An Essay Concerning Human Understanding - Project Gutenberg
Locke remained in for more than five years (1683–89). While there he made new and important friends and associated with other exiles from . He also wrote his first , published anonymously in Latin in 1689, and completed An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
A dominant theme of the Essay is the question with which the original discussion in Exeter House began: What is the capacity of the human for understanding and ? In his prefatory chapter, Locke explains that the Essay is not offered as a contribution to knowledge itself but as a means of clearing away some of the rubbish that stands in the way of knowledge. He had in mind not only the and their followers but also some of his older contemporaries. The Scholastics—those who took Aristotle and his commentators to be the source of all philosophical knowledge and who still dominated teaching in universities throughout Europe—were guilty of introducing technical terms into (such as substantial form, vegetative soul, abhorrence of a vacuum, and intentional species) that upon examination had no clear sense—or, more often, no sense at all. Locke saw the Scholastics as an enemy that had to be defeated before his own account of could be widely accepted, something about which he was entirely right.
Hume provides a critical response to “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” by challenging some of Locke’s ideas on perception, causation, and the foundation of knowledge.
The Works, vol. 1 An Essay concerning Human Understanding Part 1
Peaden offers a feminist reading of Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and discusses how it planted seeds for modern feminism(s) while also examining how it reified a discursive system which has been used to oppress women.
The opening of the essay introduces the central theme, where Locke emphasizes the importance of examining human understanding itself as a means to attain knowledge.
Both works explore the nature of human knowledge, but Kant’s treatise delves into rationalism and empiricism, offering a comprehensive examination of the limits and possibilities of human reason compared to Locke’s emphasis on the origins and scope of human understanding.
This work provides an intellectual context for Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, with Descartes discussing ideas as innate, while Locke explores ideas as acquired.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding - Hackett Publishing
This discontinued way of writing may have occasioned, besides others, twocontrary faults, viz., that too little and too much may be said in it. If thoufindest anything wanting, I shall be glad that what I have written gives theeany desire that I should have gone further. If it seems too much to thee, thoumust blame the subject; for when I put pen to paper, I thought all I shouldhave to say on this matter would have been contained in one sheet of paper; butthe further I went the larger prospect I had; new discoveries led me still on,and so it grew insensibly to the bulk it now appears in. I will not deny, butpossibly it might be reduced to a narrower compass than it is, and that someparts of it might be contracted, the way it has been writ in, by catches, andmany long intervals of interruption, being apt to cause some repetitions. Butto confess the truth, I am now too lazy, or too busy, to make it shorter. I amnot ignorant how little I herein consult my own reputation, when I knowinglylet it go with a fault, so apt to disgust the most judicious, who are alwaysthe nicest readers. But they who know sloth is apt to content itself with anyexcuse, will pardon me if mine has prevailed on me, where I think I have a verygood one. I will not therefore allege in my defence, that the same notion,having different respects, may be convenient or necessary to prove orillustrate several parts of the same discourse, and that so it has happened inmany parts of this: but waiving that, I shall frankly avow that I havesometimes dwelt long upon the same argument, and expressed it different ways,with a quite different design. I pretend not to publish this Essay for theinformation of men of large thoughts and quick apprehensions; to such mastersof knowledge I profess myself a scholar, and therefore warn them beforehand notto expect anything here, but what, being spun out of my own coarse thoughts, isfitted to men of my own size, to whom, perhaps, it will not be unacceptablethat I have taken some pains to make plain and familiar to their thoughts sometruths which established prejudice, or the abstractedness of the ideasthemselves, might render difficult. Some objects had need be turned on everyside; and when the notion is new, as I confess some of these are to me; or outof the ordinary road, as I suspect they will appear to others, it is not onesimple view of it that will gain it admittance into every understanding, or fixit there with a clear and lasting impression. There are few, I believe, whohave not observed in themselves or others, that what in one way of proposingwas very obscure, another way of expressing it has made very clear andintelligible; though afterwards the mind found little difference in thephrases, and wondered why one failed to be understood more than the other. Buteverything does not hit alike upon every man’s imagination. We have ourunderstandings no less different than our palates; and he that thinks the sametruth shall be equally relished by every one in the same dress, may as wellhope to feast every one with the same sort of cookery: the meat may be thesame, and the nourishment good, yet every one not be able to receive it withthat seasoning; and it must be dressed another way, if you will have it go downwith some, even of strong constitutions. The truth is, those who advised me topublish it, advised me, for this reason, to publish it as it is: and since Ihave been brought to let it go abroad, I desire it should be understood bywhoever gives himself the pains to read it. I have so little affection to be inprint, that if I were not flattered this Essay might be of some use to others,as I think it has been to me, I should have confined it to the view of somefriends, who gave the first occasion to it. My appearing therefore in printbeing on purpose to be as useful as I may, I think it necessary to make what Ihave to say as easy and intelligible to all sorts of readers as I can. And Ihad much rather the speculative and quick-sighted should complain of my beingin some parts tedious, than that any one, not accustomed to abstractspeculations, or prepossessed with different notions, should mistake or notcomprehend my meaning.
