On Money 1

by John Locke, Patrick Hyde Kelly (Editor)

Compiled here for the first time is the complete body of Locke's writings on money, excluding Two Treatises of Government. Accurate texts, together with a listing of variant readings and significant manuscript changes, record the evolution of Locke's ideas from his original 1668-1674 paper on interest to the three pamphlets on interest and coinage published in the 1690s. The introduction by Kelly establishes the wider context of Locke's writings in terms of contemporary debates on these subjects, the economic conditions of the time, and the circumstances of writing and publicaton. It shows, notably, that Locke's supposed responsibility for the 1696 recoinage is a myth. The account of what Locke derived from Mercantilist writings and of how he reformulated these in accordance with his philosophy illuminates his contribution to the evolution of economics, and will aid reappraisal of Two Treatises. The picture that emerges confirms Locke's status as a major economic thinker, contrary to the prevalent view of recent decades. There are two volumes in the present edition. The first contains the introductory matter, and the texts of The Early Writings on Interest, 1688-1674 and Some Considerations. The second comprises Short Observations, Further Considerations, and the Appendices, Bibliography, and Index.

358 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

John Locke was an English philosopher. He is considered the first of the British Empiricists, but is equally important to social contract theory. His ideas had enormous influence on the development of epistemology and political philosophy, and he is widely regarded as one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers and contributors to liberal theory. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. This influence is reflected in the American Declaration of Independence.

Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin for modern conceptions of identity and "the self", figuring prominently in the later works of philosophers such as David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first Western philosopher to define the self through a continuity of "consciousness." He also postulated that the mind was a "blank slate" or "tabula rasa"; that is, contrary to Cartesian or Christian philosophy, Locke maintained that people are born without innate ideas.