The lost memoir portrays the philosopher John Locke as “vain, lazy and pompous.” Rediscovered documents, believed to have been written by his longtime friend, claim that the “father of liberalism” plagiarized and lied about never reading Thomas Hobbes.
Today John Locke is considered one of the greatest philosophers of England and the world, an Enlightenment thinker known as the “Father of Liberalism.” But a previously unknown memoir, attributed to one of his close friends, paints a different picture – of a vain, lazy and pompous man who “amused himself with trifles of wit” and a plagiarist who “took everything he could from others.”
Dr. Felix Waldmann, professor of history at Cambridge, found the short memoir in the British Library while looking through the documents of the 18th century historian Thomas Birch, who acquired many manuscripts from his contemporaries. Among them were drafts of the preface to the publication of Locke’s minor works by the Huguenot journalist Pierre de Meso. Sandwiched between De Meso’s drafts were five pages in French, on which the journalist recorded an interview with an anonymous “Mr. …” about Locke.
Waldmann describes this discovery as the “holy grail” of Locke’s research: the memoir not only speaks highly of Locke’s character, but also shows that he read Thomas Hobbes’s masterpiece Leviathan from 1651, a work that was very controversial at the time, and an acquaintance with which Locke always denied. “This changes Locke’s status, and I was absolutely stunned when I found out about it,” Waldmann said. “It’s extraordinarily exciting … I don’t think I’ll ever find anything quite as meaningful.”
In a peer-reviewed article published in the Journal of Modern History, Waldmann cites James Tyrrell, Locke’s close friend for decades, as an anonymous source. They met at Oxford in 1658 and corresponded for most of their lives. Locke remained at Tyrrell’s house for several weeks, and Tyrrell took care of many of Locke’s things from 1683 to 1689, when the philosopher was exiled to the Netherlands.
The memoirs open with memories of Locke’s time at Oxford, where, according to Tyrrell, Locke “did not study at all; he was lazy and careless, amused himself with trifles of wit. ” Locke is remembered as a man who “prided himself on his originality and despised what he could not pass off as his own.”
“This tendency often led him to abandon some very common statements with great ceremony and to pompously recite some very trivial sayings,” says Tyrrell Des Maizeaux. “Being filled with a good opinion of himself, he appreciated only his own work and the people who praised him.”
Waldmann believes that De Meso did not publish Tyrrell’s memoirs because his edition of Locke’s work was dedicated to the glorification of the philosopher. “I suppose he was quite shocked to hear such things about Locke’s personal nature and, understandably, he just forgot about it,” he said.
Tyrrell also claims that one of Locke’s books was “a copy of another, which he claimed to have never read,” although Locke was “encouraged” to buy the book many years ago.
“But what is interesting is that Tyrrell, whom we considered to be Locke’s closest friend, is ready to call him a plagiarist; that he considers Locke’s success to be a product of intellectual laziness, ”the researcher pointed out.
But the Cambridge academic says the most significant discovery was Tyrrell’s discovery that Locke had read Hobbes’ Leviathan.
“This is by far the most infamous philosophical work published in the 17th century – [она была] absolutely heretical, and Hobbes was treated with extraordinary suspicion, ”Waldmann said. Locke has denied for decades that he knew Hobbes in any way, shape or form. He never quotes Leviathan in any of his published works, never refers to him in his letters, thousands of which have survived, so he tries his best to avoid any associations. “
But Tyrrell states to De Meso that Locke “almost always kept the Leviathan on his desk, and he recommended reading it to his friends,” even though he “later pretended to deny in the future that he had ever read it.”
“The idea that Locke was not interested in his greatest predecessor has caused a lot of controversy,” Waldmann said. “There are no mysteries comparable to Locke’s dialogue with Hobbes, but Locke’s closest friend says that Leviathan was almost always on his desk.”
Tyrrell continues to curse Locke in various ways, including the main ones: “he was stingy, vain, envious and reserved to the extreme”; “He took whatever he could take from others and made a profit from them” – and insignificant: Locke was reportedly so timid that “often at night the noise of a mouse made him get up and call his master. “
According to Waldmann, relations between the two have deteriorated over time. “Locke is getting more rude towards Tyrrell in the face and others, so this is one personal grudge,” he said. “The second was Locke’s extraordinary success. By the early 18th century, Tyrrell was still alive, and he watched his dead friend, who did not treat him particularly well, become the most famous literary figure of the last five decades.
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