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Essai sur l'entendement humain
L’Essai sur l’entendement humain de John Locke (1632-1704) fait partie des très grands livres qui ont modelé le visage de la philosophie occidentale. Paru en 1689, l’ouvrage a été publié en traduction française en 1700. Il est au point de rencontre de deux grands siècles de philosophie : ancré dans les concepts et les débats de l’âge classique, il marque aussi un moment de rupture dans la manière de faire de la philosophie et met au jour de nouvelles questions que les auteurs du XVIIIe siècle n’auront de cesse d’explorer. Cela fait incontestablement de l ’Essai le maître-livre des Lumières.
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First published January 1, 1690
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About the author
John Locke
1,964 books1,467 followersLibrarian 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.
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.
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November 25, 2021
Sometimes, the role of an artist or scientist is to express things that which people know to be true however can not or do not express themselves. This is how reading Locke feels like.
Exposition:
The observations noted throughout the text are from the common experiences and phenomena in the lives of people. Hence, this meets the criterion for being grounded and relevant. Then, the numerous conclusions made based upon such had an aspect of tightness through naturally following the observations. Put together, and more specifically, Locke was ruthlessly intricate in that of explicitly stating the seemingly most obvious phenomena or notions, then checking every connotation of each statement to demonstrate conclusions, often non-obvious ones, with proper reasoning.
On a smaller note, Locke summons nostalgia in me of my days doing debate competitions. For the manner in which Locke briefly titled and numbered points throughout the text was the very way we would structure debate cases and speeches. Admittedly, I sincerely wish more texts, especially those more scientific or argumentative in nature, would adopt such a structure.
Content:
In content, the text is sound psychology—at least, for its time. This was a pleasant surprise though, as I had read the text for its status of being an important work of epistemology, and thus had expected it to solely be philosophy. Another element of surprise were many of the ideas espoused in book III on words. I had thought those ideas were not discovered and reasoned out for at least a century or two more.
My favorite part of the entire text was Book III Chapter 4 Paragraph 12 where a brief example is given of demonstrating the same idea in different forms, a sculpture and a painting, to a blind man. Despite only having the capability to sufficiently sense the sculpture, the blind man nonetheless favored the painting whereby he "cried out, that certainly that must needs be a very admirable and divine piece of workmanship, which could represent to them all those parts, where he could neither feel nor perceive anything." I could talk endlessly about this. What relevance does this have to universals and particulars? What relevance does this have to potentiality? What are other phenomena that which perpetually permeate our perceptions and instruments yet we know not of them?
The text is not entirely perfect though. As a result of those numerous intricacies, it felt unnecessarily verbose or detailed at times. Many of the topics addressed were not directly important. I furthermore did not find many of the reasons given for the practicality of the notions espoused satisfying. This included the utility of book I not being a "castle in the air", latter discussions of the connections of thought to power and liberty, and the last chapter of the book with the vague mention of "practica" being a division of the sciences. In contrast, the practical solutions given after discussing the problems of words were well explained. (It should be a custom for people to equally exert themselves in presenting solutions as much as they complain about problems.)
Conclusion:
Perhaps it is the thorough combination of ideas, perhaps it is the way Locke expressed them, or perhaps it is simply the ideas themselves, however I sincerely appreciated reading this. Despite the amount of noise and deviations from the core of the content, there is an abundance of solid ideas here.
Exposition:
The observations noted throughout the text are from the common experiences and phenomena in the lives of people. Hence, this meets the criterion for being grounded and relevant. Then, the numerous conclusions made based upon such had an aspect of tightness through naturally following the observations. Put together, and more specifically, Locke was ruthlessly intricate in that of explicitly stating the seemingly most obvious phenomena or notions, then checking every connotation of each statement to demonstrate conclusions, often non-obvious ones, with proper reasoning.
On a smaller note, Locke summons nostalgia in me of my days doing debate competitions. For the manner in which Locke briefly titled and numbered points throughout the text was the very way we would structure debate cases and speeches. Admittedly, I sincerely wish more texts, especially those more scientific or argumentative in nature, would adopt such a structure.
Content:
In content, the text is sound psychology—at least, for its time. This was a pleasant surprise though, as I had read the text for its status of being an important work of epistemology, and thus had expected it to solely be philosophy. Another element of surprise were many of the ideas espoused in book III on words. I had thought those ideas were not discovered and reasoned out for at least a century or two more.
My favorite part of the entire text was Book III Chapter 4 Paragraph 12 where a brief example is given of demonstrating the same idea in different forms, a sculpture and a painting, to a blind man. Despite only having the capability to sufficiently sense the sculpture, the blind man nonetheless favored the painting whereby he "cried out, that certainly that must needs be a very admirable and divine piece of workmanship, which could represent to them all those parts, where he could neither feel nor perceive anything." I could talk endlessly about this. What relevance does this have to universals and particulars? What relevance does this have to potentiality? What are other phenomena that which perpetually permeate our perceptions and instruments yet we know not of them?
The text is not entirely perfect though. As a result of those numerous intricacies, it felt unnecessarily verbose or detailed at times. Many of the topics addressed were not directly important. I furthermore did not find many of the reasons given for the practicality of the notions espoused satisfying. This included the utility of book I not being a "castle in the air", latter discussions of the connections of thought to power and liberty, and the last chapter of the book with the vague mention of "practica" being a division of the sciences. In contrast, the practical solutions given after discussing the problems of words were well explained. (It should be a custom for people to equally exert themselves in presenting solutions as much as they complain about problems.)
Conclusion:
Perhaps it is the thorough combination of ideas, perhaps it is the way Locke expressed them, or perhaps it is simply the ideas themselves, however I sincerely appreciated reading this. Despite the amount of noise and deviations from the core of the content, there is an abundance of solid ideas here.
June 3, 2010
The Essay Concerning Human Understanding is sectioned into four books. Taken together, they comprise an extremely long and detailed theory of knowledge starting from the very basics and building up. Book I, "Of Innate Ideas," is an attack on the Cartesian view of knowledge, which holds that human beings are born with certain ideas already in their mind. "Of Innate Ideas" begins with an argument against the possibility of innate propositional knowledge (that is, innate knowledge of fact, such as the fact that whatever is, is), and then moves on to an argument against the possibility of innate ideas (such as the idea of God).
Once he feels secure that he has sufficiently argued the Cartesian position, Locke begins to construct his own theory of the origins of knowledge. The short answer is: from experience. The long answer is Book II. Book II lays out Locke's theory of ideas. He argues that everything in our mind is an idea, and that all ideas take one of two routes to arrive in our mind: either they come in through the senses, or else they come in through the mind's reflection on its own operation. He also classifies our ideas into two basic types, simple and complex (with simple ideas being the building blocks of complex ideas), and then further classifies these basic types into more specific subcategories. The vast majority of this book is spent analyzing the specific subcategories of our ideas.
Though Book II is primarily an attempt to account for the origin of all our ideas, it also includes two other very important discussions, only tangentially related to the subject of the origin of ideas. Chapter VIII contains Locke's argument for a distinction between primary and secondary qualities. He attempts to show that there are two very different sorts of relations that can hold between the qualities of the outside world and our ideas about those qualities. The relation between primary qualities (e.g. size and shape) and our ideas of them is one of resemblance; what we sense is roughly what is out there. In contrast, the relation between secondary qualities (e.g. color and odor) and our ideas of them is one of mismatch; there is nothing out in the world that resembles our sensations. In chapter XXIII, Locke tries to give an account of substance that allows most of our intuitions without conceding anything objectionable.
In "Of Words," Locke turns from philosophy of mind to philosophy of language. Ideas, however, are still an important part of the picture. According to the theory of meaning that Locke presents, words do not refer to things in the external world but to the ideas in our heads. Locke, relying heavily on his theory of ideas, attempts to give an account of how we form general terms from a world of particular objects, which leads him into a lengthy discussion of the ontology of types (that is, the question of whether there are any natural kinds out in the world or whether all classifications are purely conventional).
"Of Knowledge and Opinion," finally gives us the long awaited theory of knowledge. Locke begins with a strict definition of knowledge, one which renders most sciences (all but mathematics and morality) ineligible. Knowledge, according to Locke, is the perception of strong internal relations that hold among the ideas themselves, without any reference to the external world. He lists four sorts of relations between ideas that would count as knowledge (identity/diversity, relation, coexistence, actual existence), and then distinguishes between three grades of knowledge (intuition as the highest, demonstration as a middling level, and sensitive knowledge as a sort of pseudo- knowledge). The remainder of the book is spent discussing opinion or belief, which is the best we can hope for from nearly all our intellectual endeavors.
Locke is very careful to refrain from speaking as if opinion is "mere opinion;" he is not a skeptic and does not believe that science is futile. On the contrary, he is very eager to claim in the last chapters of the Essay, that we should be satisfied with this level of certitude and that we should continue collecting scientific data with gusto. Gaining a better and better opinion of the world is a worthy goal, and one that he shares. He does ask, however, that we be aware that as good as our opinions become, they are never going to reach the level of knowledge.
Once he feels secure that he has sufficiently argued the Cartesian position, Locke begins to construct his own theory of the origins of knowledge. The short answer is: from experience. The long answer is Book II. Book II lays out Locke's theory of ideas. He argues that everything in our mind is an idea, and that all ideas take one of two routes to arrive in our mind: either they come in through the senses, or else they come in through the mind's reflection on its own operation. He also classifies our ideas into two basic types, simple and complex (with simple ideas being the building blocks of complex ideas), and then further classifies these basic types into more specific subcategories. The vast majority of this book is spent analyzing the specific subcategories of our ideas.
Though Book II is primarily an attempt to account for the origin of all our ideas, it also includes two other very important discussions, only tangentially related to the subject of the origin of ideas. Chapter VIII contains Locke's argument for a distinction between primary and secondary qualities. He attempts to show that there are two very different sorts of relations that can hold between the qualities of the outside world and our ideas about those qualities. The relation between primary qualities (e.g. size and shape) and our ideas of them is one of resemblance; what we sense is roughly what is out there. In contrast, the relation between secondary qualities (e.g. color and odor) and our ideas of them is one of mismatch; there is nothing out in the world that resembles our sensations. In chapter XXIII, Locke tries to give an account of substance that allows most of our intuitions without conceding anything objectionable.
In "Of Words," Locke turns from philosophy of mind to philosophy of language. Ideas, however, are still an important part of the picture. According to the theory of meaning that Locke presents, words do not refer to things in the external world but to the ideas in our heads. Locke, relying heavily on his theory of ideas, attempts to give an account of how we form general terms from a world of particular objects, which leads him into a lengthy discussion of the ontology of types (that is, the question of whether there are any natural kinds out in the world or whether all classifications are purely conventional).
"Of Knowledge and Opinion," finally gives us the long awaited theory of knowledge. Locke begins with a strict definition of knowledge, one which renders most sciences (all but mathematics and morality) ineligible. Knowledge, according to Locke, is the perception of strong internal relations that hold among the ideas themselves, without any reference to the external world. He lists four sorts of relations between ideas that would count as knowledge (identity/diversity, relation, coexistence, actual existence), and then distinguishes between three grades of knowledge (intuition as the highest, demonstration as a middling level, and sensitive knowledge as a sort of pseudo- knowledge). The remainder of the book is spent discussing opinion or belief, which is the best we can hope for from nearly all our intellectual endeavors.
Locke is very careful to refrain from speaking as if opinion is "mere opinion;" he is not a skeptic and does not believe that science is futile. On the contrary, he is very eager to claim in the last chapters of the Essay, that we should be satisfied with this level of certitude and that we should continue collecting scientific data with gusto. Gaining a better and better opinion of the world is a worthy goal, and one that he shares. He does ask, however, that we be aware that as good as our opinions become, they are never going to reach the level of knowledge.
January 9, 2023
Human understanding all begins with the elementary particles and grasping how these mindless elements of matter formed our bodies to become conscious of themselves and their existence.
Even though Locke, a staunch proponent of empiricism, believes our minds to be a tabula rasa that are equipped with no inborn ideas or principles and that can only be filled by experiences, also recognizes our mind's intuitive knowledge, which is sufficient to deduce, amongst other things, our existence. Intuitive knowledge, or self-evident knowledge, is Locke's first, clearest, and most certain type of knowledge (e.g. white is not black and a triangle is not a circle).
Locke goes on to discuss the two other forms of knowledge: demonstrative and sensitive. Where the former is not self-evident but is derived from axioms and through which meditation we acquire the existence of God, and the latter knowledge is our experience of the existence of external objects detected by our senses.
Locke claims that all of our knowledge is derived from experience by way of our senses (sight, being the most comprehensive of our senses). This knowledge comes in by way of impressions our minds receive through our senses and through this process of reflecting upon these impressions we create our perceptions or the equivalent: ideas. Consequently, the mind going through this repetitive process becomes furnished with a great number of simple ideas and these simple ideas are the very limits of our knowledge beyond which we know nothing. We can only utilize these simple ideas as ingredients to formulate complex ideas. For all these ideas humans have created sounds (words) to distinguish one from the other, hence, we've developed a close connection between these words and ideas keeping in mind that many of these words we begin to use prior to understanding their meanings and many of these words are minted and derived from the illiterate humans of the distant past.
Locke also discusses our innate yearning for happiness, aversion to misery, and the pursuit of happiness being the greatest good.
This is an essay mostly on epistemology and an attempt to refute the a priori rationalist philosophers such as Rene Descartes even though Locke utilizes many of Descartes's ideas as a foundation for his own.
Even though Locke, a staunch proponent of empiricism, believes our minds to be a tabula rasa that are equipped with no inborn ideas or principles and that can only be filled by experiences, also recognizes our mind's intuitive knowledge, which is sufficient to deduce, amongst other things, our existence. Intuitive knowledge, or self-evident knowledge, is Locke's first, clearest, and most certain type of knowledge (e.g. white is not black and a triangle is not a circle).
Locke goes on to discuss the two other forms of knowledge: demonstrative and sensitive. Where the former is not self-evident but is derived from axioms and through which meditation we acquire the existence of God, and the latter knowledge is our experience of the existence of external objects detected by our senses.
Locke claims that all of our knowledge is derived from experience by way of our senses (sight, being the most comprehensive of our senses). This knowledge comes in by way of impressions our minds receive through our senses and through this process of reflecting upon these impressions we create our perceptions or the equivalent: ideas. Consequently, the mind going through this repetitive process becomes furnished with a great number of simple ideas and these simple ideas are the very limits of our knowledge beyond which we know nothing. We can only utilize these simple ideas as ingredients to formulate complex ideas. For all these ideas humans have created sounds (words) to distinguish one from the other, hence, we've developed a close connection between these words and ideas keeping in mind that many of these words we begin to use prior to understanding their meanings and many of these words are minted and derived from the illiterate humans of the distant past.
Locke also discusses our innate yearning for happiness, aversion to misery, and the pursuit of happiness being the greatest good.
This is an essay mostly on epistemology and an attempt to refute the a priori rationalist philosophers such as Rene Descartes even though Locke utilizes many of Descartes's ideas as a foundation for his own.
October 3, 2019
In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), the English philosopher John Locke tried to come up with a theory of knowledge, that would do away with all earlier attempts of philosophers from the time of Plato onwards to Descartes. This book is a long and dense one, but it is well-structured and written (relatively) approachable for the general public.
(This review is based on my reading of this book two years ago, so I will only give the broad outlines. I was planning to read the Essay for a second time, but I have so much else to do, that this will be not worth my time - maybe some time in the future).
In book 1, Locke destroys the Cartesian idea of innate knowledge. Descartes claimed (and he was the only real alternative to Aristotelean, Christian philosophy) that we have immortal souls - at our conception these souls are temporarily bound to flesh (our bodies are machines, according to Descartes) - and that therefore we come equipped with clear and distinct knowledge (i.e. ideas) about certain topics (such as God, the self, etc.). For Descartes, this was his building block for the rest of his epistemology. But back to Locke: he denies the existence of innate knowledge - for Locke we are blank slates, to be engraved by our experiences of the world around us. In other words: by perceiving the world around us with our senses, we form ideas about this world; these ideas are the only sort of knowledge we have. But are these ideas reliable knowledge?
Before answering this highly important question, Locke sets out to look closer at the concept of our ideas in book 2. According to Locke, there are two ways for ideas to originate: (1) external, via our perceptual awareness (i.e. the senses), or (2) internal, via the mind's reflection. So now we know the origin of our ideas, what are these ideas? Locke answers this question by distinguishing between simple ideas and complex ideas. Simple ideas are ideas that are of one uniform conception and cannot be created or destroyed - they just are there for us to perceive them. Complex ideas are collections of two or more simple ideas, formed by one of three processes: (1) combinating, (2) relating or (3) abstracting from simple ideas. Locke further distinguishes between different types of simple ideas and between complex ideas of different objects - topics I will skip over (for my own head's sake).
An important point to make about book 2 is Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities and the consequences for us knowing the world around us. Primary qualities are things like shape and size of objects; secondary qualities are things like colors and smells. Why is this important? Well, according to Locke when we perceive the primary qualities of objects in our world, the relationship that forms between those qualities and our ideas is one of resemblance. Our ideas resemble the existing qualities more or less accurately. The relationship that forms between our ideas and secondary qualities of objects around us, is more problematic though: our perceptions and sensations do not resemble the 'true' qualities - there is (and remains) a discrepancy. It follows from this, that our ideas are reliable in so far as they concern primary qualities, when our ideas concern secondary qualities, we should be careful not to trust our senses too much (or at all?). In essence, Locke says there's an objective reality for us to grasp, but not all of this reality is 'reliably graspable'.
Before coming up with his own theory of knowledge, Locke delves into language. This might seem as a diversion, but as Locke himself states: we communicate our knowledge (i.e. our ideas) via word of mouth, so language is an important link in the chain of knowledge. Therefore, we should study language as a part of knowledge. Locke claims that our language derives its meaning from our ideas, not from the world around us. We use words to describe ideas in us, not to describe the objects we perceive. But this brings Locke to two important (and obscure) problems: if we give meaning to words by relating them to specific ideas, (1) how do we know that the word we both use for some ideas, literally means the same to both of us? And (2) are generalizations and abstractions existing objects? (These two questions I cannot answer with the current recollection the book - this will be one of the interesting parts for my future re-read of the Essay).
To recapitulate: we are born without innate knowledge - all our ideas originated from sensual perception and the mind's reflection of the world around us; there are parts of the world (the primary qualities of objects) that we can reliably perceive, but not all parts (the secondary qualities); we use language to communicate our ideas and the meaning of words derives from the specific ideas they relate to.
Now, the last part of the Essay, book 4, wherein Locke offers his own theory of knowledge. I remember that this part amazed me the most. Locke distinguishes between different type of 'knowledge' and uses degrees of assent to signify how much we should rely on each type of knowledge. For Locke, the reliability of our knowledge derives from the relationship between the different ideas making up this part of knowledge; therefore Locke makes a subtle distinction between four types of relationships between ideas: (1) diversity, (2) relation, (3) existence and (4) coexistence. These relations signify knowledge. (Locke's defintion of knowledge is [broadly speaking] strong internal relationships between all the ideas making up the respective part of knowledge)
Now that we have the tool to make judgements about what is knowledge and what not, let's proceed to the final step. Based on the internal relationships between ideas, Locke sees three types of knowledge. The first is intuitive knowledge: this is pure knowledge, since the ideas have very strong internal relationships and these ideas are unrelated to the outside world. In other words, these are self-evident truths, or better the undisputed axioms in a deductive logical system. The second type of knowledge is what Locke calls 'demonstrative knowledge' - knowledge that can be gained from applying our reason scrupulously in order to derive new truths from intuitive knowledge. But, as Locke whittly remarks, the longer the chain of reasoning, the less reliable the knowledge becomes. The third type of knowledge is what's left, namely most of our 'everyday knowledge' - sensitive knowledge. Everyday we perceive the world around us via our senses and our reflections on these perceptions. Even though this is, from the human standpoint, the most important part of knowledge, Locke claims that sensitive knowledge is the least reliable form of knowledge.
Of course, that leaves the matter of opinion and belief. What about those? Well, according to Locke, these ideas are defintely not knowledge, so in the words of the physicist Wolfgang Pauli: these ideas "can't even be wrong." So now what? Should we become sceptics and live our life as if nothing can be certain?
Locke was an empiricist and a rationalist, but he certainly was no sceptic. Locke moved in the English scientific circles himself and was highly interested in the medical sciences of his time. He claims that science is important in and of itself - it is the only and closest way we can come to pure knowledge. We should just accept that even though science progresses, we will never reach the point where we have true knowledge of the world.
It is interesting to note that this is contra Plato, who claimed that true knowledge lies in the fact of us understanding the world mathematically as it were (we should de-sensitize ourselves from this world); it is also contra modern day physicists, like Max Tegmark, who claim that a theory of everything - the ultimate foundation for all of physics, therefore science (warning: reductionist in the area!) - will be a mathematically 'beautiful' theory, which by deduction yields all the major theories in physics (general relativity, quantum mechanics, etc.).
A second interesting point about Locke's Essay is the fact that Locke claims morality to be a type of demonstrative and (even) intuitive knowledge. So for Locke, ture moral ideas lie closer to true knowledge, and are easier to attain for us mere mortals, than scientific understanding of our world. This is strange, indeed. I always wonder, when reading these old books, about the reason for such arcane and out-of-place statements. Did Locke truly believe this to be true? Did he, in some way or other, think it necessary to make this addition to his Essay? For religious reasons? Or social or political reasons? We might never know...
As I said in the beginning of this review, this is a long and dense book, abstract at many points, but interesting as a foundation for later theories of knowledge. Locke was the first to analyze the way in which we form ideas and to think about the psychology of knowledge. Later thinkers like Hume and Kant (and all the great minds after them), owe a large debt to Locke. For this reason alone, this book is worth the effort - even though it is outdated by now (and even by 18th century standards).
--------------------
On my re-read I am more impressed by Locke's ingenuity. He is able to overthrow both Aristotelean and Cartesian accounts of reality and pull philosophy back into the realm of epistemology. He starts off with dismantling Cartesian innate ideas, then proceeds to show how knowledge is nothing but relating ideas in our minds and representing them in words.
Locke's theories of sense experience, language acquistition and knowledge are interwoven and offer a materialistic account of the world, which is - ultimatelt - unknowable by us. That is, our picture of the world is a mental construct, and all certain knowledge (logic, mathematics, morality, and the existence of things) is nothing but constructed ideas. In science, we have to work with probabilities, since we cannot have access to the constitution of nature, we only perceive some qualities of natural objects, but discoveries made with the (then new) microscope and telescope show that there's no way to draw the line. Experiment and observation are the best we have to establish probable causal relationships between things.
Also, since we form all our ideas ourselves, yet have to communicate them to other minds in everyday life, there's huge room for mistakes and misrepresentations. In short: we don't know if people bundle the same qualities, perceived in the same way, into substances as we ourselves do. And besides this, in everyday life most of the time we don't have time or capacity to reason our way to truths.
To overcome these problems, Locke devotes some chapters to 'judgement' and how we should judge claims by others both on conformity with our own ideas and experience and the account of the testimony. We should look at the number, interests, capacities, etc. of the claimants, and ultimately use our own reason to decide whether the account is reasonable. This includes matters of faith, except where trans-reasonal claims are made - in such case we should look at the credibility of the claimant. Revelation is only to be followed if the claims can be discovered by reason as well, all the other claims are nonsensical, uttered by madmen or shrewd persons.
The most prominent thought I had when re-reading Locke's Essay: his separation between the material world and the world of ideas, and the implication this gulf has for the status of human knowledge, is very reminiscent of Kant. All knowledge derives from ideas, which all - ultimately- derive from sense-experience. Yet our perception of sense-experience is not equal to the material objects themselves - to those we have, by definition, no access.
Berkeley would develop this into idealism - there is no material world, only my finite consciousness with ideas, and an infinite idea of a perfect God. Rather a retrogression to Descartes. Berkeley halts where Descartes starts to claim God is proof of the existence of the world.
Hume would develop this into scepticism - all knowledge is impossible, with the exception of mathematical knowledge, which is empty (formal). Hence we should simply give up all claims to certain knowledge.
Kant would try to rescue certain knowledge while acknowledging the divide between subject and object, by (basically) copy Locke and positing an extra world. How this saves the reality of the perceived, hence constructed, world I still don't see... (Why bother with science when you know beforehand it's only superficial knowledge, not the 'real' stuff?)
Anyway, the Oxford World Classics Edition of Locke's Essay can't be recommended. It's published in an almost unreadably small front and the lay-out is kind of awkward. Which is a problem for a book of 500 pages or so. I can't recommend Locke's Essay anyway, since it's dense stuff, and (in my opinion) not understandable, or useful, if you're not familiar with Aristotle, Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza, as well as the new science of Locke's day (the Essay should be read as an attempt to establish a foundation of knowledge for the new mechanistic science of people like Galileo, Hooke, Boyle, Huygens, Newton, etc.)
(This review is based on my reading of this book two years ago, so I will only give the broad outlines. I was planning to read the Essay for a second time, but I have so much else to do, that this will be not worth my time - maybe some time in the future).
In book 1, Locke destroys the Cartesian idea of innate knowledge. Descartes claimed (and he was the only real alternative to Aristotelean, Christian philosophy) that we have immortal souls - at our conception these souls are temporarily bound to flesh (our bodies are machines, according to Descartes) - and that therefore we come equipped with clear and distinct knowledge (i.e. ideas) about certain topics (such as God, the self, etc.). For Descartes, this was his building block for the rest of his epistemology. But back to Locke: he denies the existence of innate knowledge - for Locke we are blank slates, to be engraved by our experiences of the world around us. In other words: by perceiving the world around us with our senses, we form ideas about this world; these ideas are the only sort of knowledge we have. But are these ideas reliable knowledge?
Before answering this highly important question, Locke sets out to look closer at the concept of our ideas in book 2. According to Locke, there are two ways for ideas to originate: (1) external, via our perceptual awareness (i.e. the senses), or (2) internal, via the mind's reflection. So now we know the origin of our ideas, what are these ideas? Locke answers this question by distinguishing between simple ideas and complex ideas. Simple ideas are ideas that are of one uniform conception and cannot be created or destroyed - they just are there for us to perceive them. Complex ideas are collections of two or more simple ideas, formed by one of three processes: (1) combinating, (2) relating or (3) abstracting from simple ideas. Locke further distinguishes between different types of simple ideas and between complex ideas of different objects - topics I will skip over (for my own head's sake).
An important point to make about book 2 is Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities and the consequences for us knowing the world around us. Primary qualities are things like shape and size of objects; secondary qualities are things like colors and smells. Why is this important? Well, according to Locke when we perceive the primary qualities of objects in our world, the relationship that forms between those qualities and our ideas is one of resemblance. Our ideas resemble the existing qualities more or less accurately. The relationship that forms between our ideas and secondary qualities of objects around us, is more problematic though: our perceptions and sensations do not resemble the 'true' qualities - there is (and remains) a discrepancy. It follows from this, that our ideas are reliable in so far as they concern primary qualities, when our ideas concern secondary qualities, we should be careful not to trust our senses too much (or at all?). In essence, Locke says there's an objective reality for us to grasp, but not all of this reality is 'reliably graspable'.
Before coming up with his own theory of knowledge, Locke delves into language. This might seem as a diversion, but as Locke himself states: we communicate our knowledge (i.e. our ideas) via word of mouth, so language is an important link in the chain of knowledge. Therefore, we should study language as a part of knowledge. Locke claims that our language derives its meaning from our ideas, not from the world around us. We use words to describe ideas in us, not to describe the objects we perceive. But this brings Locke to two important (and obscure) problems: if we give meaning to words by relating them to specific ideas, (1) how do we know that the word we both use for some ideas, literally means the same to both of us? And (2) are generalizations and abstractions existing objects? (These two questions I cannot answer with the current recollection the book - this will be one of the interesting parts for my future re-read of the Essay).
To recapitulate: we are born without innate knowledge - all our ideas originated from sensual perception and the mind's reflection of the world around us; there are parts of the world (the primary qualities of objects) that we can reliably perceive, but not all parts (the secondary qualities); we use language to communicate our ideas and the meaning of words derives from the specific ideas they relate to.
Now, the last part of the Essay, book 4, wherein Locke offers his own theory of knowledge. I remember that this part amazed me the most. Locke distinguishes between different type of 'knowledge' and uses degrees of assent to signify how much we should rely on each type of knowledge. For Locke, the reliability of our knowledge derives from the relationship between the different ideas making up this part of knowledge; therefore Locke makes a subtle distinction between four types of relationships between ideas: (1) diversity, (2) relation, (3) existence and (4) coexistence. These relations signify knowledge. (Locke's defintion of knowledge is [broadly speaking] strong internal relationships between all the ideas making up the respective part of knowledge)
Now that we have the tool to make judgements about what is knowledge and what not, let's proceed to the final step. Based on the internal relationships between ideas, Locke sees three types of knowledge. The first is intuitive knowledge: this is pure knowledge, since the ideas have very strong internal relationships and these ideas are unrelated to the outside world. In other words, these are self-evident truths, or better the undisputed axioms in a deductive logical system. The second type of knowledge is what Locke calls 'demonstrative knowledge' - knowledge that can be gained from applying our reason scrupulously in order to derive new truths from intuitive knowledge. But, as Locke whittly remarks, the longer the chain of reasoning, the less reliable the knowledge becomes. The third type of knowledge is what's left, namely most of our 'everyday knowledge' - sensitive knowledge. Everyday we perceive the world around us via our senses and our reflections on these perceptions. Even though this is, from the human standpoint, the most important part of knowledge, Locke claims that sensitive knowledge is the least reliable form of knowledge.
