Benjamin Hill, ed. Under contract, Broadview Press. Anticipated 2026.
About This Edition
Two editions of the Essay have defined how it is read and taught for the past half-century. P.H. Nidditch’s 1975 Clarendon edition is the scholarly standard: complete, textually rigorous, and designed for specialist use. Kenneth Winkler’s 1996 Hackett edition is the standard teaching text: an abridgment that modernizes spelling but follows conservative editorial principles suited to upper-level undergraduates and graduate students.
This edition is designed for the student encountering Locke for the first time — in an introductory or intermediate philosophy course, or a survey of early modern philosophy. It adopts the 5th edition of 1706, the last edition incorporating Locke’s own revisions, as its copytext. The abridged main text contains approximately 130,000–140,000 words (approximately 45% of the original). Every editorial decision is governed by a single question: does this change make the philosophy clearer and more accessible to a modern student reader without altering Locke’s sense or how he chose to express himself philosophically?
Editorial Principles
This edition is more interventionist than Winkler in specific, principled ways.
Orthography. Spelling, capitalization, and italics are modernized throughout, including archaic verb forms. Punctuation is conservatively modernized; where Locke’s original sentence structure does philosophical work — displaying conceptual connections, marking logical dependencies, or enacting argumentative structure — it is retained.
Quotation and translation. Paired quotation marks are supplied throughout, replacing the early modern convention of running quotes. All Latin, Greek, and French are translated into the body text; the source language and translator are identified in a footnote.
Technical terminology. Technical philosophical terms are bolded at their first occurrence and defined in an editorial footnote — a pedagogical practice common in philosophical textbooks but absent from both Nidditch and Winkler.
Inclusive language. Generic man is replaced with human, one, or someone as contextually appropriate, with special care taken where Locke’s technical distinction between man (the biological human organism) and person (the bearer of moral and legal identity) is operative. Indefinite and generic pronouns are modernized using singular they/them/their, in accordance with current recommendations of the Chicago Manual of Style and Broadview’s editorial guidelines.
Editorial notes. Footnotes gloss technical and archaic terms, identify persons mentioned in the text, illuminate the intellectual context of Locke’s arguments, and flag textual issues relevant to non-specialist readers. They do not offer interpretation or critical commentary.
Supplemental Texts
The edition includes twelve supplemental texts contextualizing the composition, reception, and influence of the Essay:
| Author | Text | Date | Words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Galileo Galilei | The Assayer (excerpt) | 1623 | ~3,000 |
| John Locke | “De Arte Medica” (manuscript) | 1669 | ~3,000 |
| Robert Boyle | About the Excellency and Grounds of the Mechanical Hypothesis (excerpt) | 1674 | ~3,000 |
| John Toland | Christianity not Mysterious (excerpt) | 1696 | ~2,000 |
| Pierre Bayle | “Leucippus” Remark E and “Dicaearchus” Remark M, An Historical and Critical Dictionary | 1698 | ~3,000 |
| Catharine Trotter Cockburn | A Defense of Mr. Locke’s Essay (excerpt) | 1702 | ~1,000 |
| Damaris Masham | Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian Life (excerpt) | 1705 | ~4,500 |
| Anthony Collins | A Reply to Mr. Clarke’s Defense of his Letter to Mr. Dodwell (excerpt) | 1708 | ~3,500 |
| George Berkeley | Manuscript Introduction to the Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge | 1709 | ~2,000 |
| Voltaire | Letters on the English, Letter XIII: “Of Locke” | 1733 | ~2,500 |
| David Hume | An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, sections 2–3 | 1748 | ~2,000 |
| Edmund Law | A Defense of Mr. Locke’s Opinion concerning Personal Identity (excerpt) | 1769 | ~4,000 |
Dr. Benjamin Hill 