ABSTRACT
That John Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding is one of the philosophical classics is something nobody would deny, yet it is not easy to pinpoint precisely what is so special about it. Locke himself has been described as the founder of British empiricism, but labels of this sort are increasingly treated with suspicion, and some affinities to Descartes, usually regarded as the first of the great rationalist philosophers, have also been widely acknowledged. Students studying his philosophy will spend some time pondering on his advocacy of a distinction between primary and secondary qualities, but they will also be told that the doctrine had a long history and that, in Locke’s own day, it was central to the theorizing of Robert Boyle and the ‘new science’ generally. They may dwell too on his talk of a material substratum of qualities, but they may also be told that his thinking here was confused, and that at this point anyway he was strongly influenced by the scholastic philosophy he saw himself as trying to break away from. They are likely to be puzzled by his talk of ‘ideas’ as the Objects’ of thought-he tells us at one point that ‘the Mind…perceives nothing but its own Ideas’ (IV.iv.3)1-if only because, on the face of it, this poses the obvious problem that, as Berkeley was to stress, it seems to rule out the possibility of the very knowledge of the ‘real’ world that Locke clearly took it for granted we have. Locke himself confesses that the Essay is too long-‘the way it has been writ in, by catches, and many long intervals of Interruption, being apt to cause some Repetitions’ (Epistle to the Reader)—and his style makes it neither easy nor attractive to read; yet it richly rewards study. That this would be agreed both by those who have thought him guilty of fundamental errors throughout and by those who see him as belonging most decidedly to our age, and as characteristically judicious and sane, merely adds to the fascination of his work and encourages deeper study. This fascination is increased when we realize that in his own time he was often considered a dangerous and subversive thinker.