Of course, that leaves the matter of opinion and belief. What about those? Well, according to Locke, these ideas are defintely not knowledge, so in the words of the physicist Wolfgang Pauli: these ideas "can't even be wrong." So now what? Should we become sceptics and live our life as if nothing can be certain?
Locke was an empiricist and a rationalist, but he certainly was no sceptic. Locke moved in the English scientific circles himself and was highly interested in the medical sciences of his time. He claims that science is important in and of itself - it is the only and closest way we can come to pure knowledge. We should just accept that even though science progresses, we will never reach the point where we have true knowledge of the world.
It is interesting to note that this is contra Plato, who claimed that true knowledge lies in the fact of us understanding the world mathematically as it were (we should de-sensitize ourselves from this world); it is also contra modern day physicists, like Max Tegmark, who claim that a theory of everything - the ultimate foundation for all of physics, therefore science (warning: reductionist in the area!) - will be a mathematically 'beautiful' theory, which by deduction yields all the major theories in physics (general relativity, quantum mechanics, etc.).
A second interesting point about Locke's Essay is the fact that Locke claims morality to be a type of demonstrative and (even) intuitive knowledge. So for Locke, ture moral ideas lie closer to true knowledge, and are easier to attain for us mere mortals, than scientific understanding of our world. This is strange, indeed. I always wonder, when reading these old books, about the reason for such arcane and out-of-place statements. Did Locke truly believe this to be true? Did he, in some way or other, think it necessary to make this addition to his Essay? For religious reasons? Or social or political reasons? We might never know...
As I said in the beginning of this review, this is a long and dense book, abstract at many points, but interesting as a foundation for later theories of knowledge. Locke was the first to analyze the way in which we form ideas and to think about the psychology of knowledge. Later thinkers like Hume and Kant (and all the great minds after them), owe a large debt to Locke. For this reason alone, this book is worth the effort - even though it is outdated by now (and even by 18th century standards).
--------------------
On my re-read I am more impressed by Locke's ingenuity. He is able to overthrow both Aristotelean and Cartesian accounts of reality and pull philosophy back into the realm of epistemology. He starts off with dismantling Cartesian innate ideas, then proceeds to show how knowledge is nothing but relating ideas in our minds and representing them in words.
Locke's theories of sense experience, language acquistition and knowledge are interwoven and offer a materialistic account of the world, which is - ultimatelt - unknowable by us. That is, our picture of the world is a mental construct, and all certain knowledge (logic, mathematics, morality, and the existence of things) is nothing but constructed ideas. In science, we have to work with probabilities, since we cannot have access to the constitution of nature, we only perceive some qualities of natural objects, but discoveries made with the (then new) microscope and telescope show that there's no way to draw the line. Experiment and observation are the best we have to establish probable causal relationships between things.
Also, since we form all our ideas ourselves, yet have to communicate them to other minds in everyday life, there's huge room for mistakes and misrepresentations. In short: we don't know if people bundle the same qualities, perceived in the same way, into substances as we ourselves do. And besides this, in everyday life most of the time we don't have time or capacity to reason our way to truths.
To overcome these problems, Locke devotes some chapters to 'judgement' and how we should judge claims by others both on conformity with our own ideas and experience and the account of the testimony. We should look at the number, interests, capacities, etc. of the claimants, and ultimately use our own reason to decide whether the account is reasonable. This includes matters of faith, except where trans-reasonal claims are made - in such case we should look at the credibility of the claimant. Revelation is only to be followed if the claims can be discovered by reason as well, all the other claims are nonsensical, uttered by madmen or shrewd persons.
The most prominent thought I had when re-reading Locke's Essay: his separation between the material world and the world of ideas, and the implication this gulf has for the status of human knowledge, is very reminiscent of Kant. All knowledge derives from ideas, which all - ultimately- derive from sense-experience. Yet our perception of sense-experience is not equal to the material objects themselves - to those we have, by definition, no access.
Berkeley would develop this into idealism - there is no material world, only my finite consciousness with ideas, and an infinite idea of a perfect God. Rather a retrogression to Descartes. Berkeley halts where Descartes starts to claim God is proof of the existence of the world.
Hume would develop this into scepticism - all knowledge is impossible, with the exception of mathematical knowledge, which is empty (formal). Hence we should simply give up all claims to certain knowledge.
Kant would try to rescue certain knowledge while acknowledging the divide between subject and object, by (basically) copy Locke and positing an extra world. How this saves the reality of the perceived, hence constructed, world I still don't see... (Why bother with science when you know beforehand it's only superficial knowledge, not the 'real' stuff?)
Anyway, the Oxford World Classics Edition of Locke's Essay can't be recommended. It's published in an almost unreadably small front and the lay-out is kind of awkward. Which is a problem for a book of 500 pages or so. I can't recommend Locke's Essay anyway, since it's dense stuff, and (in my opinion) not understandable, or useful, if you're not familiar with Aristotle, Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza, as well as the new science of Locke's day (the Essay should be read as an attempt to establish a foundation of knowledge for the new mechanistic science of people like Galileo, Hooke, Boyle, Huygens, Newton, etc.)
October 18, 2020
Though Locke himself cautions (late in Book IV, the final volume of the Essay) against the Argumentum ad Vericundeum (from "authority")—against giving undue credence to an argument merely because of the reputation* of the person making it (e.g. "the Aristotelian unities must be respected by any playwright, because Aristotle"), still there exist certain books in the history of letters which loom large over other scribblings, and whose adamantine reputations must remain occasionally impermeable to erosion by the vaprous rantings of the hoi polloi, viz, the subjective rating systems of GR-reviewers such as this one.
But where else to begin in describing my near-monthlong relationship with this monument (pub 1789~90) of English philosophy? Except to say that it is at once a towering, unprecedented intellectual achievement; a fine example of that loftily perspicacious, poised and mellifluous style (soon to be found in the pages of the Tatler and Spectator) of the dawning eighteenth century; a breath of fresh Anglo-Saxon air to disturb the cobwebs of scholasticism and the obscurantist dust of continental rationalism; and a sometimes tediously long-winded, fastidious/punctilious, even repetitive journey through (more meanders than forthrights) the catacombs of the mind (via the portals of the senses, towards the seat of judgement).
Thus if the non-self-heeding Polonious is more than occasionally summoned to this reader's lips (viz., "Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,/And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,/I will be brief:"), the Essayis still the product of a fascinating, first-rate mind, and, with Hamlet, take it for all in all—I shall not look on its like again (though perchance I shall append some highlights in addition to those in previous below, betimes)
FINIS
*This must surely presage the windy dispute between the "Ancients and Moderns" that obsesses European salons in the coming decades, as lampooned in Swift's Battle of the Books(1704)
But where else to begin in describing my near-monthlong relationship with this monument (pub 1789~90) of English philosophy? Except to say that it is at once a towering, unprecedented intellectual achievement; a fine example of that loftily perspicacious, poised and mellifluous style (soon to be found in the pages of the Tatler and Spectator) of the dawning eighteenth century; a breath of fresh Anglo-Saxon air to disturb the cobwebs of scholasticism and the obscurantist dust of continental rationalism; and a sometimes tediously long-winded, fastidious/punctilious, even repetitive journey through (more meanders than forthrights) the catacombs of the mind (via the portals of the senses, towards the seat of judgement).
Thus if the non-self-heeding Polonious is more than occasionally summoned to this reader's lips (viz., "Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,/And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,/I will be brief:"), the Essayis still the product of a fascinating, first-rate mind, and, with Hamlet, take it for all in all—I shall not look on its like again (though perchance I shall append some highlights in addition to those in previous below, betimes)
FINIS
*This must surely presage the windy dispute between the "Ancients and Moderns" that obsesses European salons in the coming decades, as lampooned in Swift's Battle of the Books(1704)
July 19, 2014
There is absolutely no doubt that Locke's ideas and arguments are very straightforward and clear in style. He's the father of empiricism, among many other schools of thought (i.e. liberalism and individualism, which in essence, forms the proliferating values of the global society).
But he's a dude from 17th century.
And having read this along with his Second Treatise,
I'm beginning to feel that although the literary challenge may be good for the brains, it may turn out to be a deterrent for people wanting to read Locke, causing them to miss out.
Here I've found and listed a short glossary of words which might be either unfamiliar or used in an unfamiliar way:
admit of - accept
apprehension - understanding, perception
bare/ barely - mere / merely
corpuscles - small particles
denominate - apply a name to something
doth - does
evidences - shows
experiment - experience
extravagant - odd / peculiar
fain - gladly, happily
hath - has
impulse - causal impact
peculiar - particular, specific
sensible / insensible - able to be sensed / invisible to the senses
superficies - outside surfaces
v.g. - ex.
viz. - i.e.
without - outside (us)
But he's a dude from 17th century.
And having read this along with his Second Treatise,
I'm beginning to feel that although the literary challenge may be good for the brains, it may turn out to be a deterrent for people wanting to read Locke, causing them to miss out.
Here I've found and listed a short glossary of words which might be either unfamiliar or used in an unfamiliar way:
admit of - accept
apprehension - understanding, perception
bare/ barely - mere / merely
corpuscles - small particles
denominate - apply a name to something
doth - does
evidences - shows
experiment - experience
extravagant - odd / peculiar
fain - gladly, happily
hath - has
impulse - causal impact
peculiar - particular, specific
sensible / insensible - able to be sensed / invisible to the senses
superficies - outside surfaces
v.g. - ex.
viz. - i.e.
without - outside (us)
April 7, 2019
An Essay concerning Human Understanding
By John Locke (1632-1704)
It was published in 1689.
Book I - sets out to argue against all “Innate Notions” in the human being.
According to the author, the mind at our birth is a blank white page upon which ideas are registered as the senses encounter the surrounding world.
The term ‘Idea’ as defined by Locke does not have its usual sense. We think of Ideas as very close to ‘concept’. Locke, however, defined Idea as whatever is the object of understanding when a man thinks. Ideas are treated as sensory images.
Locke pursues to demonstrate that all human knowledge is based on experience.
This position is in sharp contrast to religious beliefs and also with other major philosophers of his time, namely René Descartes, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Henry More and Leibniz.
If Locke does not deny that humans are born with innate faculties or natural tendencies, such as perception and reason; however, he denies that God imprinted specific ideas and principals in our mind at birth.
Arguing from the base of his own experience Locke challenges religious and political standards with his everyday language, illustrated with classic and biblical allusions easy to read and understand.
In Book II - Locke turns to the issue of the source of the mind’s ideas and principles and qualities. For him, experience alone imprints ideas upon the mind.
With simple ideas, the mind can form new and complex ideas.
These ideas can be either transparent or obscure, distinct or confused, real or fantastic and so on.
Qualities are the powers that bring about certain ideas in the mind and belong to these ideas.
Further considerations go on about Perception, about Retention of Discerning and other operations of the mind like Duration:
Some quotes:
“If Adam and Eve (when they were alone in the World) instead of their ordinary Night’s sleep, had passed 24 hours in continued sleep, the Duration of that 24 hours had been irrevocably lost to them and had been forever left out of their Account of time.”
“For as in the History of Creation delivered by Moses, I can imagine that Light existed three days before the Sun was, or had any motion, barely by thinking, that the duration of Light before the sun was created, was so long as (if the Sun had moved then, as it doth now,)
Would have been equal to three of his diurnal revolutions;”
“So by the same way, I can have an Idea of the Chaos, or Angels, being created before there was any Light, etc.”
Of Numbers:
“Numbers are therefore the most universal Idea we have. For Number applies itself to Man, Angels, Actions, Thoughts, everything that either doth exist or can be imagined.”
Of Infinity:
“For when we call them Infinite, we have no other Idea of this Infinity, but what carries with it some reflection on, and intimation of that number or Extent of the Acts or Objects of God’s Power, Wisdom and Goodness.”
Book III - Language and abstraction or the use of words as signs of our ideas.
Locke insists that it is the role of the philosopher to clarify words and ideas and the removal of confusion.
The chapters continue in a dictionary style, word after word explaining primary and whatever other meanings.
The writing style is increasingly heavy with long and overly wordy phrases.
Book IV – Knowledge in General, Of Truth in General, of Maxims, of Probability, of Reason,
Of our Knowledge of Existence, Of our Knowledge of the Existence of GOD.
Of the Division of Sciences.
In summary, Locke’s work seems of philosophical, metaphysical nature rather than scientific.
However, in the world as it is was in the 17th century, Locke represented a trend of scientific realism, also called New Philosophy.
He was deeply religious and saw origin and progress limited to the Will of God.
The book is primarily of historical interest.
By John Locke (1632-1704)
It was published in 1689.
Book I - sets out to argue against all “Innate Notions” in the human being.
According to the author, the mind at our birth is a blank white page upon which ideas are registered as the senses encounter the surrounding world.
The term ‘Idea’ as defined by Locke does not have its usual sense. We think of Ideas as very close to ‘concept’. Locke, however, defined Idea as whatever is the object of understanding when a man thinks. Ideas are treated as sensory images.
Locke pursues to demonstrate that all human knowledge is based on experience.
This position is in sharp contrast to religious beliefs and also with other major philosophers of his time, namely René Descartes, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Henry More and Leibniz.
If Locke does not deny that humans are born with innate faculties or natural tendencies, such as perception and reason; however, he denies that God imprinted specific ideas and principals in our mind at birth.
Arguing from the base of his own experience Locke challenges religious and political standards with his everyday language, illustrated with classic and biblical allusions easy to read and understand.
In Book II - Locke turns to the issue of the source of the mind’s ideas and principles and qualities. For him, experience alone imprints ideas upon the mind.
With simple ideas, the mind can form new and complex ideas.
These ideas can be either transparent or obscure, distinct or confused, real or fantastic and so on.
Qualities are the powers that bring about certain ideas in the mind and belong to these ideas.
Further considerations go on about Perception, about Retention of Discerning and other operations of the mind like Duration:
Some quotes:
“If Adam and Eve (when they were alone in the World) instead of their ordinary Night’s sleep, had passed 24 hours in continued sleep, the Duration of that 24 hours had been irrevocably lost to them and had been forever left out of their Account of time.”
“For as in the History of Creation delivered by Moses, I can imagine that Light existed three days before the Sun was, or had any motion, barely by thinking, that the duration of Light before the sun was created, was so long as (if the Sun had moved then, as it doth now,)
Would have been equal to three of his diurnal revolutions;”
“So by the same way, I can have an Idea of the Chaos, or Angels, being created before there was any Light, etc.”
Of Numbers:
“Numbers are therefore the most universal Idea we have. For Number applies itself to Man, Angels, Actions, Thoughts, everything that either doth exist or can be imagined.”
Of Infinity:
“For when we call them Infinite, we have no other Idea of this Infinity, but what carries with it some reflection on, and intimation of that number or Extent of the Acts or Objects of God’s Power, Wisdom and Goodness.”
Book III - Language and abstraction or the use of words as signs of our ideas.
Locke insists that it is the role of the philosopher to clarify words and ideas and the removal of confusion.
The chapters continue in a dictionary style, word after word explaining primary and whatever other meanings.
