An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Nov 13, 2025 5:49 AM

Author:John Locke,Roger Woolhouse,Roger Woolhouse,Roger Woolhouse

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, first published in 1690, John Locke (1632-1704) provides a complete account of how we acquire everyday, mathematical, natural scientific, religious and ethical knowledge. Rejecting the theory that some knowledge is innate in us, Locke argues that it derives from sense perceptions and experience, as analysed and developed by reason. While defending these central claims with vigorous common sense, Locke offers many incidental - and highly influential - reflections on space and time, meaning, free will and personal identity. The result is a powerful, pioneering work, which, together with Descartes's works, largely set the agenda for modern philosophy.

Reviews

A powerful study of lust, degradation and fantasy

—— Observer

It says something about the loneliness, about the craving for love, about the relation between master and slave and between white and black, and about man's earthly anguish and longing for salvation - in a way you do not easily escape from once it has gripped you

—— Andre Brink

The writing and mood are a remarkable piece of sustained intensity... One false word could have ruined this short tour de force completely. It never does

—— Daily Telegraph

An intellectual lyric which sings the absence of history, the electric lull before history breaks... As a piece of cultural psychoanalysis and diagnosis, it's glitteringly precise

—— Tom Paulin

A truly terrifying horror story with some interestingly radical underpinnings

—— I-D

Mr Greens' extraordinary power of plot-making, of suspense and of narration...moves continuously both in time and space and in emotion

—— The Times

His style is spare, that's what is so beautiful. His novels are genuine romans philosophies - novels illustrating ideas

—— Piers Paul Read

In a class by himself...the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man’s consciousness and anxiety

—— William Golding

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