John Locke, the foremost English philosopher of the early period of modern post-Cartesian philosophy, published in 1689 his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In this paper I shall look a little at the life of John Locke and the Essay¾ the work for which he is best known.
             Not a professional philosopher, most of John Locke's time and energy was devoted to public affairs and so he spent many years on and off on a small number of comprehensive and systematic studies. With a desire to 'remove some of the rubbish that was in the way to knowledge', Locke embarked on a relatively unambitious program- in a metaphysical sense- because he didn't depend as much as rationalists did upon the attainment of metaphysical knowledge. Although he wrote on various branches of philosophy (as well as theology, medicine and education) his interest primarily was epistemology. The initial impulse for the line of thought that culminated in the Essay occurred in early 1671. Locke was having a discussion with some friends on matters of morality and revealed religion. In the Epistle to the reader at the beginning of the Essay he describes the discussants. '[They] found themselves quickly at a stand by the difficulties that arose on every side. After we had awhile puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer to a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course, and that before we set ourselves upon enquiries of that nature it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were or were not fitted to deal with.'#
             Locke suggests that the kind of inquiry he undertakes in his Essay has the two-fold justification that it is both pleasant and useful. Pleasant because it results ultimately in the attainment of knowledge and useful because he hoped it would go some way in putting an end to what he regarded as idle, empty speculation ab...