The writing style is increasingly heavy with long and overly wordy phrases.
Book IV – Knowledge in General, Of Truth in General, of Maxims, of Probability, of Reason,
Of our Knowledge of Existence, Of our Knowledge of the Existence of GOD.
Of the Division of Sciences.
In summary, Locke’s work seems of philosophical, metaphysical nature rather than scientific.
However, in the world as it is was in the 17th century, Locke represented a trend of scientific realism, also called New Philosophy.
He was deeply religious and saw origin and progress limited to the Will of God.
The book is primarily of historical interest.
May 28, 2016
When I was making my reading list I included this title, intending also to reread Two Treatises, but when this author was the next on the list, I felt too pressed for time. I did the reread but set this aside. However, I then realized that I would have to also forego my intended Leibniz reading because it is a response to this. So, I'm way behind my fairly arbitrary and entirely self-imposed timetable because I doubled back and read this.
I can't be the first reader to roll my eyes and grimace about not understanding largish chunks of this book about human understanding. But, as it turns out, I actually think I did understand it just fine. I just didn't really like the middle part that much because it was boring and repetitive. Or boring because it was repetitive. Not that he doesn't warn us in the beginning. I just thought he was being self derogatory in order to ingratiate himself to the reader and make them more likely to accept his propositions. Nope. He really did get boring.
I'm going to go on the record as being thoroughly exasperated with working so hard to understand these philosophers only to have all that hard work lead up to them trying to convince you that the Christian god exists. I did all that work to end up back at the ol' leap of faith? Thanks, Pal.
In the last part of the essay I was getting a little uncomfortable with how much Spinoza I was reading that was not being attributed to Spinoza. What up, Locke? I did a little research and the jury is out on why this happened. Or if it happened. And there isn't much of a jury. A couple of turbonerds of political philosophy with a bone to pick.
So, why 5 stars? Because it is actually mostly solidly written and compelling. I'm just so sick of reading it at this exact moment that I can't be more enthusiastic than this. But don't let that discourage you.
I can't be the first reader to roll my eyes and grimace about not understanding largish chunks of this book about human understanding. But, as it turns out, I actually think I did understand it just fine. I just didn't really like the middle part that much because it was boring and repetitive. Or boring because it was repetitive. Not that he doesn't warn us in the beginning. I just thought he was being self derogatory in order to ingratiate himself to the reader and make them more likely to accept his propositions. Nope. He really did get boring.
I'm going to go on the record as being thoroughly exasperated with working so hard to understand these philosophers only to have all that hard work lead up to them trying to convince you that the Christian god exists. I did all that work to end up back at the ol' leap of faith? Thanks, Pal.
In the last part of the essay I was getting a little uncomfortable with how much Spinoza I was reading that was not being attributed to Spinoza. What up, Locke? I did a little research and the jury is out on why this happened. Or if it happened. And there isn't much of a jury. A couple of turbonerds of political philosophy with a bone to pick.
So, why 5 stars? Because it is actually mostly solidly written and compelling. I'm just so sick of reading it at this exact moment that I can't be more enthusiastic than this. But don't let that discourage you.
November 5, 2025
Locke deserves the credit for establishing modern philosophy. He knew traditional (that is classical and medieval) but he was not afraid to disregard everything that seemed wrong to him. Throughout the whole book, the one thing that is graspable on every page is Common sense. And I mean this in the most positive way imaginable.
And this, of course, is a kind of a problem with this book. One is inclined to say, well, of course, it is right what he says, isn’t it obvious. It was not at the time and for many professional philosophers, he may still be regarded as a simplifier. Maybe he was with some questions. But it is great to have a reference. To have someone one can quote who said what one would be maybe embarrased to say for oneself.
That Locke was a clear thinker of Common sense is maybe clearest when he talks about a subject that has nothing directly to do with philosophy. In a footnote, he argues for the need to establish a decimal measurement system. A hundred years before the French Revolution. A gry is 1/10 of a line, a line 1/10 of an inch. And an inch should be defined as 1/10 of a "philosophical foot". For this alone, one must love Locke. (And how depressing, that a country that prides itself for its common sense, the decimal system is still not established hundreds of years later!)
The one thing that is really bad about this book is that it is overly long. The first chapter is on innate ideas. Locke denies that there are any. Very persuasive, in my opinion. So after about five or six pages I said: Got it! But the chapter goes on and on for 60 pages, very repetitive. And the same is true for every subject he tackles. At 250 pages this would be one of the finest books in existence at 700 pages it is necessarily a bit annoying at times.
So Locke denies that there are innate ideas. The mind is a tabula rasa. We form simple ideas (e.g. beauty) and complex ideas (e.g. theft) by our senses. Maybe the only idea of Locke that would surprise someone untouched by the history of philosophy is his idea that there are different kind of qualities namely primary (solidity, extension, figure, mobility) and secondary (colours, smells, sounds.) This sounds very true when you think about it. But, of course, it leads to idealism, if you think too much about it.
A couple of quotes:
If it be demanded, (as usually it is) whether this space, void of body, be substance or accident, I shall readily answer, I know not: nor shall be ashamed to own my ignorance, till they that ask, show me a clear distinct idea of substance. (168)
Every one finds in himself, that his soul can think, will, and operate on his body in the place where that is; but cannot operate on a body, or in a place an hundred miles distant from it. 278
I know not why we may not as well allow a thinking thing without solidity, i. e. immaterial, to exist; as a solid thing without thinking, i. e. matter, to exist; especially since it is not harder to conceive how thinking should exist without matter, than how matter should think. 284
The notion we have of a father, or brother, is a great deal clearer and more distinct, than that we have of a man; or, if you will, paternity is a thing whereof it is easier to have a clear idea, than of humanity: and I can much easier conceive what a friend is, than what God. 291
But when I am told, that something besides the figure, size, and posture of the solid parts of that body, is its essence, something called substantial form; of that, I confess, I have no idea at all, but only of the sound form, which is far enough from an idea of its real essence, or constitution. 341
So that all our complex ideas of substances are imperfect and inadequate. 343
Who is there of that school, that is not persuaded, that substantial forms, vegetative souls, abhorrence of a vacuum, intentional species, &c. are something real? ...
There is scarce any sect in philosophy has not a distinct set of terms, that others understand not; but yet this gibberish... 443
We have the ideas of matter and thinking but possibly shall never be able to know, whether any mere material being thinks, or no; 480
All the great ends of morality and religion are well enough secured, without philosophical proofs of the soul’s immateriality; 481
make propositions about the more complex ideas, as of a man, vitriol, fortitude, glory, we usually put the name for the idea: because the ideas these names stand for, being for the most part imperfect, confused, and undetermined, we reflect on the names themselves, because they are more clear, certain, and distinct, and readier occur to our thoughts than the pure ideas: 509
“The whole is equal to all its parts;” what real truth, I beseech you, does it teach us? 533
Or cannot a country wench know, that having received a shilling from one that owes her three, and a shilling also from another that owes her three, the remaining debts in each of their hands are equal? Cannot she know this, I say, unless she fetch the certainty of it from this maxim, that if you take equals from equals, the remainder will be equals, a maxim which possibly she never heard or thought of? 565
if all historians that write of Tiberius say that Tiberius did so, it is extremely probable. 585
Tell a country gentlewoman that the wind is south-west, and the weather louring, and like to rain, and she will easily understand it is not [245] safe for her to go abroad thin clad, in such a day, after a fever: she clearly sees the probable connexion of all these, viz. south-west wind, and clouds, rain, wetting, taking cold, relapse, and danger of death, without tying them together in those artificial and cumbersome fetters of several syllogisms, that clog and hinder the mind, which proceeds from one part to another quicker and clearer without them; 593
Or can those be the certain and infallible oracles and standards of truth, which teach one thing in Christendom, and another in Turkey? 624
And this, of course, is a kind of a problem with this book. One is inclined to say, well, of course, it is right what he says, isn’t it obvious. It was not at the time and for many professional philosophers, he may still be regarded as a simplifier. Maybe he was with some questions. But it is great to have a reference. To have someone one can quote who said what one would be maybe embarrased to say for oneself.
That Locke was a clear thinker of Common sense is maybe clearest when he talks about a subject that has nothing directly to do with philosophy. In a footnote, he argues for the need to establish a decimal measurement system. A hundred years before the French Revolution. A gry is 1/10 of a line, a line 1/10 of an inch. And an inch should be defined as 1/10 of a "philosophical foot". For this alone, one must love Locke. (And how depressing, that a country that prides itself for its common sense, the decimal system is still not established hundreds of years later!)
The one thing that is really bad about this book is that it is overly long. The first chapter is on innate ideas. Locke denies that there are any. Very persuasive, in my opinion. So after about five or six pages I said: Got it! But the chapter goes on and on for 60 pages, very repetitive. And the same is true for every subject he tackles. At 250 pages this would be one of the finest books in existence at 700 pages it is necessarily a bit annoying at times.
So Locke denies that there are innate ideas. The mind is a tabula rasa. We form simple ideas (e.g. beauty) and complex ideas (e.g. theft) by our senses. Maybe the only idea of Locke that would surprise someone untouched by the history of philosophy is his idea that there are different kind of qualities namely primary (solidity, extension, figure, mobility) and secondary (colours, smells, sounds.) This sounds very true when you think about it. But, of course, it leads to idealism, if you think too much about it.
A couple of quotes:
If it be demanded, (as usually it is) whether this space, void of body, be substance or accident, I shall readily answer, I know not: nor shall be ashamed to own my ignorance, till they that ask, show me a clear distinct idea of substance. (168)
Every one finds in himself, that his soul can think, will, and operate on his body in the place where that is; but cannot operate on a body, or in a place an hundred miles distant from it. 278
I know not why we may not as well allow a thinking thing without solidity, i. e. immaterial, to exist; as a solid thing without thinking, i. e. matter, to exist; especially since it is not harder to conceive how thinking should exist without matter, than how matter should think. 284
The notion we have of a father, or brother, is a great deal clearer and more distinct, than that we have of a man; or, if you will, paternity is a thing whereof it is easier to have a clear idea, than of humanity: and I can much easier conceive what a friend is, than what God. 291
But when I am told, that something besides the figure, size, and posture of the solid parts of that body, is its essence, something called substantial form; of that, I confess, I have no idea at all, but only of the sound form, which is far enough from an idea of its real essence, or constitution. 341
So that all our complex ideas of substances are imperfect and inadequate. 343
Who is there of that school, that is not persuaded, that substantial forms, vegetative souls, abhorrence of a vacuum, intentional species, &c. are something real? ...
There is scarce any sect in philosophy has not a distinct set of terms, that others understand not; but yet this gibberish... 443
We have the ideas of matter and thinking but possibly shall never be able to know, whether any mere material being thinks, or no; 480
All the great ends of morality and religion are well enough secured, without philosophical proofs of the soul’s immateriality; 481
make propositions about the more complex ideas, as of a man, vitriol, fortitude, glory, we usually put the name for the idea: because the ideas these names stand for, being for the most part imperfect, confused, and undetermined, we reflect on the names themselves, because they are more clear, certain, and distinct, and readier occur to our thoughts than the pure ideas: 509
“The whole is equal to all its parts;” what real truth, I beseech you, does it teach us? 533
Or cannot a country wench know, that having received a shilling from one that owes her three, and a shilling also from another that owes her three, the remaining debts in each of their hands are equal? Cannot she know this, I say, unless she fetch the certainty of it from this maxim, that if you take equals from equals, the remainder will be equals, a maxim which possibly she never heard or thought of? 565
if all historians that write of Tiberius say that Tiberius did so, it is extremely probable. 585
Tell a country gentlewoman that the wind is south-west, and the weather louring, and like to rain, and she will easily understand it is not [245] safe for her to go abroad thin clad, in such a day, after a fever: she clearly sees the probable connexion of all these, viz. south-west wind, and clouds, rain, wetting, taking cold, relapse, and danger of death, without tying them together in those artificial and cumbersome fetters of several syllogisms, that clog and hinder the mind, which proceeds from one part to another quicker and clearer without them; 593
Or can those be the certain and infallible oracles and standards of truth, which teach one thing in Christendom, and another in Turkey? 624
December 6, 2025
It was during my introduction to Locke at university that I first became interested in the philosophy of mind. Following my reading of the "Essay", I fancied myself an "empiricist", because Locke convinced me that there were no "a priori" or innate ideas that all humans hold to be true. My later training and practice in neurology and psychiatry reinforced my belief in Locke's conclusions, especially about the mind, which fit in well with what we seemed to know about how the brain works, and indicated to me that the only means of obtaing knowledge was through experience itself.
Locke says that people cannot form even the most basic principles unless they assimilate ideas they were taught or which they themselves worked through from experience. It seems this is true from empirical neurologic evidence. We are not born with innate ideas imprinted in our minds. We are born with wiring that triggers innate behaviors for survival, but these are not innate ideas any more than the autonomic peristalsis of our intestines or the secretions of our pituitary. Locke says that the mind starts off in infancy like a blank slate, or tabula rasa. And neuroscience tells us that, though our brains are not blank, our mind is. It is only after our brains perceive enough experiences that get stored and processed with other experiences that we are able to form ideas. From very simple ideas, we then get more complex ideas, and ideas we can string together to make principles.
Locke gives us many examples throughout this very long treatise. His Cartesian contemporaries had argued that concepts like eternity and morality are a priori. Yet, we really have no idea about such things without reflection on our experience. We are able to judge ideas like distance and time from our experience, and then we can multiply those measures in our mind as long as we please to come up with the concept of Infinity. And morality is only understood in a cultural context, which is why different cultures and different individuals do not agree on ideas of morality. So our minds do not "create" ideas out of nothing. Ideas are atomic in nature from combinations of our five senses over time. Even ideas of "fantasy", like unicorns and dragons, are based on actual experience, being a chimera of data from other living creatures in our world.
And indeed, as neuroscience has advanced, we find that this is how the brain processes information--discreet bits of signals are brought in through our sensory organs via peripheral connections to the central computer, where they are encoded in the hippocampus, which links to various other parts of the brain to link data to emotional responses, cognition, language centers, and praxis centers. Locke describes these neurolgical processes for the formation of ideas with remarkable accuracy, and he proposed that as the brain grows more complex with all these processed, stored, and retrieved combinations of ideas, we get our experience of consciousness. What made "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" so brilliant for me was that Locke wrote this in the 1680s during a time when there was no neuroscience, no SPECT scans, no fMRI studies, and so forth. And his philosophy was revolutionary for his time, because nobody else was thinking about mind in this way.
I've lived long enough to read a lot more philosophy, and now I have even more questions that Locke's empiricism simply can't satisfy. I was on a Reddit thread the other day, and somebody was stating that substance dualism is refuted. Substance dualism is the belief that mind and body are distinct "substances". The body is physical, meaning it is composed of substance we can explain through physics. The mind is not. Substance dualists say that when you want to raise your hand, an immaterial substance (like the soul) triggers your brain to move your hand. The Reddit post claims that this is like saying billiard balls move themselves. Since we can see neurons firing and activating other neurons down the line when someone moves their hand, the Reddit commenter says that substance dualism is refuted.
