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An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

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An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is one of John Locke's two most famous works, the other being his Second Treatise on Civil Government. First appearing in 1689, the essay concerns the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. He describes the mind at birth as a blank slate (tabula rasa), filled later through experience. The essay was one of the principal sources of empiricism in modern philosophy, and influenced many enlightenment philosophers, such as David Hume and Bishop Berkeley.

Locke drafted the Essay over a period of about 18 years. In the "Epistle to the Reader," Locke writes that the germ of the essay sprang from a conversation with friends. At a point where this discourse seemed stuck, Locke remarked that it could not proceed without a close examination of "our own abilities and...what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with." This conversation occurred around 1671, and in that year Locke formulated two drafts of the Essay. He would continue to work on it for nearly two decades, clarifying and expanding his basic position. Though dated 1693, the book actually first appeared in 1689.




Locke's main thesis is that the mind of a newborn is a blank slate and that all ideas are developed from experience. Book I of the Essay is devoted to an attack on the doctrine of innate ideas. Locke allowed that some ideas are in the mind from an early age, but argued that such ideas are furnished by the senses starting at birth: for instance, differences between colors or tastes. If we have a universal understanding of a concept like sweetness, it is not because this is an innate idea, but because we are all exposed to sweet tastes at an early age.

Along these lines, Locke also argued that people have no innate principles. Locke contended that innate principles would rely upon innate ideas, which do not exist. For instance, we cannot have an innate sense that God should be worshipped, when we cannot even agree on a conception of God or whether God exists at all.




The close of Book II suggests that Locke discovered a close relationship between words and ideas that prompted him to include a book on language before moving on to discuss knowledge. Book III addresses definitions, names, and the imperfections and abuses of verbal communication. According to Locke's theory of language, the human mind does not have the capacity to grant a name to every single thing it sees, such as individual crows or grains of sand. Man therefore groups ideas into 'general terms', based on the distinguishing features of each individual thing. All cows, for example, have the properties of 'eating grass', 'being milked' etc, and are therefore processed as one large group. When an object or idea has a personal connection to an individual, only then does the need arise for particular names. Hence - to put it crudely - when a specific cow is important to a person, it is brought out of the realm of general ideas, and given a proper name, such as 'Daisy'.

When looking at language, Locke posed that there were two primary uses for language: to identify and store our thoughts, and to communicate those thoughts verbally. Looking further at communication, Locke distiguished between two possible uses of verbal communication. Civil communication related to everyday necessary communication to conduct daily affairs; philosophical communication, he said "may serve to convey the precise notions of things, and to express in general propositions certain and undoubted truths, which the mind may rest upon and be satisfied with in its search after true knowledge."

Book III also included Locke's thoughts on some of the major problems in defining terms. Some them include when "the ideas they stand for are very complex, and made up of a great number of ideas put together; where the ideas they stand for have no certain connection to nature; when the signification of the word is referred to a standard, which standard is not easy to be known; where the signification of the word and the real essence of the thing are not exactly the same."

Locke also posited some situations in which language is abused. After stating that the three ends of language were "to convey our ideas, to do it with quickness, and to convey the knowledge of things," Locke noted that words fail when "[they] are used without any ideas, when complex ideas are without names annexed to them, when the same sign is not put for the same idea, when words are diverted from their common use, and when they are names of fantastical imaginations." In connecting the ends and the abuses, the implication seems to be that failure to heed the ends of communication can lead to the abuses mentioned, among others. He sums up the section with this passage: "He that hath names without ideas, wants meaning in his words, and speaks only empty sounds. He that hath complex ideas without names for them, wants liberty and dispatch in his expressions, and is necessitated to use periphrases. He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either be not minded or not understood. He that applies his names to ideas different from their common use, wants propriety in his language, and speaks gibberish. And he that hath the ideas of substances disagreeing with the real existence of things, so far wants the materials of true knolwedge in his understanding, and hath instead thereof chimeras."



Reaction, response, and influenceEdit

Locke's empiricist viewpoint was sharply criticized by rationalists. In 1704 Gottfried Leibniz wrote a rationalist response to Locke's work in the form of a chapter-by-chapter rebuttal, the Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain ("New Essays on Human Understanding"). At the same time, Locke's work provided crucial groundwork for the work of future empiricists such as David Hume.


  • Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York: Macmillan, 1967. s.v. "Locke, John".

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