ORIGINS OF MODERNITY

philosophy

Locke, John (1632-1704)
An essay concerning human understanding.
4th edition
London : Printed for Awnsham and John Churchil, and Samuel Manship, 1700.

John Locke (1632-1704) was a philosopher, physician and civil servant who rose to prominence in the 1690s with a series of publications in philosophy and theology. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is his most important work and exerted a powerful influence on the likes of George Berkeley and David Hume in Britain and Voltaire and the French philosophers. Indeed it has come to be regarded as one of the seminal influences on eighteenth-century thought. In his Essay Locke dismisses the doctrine of innate principles and develops the view that all knowledge is derived by experience; via the senses or via reflection. This fourth edition is the last lifetime edition of the Essay and is that used by Peter Nidditch in his definitive edition in the Clarendon Works of John Locke, OUP 1975.