The Enlightenment was a time of questioning of traditional institutions, customs, and morals. During the time, the consensus was that people were born with all the knowledge they would ever have. For example, kings were kings because they were born with the knowledge to be kings. This helped the monarchs and other rulers perpetrate the idea of divine right, because they were born more knowledgeable than the serfs that served them.
John Locke's essay questions these ideas of human understanding. Locke viewed people as almost a blank slate, which would acquire knowledge through sensatory experience and then produce their own ideas. He argued that, "Idea is the object of all thinking." We learn that a chair is a chair because we have seen it, heard it described to us, touched it, and experienced it. Experience is the basis of knowledge.
Sensation is the primary focus of experience. The direct senses allow us to form ideas from our ideas from experiences. As Locke explains, "All ideas come from sensation or reflection." Reflection, or reason, is the ability to think about the experiences we have had. Reflection allows us to use our "inner sense" in order to understand ideas.
John Locke, like other Enlightenment thinkers, was radical. He changed the way we viewed human understanding. He stated that we form ideas through a combination of experience, sensation, and reflection. Locke taught us how we fill our blank slate, but leaves it up to us to fill it with ideas.
No comments:
Post a Comment