[Very Short Introductions 084] • Locke

John Locke (1632-1704) one of the greatest English philosophers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, argued in his masterpiece, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, that our knowledge is founded in experience and reaches us principally through our senses; but its message has been curiously misunderstood. In this book John Dunn shows how Locke arrived at his theory of knowledge, and how his exposition of the liberal values of toleration and responsible government formed the backbone of enlightened European thought of the eighteenth century.

NB: originally published as: Locke, Oxford University Press 1984 (pb) reprinted 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1999, 89 pp.

Subsequently published as part of The British Empiricists, Oxford 1992, reprinted 1996; this work included J.O. Urmson on Berkeley and A.J. Ayer on Hume

Finally, reissued with new material as: Locke: A Very Short Introduction, (pb) Oxford University Press 2003, reprinted 2005, 2006