John Locke (1632-1704) one of the greatest English philosophers of the
late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, argued in his
masterpiece, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, that our
knowledge is founded in experience and reaches us principally through
our senses; but its message has been curiously misunderstood. In this
book John Dunn shows how Locke arrived at his theory of knowledge, and
how his exposition of the liberal values of toleration and responsible
government formed the backbone of enlightened European thought of the
eighteenth century.