Product Description

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, first published in 1690, John Locke (1632–1704) provides a complete account of how we acquire everyday, mathematical, natural scientific, religious and ethical knowledge. Rejecting the theory that some knowledge is innate in us, Locke argues that it derives from sense perceptions and experience, as analysed and developed by reason. While defending these central claims with vigorous common sense, Locke offers many incidental - and highly influential - reflections on space and time, meaning, free will and personal identity. The result is a powerful, pioneering work, which, together with Descartes’s works, largely set the agenda for modern philosophy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #204555 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 816 pages

About the Author
John Locke (1632-1704) was educated at Christ Church, Oxford and held various academic posts at that university, lecturing on Greek and rhetoric. However, his interests lay in medicine and the new experimental sciences and in 1667 he became personal physician to the Earl of Shaftesbury. Under the influence of Shaftesbury, Locke developed his ideas on politics, property, trade, monarchy and the mind. Shaftesbury became a bitter opponent of Charles II and was involved in the plot of 1683. This forced Locke to flee in exile to Holland, but he returned after 1688 and began to publish his most famous works. He wrote also on tehology, education, and in defence of religous tolerance, while founding the analytic philosophy of the mind. Roger Woolhouse is Professor of Philosophy at the University of York. He has also edited George Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous for Penguin Classics.

Customer Reviews

Warning: Abridged
I won't go into the depths of Locke studies here. Suffice to say he was the first of the 'British Empiricists'; building on Descartes' ideas and beginning an epistemology that influenced Berkely, Hume and many others. The Essay is a (very) lengthy account of his ideas - in which he begins by denying the possibility of innate ideas and goes on to explain how we come by all our ideas, discussing on the way his influential ideas on personal identity and primary and secondary qualities.

The problem that the essay has is that it's over-long (at about 800 pages) and filled with rambling repetition. Not actually amnaging to get through it all myself, I thought this abridged version might contain the highlights as it were... Well, if you have only a passing interest, this book is cheap and does set out Locke's main ideas without much repetition. For serious study, however, I'd invest a bit more for an unabridged copy (the cheapest I think is Penguin Classics; the best the one edited by Nidditch)

Full version
I won't go into the depths of Locke studies here. Suffice to say he was the first of the 'British Empiricists'; building on Descartes' ideas and beginning an epistemology that influenced Berkely, Hume and many others. The Essay is a (very) lengthy account of his ideas - in which he begins by denying the possibility of innate ideas and goes on to explain how we come by all our ideas, discussing on the way his influential ideas on personal identity and primary and secondary qualities.

If you want the best scholarly version, it's undoubtedly Nidditch's Clarendon Press one. This version doesn't offer so much in the way of notes; but it has a basic introduction, original spelling and IMPORTANT: is the cheapest unabridged version of the Essay I've come across.