John Locke (pronounced /ˈlɒk/; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704), widely known as the Father of Liberalism, is an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers.

Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract theory.

His work has a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political philosophy.

His writings influence Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries.

His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the American Declaration of Independence.

Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as Hume, Rousseau and Kant.

Locke is the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness.

He postulates that the mind is a blank slate or tabula rasa.

Contrary to pre-existing Cartesian philosophy, he maintains that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception.