Kenneth Winkler's deft abridgment of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding includes generous selections from the Essay, topically arranged passages from the replies to Stillingfleet, a chronology, a bibliography, a glossary, and an index based on the entries that Locke himself devised. His insightful introduction provides the reader with both a historical and a philosophical context in which to assess Locke's masterwork.

Published in 1689, John Locke's pioneering investigation into the origins, certainty, and extent of human knowledge set the groundwork for modern philosophy and influenced psychology, literature, political theory, and other areas of human thought and expression.