Abstract

British philosopher John Locke provides a definition of knowledge at the beginning of the fourth part of his famous book, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. According to this definition, knowledge is the perception of agreement or disagreement between ideas. In this part, he mentions three types of knowledge according to degree: intuitive, demonstrative, and sensitive. Furthermore, propositions are divided into two classes based on idea-containment: trifling and instructive. On the basis of conformity to archetypes, he identifies two other types of propositions, namely chimerical and real. The primary objective of this article is to provide a description of such key issues in Locke’s epistemology, which will serve as the basis for discussing the Kantian framework of the analytic-synthetic distinction underlying his epistemology. Through this discussion, it is possible to demonstrate, contra Lex Newman, that there is an aspect of Locke’s epistemology equivalent to the Kantian synthetic proposition. As Brian Chance puts it more specifically, Locke can be regarded as a philosopher who believes that knowledge can be both analytic and synthetic. Trifling propositions are primarily analytic, but propositions that are both instructive and real are synthetic. This interpretation renders Lockean demonstrative and sensitive knowledge as synthetic. The above argument constitutes the main contribution of the present essay to the debate among Locke scholars regarding the analytic-synthetic proposition in the context of Locke’s epistemology.