Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2011
Summary
In an age in which the intellectual life of the West as expressed in its art, culture, spirituality, and philosophy identifies itself as incurably postmodern, it is perhaps wise to heed Charles Taylor's warning that “understanding modernity aright is an exercise in retrieval.” In order to cast our minds back to the seventeenth century when the modern period was born, the student of modernity must excavate through many layers of thought in the subsequent history of ideas; that is, dig through assumptions about the philosophical meaning of history, culture, and material forces that have long since hardened imperceptibly over time into fundamental ideological commitments. To rediscover modernity as it first appeared in the world brash and confident, it requires that in some respects we forget who we are, or perhaps whom we think we are.
This study constitutes a modest effort to contribute to the enormous task of retrieving modernity by recovering an authentic understanding of John Locke's important role in its creation. We have tried to restore a sense of Locke's work as he intended it to be read; that is, as philosophical reflections upon the fundamental questions of human existence. Our analysis of Locke's mature writings reveals a bold and original thinker whose probing examination of the workings of the human mind and the manifold interpersonal relations characterizing social reality leads us to question many of the prevailing assumptions about this complex figure.
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- John Locke and Modern Life , pp. 292 - 296Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010