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Reading about the character flaws of public figures is fascinating to me, in (I'm assuming) the same way people like paparazzi photos of celebrities getting coffee in sweatpants. Bleary-eyed, frumpy, regular-sized, basically normal.

Part of the attraction is a kind of zero-sum ego trip. Bringing stars down to earth lets me believe that I'm closer to having "made it" in some vague, ill-defined way, without ever having to leave the couch.

It's interesting that this bit of offhand notes is taken as gospel.

Quite possibly it's valid, but it seems as though the certainty of TFA could be overplayed.

My personal memoir of smitty1e might be the only surviving reference to them, regarding their comment posting. In future times, some hypothesised person is going to memory-write in post-english emoji "yes, but did smitty1e really exist" and your status will continue purely on belief in my reference to you. Entire tribes of mind-readers will ponder: "did ggm lie, or did ggm really respond to this person? how can we know?"

Sure: they could have made it all up about Hobbes and Locke. Do you really think somebody would write in a basically private memoir "I remember seeing an edition of Hobbes by his bed in college even though he denied it" if it was all a fantasy?

What would motivate somebody to make up, connected, reasoned fundamental statements about the behaviour of a contemporary from personal memory?

I was at the University of York 79-82, and a british Comedian called Harry Enfield was also there. He was said to have kept a duck in a box under his bed and fed it weetbix. Now, go find any authoritative proof this really happened (asking Enfield himself is possibly cheating) -I defy you to find any written record this took place but I assure you, I will go to testimony on the stand about this, because I was there at the time and this story was notorious amongst a circuit in the colleges. Did he do it? Did he not do it? Did he only talk about it? Future Historians!

> Sure: they could have made it all up

Nobody seriously doubts that https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War happened, for all there is mostly just the account of Thucydides to document it.

But do we really think all of those speeches were delivered that exquisitely?

No. Hansard allows editing of speeches to be what you wished you'd said.

Mind you, "shimi" Lovat persuaded his personal bagpiper to play on the beaches of D Day in 1944 as the regiment landed.(1) On the 6th. Against orders. If Thucydides was Stephen Ambrose and had written it, would we credit it or say "gross embellishment"

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20170606191755/http://www.econom...

Is see your point, but there were enough witnesses at D-Day of recent vintage to have endorsed the fact.

My original, still standing, point is that the anecdote about Locke sure is being treated as authoritative when further corroboration may be in order.

To me, it has exactly the same weight as Lockes denials.
It strikes me as likely to add a footnote to the effect that Locke may have been more familiar with Hobbes than his works suggest, according to one anonymous contemporary who claimed to be a close associate. I doubt this will change anyone's understanding of his work in the least.
Yeah, it's a weak aspect of the confirmation bias we're all constantly subject to. If your story's relevance is amplified by the reported confidence, it makes sense to inflate one in hopes of inflating the other. Such is the world we live in, sadly.

Nonetheless, it's still interesting to learn there might be such a closer connection between Locke and Hobbes. The Fine Article indeed!

Unrelated, but I once came across a post claiming TFA stood for "the f**ing article", and I now can't unsee that. I wonder for a split second, before I remember what it actually stands for, why the poster is so angry.
I think it comes from the exhortation to read the manual: "RTFM!". This has been around in technical circles for over 40 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM
That's likely the original meaning, with 'the fine article' being someone squeaming.
Oh, I thought it was "the featured article"
Based on usage here, I’ve come to understand TFA as “the FULL article.” For me, this comports with the spirit of HN rules. Used in that sense, it allows for the possibility that another commenter may have skimmed, or even read the article, but may have missed a detail that the FULL article addresses.
It's always been "f*ing" like RTFM. Do you really think people needed to insert an F there to stand for featured or fine?
I mean "The Fine Article" with a glimmer of the more vulgar reading.
Somehow Locke managed to qualify as a physician, teach (as I recall it) classics at the university, and write the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Not half bad for a lazy man.
This is a summary by a journalist in the Guardian; the original scholarship is in the Journal of Modern History (paywalled)[0].

tldr: scholars have never been able to say very much concrete about John Locke's intellectual relationship to Thomas Hobbes, despite these two dudes being the most important 17th-century English political philosophers. Locke's work often appears to be responding to Hobbes, but he conspicuously never mentions him by name. But wait! This new manuscript is a (third-hand) account saying that Locke read Hobbes's Leviathan closely earlier in his life and even recommended the book to others, but later would deny that he ever read it. (Also the manuscript says some other mean things about Locke which are of maybe less scholarly interest.)

