Adding Locke makes the critique more directly tied to Weaver’s text: Weaver explicitly traces a line from Ockham’s nominalism to “Hobbes and Locke,” whom he says represent a turn toward reasoning from evidence supplied by nature. In his account, modern thought increasingly privileges sensory experience and particular facts over intellectual knowledge of universals and transcendent truth. (wisc.pb.unizin.org) Locke’s place in Weaver’s critique: Locke’s empiricism—especially his rejection of innate ideas and emphasis on experience as a source of ideas—can be read, from Weaver’s perspective, as part of that shift. The danger, for Weaver, is not studying experience itself; it is treating experience and accumulated facts as sufficient grounds for knowledge, while losing sight of first principles and purposes beyond the observable world. (wisc.pb.unizin.org) Important qualification: Locke is not simply a relativist or a thinker who discards moral truth. He argues for a universal law of nature grounded in God and accessible through reason. So Weaver’s critique is best understood as a criticism of the direction he sees in Locke’s empiricism—not a complete description of Locke’s philosophy. (plato.stanford.edu) In short: Weaver’s broad contrast is between knowledge anchored in objective, higher truth and a modern approach that begins with observable facts and reasons upward. He places Hobbes and Locke in that latter historical movement; connecting Machiavelli to it is more of a broader interpretation than a direct part of Weaver’s central genealogy. (wisc.pb.unizin.org)

 Adding Locke makes the critique more directly tied to Weaver’s text: Weaver explicitly traces a line from Ockham’s nominalism to “Hobbes and Locke,” whom he says represent a turn toward reasoning from evidence supplied by nature. In his account, modern thought increasingly privileges sensory experience and particular facts over intellectual knowledge of universals and transcendent truth. (wisc.pb.unizin.org)

Locke’s place in Weaver’s critique: Locke’s empiricism—especially his rejection of innate ideas and emphasis on experience as a source of ideas—can be read, from Weaver’s perspective, as part of that shift. The danger, for Weaver, is not studying experience itself; it is treating experience and accumulated facts as sufficient grounds for knowledge, while losing sight of first principles and purposes beyond the observable world. (wisc.pb.unizin.org)

Important qualification: Locke is not simply a relativist or a thinker who discards moral truth. He argues for a universal law of nature grounded in God and accessible through reason. So Weaver’s critique is best understood as a criticism of the direction he sees in Locke’s empiricism—not a complete description of Locke’s philosophy. (plato.stanford.edu)

In short: Weaver’s broad contrast is between knowledge anchored in objective, higher truth and a modern approach that begins with observable facts and reasons upward. He places Hobbes and Locke in that latter historical movement; connecting Machiavelli to it is more of a broader interpretation than a direct part of Weaver’s central genealogy. (wisc.pb.unizin.org)