[PDF] An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Book I: Innate Notions
It will possibly be censured as a great piece of vanity or insolence in me, topretend to instruct this our knowing age; it amounting to little less, when Iown, that I publish this Essay with hopes it may be useful to others. But, ifit may be permitted to speak freely of those who with a feigned modesty condemnas useless what they themselves write, methinks it savours much more of vanityor insolence to publish a book for any other end; and he fails very much ofthat respect he owes the public, who prints, and consequently expects menshould read, that wherein he intends not they should meet with anything of useto themselves or others: and should nothing else be found allowable in thisTreatise, yet my design will not cease to be so; and the goodness of myintention ought to be some excuse for the worthlessness of my present. It isthat chiefly which secures me from the fear of censure, which I expect not toescape more than better writers. Men’s principles, notions, and relishes are sodifferent, that it is hard to find a book which pleases or displeases all men.I acknowledge the age we live in is not the least knowing, and therefore notthe most easy to be satisfied. If I have not the good luck to please, yetnobody ought to be offended with me. I plainly tell all my readers, except halfa dozen, this Treatise was not at first intended for them; and therefore theyneed not be at the trouble to be of that number. But yet if any one thinks fitto be angry and rail at it, he may do it securely, for I shall find some betterway of spending my time than in such kind of conversation. I shall always havethe satisfaction to have aimed sincerely at truth and usefulness, though in oneof the meanest ways. The commonwealth of learning is not at this time withoutmaster-builders, whose mighty designs, in advancing the sciences, will leavelasting monuments to the admiration of posterity: but every one must not hopeto be a Boyle or a Sydenham; and in an age that produces such masters as thegreat Huygenius and the incomparable Mr. Newton, with some others of thatstrain, it is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearingthe ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way toknowledge;—which certainly had been very much more advanced in the world,if the endeavours of ingenious and industrious men had not been much cumberedwith the learned but frivolous use of uncouth, affected, or unintelligibleterms, introduced into the sciences, and there made an art of, to that degreethat Philosophy, which is nothing but the true knowledge of things, was thoughtunfit or incapable to be brought into well-bred company and politeconversation. Vague and insignificant forms of speech, and abuse of language,have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard and misapplied words,with little or no meaning, have, by prescription, such a right to be mistakenfor deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy topersuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but thecovers of ignorance, and hindrance of true knowledge. To break in upon thesanctuary of vanity and ignorance will be, I suppose, some service to humanunderstanding; though so few are apt to think they deceive or are deceived inthe use of words; or that the language of the sect they are of has any faultsin it which ought to be examined or corrected, that I hope I shall be pardonedif I have in the Third Book dwelt long on this subject, and endeavoured to makeit so plain, that neither the inveterateness of the mischief, nor theprevalency of the fashion, shall be any excuse for those who will not take careabout the meaning of their own words, and will not suffer the significancy oftheir expressions to be inquired into.