I am not a dualist, but the longer I think about these issues, I feel like I'm getting there. Neuroscience and philosophy have yet to refute dualism, so I don't know why I would expect definitive answers from a Reddit debate. It's true that we are able to see that neurons are firing when we move a hand. Through brain mapping, we are even able to activate neural firing in the same circuits that move the hand, so we know more or less what parts of the brain control what parts of the body. We've even been able to stimulate visual hallucinations, beliefs, and emotional responses in people by tickling certain parts of the brain, so something as abstract as a thought surely seems like it has a physical source that can be examined empirically. But when someone voluntarily raises their hand, we've never seen the SOURCE of the neurons firing. How does the very first neuron get triggered? To use the billiard analogy from the Reddit thread, where is the pool stick that hits the cue ball? Better yet, where's the billiard player holding the stick?
Locke, however, is not really tackling these sorts of questions, at least not directly. He is interested in how we get our ideas, not whether they are generated by soul or by brain. While his scope of inquiry is largely within the realm of epistemology and rings of what we call common sense today, he does speculate on matters of the soul, or at least the mind, by explaining how it is that humans ever came up with the idea of a soul in the first place, even if the ultimate "truth" about the "substance" of soul is beyond empirical understanding.
He is uncertain whether the soul is spiritual, material, or thought in action, but he seems to believe in the dualist concept of soul being something apart from the physical body, and something that thinks. The soul may very well be the person holding the billiard stick, the immaterial thinker that triggers the cascade of events in the brain and body, the initiator of motion in physical bodies. He does not believe the soul is what leads to consciousness, however. Consciousness does empirically seem to be tied to the body. If you slip into unconsciousness because of a drug or a concussion or even deep sleep, you will have a gap in your consciousness. Yet we have an empirical experience of being the same "person" we were before we went under anesthesia or who went to bed the night before. Therefore, Locke concludes that a continuity of conscious MEMORY is what qualifies as a "person". Our physical bodies are constantly changing. We shed skin cells and lose hair. Our physical appearance drastically changes over time. But if we remember our first date, or how nervous we were on our first day of school, we have a link to those physical bodies, and thus a person is an idea that has extension through time.
Now, the more I've learned about how memory really seems to work, the less I'm inclined to believe memory is reliable. Our brains don't have the storage and processing capacity to keep a complete and accurate string of years of memories for us to access. Instead, our brains encode discreet bits of data that get filed away via emotional cathexis. We fill in the rest of the gaps to provide a narrative memory. So when I tell the story of my adventures while backpacking the Yosemite wilderness decades ago, I am making a sensible story of bits of data here and there encoded from that time. Therefore, Locke's linking memory to personal identity still leaves some questions. Even though I can't remember being born, does that mean that I am not the same "me" as I was when a baby? Or if I develop dementia down the line, will that old man who has forgotten that I ever wrote this review not be the same person as the one writing this today?
But Locke was not trying to convince us that his theories were correctly representing things as they are. He was only interested in HOW we come up with ideas in the first place, and thus how we develop KNOWLEDGE through comparing agreements and differences between ideas. And knowledge is imperfect, because we will never be able to discover all the ideas and relations that make up our universe. We can only navigate our world through the limits of our design, and we were designed to operate in certain ways. He is exploring that operating system, and he is trying to say that our operating system does not contain innate ideas, but the ideas we do have are based on a particular synthesis of empirical data from our world.
Why is it important for us to learn how our own minds work? Well, you can't have an employer refusing to pay you because you are not the same person you were when you were hired last pay period. You can't have a husband murdering their wife because he thinks some stranger has invaded his home due to her not being the same person he married. We would call such thinking disordered. And we do. We have to have some empirical understanding of our ideas in order to function as social beings or even to survive as individuals. This leads to Locke's philosophy of government, and also his warning that so-called "learned" people do misuse language in an attempt to confuse and manipulate the public. But these are topics for another day.
This book is brilliantly good! It provides the basics for much of the debate about mind today! He goes on to talk about secondary qualities (color, taste, etc.) being dependent on primary qualities (size, shape, etc.), and how these qualities stimulate ideas. He argues that another person's internal experience of such qualities can't be known. In his elegant "inverted spectrum" experiment, two people with normal vision use words "blue" and "yellow" to describe the colors of objects correctly. Yet, they may be using the correct words due to an understanding of a common language. They may NOT necessarily be seeing the same colors!
Let's pretend that Joe sees blue in his mind where others see yellow. But Joe would never call a lemon "blue". For Joe's whole life, when he saw a "blue" lemon, he was taught it was colored "yellow". So for Joe, lemons are still yellow. Nobody would know that his experience of a lemon is different from their own, nor would Joe know he was any different than anyone else.
And so Locke posed one of the tastiest puzzles in philosophy--the problem of other minds. He also anticipated the modern concept of "qualia" by examining the private, qualitative, and subjective nature of conscious awareness. This has itself been an argument against physicalism. If an inverted spectrum is possible without any physical or behavioral difference, then qualia must be non-physical properties of experience.
If I have any complaint about this book, it is that it is quite dry and sometimes repetitive, which can be a drag over the course of over 800 pages. Oh yes. It's that long, despite most editions claiming to be only 400 pages (because they employ small print, double-columned text, or split the book into two volumes). This is probably not a book you'll typically read straight through. Locke's writing lacks the wit, style, and poetic beauty of a Schopenhauer. However, it also lacks the confusing ramblings of a Hegel or a Marx. I would bet that if Locke had been alive to read the latter two philosophers, he would say that they were trying to create complex ideas out of too few simple ideas, and were coming to conclusions without having clear understanding of their own ideas and their relations, or misusing words that refer to no specific or consistent ideas. Locke, on the other hand, intentionally tries to be as clear as possible, and he succeeds.
He does throw you off occasionally, but this is usually due to his use of archaisms. In his analysis of language and complex ideas, he keeps recycling the same examples of English words. Gold, cassowary, and drill are three commonly used examples of ideas that he repeats throughout his essay with autistic obsessiveness. You may know that a cassowary is a tall, flightless bird that looks like a dinosaur crossed with an emu. But when he compares the complex ideas referred to as "drill" and "man", he says things like "there are stories of women being impregnated by drills", and the picture in your mind's eye may be something out of a horror movie. He never defines "drill", but he means a baboon-like ape (as in "mandrill"), which actually makes the image in your brain even worse. Ironically, he has an entire section where he talks about how words in languages cease to refer to the same ideas over time. But I don't want to mislead you into thinking that Locke's English is outdated or difficult. It is not. His philosophy does not require any significant level of expertise in epistemology or psychology, and his prose is surprisingly straightforward and comprehensible even three centuries later.
However, because I have revisited this book through the lens of a psychiatrist, I've found even more to appreciate. I realized that Locke laid the foundations for a lot of psychoanalytic theory, particularly in terms of object-relations, and especially in self-psychology due to his emphasis on early childhood experience as crucial for developing ideas that shape self-identity through a psychological continuity. In Chapter 33 of Book II, he stresses that parents should be attuned and empathetic to their child's temperament, and not overlook their mental health in favor of only their physical health. In the same section, he talks about how ideas can be pathologically linked in such a way as to cause PTSD, phobias, and delusions, long before these concepts became part of our modern psychological understanding. Actually, in Locke, the reader finds the entire germ of the "idea" of contemporary psychology!
I am indebted to this book for stimulating my interest in mind, which has shaped my entire life, and there are still plenty of goodies here for my puny intellect to munch on. This book also kicked off the Age of Enlightenment, and has influenced philosophy and culture ever since. I think it's required reading!
SCORE: 4.5, rounded to 5 blank slates out of 5
Locke says that people cannot form even the most basic principles unless they assimilate ideas they were taught or which they themselves worked through from experience. It seems this is true from empirical neurologic evidence. We are not born with innate ideas imprinted in our minds. We are born with wiring that triggers innate behaviors for survival, but these are not innate ideas any more than the autonomic peristalsis of our intestines or the secretions of our pituitary. Locke says that the mind starts off in infancy like a blank slate, or tabula rasa. And neuroscience tells us that, though our brains are not blank, our mind is. It is only after our brains perceive enough experiences that get stored and processed with other experiences that we are able to form ideas. From very simple ideas, we then get more complex ideas, and ideas we can string together to make principles.
Locke gives us many examples throughout this very long treatise. His Cartesian contemporaries had argued that concepts like eternity and morality are a priori. Yet, we really have no idea about such things without reflection on our experience. We are able to judge ideas like distance and time from our experience, and then we can multiply those measures in our mind as long as we please to come up with the concept of Infinity. And morality is only understood in a cultural context, which is why different cultures and different individuals do not agree on ideas of morality. So our minds do not "create" ideas out of nothing. Ideas are atomic in nature from combinations of our five senses over time. Even ideas of "fantasy", like unicorns and dragons, are based on actual experience, being a chimera of data from other living creatures in our world.
And indeed, as neuroscience has advanced, we find that this is how the brain processes information--discreet bits of signals are brought in through our sensory organs via peripheral connections to the central computer, where they are encoded in the hippocampus, which links to various other parts of the brain to link data to emotional responses, cognition, language centers, and praxis centers. Locke describes these neurolgical processes for the formation of ideas with remarkable accuracy, and he proposed that as the brain grows more complex with all these processed, stored, and retrieved combinations of ideas, we get our experience of consciousness. What made "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" so brilliant for me was that Locke wrote this in the 1680s during a time when there was no neuroscience, no SPECT scans, no fMRI studies, and so forth. And his philosophy was revolutionary for his time, because nobody else was thinking about mind in this way.
I've lived long enough to read a lot more philosophy, and now I have even more questions that Locke's empiricism simply can't satisfy. I was on a Reddit thread the other day, and somebody was stating that substance dualism is refuted. Substance dualism is the belief that mind and body are distinct "substances". The body is physical, meaning it is composed of substance we can explain through physics. The mind is not. Substance dualists say that when you want to raise your hand, an immaterial substance (like the soul) triggers your brain to move your hand. The Reddit post claims that this is like saying billiard balls move themselves. Since we can see neurons firing and activating other neurons down the line when someone moves their hand, the Reddit commenter says that substance dualism is refuted.
I am not a dualist, but the longer I think about these issues, I feel like I'm getting there. Neuroscience and philosophy have yet to refute dualism, so I don't know why I would expect definitive answers from a Reddit debate. It's true that we are able to see that neurons are firing when we move a hand. Through brain mapping, we are even able to activate neural firing in the same circuits that move the hand, so we know more or less what parts of the brain control what parts of the body. We've even been able to stimulate visual hallucinations, beliefs, and emotional responses in people by tickling certain parts of the brain, so something as abstract as a thought surely seems like it has a physical source that can be examined empirically. But when someone voluntarily raises their hand, we've never seen the SOURCE of the neurons firing. How does the very first neuron get triggered? To use the billiard analogy from the Reddit thread, where is the pool stick that hits the cue ball? Better yet, where's the billiard player holding the stick?
Locke, however, is not really tackling these sorts of questions, at least not directly. He is interested in how we get our ideas, not whether they are generated by soul or by brain. While his scope of inquiry is largely within the realm of epistemology and rings of what we call common sense today, he does speculate on matters of the soul, or at least the mind, by explaining how it is that humans ever came up with the idea of a soul in the first place, even if the ultimate "truth" about the "substance" of soul is beyond empirical understanding.
He is uncertain whether the soul is spiritual, material, or thought in action, but he seems to believe in the dualist concept of soul being something apart from the physical body, and something that thinks. The soul may very well be the person holding the billiard stick, the immaterial thinker that triggers the cascade of events in the brain and body, the initiator of motion in physical bodies. He does not believe the soul is what leads to consciousness, however. Consciousness does empirically seem to be tied to the body. If you slip into unconsciousness because of a drug or a concussion or even deep sleep, you will have a gap in your consciousness. Yet we have an empirical experience of being the same "person" we were before we went under anesthesia or who went to bed the night before. Therefore, Locke concludes that a continuity of conscious MEMORY is what qualifies as a "person". Our physical bodies are constantly changing. We shed skin cells and lose hair. Our physical appearance drastically changes over time. But if we remember our first date, or how nervous we were on our first day of school, we have a link to those physical bodies, and thus a person is an idea that has extension through time.
Now, the more I've learned about how memory really seems to work, the less I'm inclined to believe memory is reliable. Our brains don't have the storage and processing capacity to keep a complete and accurate string of years of memories for us to access. Instead, our brains encode discreet bits of data that get filed away via emotional cathexis. We fill in the rest of the gaps to provide a narrative memory. So when I tell the story of my adventures while backpacking the Yosemite wilderness decades ago, I am making a sensible story of bits of data here and there encoded from that time. Therefore, Locke's linking memory to personal identity still leaves some questions. Even though I can't remember being born, does that mean that I am not the same "me" as I was when a baby? Or if I develop dementia down the line, will that old man who has forgotten that I ever wrote this review not be the same person as the one writing this today?
But Locke was not trying to convince us that his theories were correctly representing things as they are. He was only interested in HOW we come up with ideas in the first place, and thus how we develop KNOWLEDGE through comparing agreements and differences between ideas. And knowledge is imperfect, because we will never be able to discover all the ideas and relations that make up our universe. We can only navigate our world through the limits of our design, and we were designed to operate in certain ways. He is exploring that operating system, and he is trying to say that our operating system does not contain innate ideas, but the ideas we do have are based on a particular synthesis of empirical data from our world.
Why is it important for us to learn how our own minds work? Well, you can't have an employer refusing to pay you because you are not the same person you were when you were hired last pay period. You can't have a husband murdering their wife because he thinks some stranger has invaded his home due to her not being the same person he married. We would call such thinking disordered. And we do. We have to have some empirical understanding of our ideas in order to function as social beings or even to survive as individuals. This leads to Locke's philosophy of government, and also his warning that so-called "learned" people do misuse language in an attempt to confuse and manipulate the public. But these are topics for another day.
This book is brilliantly good! It provides the basics for much of the debate about mind today! He goes on to talk about secondary qualities (color, taste, etc.) being dependent on primary qualities (size, shape, etc.), and how these qualities stimulate ideas. He argues that another person's internal experience of such qualities can't be known. In his elegant "inverted spectrum" experiment, two people with normal vision use words "blue" and "yellow" to describe the colors of objects correctly. Yet, they may be using the correct words due to an understanding of a common language. They may NOT necessarily be seeing the same colors!
Let's pretend that Joe sees blue in his mind where others see yellow. But Joe would never call a lemon "blue". For Joe's whole life, when he saw a "blue" lemon, he was taught it was colored "yellow". So for Joe, lemons are still yellow. Nobody would know that his experience of a lemon is different from their own, nor would Joe know he was any different than anyone else.
