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DTSTAMP:20260802T152949Z
DTSTART:20260815T170000Z
DTEND:20260815T183000Z
SUMMARY:Johne Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
LOCATION:West End Neighborhood Library
DESCRIPTION:Saved in Palaner as: saved\n\nPalaner match: 31% · why: lots of
  people going\n\nJohn Locke (1632-1704) was a teacher\, aide\, physician\,
  and a founder of modern European philosophy. His political writings\, whi
 ch we discussed in July\, were the cornerstone of the liberal ideology tha
 t would eventually come to dominate modern political thought. His reflecti
 ons on the foundations of metaphysics and epistemology\, contained in his 
 Essay Concerning Human Understanding\, similarly set the agenda for those 
 disciplines for over a century after its publication in 1689.\n\nLocke’s i
 mmediate predecessors\, most notably Rene Descartes\, had attempted to fou
 nd a philosophical science\, a system of indubitable knowledge\, on the mo
 del of geometrical demonstration received from ancient Greece. The most im
 portant conclusions about the world—its nature\, even its existence—were t
 o be deduced from prior truths. If those prior truths were\, as those phil
 osophers had believed\, indubitable\, the conclusions would follow with ce
 rtainty. Locke’s attack on innate ideas\, for which he is credited as a fa
 ther of empiricism\, is an attack on the authority of the alleged founding
  truths of metaphysics. If no idea is innate\, Descartes’ basic assumption
 s—e.g.\, that there are degrees of reality and that the cause must have as
  much or more being as the effect—can no longer pretend to be the innate a
 nd inescapable positions of every intellect.\n\nLocke also opens up the fi
 eld of modern philosophical psychology. The Essay is\, among other things\
 , a detailed description of the mental phenomena that words like “thinking
 \,” “idea\,” “belief\,” “judgment\,” and “knowledge” denote. However debat
 able his conclusions\, Locke notices much that modern philosophy had not p
 reviously seen as needing comment. Whether interlocutors attacked his posi
 tions\, like Leibniz\, or extended his method beyond its original conclusi
 ons\, like Berkeley and Hume\, or complicated them\, like Kant\, Locke’s c
 ontemporaries and successors were in his debt.\n\nWe will be reading An Es
 say Concerning Human Understanding in the Hackett abridgment edited by Ken
 neth Winkler. Note that other editions will contain different selections o
 f text. Please read the Epistle\, book I\, Book II\, Book IV. i-ix\, xi-xi
 v\, xx-xxi. (Pages 1-175\, 224-274\, 284-301\, 329-338 in the Hackett edit
 ion\, which comes out to 256 pages.)\n\nOptional secondary readings includ
 e the remaining parts of the Essay including chapter III\, and two Stanfor
 d Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles: "John Locke" https://plato.stanford
 .edu/entries/locke/ and "Locke's Philosophy of Science" https://plato.stan
 ford.edu/entries/locke-philosophy-science/.
URL:https://www.meetup.com/history-of-philosophy/events/315753789/
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