The Philosophy Book

133

As the mind is a blank canvas, or

tabula rasa, at birth, Locke believes

that anybody can be transformed by

a good education, one that encourages

rational thought and individual talents.

the world held in common, Locke
argues that we would have no firm
grounds for concluding that they
were also innate. He declares that
it would always be possible to
discover other explanations for
their universality, such as the fact
that they stem from the most basic
ways in which a human being
experiences the world around him,
which is something that we all
must share.
In 1704, Gottfried Leibniz wrote
a rebuttal of Locke’s empiricist
arguments in his New Essays on

the Human Understanding. Leibniz

declares that innate ideas are the

one clear way that we can gain

knowledge that is not based upon

sensory experience, and that Locke

is wrong to deny their possibility.

The debate about whether human

beings can know anything beyond

what they perceive through their

five basic senses continues.

Language as innate

Although Locke may reject the

doctrine of innate ideas, he does

not reject the concept that human

beings have innate capacities.

Indeed, the possession of capacities

such as perception and reasoning

are central to his accounts of the

mechanism of human knowledge

and understanding. In the late

20th century, the American

philosophy Noam Chomsky took

this idea further when he put

forward his theory that there is an

innate process of thinking in every

human mind, which is capable

of generating a universal “deep

structure” of language. Chomsky

believes that regardless of their

apparent structural differences,

all human languages have been

generated from this common basis.

RENAISSANCE AND THE AGE OF REASON

Locke played an important role in

questioning how human beings

acquire knowledge, at a time when

man’s understanding of the world

was expanding at an unprecedented

rate. Earlier philosophers—notably

the medieval Scholastic thinkers

such as Thomas Aquinas—had

concluded that some aspects of

reality were beyond the grasp of

the human mind. But Locke took

this a stage further. By detailed

analysis of man’s mental faculties,

he sought to set down the exact

limits of what is knowable. ■

Let us then suppose

the mind to be white

paper, void of all

characters, without any

ideas; how comes it

to be furnished?

John Locke

John Locke John Locke was born in 1632, the

son of an English country lawyer.

Thanks to wealthy patrons, he

received a good education, first

at Westminster School in London,

then at Oxford. He was impressed

with the empirical approach to

science adopted by the pioneering

chemist Robert Boyle, and he

both promoted Boyle’s ideas and

assisted in his experimental work.

Though Locke’s empiricist ideas

are important, it was his political

writing that made him famous. He

proposed a social-contract theory of

the legitimacy of government and

the idea of natural rights to private

property. Locke fled England

twice, as a political exile, but

returned in 1688, after the

accession to the throne of

William and Mary. He remained

in England, writing as well as

holding various government

positions, until his death in 1704.

Key works

1689 A Letter Concerning

Toleration

1690 An Essay Concerning

Human Understanding

1690 Two Treatises of

Government