And so Locke posed one of the tastiest puzzles in philosophy--the problem of other minds. He also anticipated the modern concept of "qualia" by examining the private, qualitative, and subjective nature of conscious awareness. This has itself been an argument against physicalism. If an inverted spectrum is possible without any physical or behavioral difference, then qualia must be non-physical properties of experience.
If I have any complaint about this book, it is that it is quite dry and sometimes repetitive, which can be a drag over the course of over 800 pages. Oh yes. It's that long, despite most editions claiming to be only 400 pages (because they employ small print, double-columned text, or split the book into two volumes). This is probably not a book you'll typically read straight through. Locke's writing lacks the wit, style, and poetic beauty of a Schopenhauer. However, it also lacks the confusing ramblings of a Hegel or a Marx. I would bet that if Locke had been alive to read the latter two philosophers, he would say that they were trying to create complex ideas out of too few simple ideas, and were coming to conclusions without having clear understanding of their own ideas and their relations, or misusing words that refer to no specific or consistent ideas. Locke, on the other hand, intentionally tries to be as clear as possible, and he succeeds.
He does throw you off occasionally, but this is usually due to his use of archaisms. In his analysis of language and complex ideas, he keeps recycling the same examples of English words. Gold, cassowary, and drill are three commonly used examples of ideas that he repeats throughout his essay with autistic obsessiveness. You may know that a cassowary is a tall, flightless bird that looks like a dinosaur crossed with an emu. But when he compares the complex ideas referred to as "drill" and "man", he says things like "there are stories of women being impregnated by drills", and the picture in your mind's eye may be something out of a horror movie. He never defines "drill", but he means a baboon-like ape (as in "mandrill"), which actually makes the image in your brain even worse. Ironically, he has an entire section where he talks about how words in languages cease to refer to the same ideas over time. But I don't want to mislead you into thinking that Locke's English is outdated or difficult. It is not. His philosophy does not require any significant level of expertise in epistemology or psychology, and his prose is surprisingly straightforward and comprehensible even three centuries later.
However, because I have revisited this book through the lens of a psychiatrist, I've found even more to appreciate. I realized that Locke laid the foundations for a lot of psychoanalytic theory, particularly in terms of object-relations, and especially in self-psychology due to his emphasis on early childhood experience as crucial for developing ideas that shape self-identity through a psychological continuity. In Chapter 33 of Book II, he stresses that parents should be attuned and empathetic to their child's temperament, and not overlook their mental health in favor of only their physical health. In the same section, he talks about how ideas can be pathologically linked in such a way as to cause PTSD, phobias, and delusions, long before these concepts became part of our modern psychological understanding. Actually, in Locke, the reader finds the entire germ of the "idea" of contemporary psychology!
I am indebted to this book for stimulating my interest in mind, which has shaped my entire life, and there are still plenty of goodies here for my puny intellect to munch on. This book also kicked off the Age of Enlightenment, and has influenced philosophy and culture ever since. I think it's required reading!
SCORE: 4.5, rounded to 5 blank slates out of 5
August 30, 2011
This is the second time I've read this book, sort of. The first time was at university. After 10 or 11 years I decied to return to it and see how much I'd forgotten (especially as I teach bits of Locke for A-level Philosophy). I slowly realised that after the first few chapters, the notes and annotations disappeared from my book, indicating that I'd never finished it. After a couple of days of reading this, I realised why. Yes, it is one of the most important documents in Philosophical history. Yes, it kickstarts British empiricism and sets the groundwork for Locke's political philosophy, which would go on to change the world. However, it is the single dullest text you could choose to read. Sheer boredom digs in deep as you read dry and lifeless prose about dry and lifeless topics. Compare it to the Hume's Essay or Enquiries (which on closer examination, isn't too different to Locke's essay) and you see that similar topics can be written about with much more vitality and charm. Philosophers will shake their heads that I'm being so shallow as to ignore the content of the book for the sake of the style. I don't deny the arguments are good (in places), although many of them have seen their downfall since. However, if I was asked whether i enjoyed the book, I'd have to say no. It was dull as dishwater and, despite providing some powerful critiques of other philosophical outlooks, it didn't make me want to engage any further.
April 23, 2008
John Locke's readable discourse on empiricism, which we might think of now as inductive reasoning from contingent facts, covers a broad scope and gives readers a taste of the Enlightenment in its full flower.
Written before philosophy became too specialized for everyday discourse, this book serves as an excellent starting point anyone wanting to venture into philosophy. John Locke's easy writing style stands in contrast to his formidable reputation, and within these pages he pulls together his disparate and thoughtful observations on the contemporary state of mankind.
The ideas set forth act as a counterweight to the rationalist tendencies of the earlier part of that century. By directing attention to the observed world, Locke moves philosophy away from its excessive reliance on Aristotle's syllogistic, formalized inductive logic, and lays out the case for observation as the primary means of attaining facts.
Written before philosophy became too specialized for everyday discourse, this book serves as an excellent starting point anyone wanting to venture into philosophy. John Locke's easy writing style stands in contrast to his formidable reputation, and within these pages he pulls together his disparate and thoughtful observations on the contemporary state of mankind.
The ideas set forth act as a counterweight to the rationalist tendencies of the earlier part of that century. By directing attention to the observed world, Locke moves philosophy away from its excessive reliance on Aristotle's syllogistic, formalized inductive logic, and lays out the case for observation as the primary means of attaining facts.
October 26, 2017
Locke can't be blamed for getting most things wrong: our understanding of the world has changed drastically since his time. He can be blamed however for being wrong in things that his contemporaries or even predecessors got right, especially when this is caused by a very shallow treatment of the questions he addresses. I strongly disliked the Essay, it reads like the work of someone who tried to build his own simplistic system from scratch as a way to compensate for an inability to grasp anything related to metaphysics which all other philosophers of his time dealt with. In this pioneering way, Locke is similar to Descartes, but where the latter was aware of what he was doing and being purposefully modest in his project, Locke displays no such intent. To anyone planning on reading Locke, I HIGHLY encourage an abridged version, or better yet, just skim through some notes on him. You will not miss out on anything worthwhile, I guarantee it.
August 10, 2024
li só o livro iii
July 23, 2023
Long and sometimes repetitive but good. This book is the first in my list of several primary sources I plan to read this year in the areas of Philosophy of Knowledge and Philosophy of Mind. Extremely groundbreaking for its time and still a foundational work in epistemology. This is the most important primary source to understand the empiricist school as Locke is the Father of Empiricism.
I plan to read Hume and Berkeley next. While I’m not 100% on board with empiricism Locke makes great arguments against innate ideas and dunks on Descartes pretty hard. I am excited for when I get to the empiricist-rationalist synthesis forged by Kant. But I have a few more books to read before then.
I plan to read Hume and Berkeley next. While I’m not 100% on board with empiricism Locke makes great arguments against innate ideas and dunks on Descartes pretty hard. I am excited for when I get to the empiricist-rationalist synthesis forged by Kant. But I have a few more books to read before then.
February 19, 2023
The year of 1689 saw two publications that would make John Locke influential force in political discussions for the next four plus centuries, but a third publication would set the stage for a new school of modern philosophy. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in which Locke argues against that the mind is born with innate ideas and is instead a blank slate that knowledge is gained through experience.
The work is divided into four books: Book I focuses on Locke’s main thesis in opposing the principle of innate ideas, Book II presents Locke’s argument that every idea is derived from experience either by sensation or reflection, Book III focuses on words and how man uses unique sounds to signify ideas then relate them to others, and Book IV focuses on knowledge in general—that it can be thought of as the sum of ideas and perceptions—and if there can be a limit to human knowledge. Over the 635 pages, Locke’s reasoning while thorough also verged on bloated arguments that would have diluted the overall piece. Of the entire essay, Book IV had the most interesting material as Locke focused on various issues but the one that stood out the most was his look into the existence of God and of Faith and Reason.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a thoughtful yet nearly bloated piece in which John Locke puts forth his thoughts on how we gain knowledge and how we should use it.
The work is divided into four books: Book I focuses on Locke’s main thesis in opposing the principle of innate ideas, Book II presents Locke’s argument that every idea is derived from experience either by sensation or reflection, Book III focuses on words and how man uses unique sounds to signify ideas then relate them to others, and Book IV focuses on knowledge in general—that it can be thought of as the sum of ideas and perceptions—and if there can be a limit to human knowledge. Over the 635 pages, Locke’s reasoning while thorough also verged on bloated arguments that would have diluted the overall piece. Of the entire essay, Book IV had the most interesting material as Locke focused on various issues but the one that stood out the most was his look into the existence of God and of Faith and Reason.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a thoughtful yet nearly bloated piece in which John Locke puts forth his thoughts on how we gain knowledge and how we should use it.
November 26, 2021
Locke always saves me in my darkest academic periods
July 24, 2011
Si bien d'autre m'ont été agréable et instructifs, Voila le livre de philosophie qui m'aura été le plus profitable de tous ceux qui me sont tombés dans les mains. L'essai philosophique sur l'entendement humain, écrit par John Locke en 1655 est une petite merveille, et réussit haut la main son pari d'apporter de la lumière sur la question. L'auteur écrit dans un style clair, très accessible et hors de toute affectation, mais sans céder aucun pouce aux exigences de clarté et de rigueur. Pour autant, j'ai du ruminer ce livre par petits bouts tant est forte la densité d'idées exposées. Il est bien dommage de ne pas avoir la place de les développer ici. L'auteur n'abandonne jamais son lecteur sans avoir analysé, découpé, et mis à la bonne distance de la vue du lecteur les notions qu'il manipule avec précautions. Cette édition est un fac similé de la traduction originale revue par l'auteur lui-même. La graphie particulière des S demande un petit effort au lecteur au début, car certains sont très semblables aux F, mais l'habitude vient amoindrir cette difficulté. Je regrette beaucoup que cet ouvrage soit si difficile à trouver, et m'en étonne alors que nombre de philosophes des lumières lui adressent de si vifs et mérités louanges, même ceux qui en sont le plus avares comme l'ombrageux Voltaire.
August 4, 2011
John Locke has some of the best reasons why we should not believe in innate ideas, and from this, why we should not be in agreement with the Rationalists. However, this begs the question "How can we trust ideas based on experience?"
Instead of bogging down his argument, I find that his trust in human experience to be refreshing. We cannot live our lives sitting in a room thinking about the random crap in the world -- we have to get out there and live it!
This particular edition was a different one from the rest of the class that I took, and I found that most of the text matched up word for word, however it was off when it came to chapter numbers, which confused me a bit -- how could the "complete" edition lack a chapter or two? I'm sure, though, that if I actually spent the time to worry about this, I would have figured out the problem.
Overall, this is a great text of one of the most important thinkers for American democracy. Locke, therefore, should be read whether you agree with him or not. (If, of course, you are American. If not, read him because he has some pretty interesting things to say.)
Instead of bogging down his argument, I find that his trust in human experience to be refreshing. We cannot live our lives sitting in a room thinking about the random crap in the world -- we have to get out there and live it!
This particular edition was a different one from the rest of the class that I took, and I found that most of the text matched up word for word, however it was off when it came to chapter numbers, which confused me a bit -- how could the "complete" edition lack a chapter or two? I'm sure, though, that if I actually spent the time to worry about this, I would have figured out the problem.
Overall, this is a great text of one of the most important thinkers for American democracy. Locke, therefore, should be read whether you agree with him or not. (If, of course, you are American. If not, read him because he has some pretty interesting things to say.)
February 29, 2020
Summary: I dug this book given that people are still revisiting in modern philosophy over and over. It's short, but apparently, it's so deep it was too much for a lot of the people that gave it sub-3. A pity. The world is too short philosophy teachers.
Vlog to come the first week of March. See my Instagram: WhereIsMayLing
Ok, yes. I admit that there is a lot of old-timy speech. That can be tough if you're not used to this style of writing. But I'm old and I read really fast, so it's not such a big deal to me. There are a couple of great break downs in reviews already, so I'm just going to stick my notes here. I will be using it in my book as a reference.
p. 8 - The preface: The reason you read it is b/c Locke takes issue with the idea that there are "innate" ideas. This is a big deal, b/c if there are no innate ideas then things like the US constitution are a bit hokey. Also, it means that everything is somewhat relative. He's got to ground that somehow. That's why you bother with this book...b/c he's right. I mean, given when he's writing, trust me, you do not want what was innate then to still be true now.
p. 18 - Universal consent proves nothing innate. I mean, this whole section is profound. B/c think about what the world would be like if it were otherwise. If we just believed that men were smarter and more capable than women. If we believed that one race was better than another. Well... that would suck. I mean, unless you're a supremacist of some sort. Then I guess it's ok.
p. 53 - Here's where he's saying God is not innate. You got to learn about him. I mean, this was so controversial in its day. But I think today it's less controversial. Even Christians might say you know God, but you also need to come to know him, i.e. he ain't innate.
p. 60... this is a multi-paragraph argument that basically says, we don't get it from innate, we got to work for the answers via practice, etc. This part is kind of important b/c he goes into the whole sensory vs. the stuff that just in our heads sort of ideas (reflection).
p. 64 - "Ideas is the object of thinking." "All ideas come from sensation or reflection."
p. 75 - "A man begins to have ideas when he first has sensation."
"Thus the first capacity of human intellect is, -- that the mind is fitted to receive the impressions made on it; either through the senses by outward objects, or by its own operations when it reflects on them."
p. 93 - Real Qualities exist without us: "The particular bulk, number figure, and motion of the parts..." Then there are the ones that need us: "But light, heat, whiteness, or coldness, are no more really in them than sickness or pain is in manna." His point is that these are all relative sensations. They require us to make a call. The others also require us, but they can stand alone.
p. 97 he calls the primary qualities "Immediately perceivable." the others are "mediately perceivable." (requiring intervention)
p. 109 - "Wit lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy: Judgement, on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully, one from another, ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude, and by affinity to take one thing for another."
p. 129 - He starts to talk about simple vs complex ideas. In truth, he gets a bit into trouble here and it's fair to criticize. Like for sure, the whole field of linguistics wouldn't exist if simple words actually meant the same thing to everyone. But, hey, not a bad starting place for the concepts.
p. 145 Time and Duration does put a wrench in things. So this section is very weird but kinda necessary. In a nutshell, I think what he's saying is that for the human, time and duration are derived observations. (So kind of you take it in from the sense, but kind of no. Kinda you reflected upon it, but also kinda no.) They are not directly viewable/observed.
p. 161 To be fair, I also got a little confused by why Infinite is so important to him. It def is, cause he goes for a while on this. I think it's the whole religious thing. Even without this, the whole argument is cool. Still, it's very Zeno's paradox and kind of fun.
p. 189/90 - The whole desire thing, it's weird, but I kinda get how he has to address that if he's interested in why we are driven toward understanding. so ok. I mean, sometimes, I think people should just say what they think is awesome and just say afterward, I'm not sure about this desire thing and how it relates yet. I think this messed up his neat little essay and confused people.
p. 214- "The mind often exercises an ACTIVE power in making these several combinations. For it being once furnished with simple ideas, it can put them together in several compositions, and so making (a) variety of complex ideas, without examining whether they exist so together in nature. And hence I think it is that these ideas are called Notions."
p. 215 - "Whence it has unity; and how such a precise multitude comes to make but one idea; since that combination does not always exist together in nature? to which I answer it is plain it has its unity from an act of the mind..."
p. 221 "Hence, when we talk of any particular sort of corporeal substances, as horse, stone, etc., though the idea we have of either of them be the complication or collection of those several simple ideas of sensible qualities, which we used to find united in the thing called horse or stone; yet BECAUSE WE CANNOT CONCEIVE HOW THEY SHOULD SUBSIST ALONE, NOR ONE IN ANOTHER, we suppose them existing in and supported by some common subject; which support we denote by the name substance, though it be certain we have no clear or distinct idea of that thing we suppose to support.
p. 265 - He then tries to link all things to simple and complex ideas and he falls a bit flat. I think this is where he gets criticized and rightfully so. He's just trying too hard to fit his framework constrained by the existing zeitgeist. There was actually no need to reduce everything to the simple form. It's unnecessary. It would have been smarter - as I believe others have done in modern times - to just let people be complexly contradictory.
