John Locke is probably the most important, and certainly the most influential, of all English philosophers. Although he published his first work, typically anonymously, when he was fifty-seven, by the end of his life, barely fifteen years later, he was, with Isaac Newton, regarded as the leading English thinker of his day. In the eighteenth century Locke's reputation spread through Europe and North America so that he came to occupy a place of dominance not only in the English-speaking world but also in France and other major European countries. His philosophy may be seen at the heart of the Enlightenment, influencing almost all the major thinkers even if they were not always persuaded by him. It was from his claims that virtually all the innovations in epistemology and metaphysics began, and it was from his conception of man and the state that moral and social theory, not to...