Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
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ReviewArticle
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88
whoseresourcescould seldommaintaintheirpretensions.
profession
Consequentlyhe appearsparsimonious. He lived in a societyfor
was an everydaymatterand
whichconspicuousphysicalsuffering
ofsocialthoughtwhichheldsuchsuffering
to be
movedin a tradition
bothnormaland inevitable. Consequentlyhe seemscruel. Other
on his personality
can be tracedto similarfailuresto allow
comments
forhis situation. Possiblyit is not the task of the biographerto
answerthequestionsofthehistorian. To havewrestedanynarrative
at all froma collectionas complicatedand dispersedas the Locke
papers have become is a considerableachievement. But this
to the contextof Locke's lifedoes morethan suggest
insensitivity
a moreusefulandinterestiteliminates
irrelevant
personaljudgments,
approach. Removedfromthepressures
ing methodof biographical
of his time,Locke emergesas a collectionof episodes,a bundle of
events and responses from which the necessaryconnection,a
is lacking. We havea massoftraitsbut,since
developingcharacter,
no personality.He is now romantic,now
theyremainunarranged,
rigidlymethodical,now genial, now cantankerous,now reticent
and now aggressive- but thedetailsremainwithoutco-ordination.
This failureto relatethe aspectsof Locke's lifeto one anotheris
mostapparentin the handlingof his medicalthoughtand activity.
Medical interestsmusthave occupied almosthalf,at timesnearly
the whole,of his attention;and medicineforLocke as forhis age
moralperhaps- of the
was but one facet- the mostimmediately
generalscienceof physicalnature,the search,in the pages not of
Scripturebut ofthelibernaturae,forthetrueorderofthe universe.
Locke's startingpointwas "chemistry"as definedby Boyle,and as
as muchas thatof
WalterPagel has shown,the concernof chemistry
theologywas withthe causafinalis. In i66o Locke wrotehis first
politicalworks,two essaysagainstreligioustolerationarguedin the
termsoftraditional
academictheologyand scholasticlogic. In i66o
also his medicalnotebookssuggesta mindimmersedin the system
buildingcategoriesof the alchemistswitha bias towardsthe archei
of van Helmont and the Paracelsan tria prima. In I667 after
six yearsspent mainlyin turninghimselfinto a virtuoso,he had
in his medicine;at thesametimehe
becomean aggressive
empiricist
defences
producedthe firstof his familiarpragmaticand utilitarian
Toleration
of religioustoleration. Boththe Essay Concerning
(I667)
De artemedica(I669) arguefromtheintractability
and theunfinished
ofthefacts- individualsand naturalphenomena- and thefutility
of a priorisystemsin favourof an "experimental"and permissive
approachto both typesof reality. It is hardlyprobablethatsuch
wereno morethancoincidental.
close paralleldevelopments
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89
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90
PhilipAbrams
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