Lockean Philosophy in Jonathan Swifts Gullivers Travels Essay

An Exploration of Lockean Philosophy in Gullivers Travels Ricardo Quintana asserts in his study Two Augustans that even though quick as a traditional philosophical realist dismissed Lockian empiricism with impatience, he recognized in Lockian political theory an enforcement of his own convictions (76). It may be argued, however, than when two contemporary authors, such as Locke and Swift, are shaped within the same matrix of cultural forces and events, they reveal through their respective works a similar ideology. The take of this paper is twofold first, to explore the parallels between Lockes Some Thoughts Concerning Education and Swifts Gullivers Travels, using textual evidence and literary criticism and second, to compare the methods prescribed by Locke and Swift for education, taking into account some cultural views in the eighteenth-century. The first half of the eighteenth-century, sometimes referred to as the Age of Reason, marked a new era in parent-child relations, based upon a confluence of political and religious currents that radically altered the accepted social attitudes towards children (Braverman 37). The revision of the late seventeenth-century political and cultural perspective gave ascending to a new philosophy that regarded children as more-or-less inherently good and virtuous. This milder view differed from earlier beliefs that portrayed children as fallen creatures, who embodied original sin derived from decade and Eves Fall. Commenting on Lockes Thoughts, Lawrence Stone observes the following in his extensive study The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 Lockes book coincided with the overthrow of Divine Right Monarchy, the rejection of the doctrine of P... ...versity of California Press, 1968. Ezell, Margaret J. M. illusion Lockes Images of Childhood Early Eighteenth Century Response to Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Eighteenth-Century Studies. Winter. 1983 139-55. Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government, The W orks of John Locke. Vol. 5. capital of the United Kingdom Thomas Teggs et al., 1823. Locke, John. Some Thoughts Concerning Education, The Works of John Locke. Vol. 9. London Thomas Teggs et al., 1823. Quintana, Ricardo. Two Augustans John Locke and Jonathan Swift. Madison University of Wisconsin Press, 1978. Setten, Henk van. Some Thoughts Concerning Education by John Locke, 1693.The History of Education Site. 1-2 pp. Online. Internet. 23 Sept. 1999. Available http//www.socsci.kun.nl/ped/whphistedu/locke/locke_intro.html Swift, Jonathan. Gullivers Travels. Oxford Oxford University Press, 1998.