Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Of The Conduct Of The Understanding
    Of The Conduct Of The Understanding
    Of The Conduct Of The Understanding
    Ebook125 pages1 hour

    Of The Conduct Of The Understanding

    By Read Books Ltd.

    3/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateFeb 20, 2015
    ISBN9781473371170
    Of The Conduct Of The Understanding

    Related to Of The Conduct Of The Understanding

    Related ebooks

    Philosophy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Varieties of Experience

      Sep 1, 2020

      THERE IS A PUZZLE at the heart of my academic work. I am an anthropologist, and among other things, I study the voices (or auditory hallucinations) of people in different countries who have schizophrenia. Their voices are clearly shaped by local cult

      4 min read

    • Article

      This Essentially Meaningless Conflict

      Sep 22, 2017

      MARILYNNE ROBINSON’S accomplishments are impressive by any standard: she has won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the National Humanities Medal, among other honors. But perhaps a better measure o

      8 min read

    • Article

      Great Minds Of The Stuart Era

      Jul 13, 2023

      Great Minds Of The Stuart Era
      3 min read

    • Article

      Critical Thinker

      Apr 16, 2023

      ANAXIMANDER AND THE NATURE OF SCIENCE, by Carlo Rovelli (Allen Lane, $40) Most scientists know what science is until someone asks them to define it, and then they don’t. It’s something to do with precision and accuracy, so you’d think there was a pre

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Brilliant Biography Of An Elusive Genius

      Jul 27, 2023

      IN MEDIEVAL SCHOLASTICISM, ARISTOTLE’S reputation was such that he was usually referred to simply as “the Philosopher”. Among the moderns, this book makes the case for treating Baruch Spinoza (1632–77) similarly. And if there is no philosopher but Sp

      6 min read

    • Article

      Thinking Makes It So: Ward Farnsworth Reframes the Stoics with Wit and Insight

      Aug 30, 2018

      Seneca’s suicide, at the order of the emperor Nero, presents a macabre scene. Previously adviser to the fickle, impetuous, paranoid, thin-skinned emperor, Seneca was erroneously implicated in an assassination plot and was ordered to take his own life

      9 min read

    • Article

      Herbert Spencer’s Principle of Equal Freedom: Is It Well Grounded?

      Sep 1, 2020

      During the mid-to late nineteenth century, Herbert Spencer was the most widely read philosopher in the world. A large part of his appeal was owing to his ambition of providing a complete and comprehensive account of human reality based on scientific

      38 min read

    • Article

      Scientists Have No Defense Against Awe

      Jun 12, 2016

      Eileen Pollack, author of The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys’ Club, hinted at the complexity of the relationship between science and the soul in a recent essay: “We need scientists who recognize the reality of this illusion we st

      5 min read

    • Article

      How To Live (like A Stoic)

      Jan 23, 2018

      How To Live (like A Stoic)
      4 min read

    • Article

      Uncertainty

      Jun 6, 2022

      Until philosophers are Kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to

      2 min read

    • Article

      Finding Real Answers

      Apr 27, 2023

      MAY IN WESTMINSTER SEES SPRING, blossom and the National Conservatism Conference. This movement has its origins in the work of, among others, the philosophers Yoram Hazony and, here in the UK, James Orr. It raises the most fundamental questions of ou

      1 min read

    • Article

      Electrons May Very Well Be Conscious

      Dec 30, 2020

      Happy Holidays. This week we are reprinting our top stories of 2020. This article first appeared online in our Facts So Romantic blog in May, 2020. In May, the cover of New Scientist ran the headline, “Is the Universe Conscious?” Mathematician and ph

      5 min read

    • Article

      On The Origin Of Species Had Been Banned?

      Nov 4, 2021

      John is a retired science research leader at the Natural History Museum, London in marine biodiversity, ecology and evolution, and regent’s lecturer at the University of California. His book, The Fall Of Roman Britain And Why We Speak English, will b

      5 min read

    • Article

      Leviathan

      Jun 16, 2022

      The Index Librorum Prohibitorum was a running list of books deemed heretical, blasphemous, or otherwise morally dangerous by the Roman Catholic Church. First published in the 16th century, the Index was ostensibly a response to the Reformation, but i

      1 min read

    • Article

      Freedom vs. Order

      Nov 5, 2020

      The author is the first deputy president of the Central Institute of Socialism Ancient Greek civilization is considered the cradle of modern Western civilizations, and Chinese civilization experienced crucial evolution around the same time during the

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Wisdom Of The Old Traditions

      Jun 24, 2021

      THE MODERN WORLD IS ON autopilot. We busy ourselves with frivolous entertainment — chain-dating included — and the fanatical pursuit of material gain. We slog away, neglecting family and friends, and burn ourselves out young. Rarely, if ever, do we s

