A Gentleman’s “moderate knowledge”: Mediocrity as the Appropriate Measure of Learning in John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education

The paper aims to investigate the specificity of the curricular recommendations which Locke addressed to young gentlemen’s tutors in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, markedly characterized by moderation: excellence in either scholarly or modern learning was rejected as not being a gentleman’s main business. What Locke insisted on was the acquisition of virtuous habits as the chief scope of a gentleman’s education; a “taste” of the various sciences, as well as a modest refinement of manners, were sufficient to this end. Such “moderate knowledge” appears to be closely connected with the “state of mediocrity” which, in the Essay, he describes as proper to man in his earthly life. This was a lesson Locke probably thought the gentry of his time should be reminded of: the mediocre state he attributed to the generality of human beings appeared to be particularly appropriate when describing the gentry’s condition in the last few decades of the seventeenth century, which was significantly marked by uneasiness and anxiety.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-ND

A person counts once a day per paper. We keep no cookie and no address: a reader is a hash that changes every day. Any month under five reads shows no number.