English Empiricism

English empiricism In England, between the sixteenth and eighteenth century will be
developed in opposition to Descartes philosophical method and those who followed him
(Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibniz). Against aprioristic rationalism (knowledge is prior to
experience) they propose an empiricism; i.e., knowledge begins with the experience; it is a
posteriori knowledge. Empiricists also want to find the truth through reason. Reality for
them has a rational structure. In this sense, they can also be considered as rationalists.
However, they do not consider that the ideas are independent of the experience. On the
contrary, they hold that the reason develops ideas based on the experience. Therefore, they
wonder: how does the mind process information from the experience?
The impact of empiricism in political and even religious field will be tremendous.
Not all philosophers are equally important. The most prominent empiricist was John Locke.
But, before him, it is worth mentioning at least two predecessors. The first one is Francis
Bacon (1561-1626), perhaps the first empiricist, who wrote the Novum Organum. In this
work, he provides, in opposition to the deductive and syllogistic Aristotelian logic, an
inductive logic. Its inductive logic is called incomplete because it does not consider all
individual cases, but a part or a sample of them. In this way, it claims to provide a
reasonable but not absolute certainty. It was anyway a sufficient certainty to science.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was also an important thinker in this line. Hobbes was an
empiricist, materialistic, and, therefore deterministic. His conception of man was
pessimistic. Human beings are all equals but they all want the same things and therefore are
aggressive to each other. The only way to live in peace would be through the transfer of
their right to freedom, to a State, through an agreement. The sovereign would incarnate the
State authority that has been delegated by the agreement of all individuals together. But that
State, for Hobbes, has absolute power or freedom, as well as individuals had, before
delegating this to the State. For this State that absorbs everything, Hobbes has a name:
Leviathan, which is in turn the name of a book where he proposes a theory of the State.
Now let us talk about John Locke (1632-1704). Locke does not rely on Descartes
philosophy according to which the mind presupposes the existence of innate ideas that do
not come from sensory experience (e.g. mathematical ideas or God). John Locke proposes
again the metaphor of the tabula rasa. Actually, he speaks about a white paper, void of all
characters, without any ideas, but not exactly in the sense of Aristotle or the Thomists. For
them, these ideas are obtained by abstraction from sensible knowledge of individual things.
In contrast, for Locke and the empiricists, the idea or concept is a complex of sensations,
that is, it is formed by the combination of sensations. The idea is what I think or perceive.
Locke classifies ideas into two kinds: (1) simple ideas: they are basically the product of
sensations; (2) compound ideas: they are the result of the association or combination by the
mind of the simple ideas. Ideas such as substance or relationship are compound ideas. In
turn, Locke divides ideas into primary and secondary. Primary ideas are the ideas
originated in more than one sense (for example, a flower perceived by sight, touch, and
smell). The secondary ideas are those that originate in the sensations of one sense (e.g., a

color that can only be seen). The primary ideas correspond to reality (objects that produce
them are real), while the secondary ideas are purely subjective (colors, smells, tastes).
For Locke, then, the only reality is sensible and concrete reality. From there come the ideas
elaborated by the mind. This has an impact on the political viewpoint of Locke. If ideas do
not have reality or objective validity because they are subjectivethe result of a mental
elaborationnobody can impose them. They cannot be used, therefore, as rules or
principles to govern the state. The role of State will only be to coordinate and to defend the
freedoms of individuals. The norms guiding those who govern should come from the will
of the majority, empirically determined by the vote of each individual. For this reason,
Locke is considered the father of democratic liberalism.
Empiricists, who followed Locke, took some of his ideas to the extreme. George Berkeley
(1685-1753), an Anglican bishop, suggested that not only the secondary ideas were
subjective, but also the primaries. The ideas would only be contents of the perception, and
they exist only insofar they are perceived. For Berkeley there is no material or corporeal
substance. Our ideas come from God, who is the one that puts them in mind. Berkeley falls
on a total idealism. The soul (i.e. the mind) and God are the only that exist. Matter does not
really exist.
On the other hand, David Hume (1711-1776) will take Lockes ideas further away. He also
goes on to critique the concept of material substance, but in another way. Berkeley denied
the existence of matter or material substance. Hume goes on to state that, the only things
that an observer can see of the material substance are its sensible qualities, but not the
material substance in itself. Therefore, we cannot say that there is a substance in itself. The
same is true with the idea of causality. No one can claim to have seen the cause-and-effect
relationship really. What we see is a succession of two phenomena to those we attribute the
cause-effect relationship. But that relationship is an inference from the observer. Nothing
assures us that the relation is real and that when both phenomena occur necessarily that
succession will occur.
Hume even claims that the self is nothing more than a set of perceptions or contents of
consciousness. The I is not really substantial, but only a product of the imagination.
Hume forgets that it is I who have the perceptions, that it is I who find myself facing them
and that therefore I am distinct from them. (Maras, 250. Italics in the original). Humes
philosophy, then, has been described as sensationalist (all that is known are sensations) and
skepticism (we cannot really know things but sensations). There is neither material
substance, nor an I or self.
The Enlightenment
The new rationalist and empiricist philosophical positions of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries are going to be popular in the eighteenth century, especially in aristocratic and
educated social contexts. It starts to be common the idea that the man was heading on a
path of progress and human reason would solve all the problems that arise. This new way
of thinking meant that over time, the old forms of irrational thinking based purely on
religious beliefs, customs, or authority, would be abandoned. The reason lightens the
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whole society and clarifies all mysteries. This cultural and intellectual stream was called
Enlightenment. The eighteenth century is also called the Age of Reason.
Among the promoters of the Enlightenment were the French Encyclopedists, who edited
the so-called Encyclopedia or Rational Dictionary of Sciences,Arts and Trades (17501780). The contributors included thinkers such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau,
Diderot, DAlembert, etc.
Those enlightened and Encyclopedists did not expect revolutionary changes in society.
They thought that the changes they hoped would occur gradually as society was illuminated
with new knowledge.
In this context, however, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) appears. In his Discourse on
the Arts and Sciences, presented on the occasion of a competition organized by the
Academy of Dijon, he suggested, contrary to what the intellectuals of his time thought, that
the progress of science and the arts had not had contributed to the moral improvement of
human being. Rousseau believed that human beings were naturally good, but it was the
society that corrupted them. He was thinking of the society of his time, based on irrational
beliefs and customs. He argued the need to create a new rational society, where men were
subjected to minimal control in order to unfold their possibilities. Since man was naturally
good and innocent, did not need too much control.
Rousseau thus favored the emergence of a revolutionary spirit that will culminate in the
French Revolution starting in 1789. This produced a break with the medieval social and
political system. Revolutions influence rapidly expanded favoring the appearance of
liberal political states based on the idea of a social contractRousseau published a book
with the title On the Social Contract where he expressed his policy proposalaccording to
which the will of the majority is expressed through the universal suffrage or vote. In this
way, democracy was born.
During this period, it is understood, therefore, that the reason is not only what permits to
understand the natural world, but also what should be on the basis of social and political
organization.