Understanding John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (PDF)

John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding is one of his major works. Published 1689, it has been one of the most influential books of the last three centuries. The importance of Locke's Essay lies in the fact that it is the first presentation of 'empiricist' philosophy about mind and cognition: a theory of knowledge and belief based on the principle that everything in our mind gets there by experience. A first principle of his empiricist philosophy of mind is often described by the notion of a 'Tabula Rasa', or a blank piece of paper: at birth, our minds arrive into this world completely empty, like a pure white sheet of paper, and it is only as experience 'writes' on this paper that ideas and thoughts start to form. The Essay is not just a work on a single topic. It is wide-ranged, covering such diverse topics as philosophy of language, philosophy of logic, moral philosophy, and philosophy of religion in addition to the better known philosophy of mind and cognition. To write the Essay Locke needed a period of 18 years. In the 'Epistle to the Reader' Locke writes that the germ of the essay sprang from a conversation with friends. How he outlines his thoughts this work will find out and it will try to help to understand it. First I will take a closer look on the historical context of the Essay and then give a brief summary of it, but the main aim is giving an idea what the Essay is about and what we can get out of it. [...]