This edition carries Notes and an Introduction by Mark G. Spencer of Brock University, Ontario.
Few English writers of the seventeenth century left as deep a mark as John Locke (1632-1704). His Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690) and Two Treatises of Government (1690) bore heavily on the history of ideas throughout the eighteenth century, and Locke’s work is rightly counted among the foundations of the Age of Enlightenment. The Essay and the Second Treatise — by far the more influential of the Two Treatises — found a wide readership among Locke’s contemporaries and those who followed close behind them: not only philosophers, historians and political theorists but community and political leaders, engaged laypersons, and others keen to take part in the era’s expanding print culture. The epistemological claim that the mind begins as a blank slate, waiting to be filled, sat alongside the political claim that human beings are born free and equal, with the right to create and direct the governments under which they live. Locke remains a remarkably accessible author today, offering as much food for thought to university professors and their students as to the general reader simply looking to enjoy the classics of world literature.
ISBN 13: 9781840227321
Author: John Locke
