ABSTRACT
Locke's Essay is one of the mam works in the English philosophical tradition and one which had a wide-ranging influence in Europe. The historical context of the Essay is significant for it can be read as an attempt to give a theoretical account of social unity at a time when the society in which its author lived was recovering from a major set of cultural and political upheavals. Written during the period in which the bourgeoisie had negotiated a powerful position for itself within a new social order, the piece is marked by a concern with one of the fundamental underlying problems of the day: how to reconcile the liberty of the individual on the one hand with the demands of social cohesion on the other. Locke's theoretical account attempts to posit language as the location in which this conflict was to be resolved. The place where we are able at one and the same time to be absolutely individual while at the same time being necessarily social.
