Browse Items (23 total)

In his book Emile or On Education, Jean-Jacques Rousseau points out the contemporary belief on "quantity over quality:" he emphasizes the importance of experiences and the feeling of existence.

A mezzotint portrait of philosopher John Locke, mid-18th century

When Locke says "And thus we come by those ideas we have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all those which we call sensible qualities; which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they from external objects…

The first of four books from John Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding," which details his philosophical views of the human mind.

All ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas: —How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy…

17th century perception of slavery

In this passage, John Locke puts forth his ideas on the concept of infinity. He argues that, because we have never seen something truly infinite, we cannot entirely grasp the nature of infinity. This follows from his argument earlier in An Esssay…

George Berkeley (1685-1753) was an Anglo-Irish philosopher and bishop. He is best known for his immaterialism (denial of the existence of material substances) and anti-abstractionism (denial of abstract ideas). Berkeley is traditionally listed as one…

Scorpion and Felixwas the only comedic novel ever officially written by Karl Marx, and even then, it was never officially published. Marx loved Laurence Sterne's work, and thus this piece was heavily influenced by Sterne's The Life and Opinions of…

This quote shows the correlation between the acquisition of goods and knowledge. Sterne concludes that the satisfaction of new acquisition fuels the desire for more.