New Essays Concerning Human Understanding
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text · 4 illegible passages, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~520,000 words · 2,477 passages
Cite this work
- APAGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. (n.d.). New Essays Concerning Human Understanding. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/leibniz/new-essays-concerning-human-understanding
- MLAGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. "New Essays Concerning Human Understanding." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/leibniz/new-essays-concerning-human-understanding.
- ChicagoGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. New Essays Concerning Human Understanding. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/leibniz/new-essays-concerning-human-understanding.
What it is about
Leibniz's reply to Locke's Essay, chapter by chapter, cast as a dialogue between Philalethes, who speaks for Locke, and Theophilus, who speaks for him.
Context and history
He finished it around 1704, the year Locke died, and then withheld it: arguing with a man who could no longer answer struck him as unworthy. It appeared in 1765, almost fifty years after Leibniz's own death, and changed at a stroke how both were read — Kant had it in hand while thinking through the Critique.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
THE Essay on the Understanding, by a distinguished English man, being one of the most beautiful and esteemed works of this period, I have resolved to make some remarks upon it, because having sufficiently meditated for a long time upon the same subject and upon the greater part of the matters therein touched upon, I have thought that it would be a favorable opportunity to publish something under the title of " New Essays on the Understanding," and to procure a favor able reception to my thoughts, by putting them in so good company. I l have thought also that I could profit from the labor of another not only to lessen my own (since in fact it is less difficult to follow the thread of a good author than to work wholly independently), but further to add something to what he has given us, which is always easier than to start from the beginning ; for I think I have cleared up some difficulties which he had left in their entirety. Thus his reputation is an advantage to me ; having for the rest a disposition to render justice, and very far from wishing to diminish the esteem in which this work is held, I would increase it, if my approval carried any weight. It is true I often differ in my views (from
What is New Essays Concerning Human Understanding about?Summarize New Essays Concerning Human Understanding brieflyWhat are the key ideas in New Essays Concerning Human Understanding?
← Back to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz