Concept
New Essays on Human Understanding
Overview
New Essays on Human Understanding (French: Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain) is a chapter-by-chapter rebuttal by Gottfried Leibniz of John Locke's major work An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689). It is one of only two full-length works by Leibniz (the other being the Theodicy). It was finished in 1704, but Locke's death was the cause alleged by Leibniz to withhold its publication. The book was published in 1765, some 60 years following its completion. Leibniz had died in 1716, and never saw its published form.
Like many philosophical works of the time, it is written in dialogue form.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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98. This digression appeared to me to be seasonable, because that writer deserves to be more widely known. Returning now to the subject I make a further observation. Supposing that to-day a knowledge of Jesus Christ according to the flesh is absolutely necessary to salvation, as indeed it is safest to teach, it will be possible to say that God will give that knowledge to all those who do, humanly speaking, that…
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
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"It is abstractions which give birth to almost all our difficulties," and Locke's error here is that he begins with abstractions, and takes them to be most open to intelligence. Locke's second error is separating so completely substance and attribute. "After having distinguished," says Leibniz, "two things in substance, the attributes or predicates, and the common subject of these predicates, it is not to be…
John Dewey, Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding
States what New Essays on Human Understanding is.
First, it is false; because it is evident these maxims are not in the mind so early as the use of reason; and therefore the coming to the use of reason is falsely assigned as the time of their discovery. How many instances of the use of reason may we observe in children, a long time before they have any knowledge of this maxim, “That it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be?” And a great part of…
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
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Philosophers who discussed New Essays on Human Understanding
Related ideas
- Empiricism
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
- Ancient Greek
- John Locke
- Dialogue
- Mind–body dualism
- Free will
- Existence of God
- Théodicée
Place in the tradition
Part of Rationalism.
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