"Few among the great names in philosophy have met with a harder measure of justice from the present generation than Locke; the unquestioned founder of the analytic philosophy of mind, but whose doctrines were first caricatured, then, when the reaction arrived, cast off by the prevailing school even with contumely, and who is now regarded by one of the conflicting parties in philosophy as an apostle of heresy and sophistry, while among those who still adhere to the standard which he raised, there has been a disposition in later times to sacrifice his reputation in favour of Hobbes; a great writer, and a great thinker for his time, but inferior to Locke not only in sober judgment but even in profundity and original genius. Locke, the most candid of philosophers, and one whose speculations bear on every subject the strongest marks of having been wrought out from the materials of his own mind, has been mistaken for an unworthy plagiarist, while Hobbes has been extolled as having anticipated many of his leading doctrines. He did anticipate many of them, and the present is an instance in what manner it was generally done. They both rejected the scholastic doctrine of essences; but Locke understood and explained what these supposed essences really were; Hobbes, instead of explaining the distinction between essential and accidental properties, and between essential and accidental propositions, jumped over it, and gave a definition which suits at most only essential propositions, and scarcely those, as the definition of Proposition in general."
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Philosophers from EnglandNon-fiction authors from EnglandUniversity of Oxford facultyCritics from the United KingdomPhysicians from England
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John Locke
1632 – 1704
englischer Philosoph
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