Vlog to come the first week of March. See my Instagram: WhereIsMayLing
Ok, yes. I admit that there is a lot of old-timy speech. That can be tough if you're not used to this style of writing. But I'm old and I read really fast, so it's not such a big deal to me. There are a couple of great break downs in reviews already, so I'm just going to stick my notes here. I will be using it in my book as a reference.
p. 8 - The preface: The reason you read it is b/c Locke takes issue with the idea that there are "innate" ideas. This is a big deal, b/c if there are no innate ideas then things like the US constitution are a bit hokey. Also, it means that everything is somewhat relative. He's got to ground that somehow. That's why you bother with this book...b/c he's right. I mean, given when he's writing, trust me, you do not want what was innate then to still be true now.
p. 18 - Universal consent proves nothing innate. I mean, this whole section is profound. B/c think about what the world would be like if it were otherwise. If we just believed that men were smarter and more capable than women. If we believed that one race was better than another. Well... that would suck. I mean, unless you're a supremacist of some sort. Then I guess it's ok.
p. 53 - Here's where he's saying God is not innate. You got to learn about him. I mean, this was so controversial in its day. But I think today it's less controversial. Even Christians might say you know God, but you also need to come to know him, i.e. he ain't innate.
p. 60... this is a multi-paragraph argument that basically says, we don't get it from innate, we got to work for the answers via practice, etc. This part is kind of important b/c he goes into the whole sensory vs. the stuff that just in our heads sort of ideas (reflection).
p. 64 - "Ideas is the object of thinking." "All ideas come from sensation or reflection."
p. 75 - "A man begins to have ideas when he first has sensation."
"Thus the first capacity of human intellect is, -- that the mind is fitted to receive the impressions made on it; either through the senses by outward objects, or by its own operations when it reflects on them."
p. 93 - Real Qualities exist without us: "The particular bulk, number figure, and motion of the parts..." Then there are the ones that need us: "But light, heat, whiteness, or coldness, are no more really in them than sickness or pain is in manna." His point is that these are all relative sensations. They require us to make a call. The others also require us, but they can stand alone.
p. 97 he calls the primary qualities "Immediately perceivable." the others are "mediately perceivable." (requiring intervention)
p. 109 - "Wit lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy: Judgement, on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully, one from another, ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude, and by affinity to take one thing for another."
p. 129 - He starts to talk about simple vs complex ideas. In truth, he gets a bit into trouble here and it's fair to criticize. Like for sure, the whole field of linguistics wouldn't exist if simple words actually meant the same thing to everyone. But, hey, not a bad starting place for the concepts.
p. 145 Time and Duration does put a wrench in things. So this section is very weird but kinda necessary. In a nutshell, I think what he's saying is that for the human, time and duration are derived observations. (So kind of you take it in from the sense, but kind of no. Kinda you reflected upon it, but also kinda no.) They are not directly viewable/observed.
p. 161 To be fair, I also got a little confused by why Infinite is so important to him. It def is, cause he goes for a while on this. I think it's the whole religious thing. Even without this, the whole argument is cool. Still, it's very Zeno's paradox and kind of fun.
p. 189/90 - The whole desire thing, it's weird, but I kinda get how he has to address that if he's interested in why we are driven toward understanding. so ok. I mean, sometimes, I think people should just say what they think is awesome and just say afterward, I'm not sure about this desire thing and how it relates yet. I think this messed up his neat little essay and confused people.
p. 214- "The mind often exercises an ACTIVE power in making these several combinations. For it being once furnished with simple ideas, it can put them together in several compositions, and so making (a) variety of complex ideas, without examining whether they exist so together in nature. And hence I think it is that these ideas are called Notions."
p. 215 - "Whence it has unity; and how such a precise multitude comes to make but one idea; since that combination does not always exist together in nature? to which I answer it is plain it has its unity from an act of the mind..."
p. 221 "Hence, when we talk of any particular sort of corporeal substances, as horse, stone, etc., though the idea we have of either of them be the complication or collection of those several simple ideas of sensible qualities, which we used to find united in the thing called horse or stone; yet BECAUSE WE CANNOT CONCEIVE HOW THEY SHOULD SUBSIST ALONE, NOR ONE IN ANOTHER, we suppose them existing in and supported by some common subject; which support we denote by the name substance, though it be certain we have no clear or distinct idea of that thing we suppose to support.
p. 265 - He then tries to link all things to simple and complex ideas and he falls a bit flat. I think this is where he gets criticized and rightfully so. He's just trying too hard to fit his framework constrained by the existing zeitgeist. There was actually no need to reduce everything to the simple form. It's unnecessary. It would have been smarter - as I believe others have done in modern times - to just let people be complexly contradictory.
partially-read
December 27, 2015I began reading portions of this scholarly (Nidditch) edition of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 2002 and read additional substantial portions in 2015. I have not, however, finished it. The work, albeit famous, is quite tedious for the twenty-first-century reader. As a result of its classic status in the history of modern philosophy and its importance for understanding Locke's other writings, I will have to finish reading and analyzing it at some point. For the time being, however, I am procrastinating in exactly the same manner I procrastinate going to the dentist.
January 22, 2022
El ejercicio de razonamiento y lógica que hizo Locke para escribir esta obra es fascinante. Me tomó más tiempo del que pensé, y a decir verdad hubo partes que fueron demasiado para mi pobre cerebro ignorante. Me quedo con algunas ideas generales y básicas, que sirven como fundamento para seguir estudiando otras obras y otros autores.
June 24, 2013
Locke’s Essay is considered a foundational work for the new empiricism which arose out of the friction between Descartes with his rationalist followers and the old-school Aristotelian empiricists of the Scholastics. In true empiricist form, Locke binds himself to the proposition that all knowledge can only be gained through the senses but, in an interesting twist, also refuses to put blind faith in the accuracy of the senses.
To begin, Locke spends Book I rejecting any notion that there is innate knowledge. It’s a fairly simple premise which is drawn out unnecessarily. If there was innate knowledge, then there would be no dispute among individuals about it. Children would have it. People of other cultures would have it. Everyone. Since that’s not the case, there isn’t innate knowledge. The closest he comes is in the perception of God. Most (but not all) cultures have an understanding of a higher power. However, he maintains consistency and argues that the existence of God is something that is rationally concluded by observations in the world.
The second and third books, which are the bulk of the Essay focus on definitions. The nature of Ideas and Substance is discussed at length. Ideas are broken down into simple and complex ideas. Essentially, simple ideas are the ones that are ones which define themselves. Power, pain, pleasure, etc. He similarly breaks down Substance into primary, secondary and tertiary qualities. The primacy of a Substance is that which is the core essence of a thing. Since he’s unable to define a thing’s core essence, Locke intellectually creates a substratum of existence in which a thing can be purely defined. This seems to go against the empiricist ethic because we have no experience of this substratum.
Book IV is where he gets to the heart of his epistemology. Which, quite frankly, is a bit of a let down. For Locke, “our highest degree of knowledge is intuitive, without reasoning.” Pg. 321. He copies Descartes in his conclusion that we know only clear and distinct truths. For him, it’s a conclusion reached by recognizing our experience. For Descarte, it was an a priori recognition.
Locke was heavily influenced by Robert Boyle’s Corpuscular Hypothesis at the time and his views defining Ideas and Substance clearly reflect that impact. It’s surprising then that Locke fails to appreciate how scientific advancements will affect our ability to experience new things which may give a greater foundation for knowledge. Locke views science as a means to develop our judgment about knowledge, but does not actually increase knowledge itself. A fine distinction which ultimately seems fairly meaningless. Locke assumes that the experience of his time could provide the most clear and distinct truths which form a basis for knowledge. Additionally, since he’s a religious man, he allows for revelation from God as another avenue for knowledge.
The edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding edited by Winkler is an abridgment. I was debating whether I should return this to the library and get the full work, but I’m glad I stuck with the abridged edition. Even in this edition, Locke is repetitive and wordy. I’m sure I lost some of the logical build-up to his conclusions, but I got the gist. It was groundbreaking at the time and for that it has to be appreciated. However, since Locke limited his knowledge to what could be experienced in the late 17th century, it seems considerably less relevant for the 21st century. In this age of DNA, molecular chemistry and microbiology, extensive discussion about the definitional difference between a horse and piece of gold seems a bit unnecessary.
To begin, Locke spends Book I rejecting any notion that there is innate knowledge. It’s a fairly simple premise which is drawn out unnecessarily. If there was innate knowledge, then there would be no dispute among individuals about it. Children would have it. People of other cultures would have it. Everyone. Since that’s not the case, there isn’t innate knowledge. The closest he comes is in the perception of God. Most (but not all) cultures have an understanding of a higher power. However, he maintains consistency and argues that the existence of God is something that is rationally concluded by observations in the world.
The second and third books, which are the bulk of the Essay focus on definitions. The nature of Ideas and Substance is discussed at length. Ideas are broken down into simple and complex ideas. Essentially, simple ideas are the ones that are ones which define themselves. Power, pain, pleasure, etc. He similarly breaks down Substance into primary, secondary and tertiary qualities. The primacy of a Substance is that which is the core essence of a thing. Since he’s unable to define a thing’s core essence, Locke intellectually creates a substratum of existence in which a thing can be purely defined. This seems to go against the empiricist ethic because we have no experience of this substratum.
Book IV is where he gets to the heart of his epistemology. Which, quite frankly, is a bit of a let down. For Locke, “our highest degree of knowledge is intuitive, without reasoning.” Pg. 321. He copies Descartes in his conclusion that we know only clear and distinct truths. For him, it’s a conclusion reached by recognizing our experience. For Descarte, it was an a priori recognition.
Locke was heavily influenced by Robert Boyle’s Corpuscular Hypothesis at the time and his views defining Ideas and Substance clearly reflect that impact. It’s surprising then that Locke fails to appreciate how scientific advancements will affect our ability to experience new things which may give a greater foundation for knowledge. Locke views science as a means to develop our judgment about knowledge, but does not actually increase knowledge itself. A fine distinction which ultimately seems fairly meaningless. Locke assumes that the experience of his time could provide the most clear and distinct truths which form a basis for knowledge. Additionally, since he’s a religious man, he allows for revelation from God as another avenue for knowledge.
The edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding edited by Winkler is an abridgment. I was debating whether I should return this to the library and get the full work, but I’m glad I stuck with the abridged edition. Even in this edition, Locke is repetitive and wordy. I’m sure I lost some of the logical build-up to his conclusions, but I got the gist. It was groundbreaking at the time and for that it has to be appreciated. However, since Locke limited his knowledge to what could be experienced in the late 17th century, it seems considerably less relevant for the 21st century. In this age of DNA, molecular chemistry and microbiology, extensive discussion about the definitional difference between a horse and piece of gold seems a bit unnecessary.
March 19, 2016
This book was overlong and I am glad to be finished with it. Locke has a tendency to iterate and reiterate points and "proofs" ad nauseam. He also has a tendency to discourse on things that are not altogether relevant to the topic at hand; while this might be acceptable now and then, Locke does it to an extreme that is taxing on the reader's attention and patience. This book, if it weren't for the redundancies and lack of focus, would be a far more acceptable length. That being said, it was not as tiresome as I thought it would be. He does make some interesting points and his exploration of topics are often adequately thorough, although I did not always agree with his arguments. His "tabula rasa" is the obvious first point of contention for me. While I agree that the mind lacks fully formed ideas, to compare it to a blank canvas or blank notepad is an incredibly poor analogy. A pad of paper doesn't comprehend the words written on it. The human mind, from birth, has some capability towards semeiotic dynamism that is not only lacking in lifeless media, but also lacking in other lifeforms on this planet. Some very complex preset condition must be responsible for this. While Locke allows the mind some instinctual capability from birth, he allows it no preset ideas. I think that Jung, and others before and after him, did a fairly good job of proving the validity of archetypal (a word found in Locke interestingly enough) notions being very basic within human generation. I do intend to read Leibniz's response to this book because I know he was against the foregoing theory. Some other things did catch my attention while reading this book as well; one was the phrase "pursuit of happiness" that is found and explored in a section of this work. One can't help thinking that it was this section that inspired the framers of the Declaration of Independence to use that phrase. What I found interesting though is that essential to Locke's discussion is the notion that not all pursuits really make for happiness but one must be discerning and choose to relinquish false avenues in that pursuit. Too bad many Americans do not know the context of the phrase "pursuit of happiness" that was originally intended by Locke.
The last hundred pages were probably the most interesting for me. I wound up marking whole paragraphs in the chapter devoted to enthusiasm. Also, his discussions regarding intuitive knowledge I agreed with in large part, although my definition of intuitive knowledge is slightly more broad.
While Locke was a professing Christian, this work, along with others, contributed to the growing tide of deism in England. Some of his points were utilized by deists subsequently, and are still used by atheists. I did agree with his discussion regarding faith and reason to a large extent, but I think some of his arguments regarding the role of reason and faith are not as clear cut as he sets out here. Many of the roles he delegates to reason puts far too much stock in it's ability to always know definitively and a priori how it can work as a foil to faith/revelation.
It is easy to see the influence this work had on philosophers subsequently. It almost certainly was an influence on Kant. I doubt I will be rereading this anytime soon. It was worth reading once and noting the more interesting portions for future reference.
The last hundred pages were probably the most interesting for me. I wound up marking whole paragraphs in the chapter devoted to enthusiasm. Also, his discussions regarding intuitive knowledge I agreed with in large part, although my definition of intuitive knowledge is slightly more broad.
While Locke was a professing Christian, this work, along with others, contributed to the growing tide of deism in England. Some of his points were utilized by deists subsequently, and are still used by atheists. I did agree with his discussion regarding faith and reason to a large extent, but I think some of his arguments regarding the role of reason and faith are not as clear cut as he sets out here. Many of the roles he delegates to reason puts far too much stock in it's ability to always know definitively and a priori how it can work as a foil to faith/revelation.
