This section contains 10,330 words (approx. 35 pages at 300 words per page) |
SOURCE: “The Theory of Ideas in Gassendi and Locke,” in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. LI, No. 3, July-Sept., 1990, pp. 379-99.
In this essay, the Michaels argue strongly for Gassendi's considerable influence on John Locke, discussing possible sources for Locke's knowledge of Gassendi and comparing passages from Gassendi's Syntagma Philosophicum and Exercitationes Paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos with Locke's Essays on the Law of Nature and Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
There has recently been controversy over whether Gassendi should be considered the source of modern empiricism.1 Present day interest in Gassendi's influence on Locke perhaps dates from the observation of R. I. Aaron in his book on Locke, first published in 1937, that “The influence of Gassendi upon Locke, and indeed, upon English thought in general at this period has been strangely neglected.”2 David Fate Norton in his paper “The Myth of ‘British Empiricism’” goes substantially further than Aaron, asserting...
This section contains 10,330 words (approx. 35 pages at 300 words per page) |