Essay concerning human understanding.
During his time at Exeter House, John Locke maintained close relationships with his friends; the start of his most important philosophical work, "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (1689), began during a meeting with friends in his rooms, likely around February 1671. At this meeting, the group decided to discuss matters of morality and revealed religion-knowledge of God obtained through revelation.
Even as he and others began shaping that document, Madison gleaned information on law and government from these histories and from the works he’d read since boyhood. While Locke's social connections were toward the Protestant circle, his reading material mainly consisted of works by French Catholic philosophers; however, the main focus of his journals during this period was his medical interests, and he observed and noted the poverty of the local population, drawing comparisons with conditions in England and the expenditures of the French king, Louis XIV, on the Palace of Versailles. Although Locke occasionally got to know about philosophical questions and added notes to his journal, the primary emphasis during this time was on his observations and reflections related to medicine; some of these philosophical notes can be found in his later work, "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding." So, it also jumped out at me, when I was reading Leibniz’s New Essays Concerning Human Understanding and he referenced a popular German lie told to children about where babies come from (the title of this post comes from the post-index “List of Examples, Illustrations and Anecdotes”, which alternates between fairly boring and highly intriguing/evocative in its brief descriptions of the various examples, illustrations and anecdotes): Two key principles in these concepts stood out: 1st Locke strongly believed in a "law of nature," a moral law inherent in the natural order that determines the rightness or wrongness of human actions; 2nd, he believed in the idea of empiricism, which means that all knowledge, including moral understanding, comes from experience and is not something people are born with; these principles became base for his later philosophical works, mainly in the realms of political theory and epistemology. Before getting the details of how political society is created, Locke spent a lot of time describing something very important to his ideas: property. According to Locke, each person owns their own body; it is their property, and others cannot use it without permission. But, through labor, people can acquire property beyond their bodies. When someone works on something-like turning an empty field into crops or a bunch of wood into a house-the product of that work, like the crops or the house, becomes their property. Locke's thinking was a forerunner to the labor theory of value, which later economists like David Ricardo and Karl Marx talked about in the 19th century (also known as classical economics). The printed books in Locke's library reflected his various intellectual interests as well as his movements at different stages of his life. Locke travelled extensively in France and the Netherlands during the 1670s and 1680s, and during this time he acquired many books from the continent. Only half of the books in Locke's library were printed in England, while close to 40% came from France and the Netherlands. These books cover a wide range of subjects. According to John Harrison and Peter Laslett, the largest genres in Locke's library were (23.8% of books), medicine (11.1%), politics and law (10.7%), and classical literature (10.1%). The Bodleian library currently holds more than 800 of the books from Locke's library. These include Locke's copies of works by several of the most influential figures of the seventeenth century, including
Who is the author of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding?
According to Locke, everyone has a right to the things they create through their work, enough to meet their basic needs; however, in the natural state, Locke believed it is not okay to gather more than you need and keep the extra for yourself, and he thought people should share their extra with those who have less. Locke said that God gave the world to everyone to use together for the best benefit of life and convenience. When it comes to money, Locke pointed out that its introduction changed how society works a lot as money, unlike physical things, does not have value on its own; it only has value because people agree that it does. So, the idea of using money to trade goods and services is something people came up with over time.
John Locke is the author of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
With respect to the grounds and content of natural law, Locke is notcompletely clear. On the one hand, there are many instances where hemakes statements that sound voluntarist to the effect that lawrequires a legislator with authority (Essay 1.3.6, 4.10.7).Locke also repeatedly insists in the Essays on the Law ofNature that created beings have an obligation to obey theircreator (Political Essays 116–120). On the other handthere are statements that seem to imply an external moral standard towhich God must conform (Two Treatises 2.195; Works7:6). Locke clearly wants to avoid the implication that the content ofnatural law is arbitrary. Several solutions have been proposed. Onesolution suggested by Herzog (1985) makes Locke an intellectualist bygrounding our obligation to obey God on a prior duty of gratitude thatexists independent of God. A second option, suggested by Simmons(1992), is simply to take Locke as a voluntarist since that is wherethe preponderance of his statements point. A third option, suggestedby Tuckness (1999) (and implied by Grant 1987 and affirmed byIsraelson 2013), is to treat the question of voluntarism as having twodifferent parts, grounds and content. On this view, Locke was indeed avoluntarist with respect to the question “why should we obey thelaw of nature?” Locke thought that reason, apart from the willof a superior, could only be advisory. With respect to content, divinereason and human reason must be sufficiently analogous that humanbeings can reason about what God likely wills. Locke takes it forgranted that since God created us with reason in order to followGod’s will, human reason and divine reason are sufficientlysimilar that natural law will not seem arbitrary to us.
How many chapters are in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding?
In addition to books owned by Locke, the Bodleian also possesses more than 100 related to Locke or written in his hand. Like the books in Locke's library, these manuscripts display a range of interests and provide different windows into Locke's activity and relationships. Several of the manuscripts include letters to and from acquaintances like Peter King (MS Locke b. 6) and (MS Locke c. 45). MS Locke f. 1–10 contain Locke's journals for most years between 1675 and 1704. Some of the most significant manuscripts include early drafts of Locke's writings, such as his (MS Locke f. 26). The Bodleian also holds a copy of Robert Boyle's with corrections and notes Locke made while preparing Boyle's work for posthumous publication (MS Locke c. 37 ). Other manuscripts contain unpublished works. Among others, MS. Locke e. 18 includes some of Locke's thoughts on the , which Locke sent to his friend Edward Clarke but never published.