An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

First published in 1689, "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" is a work by English philosopher John Locke concerning the foundation of human knowledge and understanding.

Locke’s aim in "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" is to inquire into the origin and extent of human knowledge. His conclusion—that all knowledge is derived from sense experience—became the principal tenet of empiricism, which has dominated Western philosophy ever since. Even George Berkeley, who rejected Locke’s distinction between sense qualities independent of the mind and sense qualities dependent on the mind, produced his idealism in response to Locke’s provocative philosophy and gave it an empirical cast that reflected Western culture’s rejection of innate or transcendental knowledge.