summary of essay concerning human understanding

A Summary and Analysis of John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Published in 1689 though formally dated 1690, John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is one of the most important works of Enlightenment philosophy: indeed, in many ways, Locke paved the way for the (later) Enlightenment.

But what is it about An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , and Locke’s argument, which makes him so important?

You can read the whole of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding here (the text is taken from the original 1689 edition, which erroneously gave the title as An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding ), but we’ve tried to summarise the main points of Locke’s argument below, before proceeding to an analysis of his meaning – and his significance.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding : summary

Locke begins the Essay by arguing against the earlier rationalist idea (propounded by Descartes among others) that ideas can be innate within the human mind. For Locke, when babies are born their minds are empty: a notion which he famously calls the tabula rasa (literally, ‘blank slate’). Human minds are like a blank sheet of paper when we’re born, and everything that ends up in them is supplied by experience.

This signals Locke’s adherence to empiricism over rationalism: rather than believing knowledge and ideas about the world are in-built within us by nature, he believes that ideas are acquired from external stimuli, from us going out there into the world and being exposed to things.

Book II develops this idea in more detail. Experience is the bedrock of all human knowledge. We don’t inherently ‘know’ things: we learn about things as we experience them. This is a bit like a ‘nurture over nature’ view. There are two routes to knowledge via experience: sensation and reflection . Sensation is about coming into contact with the external world, whereas reflection comes from introspection, or from reflecting on what we have experienced.

Book III proposes an idea later developed in more depth by Immanuel Kant: that we cannot ever know true reality, only our perception of it. And our perception of reality is necessarily subjective: you don’t have precisely the same experience of the world as I do. It is also in Book III that Locke attempts to apply his empiricist approach to language.

Book IV appears, on the face of it, to contradict what Locke had set out to argue: namely, that empiricism rather than rationalism is the correct way to view knowledge. But he is actually arguing that, once we adopt an empirical mindset, we are then able to draw a rationalist conclusion of the world from that experience.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding : analysis

The twentieth-century philosopher Isaiah Berlin once suggested that John Locke effectively invented the idea of common sense in matters of philosophy, and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is certainly a powerful defence of the importance of an empiricist outlook, whereby we trust our own senses and experiences rather than simply assuming things to be innately true and unquestionable. Bertrand Russell made a similar claim about Locke’s book.

What this means is that Locke’s contribution to philosophy lies partly in his emphasis on the importance of experience in forming our ideas and values. Empiricism places the emphasis on our own sensory understanding of the world (what is now sometimes called ‘lived experience’, to offer a broader term).

This means that we trust our own senses rather than some innate knowledge we come pre-programmed with at birth. How do we know right from wrong? Locke would argue that we have to learn what ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ mean in order to know that.

Locke is, of course, right to emphasise the importance of experience in forming our knowledge of the world. But, in his determination to oppose the rationalist approach touted by Spinoza, Descartes, and others, does he take things too far in the other direction?

There are many moral philosophers who would argue that we do have an innate sense of right and wrong which is present at birth, even if we’re too young to act on it as soon as we leave the womb. Evolutionary biologists would argue that we wouldn’t have got as far as we have as a species without this in-built sense of morality, among other things.

There are other aspects of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding which critics have argued are too reductive. Although our own experience is obviously important in shaping our view of the world, few would go so far as Locke and argue that it’s the only significant factor.

For one thing, our experience of the world is just too different: a man living in a secluded monastery in Yorkshire is unlikely to arrive at the same ‘knowledge’ of the world as a midwife working in London. Locke grants that our experiences will necessarily be subjective, but where does that leave us when considering supposedly self-evident or universal truths, such as ‘killing is wrong’ or ‘do unto others as you would have them to do you’?

Nevertheless, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is an important book, not least because it was a milestone in philosophy and would act as the foundation for the work of many philosophers who came after Locke.

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54 pages • 1 hour read

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

The Epistle to the Reader and Book 1, Chapters 1-4

Book 2, Chapters 1-11

Book 2, Chapters 12-33

Book 3, Chapters 1-11

Book 4, Chapters 1-21

Key Figures

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Summary and Study Guide

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke is a study of how humans think, learn, and retain knowledge. Scholars often focus first on Locke’s philosophical treatises, but his work on epistemology complements and shapes his political thought. Born in 1632, the English philosopher ushered in the Age of Enlightenment and is considered one of the greatest Western philosophers in history. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , first published in 1690, explores the origin and nature of knowledge. Locke’s work is unique because it rejects the previously accepted concept of innate knowledge and advocates for reason and observation.

This guide references the 2014 Wordsworth Classics edition, which also includes Locke’s Second Treatise of Government .

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Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding details the 17th-century philosopher’s exploration of the origin and scope of human knowledge. Locke’s work challenges previously accepted ideas about innate knowledge—the idea that certain principles are present in the minds of all humans at birth. Innate knowledge is supported by the notion of universal consent , which Locke vehemently challenges. Instead, Locke asserts that the origin of knowledge is sensory experience. As humans grow up and accumulate experiences, intaking sensory details, they form ideas and principles about the world around them. They apply different processes of thinking to make sense of the ideas and to find patterns. By connecting and comparing ideas, humans form complex and abstract thoughts.

