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An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1

John Locke

Book Overview: 

John Locke's essays on human understanding answers the question “What gives rise to ideas in our minds?”. In the first book Locke refutes the notion of innate ideas and argues against a number of propositions that rationalists offer as universally accepted truth. In the second book Locke elaborates the role played by sensation, reflection, perception and retention in giving rise to simple ideas. Then he elaborates on how different modes, substances and relations of simple ideas (of the same kind) give rise to complex ideas v.g. space, time, infinity etc. Finally he discusses complex ideas of mixed modes which arise from a combination of simple ideas of different kinds v.g. identity and diversity, cause and effect, etc.

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Book Excerpt: 
. . .se should characters be graven on the mind by the finger of God, which are not clearer there than those which are afterwards introduced, or cannot be distinguished from them? If any one thinks there are such innate ideas and propositions, which by their clearness and usefulness are distinguishable from all that is adventitious in the mind and acquired, it will not be a hard matter for him to tell us WHICH THEY ARE; and then every one will be a fit judge whether they be so or no. Since if there be such innate ideas and impressions, plainly different from all other perceptions and knowledge, every one will find it true in himself. Of the evidence of these supposed innate maxims, I have spoken already: of their usefulness I shall have occasion to speak more hereafter.

23. Difference of Men's Discoveries depends upon the different Application of their Faculties.

To conclude: some ideas forwardly offer themselves to all men's unders. . . Read More

Community Reviews

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 fr

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

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

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 play

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 a

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 be

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