It's an interesting sort of find, although 17th-century intellectual history was not my specialty when I was a historian so it's hard to say how really important it is in terms of reorienting that sub-field. Bigger picture, I suppose it depends on how much you care about what Locke thought of Hobbes.

[0] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/714068

Can I say this doesn't really surprise me at all?

Philosophy almost by definition requires a good ability to skip work to just sit down and think deeply about things, something you can't really do expediently or while busy with life. If you go merrily about doing whatever needs doing you're like not unhappy enough with the state of things to ask yourself some big questions.

It also requires a good ability to repackage ideas, many of which have been ill-presented by original authors or far ahead of their time, to an audience in a manner that makes them receptive to them. Most philosophers spend far more time engaging in dialogue with existing ideas instead of making their own.

Oh, I just remembered Lost
The guardian is constantly negative. It's like their job is to attack and discredit people and institutions they don't like. Often based on insinuations or flimsy or no evidence.

More knowledge and less lobbying please.

Heroes never live up to their reputation. Remember, they were people with pluses and negatives, and most likely were extremely lucky in becoming the protagonist in some historical narrative instead of a bystander.
he amused himself with trifling works of wit, a real scandal!
I suspect many more people now also amuse themselves with trifling works of Twitter.
My gripe with Locke is more that his "equality" was only for the non-slaves of his nation state. That's not equality, that's a good starting point for tyranny/oppression.
Sigh…

My gripe with modern politicians is that their definition of "equality" is only for the adults of our nation state.

Men old enough to drive three ton SUVs, fight wars, and father children are denied the right to vote. Hell, in one famous democracy they cannot even buy a beer.

You and I are John Locke.

> Men old enough to drive three ton SUVs, fight wars, and father children are denied the right to vote.

No idea what you're trying to say here dear thowaway.

> You and I are John Locke.

And here neither.

Really? No idea, none, nada, completely in the dark?

OK then: the OP was belittling the ethics of John Locke because he failed to measure up to the posters 21st century western values. [Its a popular modern past-time].

Hell, slavery was so embedded that slaves thought it was normal. [Much like we treat work today]. Saudi Arabia only came around to the consensus that owning people was bad in 1961. Your great grandparents didn't think women should vote.

So I was pointing out that there are still many edge-cases in the OPs/our own society - from where he/she judges, that are a similar [but, yes, not identical] blind spot.

On which he/she is completely silent. Why EXACTLY, should high-school students not vote?

[But, I suspect you actually did work all this out yourself]

> Hell, slavery was so embedded that slaves thought it was normal.

There was Jesus teachings right? And many others who were frowning upon it. This "it was embedded" is merely a way to retroactively make it sound not as bad as it is. Condoning slavery in Locke's time was also bad. And, ihmo, especially looks bad on "mr equality" himself.

> Why EXACTLY, should high-school students not vote?

I totally agree. But highscholers at least will someday vote + have parents and hence get included. Slaves on the other hand get 100% exploited.

Still I dont get your references.

> This "it was embedded" is merely a way to retroactively make it sound not as bad as it is?

No, why on earth would you think that of me? Don't be a dick.

Its just a historical fact. Wierd and awful as it may seem to us. Which is why Mr Locke could not see it.

Here is a crutch to help you get there:

1. we currently - and rightly - hate racial discrimination in apparently all its forms, but

2. we (via our governments) think it is perfectly ok to make some visitors to our countries get expensive restrictive visas, whilst others are welcomed with open arms

3. compare and contract the international border experience of citizens of EU, USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with ANY African country

4. hell, there are job adverts demanding 'a passport that can travel'.

Now ask yourself how much sleep most of the Western progressives lose over this. They just cannot see it.

Later generations might. Should they smugly dismiss us?

> There was Jesus teachings right?

Jesus didn't teach anything directly against slavery, which is why Christianity took a long time to generally oppose slavery. Now, you can argue that's because Jesus generally wasn’t a political reformer and directed commentary to how to live in the world with its defects, leaving how to fix the defects implicit. And that may be true and a valid response to claims that Jesus was pro-slavery, but doesn't rescue your pointing to him as an anti-slavery advocate.

Your entire argument seems predicated on the idea that "people like Jesus knew slavery was bad, so John Locke should have too".

This is a false premise. Jesus actively encouraged slavery. https://pathofthebeagle.com/2011/10/20/what-did-jesus-say-ab...

> OK then: the OP was belittling the ethics of John Locke because he failed to measure up to the posters 21st century western values.

Slavery was recognized as odious by many earlier than, or contemporary with, Locke; its not a 21st century moral novelty.