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Locke argues that observation and sensory experience are the first steps to an intellectual life. This empiricist approach emphasizes reason, solidifying Locke as a key figure in Enlightenment thinking, which championed logic and science. In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , Locke advocates for the concept of tabula rasa . This theory proposes that the mind is a blank slate that experience fills over time. The book contextualizes the following themes: The Tabula Rasa Theory , Empiricism and the Role of Experience , and The Spiritual Nature of Knowledge . These themes work together to form a full picture of Locke’s epistemological philosophy. The work includes a brief introduction and four books.

In Book 1, “Of Innate Notions,” Locke outlines his three goals: to discover the origin of ideas, to understand the nature of an idea, and to determine how to acquire knowledge when it seems limited. Locke challenges earlier schools of philosophy and the concept of innate knowledge. He denies the existence of universal consent, claiming that no singular principle exists on which all humans can agree. Instead, ideas form through experience. While asserting that God plays a vital role in the acquisition of knowledge, Locke denies that God imparts innate knowledge or that morality and the concept of God are divinely appointed to the mind before birth.

In Book 2, “Of Ideas,” Locke explores simple and complex ideas. He argues that two types of experience contribute to ideas: sensation and reflection . Sensory impressions reveal simple ideas. As humans gather sensory impressions and then compare and align ideas with other ideas, understanding becomes complex and nuanced. Locke asserts that the human mind is distinct from its animal counterparts because it can make judgments, discern, compare, compose, and form abstract thoughts. The ability to apply these thought processes, Locke suggests, reflects God’s nature; furthermore, God imparts pain and pleasure to help humans determine the difference between right and wrong.

Book 3, “Of Words,” breaks down abstract ideas and navigates the relationship between language and ideas. Producing names for every individual idea would present a formidable challenge. Therefore, classification provides the clarity and conciseness to bring order to ideas. Additionally, Locke explores the subject of essences, a concept widely accepted since Plato. Locke proposes that essences are general ideas about the things that humans observe. He distinguishes real essences from nominal essences, which represent the abstract. This book finishes with a critique of language. Locke reveals how the impreciseness of language complicates philosophy and science. He therefore challenges scientists and philosophers to avoid misuse of language. Those who use words inconsistently or without fully understanding the ideas they represent contribute to the confusion of language and ideas. Locke proposes several remedies, including using the same words for specific ideas and taking the opportunity to define meaning.

Book 4, “Of Knowledge and Probability,” addresses the nature of knowledge. Locke shows how finding the ways in which ideas relate and diverge contributes to an understanding of truth and probabilities. Sensory experience is the source of knowledge but can limit understanding. Humans are unable to know more things with certainty because of their own restrictions. However, they can understand the nature of existence. People recognize their own existence through intuition, the existence of God through perception, and the existence of others through sensory experience. Locke challenges the idea that a world outside the mind doesn’t exist, citing human experience as substantial evidence. In addition, he also shows the relationship between faith and reason, arguing that the two inform and complement one another.

Locke concludes by encouraging his readers to take up the banner of knowledge. Only by loving knowledge and actively and intentionally pursuing it will humans be able to inch closer to certainty and truth. Locke’s advocacy for thinking and contemplation reflects a history of epistemology that emphasizes the noble pursuit of understanding.

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Introduction, the foundation of knowledge: empiricism, primary and secondary qualities, the role of language in human understanding.

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• An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Summary

by John Locke

These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own.

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Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is an epistemology, or a study of the phenomenon of human knowledge and belief.

In Book I, he turns to the question of nature vs nurture, and he argues against the idea that a human is born with a set of innate ideas or beliefs. Rather, he argues that humans are born without ideas or thoughts, but that through experience, they construct their worldview one moment at a time.

In Book II, Locke outlines a division between passive and active learning, stating that beliefs that come into the mind from passive methods tend to be more simply, whereas complex ideas, especially abstract ideas like numbers and math, are acquired with active participation, with effort. He also outlines another division, a division between qualities, saying that primary qualities can be known as truly extant, where as secondary qualities are more like what the object represents to the subjective experience of the person. In other words, an apple is a red object, but to a human, it's food.

In Book III, Locke turns to the question of language and the way language shapes the mind. Locke describes the way words signify ideas, and he makes the claim that man is unique in his linguistic abilities. (Trying to specify what the essential difference between mankind and the animal kingdom was very popular during this season of philosophy).

In Book IV, the final chapter of the essay, the subject of the essay broadens to discuss the nature of knowledge, offering a true ontology along with his epistemology. By saying a thing can be known, Locke argues that they have made an ontological assumption, but it's not clear that humans have the objectivity to make those kinds of truth claims, so ultimately, human intuition is assumption. He ends the work outlining the various categories for the sciences.

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An Essay Concerning Human Understanding study guide contains a biography of John Locke, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, and a full summary and analysis.

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• Locke’s Proof Against Innate Mathematical Knowledge
• Locke, Blake, and Wordsworth: Understanding Experience
• On the Nature of Ideas and Human Understanding: Comparing Locke and Berkeley

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The first amendment, historic document, an essay concerning human understanding (1690).

