John Locke's Enlightenment Theory

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A philosopher by the name of John Locke said, “a child is a blank state that is formed only through experience.” John Locke was said to be one of the most influential people out of the Enlightenment Thinkers as he was a physician and philosopher. The meaning behind his theory is that children should be instructed after they have been educated. The majority of the time people are the way that they are because of something they have gone through, or people are able to look back on experiences and find out what caused them to be a certain way, even though experiences do not always define you. A part of what makes a person who they are is the experiences they go through. For instance, in the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley the monster says, …show more content…
One point he made was, “If your parents didn't let you make decisions, you might be codependent as an adult” (Baer). He is saying that because you were not allowed to make decisions yourself as a child later in life it is going to affect you. When you become an adult you will rely on others to either help or make decisions for you simply because you never learned how to as a kid. Also in his article he mentioned, “For men, a 2009 study showed that experiencing sexual abuse as a child raised the risk of obesity by 66% compared with males who never experienced sexual abuse” (Baer). This is explaining that since you went through something it affected you later in life. In this case, the adults had a traumatic experience as a child and that has now helped shape the person they have …show more content…
One point made by her was as follows, “ The thing you must understand about your past is that each experience — each location you visited — has brought you to where you are today. Each experience taught you things” (Giles). Simply put, the experiences you have been through teach you a lesson. Rather than forming you into the same type of person who may have caused something bad to happen to you. Another point she made was, “Accept that there is nothing you can do to change the past. You did the best you could with what you knew at the time. That was all you could do. Give yourself permission to be a work in progress” (Giles). Here she is saying that you could not have known how to handle the situation very well because you had not had something like that happen to you before. She is explaining that through these experiences you are evolving, changing, and becoming a better
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