Major Works

• An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

  - Recommended edition: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975).
  Excerpt: Since it is the understanding, that sets man above the rest of sensible beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion, which he has over them; it is certainly a subject, even for its nobleness, worth our labour to inquire into. The… More

Commentary

• Locke and the Compass of Human Understanding by John Yolton

  - John Yolton, Locke and the Compass of Human Understanding: A Selective Commentary on the 'Essay' (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
  The Essay Concerning Human Understanding is John Locke’s most important work, and through this selective commentary, first published in 1970, Professor Yolton concentrates our attention on the more interesting and controversial of the doctrines in it.… More

• John Locke: Problems and Perspectives

  - John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. John Yolton (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
  Originally published in 1969, the impetus for this collection came from a conference on the Thought of John Locke held at York University, Toronto in 1966. Written in the co-operative spirit of the conference, the essays collected here were intended to… More

• “Mixed Modes in John Locke’s Moral and Political Philosophy”

  - Steven Forde, "'Mixed Modes' in John Locke's Moral and Political Philosophy," Review of Politics 4 (2011), 581-608.
  The moral theory of “mixed modes” John Locke presents in his Essay concerning Human Understanding is beset with paradoxes. On the one hand, he tells us that all mixed modes, including moral concepts, are “arbitrary” mental constructs.… More