Locke, Literary Criticism, and Philosophy

Bridges the gap between philosophical and literary-critical discussions of Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding.

William Walker (Author)

9780521451055, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 December 1994

248 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.54 kg

William Walker's original analysis of John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding offers a challenging and provocative assessment of Locke's importance as a thinker, bridging the gap between philosophical and literary-critical discussion of his work. He presents Locke as a foundational figure who defines the epistemological and ontological ground on which eighteenth-century and Romantic literature operate and eventually diverge. He is revealed as a crucial figure for emerging modernity, less the familiar empiricist innovator and more the proto-Nietzschean thinker whose text fosters hitherto unsuspected instabilities and promotes a new kind of rhetorical force to counterbalance them. Walker's reading of Locke is at once finely attentive to the text and engagingly resourceful in placing the Essay in its broadest philosophical and historical context.

Acknowledgements
Part I. Introduction: 1. Locke, literary criticism and philosophy
Part II. Mind: 2. Substance, space, labor, and property
3. Acquaintance
4. Seeing and touching
5. Force
Part III. Trope: 6. De Man on Locke
7. Locke and Nietzsche
Part IV. Conclusion: 8. Locke, literary criticism, and philosophy
Appendix
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]