      4 min read

    • Article

      Rebel Greek Philosophers

      Mar 23, 2023

      Rebel Greek Philosophers
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Charmed Life of Frank Wilczek

      Mar 17, 2021

      Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek’s new book, Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality, is both a way of thinking about the abundance that characterizes our exterior and interior worlds, and a kind of alternative to traditional religion, a way of being “born aga

      13 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Jul 14, 2022

      CONTACT US BY POST: PO BOX 1200, WHITSTABLE CT1 9RH, OR E-MAIL SIEVEKING@FORTEANTIMES.COM PLEASE PROVIDE US WITH YOUR POSTAL ADDRESS Simon Young’s account of the Wollaton Gnomes [FT417:29] brought to mind an account of “The Fairies of The Burn of Eat

      14 min read

    • Article

      The Best Panaceas for Heartaches

      Sep 22, 2017

      The Best Panaceas for Heartaches
      17 min read

    • Article

      What’s Philosophy For?

      Aug 10, 2020

      What’s Philosophy For?
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Writer Turned Mystic

      Jan 27, 2020

      The Writer Turned Mystic
      5 min read

    • Article

      Somebody’s Watching

      Jul 30, 2018

      Somebody’s Watching
      4 min read

    Reviews for Of The Conduct Of The Understanding

    3/5

    2 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Slingerbeweging, sterk van de hak op de tak, geen systematiekMaar wel een aantal interessante, moderne inzichten over het goed gebruiken van je verstand.
    • 3/5
      Slingerbeweging, sterk van de hak op de tak, geen systematiekMaar wel een aantal interessante, moderne inzichten over het goed gebruiken van je verstand.

    Book preview

    Of The Conduct Of The Understanding - Read Books Ltd.

    Of the Conduct of the Understanding

    by

    John Locke

    Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

    This book is copyright and may not be

    reproduced or copied in any way without

    the express permission of the publisher in writing

    British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

    A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

    Contents

    Of the Conduct of the Understanding

    John Locke

    Section 01. Introduction.

    Section 02. Parts.

    Section 03. Reasoning.

    Section 04. Of practice and habits.

    Section 05. Ideas.

    Section 06. Principles.

    Section 07. Mathematics.

    Section 08. Religion.

    Section 09. Ideas.

    Section 10. Prejudice.

    Section 11. Indifferency.

    Section 12. Examine.

    Section 13. Observation.

    Section 14. Bias.

    Section 15. Arguments.

    Section 16. Haste.

    Section 17. Desultory.

    Section 18. Smattering.

    Section 19. Universality.

    Section 20. Reading.

    Section 21. Intermediate principles.

    Section 22. Partiality.

    Section 23. Theology.

    Section 24. Partiality.

    Section 25. Haste.

    Section 26. Anticipation.

    Section 27. Resignation.

    Section 28. Practice.

    Section 29. Words.

    Section 30. Wandering.

    Section 31. Distinction.

    Section 32. Similes.

    Section 33. Assent.

    Section 34. Indifferency.

    Section 35.

    Section 36. Question.

    Section 37. Perseverance.

    Section 38. Presumption.

    Section 39. Despondency.

    Section 40. Analogy.

    Section 41. Association.

    Section 42. Fallacies.

    Section 43. Fundamental verities.

    Section 44. Bottoming.

    Section 45. Transferring of thoughts.

    John Locke

    John Locke was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and known as the ‘Father of Classical Liberalism.’ Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to ‘social contract theory.’ His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy, as well as influencing Voltaire, Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers as well as the American revolutionaries.

    John Locke was born on 29th August 1632, in a small thatched cottage in the village of Wrington, Somerset, England— about twelve miles outside of the city of Bristol. He was born to Puritan parents who sent the young boy to the prestigious Westminster School, under the sponsorship of Alexander Popham. After completing his studies there, Locke was admitted to Christ Church College, Oxford University, where he initially studied philosophy. As a student, Locke found the work of modern philosophers such as René Descartes much more interesting than the classical material taught at the university—and consequently was greatly irritated by the curriculum. Through a friend, Richard Lower, Locke was introduced to medicine and the experimental philosophy being pursued at other universities at the time; a passion which would never leave him.

    Locke was awarded a bachelor’s degree in 1656 and a master’s degree in 1658. He obtained a bachelor of medicine in 1674, having studied medicine extensively during his time at Oxford and worked with such noted scientists and thinkers as Robert Boyle, Thomas Willis, Robert Hooke and Richard Lower. In 1667, Locke became part of the Earl of Shaftesbury’s retinue and coordinated the advice of several physicians when his employer was struck with a liver infection. It was in Shaftesbury’s household, during 1671 that the meeting took place, described in the Epistle to the reader of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which inspired the whole essay. In this famous work, Locke outlined his theory of the mind and personal consciousness. His theory of the mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as Hume, Rousseau and Kant.

    Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that at birth, the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa, and contrary to Cartesian philosophy (based on pre-existing concepts), Locke maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception. Locke was also heavily involved in political philosophy, which he founded on ‘social contract theory.’ Unlike other thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbes— Locke believed that human nature is characterised by reason and tolerance. This was detailed in Two Treatises of Government (also inspired by the Earl of Shaftesbury and his Whig politics) which argued that in a natural state, where all people are equal and independent, everyone would have a natural right to defend his ‘life, health, liberty or possessions.’ Most scholars trace the phrase ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ in the American Declaration of Independence to Locke’s theory of rights.

    Locke later fled to the Netherlands, in 1683—under strong suspicion of involvement in the Rye House Plot (a plan to assassinate King Charles II). Though today there is little evidence to suggest his involvement, Locke stayed in Holland for five years. He was able to devote a great deal of time rewriting the Essay and composing the Letter on Toleration. The bulk of Locke’s publishing took place on his return from exile in 1688, with his aforementioned Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the Two Treatises of Civil Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration all appearing in quick succession. He later joined Lord and Lady Masham’s country estate in Essex, but suffered from variable health and chronic asthma attacks, yet nevertheless became an intellectual hero of the Whigs and debated with figures such as John Dryden and Isaac Newton. John Locke died on 28th October 1704, and is buried in the churchyard of the village of High Laver, east of Harlow in Essex. This was where he had lived, in the Masham household since 1691. He never married, nor had any children.

    Locke lived through some great events in English history; the English Restoration, the Great Plague of London and the Great Fire of London. Constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy were still in their infancy during Locke’s life, and his works went on to exert a massive influence on political philosophy and modern liberalism as we know it. Such was his influence on the Founding Fathers of the United States, that one passage from the Second Treatise is produced verbatim in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson wrote: ‘Bacon, Locke and Newton, I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical and Moral sciences.’ Today, most contemporary libertarians claim Locke as an influence and his profound insights into the world of epistemology and subjectivity are held to mark the beginning of modern Western conceptions of the self.

    Of the Conduct of the Understanding

    (1706)

    by John Locke

    Quid tam temerarium tamque indignum sapientis gravitate atque constantia quam aut falsum sentire aut quod not satis explorate perceptum sit et cognitum sine ulla dubitations defendere ?

    What is so reckless and so unworthy of the earnest and unrelenting endeavour of the philosopher than either to hold a false opinion or to maintain unhesitatingly what has been accepted as knowledge without adequate observation and enquiry ?

    Cicero, De Natura Deorum, Lib. I.

    Section 01. Introduction.

    The last resort a man has recourse to in the conduct of himself is his understanding ; for though we distinguish the faculties of the mind and give the supreme command to the will as to an agent, yet the truth is, the man which is the agent determines himself to this or that voluntary action upon some precedent knowledge or appearance of knowledge in the understanding. No man ever sets himself about anything but upon some view or other which serves him for a reason for what he does ; and whatsoever faculties he employs, the understanding, with such light as it has, well or ill informed, constantly leads ; and by that light, true or false, all his operative powers are directed. The will itself, how absolute and uncontrollable however it may be thought, never fails in its obedience to the dictates of the understanding. Temples have their sacred images, and we see what influence they have always had over a great part of mankind. But in truth the ideas and images in men’s minds are the invisible powers that constantly govern them, and to these they all universally pay a ready submission. It is therefore of the highest concernment that great care should be taken of the understanding to conduct it right in the search of knowledge and in the judgments it makes.

    The logic now in use has so long possessed the chair, as the only art taught in the schools for the direction of the mind in the study of the arts and sciences, that it would perhaps be thought an affectation of novelty to suspect that rules that have served the learned world these two or three thousand years and which without any complaint of defects the learned have rested in are not sufficient to guide the understanding. And I should not doubt but this attempt would be censured as vanity or presumption did not the great Lord Verulam’s authority justify it, who, not servilely thinking learning could not be advanced beyond what it was because for many ages it had not been, did not rest in the lazy approbation and applause of what was, because it was, but enlarged his mind to what might be. In his preface to his Novum Organum concerning logic he pronounces thus, Qui summas dialecticae partes tribuerunt ateque inde fidissima scientiis praesidia comparari putarunt, verissime et optime viderunt intellectum humanum sibi permissum merito suspectum esse debere. Verum infirmior omnino est malo medicina ; nec ipsa mali expers. Siquidem dialectica quae recepta est, licet ad civilia et artes quae in sermone et opinione positae

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1