Book 3: Chapter 15, Locke's Influence Summary and Analysis

Since Locke there have been two types of philosophy; one derived from Locke and the other from Descartes and Kant. Locke's main opponents were the Cartesians and Leibniz, but his influence was partly due to Newton. Locke himself admired Berkeley and Hume. Descartes's work on vortices proved inferior to the law of gravitation by Newton.

His followers were not interested in Locke's political doctrines until the French Revolution. Locke influenced Shelley in his "Necessity of Atheism".

Like other empiricists in this period Locke regarded pleasure as good while others condemned it as being ignoble. Approaches to ethics differed according to personal convictions and approaches. They tended to be also associated with different systems employed in politics. Both Hobbes and even Spinoza valued power. While Locke agreed with Descartes on the existence of God he, like...