[Revised entry by Patricia Sheridan on October 20, 2026.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Locke’s greatest philosophical work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, is generally seen as a defining work of seventeenth-century empiricist epistemology and metaphysics. The moral philosophy developed in this work is rarely taken up for critical analysis, considered by many scholars of Locke’s thought to be too obscure and confusing to be taken too seriously. The view is not only seen by many commentators as incomplete, but it carries a degree of rationalism that cannot be made consistent with our picture of…

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