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Essay Concerning Human Knowledge (1689)
Essay Concerning Human Understanding was published in 1689—at a time of intense political and philosophical unrest in Britain. Locke’s essay was the first systematic presentation of an empiricist philosophy of mind and cognition: a theory of knowledge and belief based wholly on the principle that everything in our mind gets there by way of experience. Locke’s meticulous, but rational empiricism offered an alternative and enticing view of the world and our access to it from the dominant warring philosophical camps of the time—the Aristotelian Scholastics and the upstart Cartesian rationalists.
Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government (1690)
A cornerstone of Western political philosophy, Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government is an essay published in 1690. Subtitled An Essay Concerning the True Original Extent and End of Civil Government, the essay was published in support of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The concept of the modern liberal-democratic state is rooted in the work. Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Governmentserves as a counterargument to Thomas Hobbes’s pro-absolutist government Leviathan (1651) and helped to inspire the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)
Some Thoughts Concerning Education was written by and published in 1693. When asked by a friend for advice on how best to raise a son, Locke responded with a series of letters that became the basis for the published work. Because it started as a series of letters, it doesn’t present systematic theory of education—although it does show a surprising amount of insight into child psychology. “Education” here primarily means the moral education of young men. The aim of education, in Locke’s view, is to give a man rational control over his passions and desires.
