Can I read An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Great Books in Philosophy) on EtoBox?

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Great Books in Philosophy) by John Locke is a philosophy book available to read on EtoBox.

What is An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Great Books in Philosophy) about?

It has been many years since I pondered and repondered over this volume. Locke is an important figure in the history of Western Philosophy. He is really the founding figure of the great empirical tradition which would go through Hume all the way up to the various analytical philosophies of the twentieth century. He is also a major political thinker whose importance for the great founders of America cannot be overestimated. Locke talks about the mind as tabula rasa as a blank slate which experience writes upon, and reflection compounds into ' complex ideas' The simple ideas come through experience. This total rejection of inherent ideas, and inherent structures of the mind is something which a lot of modern linguistic theory rejects. As to the way we apprehend experience immediately I think here too Locke is in some way contradicted by modern psychological theory which would speak in some sense about our structuring that experience through our own participation in perception. In other words Locke's model of perception is I believe a far too ' passive one'. I cannot however judge, as I do not know enough about the subject whether or not Lockean categories in these areas of percept

Who reads An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Great Books in Philosophy)?

Author

John Locke

Publisher

Prometheus Books, Publishers

Published

1995

Language

EN

ISBN

9780879759179

Category

philosophy

Subjects

Christian, Fiction, Western

Rating

3.82 / 5 (12 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-13