that Locke’s self-written epitaph on his tombstone runs 137 words.