Locke tercentenary

by Chris Bertram on October 26, 2004

This year is the 300th anniversary of the death of John Locke and since he was born in Wrington and brought up in Pensford (both small villages near Bristol) we’ve been doing our bit to celebrate. On Saturday we had “a one-day conference aimed mainly at schoolchildren”:http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Philosophy/Events/default.htm and last night I gave an evening class on his political thought (attended by, among others, our polymathically perverse commenter Count Des von Bladet who “asked a question about Levi-Strauss”:http://piginawig.diaryland.com/041025.html#5 that I didn’t understand). There’s also been a flurry of newspaper articles, of which “the latest is from Martin Kettle in today’s Guardian”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1335926,00.html .

{ 7 comments }

1

Kieran Healy 10.26.04 at 3:31 pm

On Saturday we had a one-day conference aimed mainly at schoolchildren

I hope _someone_ said, “Locke thought everyone was like you lot: nasty, brutish — and short.”

2

des von bladet 10.26.04 at 3:48 pm

Thanks for the link – I am hoping to put my beloved homeland of Latveria on the intellectual map in the way “Slavering” Slavoj Zizek has done for Slovenia, but the Latverian tradition in philosophy is of course quite different from that of the English-speaking world.

Kieran: He also played a mean game of Calvin-ball, but for some reason no one ever mentions that either…

3

john b 10.26.04 at 5:30 pm

I thought Hobbes was the nasty, brutish and short one?

To be Lockean, you’d have to judge the kids’ thoughts by their actions, which would be reasonable but would spoil the joke…

4

bob mcmanus 10.26.04 at 5:59 pm

“Is not the Western philosophical tradition in fact the legacy of the scandalous confrontation of myth with its own historicity?”

Well, sure. The purpose of most philosophers was to make their own conciousness(episteme, discourse?) ahistorical. Escape from contingency.

5

Kieran Healy 10.26.04 at 6:50 pm

Crap! I wrote that before my coffee. I am an idiot.

6

des von bladet 10.27.04 at 10:01 am

Bob: It is very disorientating being agreed with! (It’s probably just as well it doesn’t happen very often.)

7

P.M.Lawrence 10.30.04 at 11:13 am

Hang on, you’re celebrating his death?

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