John Locke | 1690

John Locke (1632-1704) was the author of A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690), Two Treatises on Government (1690), and other works. Prior to the American Revolution, Locke was best known in America for his epistemological work. Contrary to the Cartesian view of innate ideas, Locke claimed that the human mind is a tabula rasa and that knowledge is accessible to us through sense perception and experience. Of the significance of Locke’s contribution to the theory of knowledge, James Madison compared him to Sir Isaac Newton’s discoveries in natural science: Both established “immortal systems, the one [Newton] in matter, the other [Locke] in mind” ("Spirit of Governments," 1791). 

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CHAP. II.: No Innate Principles in the Mind.

The way shewn how we come by any knowledge, sufficient to prove it not innate.

§ 1. It is an established opinion amongst some men, that there are in the understanding certain innate principles; some primary notions, ϰοιναὶ ἔννοιαι, characters, as it were, stamped upon the mind of man, which the soul receives in its very first being; and brings into the world with it. It would be sufficient to convince unprejudiced readers of the falseness of this supposition, if I should only shew (as I hope I shall in the following parts of this discourse) how men, barely by the use of their natural faculties, may attain to all the knowledge they have, without the help of any innate impressions; and may arrive at certainty, without any such original notions or principles. For I imagine any one will easily grant, that it would be impertinent to suppose, the ideas of colours innate in a creature, to whom God hath given sight, and a power to receive them by the eyes, from external objects: and no less unreasonable would it be to attribute several truths to the impressions of nature, and innate characters, when we may observe in ourselves faculties, fit to attain as easy and certain knowledge of them, as if they were originally imprinted on the mind. . . .

CHAP. I: Of Idea in general, and their Original.

§ 2. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas: —How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE. In that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either, about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, do spring. . . .

CHAP. XI.: Of Discerning, and other Operations of the Mind.

§ 17. I pretend not to teach, but to inquire, and therefore cannot but confess here again, that external and internal sensation are the only passages that I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this dark room: for methinks the understanding is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little opening left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without: would the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them. . . .

CHAP. XXI.: Of Power.

§ 51. As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness, so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty. The stronger ties we have to an unalterable pursuit of happiness in general, which is our greatest good, and which, as such, our desires always follow, the more are we free from any necessary determination of our will to any particular action, and from a necessary compliance with our desire, set upon any particular, and then appearing preferable good, till we have duly examined, whether it has a tendency to, or be inconsistent with our real happiness: and therefore till we are as much informed upon this inquiry, as the weight of the matter, and the nature of the case demands; we are, by the necessity of preferring and pursuing true happiness as our greatest good, obliged to suspend the satisfaction of our desires in particular cases.

§ 52. This is the hinge on which turns the liberty of intellectual beings, in their constant endeavours after and a steady prosecution of true felicity, that they can suspend this prosecution in particular cases, till they have looked before them, and informed themselves whether that particular thing, which is then proposed or desired, lie in the way to their main end, and make a real part of that which is their greatest good: for the inclination and tendency of their nature to happiness is an obligation and motive to them, to take care not to mistake or miss it; and so necessarily puts them upon caution, deliberation, and wariness, in the direction of their particular actions, which are the means to obtain it. Whatever necessity determines to the pursuit of real bliss, the same necessity with the same force establishes suspense, deliberation, and scrutiny of each successive desire, whether the satisfaction of it does not interfere with our true happiness, and mislead us from it. This, as seems to me, is the great privilege of finite intellectual beings; and I desire it may be well considered, whether the great inlet and exercise of all the liberty men have, are capable of, or can be useful to them, and that whereon depends the turn of their actions, does not lie in this, that they can suspend their desires, and stop them from determining their wills to any action, till they have duly and fairly examined the good and evil of it, as far forth as the weight of the thing requires.

 § 2. . . . Sense and intuition reach but a very little way. The greatest part of our knowledge depends upon deductions and intermediate ideas: and in those cases, where we are fain to substitute assent instead of knowledge, and take propositions for true, without being certain they are so, we have need to find out, examine, and compare the grounds of their probability. In both these cases, the faculty which finds out the means, and rightly applies them to discover certainty in the one, and probability in the other, is that which we call reason. For as reason perceives the necessary and indubitable connexion of all the ideas or proofs one to another, in each step of any demonstration that produces knowledge: so it likewise perceives the probable connexion of all the ideas or proofs one to another, in every step of a discourse, to which it will think assent due. This is the lowest degree of that which can be truly called reason. . . .

§ 23. By what has been before said of reason, we may be able to make some guess at the distinction of things, into those that are according to, above, and contrary to reason. 1. According to reason are such propositions, whose truth we can discover by examining and tracing those ideas we have from sensation and reflection; and by natural deduction find to be true or probable. 2. Above reason are such propositions, whose truth or probability we cannot by reason derive from those principles. 3. Contrary to reason are such propositions, as are inconsistent with, or irreconcileable to, our clear and distinct ideas. Thus the existence of one God is according to reason; the existence of more than one God, contrary to reason; the resurrection of the dead, above reason. . . .

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