It is easy to see the influence this work had on philosophers subsequently. It almost certainly was an influence on Kant. I doubt I will be rereading this anytime soon. It was worth reading once and noting the more interesting portions for future reference.
December 28, 2015
Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a book which aspired to do the following:
a) Provide the epistemological foundation – empiricism – for corpuscularian (i.e., atomistic), and, perhaps, Newtonian science
b) Reveal the inadequacies of Cartesianism and Aristotelianism in natural philosophy
c) Reveal the inadequacies of the rationalists with their emphasis on innate ideas
d) Provide an original and fairly convincing story of the origins of all of our ideas
e) Provide a comprehensive natural history of the mind
f) Lay down the epistemological foundations of a liberal political theory
g) Show the existence of an external, mind-independent world
h) Explain the relation between language and the world
i) Highlight the limitations of the human mind
Whether Locke succeeded in any of the above is still a matter of fruitful debate, a testament to Locke’s genius.
The Essay is one of those books that you’ll want to keep coming back to. It is a work of immense wisdom and intellectual power; nothing less than a masterpiece.
a) Provide the epistemological foundation – empiricism – for corpuscularian (i.e., atomistic), and, perhaps, Newtonian science
b) Reveal the inadequacies of Cartesianism and Aristotelianism in natural philosophy
c) Reveal the inadequacies of the rationalists with their emphasis on innate ideas
d) Provide an original and fairly convincing story of the origins of all of our ideas
e) Provide a comprehensive natural history of the mind
f) Lay down the epistemological foundations of a liberal political theory
g) Show the existence of an external, mind-independent world
h) Explain the relation between language and the world
i) Highlight the limitations of the human mind
Whether Locke succeeded in any of the above is still a matter of fruitful debate, a testament to Locke’s genius.
The Essay is one of those books that you’ll want to keep coming back to. It is a work of immense wisdom and intellectual power; nothing less than a masterpiece.
November 4, 2013
Some of this book was assigned for the History of Classical Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago during the first semester of 1980/81, but I read all of it, albeit quickly at times.
Like Hume, Locke is a relatively easy philosopher for modern Anglo-Americans, their thought being so substantially constituative of contemporary prejudice, both in philosophy and in the natural sciences. He is not, however, as careful and precise--not as "acute" as Kant put it--as Hume was.
Although I did not do it this way, Locke's Essay might be most profitably read in the context of a study of the history of science during the early Enlightenment.
Like Hume, Locke is a relatively easy philosopher for modern Anglo-Americans, their thought being so substantially constituative of contemporary prejudice, both in philosophy and in the natural sciences. He is not, however, as careful and precise--not as "acute" as Kant put it--as Hume was.
Although I did not do it this way, Locke's Essay might be most profitably read in the context of a study of the history of science during the early Enlightenment.
December 14, 2021
The most boring and repetitive book i have ever read(not gonna bother with my issues with it content wise, just, stylistically, so.... dry)
January 16, 2022
In terms of comprehensibility for the lay reader, John Locke is somewhere between Spinoza on the extreme end, and writers such as Descartes, Aristotle and Pascal on the easy end. (I name philosophers I have read recently.)
Spinoza is relentlessly difficult, with every idea requiring the reader to back up and re-read several earlier passages, which were not that easy to grasp in the first place. Locke is thankfully within the grasp of someone outside the study of philosophy who is reading for pleasure, but he does pose challenges.
What makes Locke harder for the English reader? The ‘easier’ philosophers I have named did not write in English, so we have a translator on hand to choose language that is clearer to the reader. With Locke we have a range of technical terms that may have been better understood by scholars of his age, but which are less familiar now.
To be fair, Locke does explain most of his terms as he goes along, though a grasp in Latin might on a few occasions be useful. Nonetheless as a reader one would have to have a good grasp of the concepts from other sources, have a very good memory, take notes, or re-read earlier passages to have a full grasp of what Locke means on every occasion.
For the main part, Locke’s meaning can be understood however. For the patient reader, this work can be rewarding, which is not to say that we are obliged to agree with all that he says.
I will not attempt to fully explain Locke’s ideas, as there are many of them and they can be elusive to remember. I will only focus on a few points of interest that struck me while reading the book.
As with most philosophy, the ideas are so abstract as to be open to interpretation. You can be sure that there is an academic explaining why another academic misunderstood the meaning of most of the book. If Locke was brought back to life, which academic would he agree with, I wonder? Perhaps neither.
Locke is preoccupied with the notion of ideas, and this means that much of our perception comes from an understanding of what we interpret from outside. Hence he rejects the idea of innate knowledge. This creates the fascinating thought that much of what we understand about the world is down to what is inside our mind. How much of the outside world do we know?
Think about the passage of time. It exists insomuch as I receive external clues. I know from experience that by the time I finish this sentence, time will have passed. How else do I know that time passes except through the senses?
Excluding clocks for a moment, I may surmise time has passed through my sight. The sun and shadows have changed places. They were in one place and are now in another. I see past tense and present tense. I heard the children in the neighbouring playground and now I do not. I smelled cooking, and now I do not. Time is merely the progression of my senses.
How solid is my sense of place? Locke uses a fascinating example. We say that a chess piece is in the same place, but we judge this only by the spatial dimensions of the board. If someone carried the chessboard into a different room, we would still consider the piece in the same place – or if the board stayed in one room, but that room was the cabin of a ship that crossed the ocean. Even if the ship stays in port, the planet rotates and moves around the sun. It is emphatically not in the same place on a universal level yet in another sense it is.
Locke would have been even more confused if he had realised that the appearance of outward items may be misleading. He is fond of talking about the colour white as being something that is unmistakeably forced on our senses. What would he think if he knew that our perception of colour is not merely an outside object forcing itself on us, but the result of our eye and brain assigning the colours?
Still the objects are there, presumably, and we can detect night-time since the colours disappear in the dark. Perhaps that offers us assurance that there is something else beyond us.
The limit of our knowledge is a constant theme in Locke’s work. How do we know the essence of an object? Locke feels it is always beyond us. We have moved on since then, and can talk of molecules. Still what makes up a molecule? Or an electron? Perhaps there is a law of infinite regression here.
How do we will the body to move? That is another question asked by Locke. By sending electrical charges from the brain around the body, a modern scientist might say. But how do we will the brain to send those charges?
Unfortunately, like most philosophers, Locke seems to abandon his rigour when it comes to religion. You might think that philosophers would think there is something suspicious about the way that each one has to come up with their own justification for god’s existence, but no. As with most philosophers, Locke begins with the idea that god exists, and works backwards to prove it.
Indeed Locke seems quite happy to allow the idea of spirits, miracles and Noah’s Ark to slide by as established facts without examining them. He does draw the line at divine revelations to individuals that are believed without rational basis, so I suppose we should be glad of that.
Nonetheless he ultimately comes to an appeal to special pleading which says that life and matter must have a beginning, and lifeless matter cannot become life by any process, but apparently god lies outside these rules. If Locke uses a rock as a guide, then no, life will not emerge from a rock. If he chose to suggest complex chemical processes might gradually become life, his position might be harder to attain.
Ultimately most of our knowledge must be inferred by discrimination and judgement, but that poses problems for us. As Locke says, judgement is essentially only a guess. It may be an educated guess, but only that. If we know something for a fact, such as the malleability and ductility of gold (another favourite Locke example), we don’t consider that a judgement. In less certain areas, we are essentially guessing.
That should be a warning to us about judging others. What do we know of the right and wrong of other people’s behaviour, when our judgement is only a guess? In any case, we are subject to many kinds of fallibility in our understanding, examples of which Locke points out as he goes along.
The introduction to my book is a very long one, and written by someone who seems to have a low opinion of Locke’s ideas. To me, Locke's thoughts are no better or worse than those of the great philosophers. What I can say is that they make a fascinating read for anyone who has the time and interest to dedicate themselves to reading Locke.
Spinoza is relentlessly difficult, with every idea requiring the reader to back up and re-read several earlier passages, which were not that easy to grasp in the first place. Locke is thankfully within the grasp of someone outside the study of philosophy who is reading for pleasure, but he does pose challenges.
What makes Locke harder for the English reader? The ‘easier’ philosophers I have named did not write in English, so we have a translator on hand to choose language that is clearer to the reader. With Locke we have a range of technical terms that may have been better understood by scholars of his age, but which are less familiar now.
To be fair, Locke does explain most of his terms as he goes along, though a grasp in Latin might on a few occasions be useful. Nonetheless as a reader one would have to have a good grasp of the concepts from other sources, have a very good memory, take notes, or re-read earlier passages to have a full grasp of what Locke means on every occasion.
For the main part, Locke’s meaning can be understood however. For the patient reader, this work can be rewarding, which is not to say that we are obliged to agree with all that he says.
I will not attempt to fully explain Locke’s ideas, as there are many of them and they can be elusive to remember. I will only focus on a few points of interest that struck me while reading the book.
As with most philosophy, the ideas are so abstract as to be open to interpretation. You can be sure that there is an academic explaining why another academic misunderstood the meaning of most of the book. If Locke was brought back to life, which academic would he agree with, I wonder? Perhaps neither.
Locke is preoccupied with the notion of ideas, and this means that much of our perception comes from an understanding of what we interpret from outside. Hence he rejects the idea of innate knowledge. This creates the fascinating thought that much of what we understand about the world is down to what is inside our mind. How much of the outside world do we know?
Think about the passage of time. It exists insomuch as I receive external clues. I know from experience that by the time I finish this sentence, time will have passed. How else do I know that time passes except through the senses?
Excluding clocks for a moment, I may surmise time has passed through my sight. The sun and shadows have changed places. They were in one place and are now in another. I see past tense and present tense. I heard the children in the neighbouring playground and now I do not. I smelled cooking, and now I do not. Time is merely the progression of my senses.
How solid is my sense of place? Locke uses a fascinating example. We say that a chess piece is in the same place, but we judge this only by the spatial dimensions of the board. If someone carried the chessboard into a different room, we would still consider the piece in the same place – or if the board stayed in one room, but that room was the cabin of a ship that crossed the ocean. Even if the ship stays in port, the planet rotates and moves around the sun. It is emphatically not in the same place on a universal level yet in another sense it is.
Locke would have been even more confused if he had realised that the appearance of outward items may be misleading. He is fond of talking about the colour white as being something that is unmistakeably forced on our senses. What would he think if he knew that our perception of colour is not merely an outside object forcing itself on us, but the result of our eye and brain assigning the colours?
Still the objects are there, presumably, and we can detect night-time since the colours disappear in the dark. Perhaps that offers us assurance that there is something else beyond us.
The limit of our knowledge is a constant theme in Locke’s work. How do we know the essence of an object? Locke feels it is always beyond us. We have moved on since then, and can talk of molecules. Still what makes up a molecule? Or an electron? Perhaps there is a law of infinite regression here.
How do we will the body to move? That is another question asked by Locke. By sending electrical charges from the brain around the body, a modern scientist might say. But how do we will the brain to send those charges?
Unfortunately, like most philosophers, Locke seems to abandon his rigour when it comes to religion. You might think that philosophers would think there is something suspicious about the way that each one has to come up with their own justification for god’s existence, but no. As with most philosophers, Locke begins with the idea that god exists, and works backwards to prove it.
Indeed Locke seems quite happy to allow the idea of spirits, miracles and Noah’s Ark to slide by as established facts without examining them. He does draw the line at divine revelations to individuals that are believed without rational basis, so I suppose we should be glad of that.
Nonetheless he ultimately comes to an appeal to special pleading which says that life and matter must have a beginning, and lifeless matter cannot become life by any process, but apparently god lies outside these rules. If Locke uses a rock as a guide, then no, life will not emerge from a rock. If he chose to suggest complex chemical processes might gradually become life, his position might be harder to attain.
Ultimately most of our knowledge must be inferred by discrimination and judgement, but that poses problems for us. As Locke says, judgement is essentially only a guess. It may be an educated guess, but only that. If we know something for a fact, such as the malleability and ductility of gold (another favourite Locke example), we don’t consider that a judgement. In less certain areas, we are essentially guessing.
That should be a warning to us about judging others. What do we know of the right and wrong of other people’s behaviour, when our judgement is only a guess? In any case, we are subject to many kinds of fallibility in our understanding, examples of which Locke points out as he goes along.
The introduction to my book is a very long one, and written by someone who seems to have a low opinion of Locke’s ideas. To me, Locke's thoughts are no better or worse than those of the great philosophers. What I can say is that they make a fascinating read for anyone who has the time and interest to dedicate themselves to reading Locke.
February 19, 2023
“It is as insignificant to ask whether man’s will be free as to ask whether his sleep be swift, or his virtue square: liberty being as little applicable to the will as swiftness of motion is to sleep, or squareness to virtue” (225).
Locke was the first empiricist I ever read, and at the time this book fascinated me. It still does. Despite how obviously debatable Locke’s views are today, some of them I like to entertain out of sheer intrigue. Even still, I think other ideas hold up quite well. His views on space (place, distance, etc.) are very Aristotelian (162)—a tradition I don’t subscribe to. Other takes are quite thought-provoking: namely, identity being linked to a continuous consciousness (302). I think this really resonates with my own phenomenological perspective. I don’t know whether or not I agree, but tracing the implications of such ideas is fun in itself. And I understand just how limited this is to my experience.
What surprises me is how little attention this work receives compared to Locke’s better known Treatises on Government. In my opinion, his liberal views for that time were problematic at worst and trivial at best. And even though I don’t take too much of his epistemology seriously either, there is something genuinely compelling about reading this otherwise dry, systematic analysis. It will always have a special place in my reading history.
Locke was the first empiricist I ever read, and at the time this book fascinated me. It still does. Despite how obviously debatable Locke’s views are today, some of them I like to entertain out of sheer intrigue. Even still, I think other ideas hold up quite well. His views on space (place, distance, etc.) are very Aristotelian (162)—a tradition I don’t subscribe to. Other takes are quite thought-provoking: namely, identity being linked to a continuous consciousness (302). I think this really resonates with my own phenomenological perspective. I don’t know whether or not I agree, but tracing the implications of such ideas is fun in itself. And I understand just how limited this is to my experience.
What surprises me is how little attention this work receives compared to Locke’s better known Treatises on Government. In my opinion, his liberal views for that time were problematic at worst and trivial at best. And even though I don’t take too much of his epistemology seriously either, there is something genuinely compelling about reading this otherwise dry, systematic analysis. It will always have a special place in my reading history.
August 19, 2012
I don't know if I just wasn't in the right mindset when reading this or what but I think this book could have been condensed to perhaps a third of its current size? The redundancy was astounding and the word choice so flowery for something that was not only not poetry but not even pleasant to the reader. I just felt like the style and flow of the book was very circular in kind of a spiral factor sort of way. What he had to say on complex ideas was brilliant, and the way he approached the mind and our "innate ideas" was interesting but the language choice was for me not entirely pleasant or enjoyable. From a philosophical standpoint its a very important work, from a literary standpoint it bored me silly.
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