Etienne Bonnot de Condillac

A French philosopher, born at Grenoble, 30 September, 1715; died near

Beaugency (Loiret), 3 August, 1780. He was the brother of the Abbé de Mably

and was himself Abbé of Mureaux. Thanks to the resources of his benefice, he

was able to follow his natural inclinations and devote himself wholly to study, for

which purpose he retired into solitude. About 1755 he was chosen preceptor of

the Duke of Parma, the grandson of Louis XV, for whom he wrote his "Cours

d'études". The education of the prince being completed, Condillac was elected in

1768 to succeed the Abbé d'Olivet as a member of the French Academy. He was

present but once at the sessions--on the day of his reception--and then retired to

his estate of Flux near Beaugency where he spent the remainder of his days.

From an intellectual point of view, Condillac's life may be divided into two periods.

During the first he simply developed the theories of Locke. He published in 1746

his "Essai sur l' origine des connaissances humaines" which is a summary of

Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding", and in 1749 his "Traité des

systemes" wherein he attacks the innate ideas and abstract systems of

Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, Spinoza, and Boursier. The latter period,

devoted to more original work, begins with the "Traité des sensations" in 1754,

the central idea of which is to renew the human understanding by a fundamental

analysis of the first data of mental experience in man's conscious life. In 1755 he

published his "Traité des animaux", a sequel to the "Traité des sensations"; and

then his "Cours d'études" which includes "Grammaire", "L'Art d'écrire", "L'Art de

raisonner", "L'Art de penser", "L'histoire générale des hommes et des empires",

edited in 13 vols., Parma, 1769-1773. This was placed on the Index in 1836. In

1776 appeared his book on "Le commerce et le gouvernement considérés

relativement l'un à l'autre" in which he exposes his principles of the right to

property and his theory of economics. In 1780, a few months before his death, he

published his "Logique", an elementary treatise composed at the request of the

council of public instruction of Poland. His "Langue des calculs" was published

unfinished only after his death in the first complete edition of his works (23 vols.,

Paris, 1798).

Condillac starts with Locke's empiricism, but Locke, he thinks, did not go deeply

enough into the problem of the origin of human knowledge. According to Locke

our knowledge has a two-fold source, sensation and reflection; according to

Condillac, not only all our ideas, but even all our mental operations and faculties

spring from sensation alone as their ultimate source; all are merely different

stages or forms in the development of sensation (sensations transformées). He

illustrates his theory by the hypothesis of a statue, which, inert at the beginning,

is supposed to acquire, one by one, the senses, from the most elementary,

smell, to the most perfect, touch. With this last sense and its impression of

resistance, the stature which had been previously mere odour, taste, colour, etc.,

now acquires the distinction between the self and non-self. When it has all the

senses, it has also the whole mental life. From sensation considered as

representative spring all the faculties of the understanding. Attention is nothing

but an exclusive sensation. When the object is present the impression is called

actual sensation; the impression which remains after the disappearance of the

object is called memory. Comparison is nothing more than a double attention; we

cannot compare two objects or perceive two sensations without remarking that

they are similar or dissimilar; to perceive similarities or differences is to judge; to

reason is to draw a judgment from another judgment wherein it was contained.

Moreover, all sensation is essentially affective, that is, painful or pleasant; under

this aspect it is the source of all our active faculties. Need is the pain which

results from the privation of an object whose presence is demanded by nature or

habit; need directs all our energies towards this object; this very direction is what

we call desire; desire as a dominant habit or passion; will is nothing but absolute

desire, a desire made more energetic and more permanent through hope. What

we call substance is simply the collection of sensations. What we call the ego is

simply the collection of our sensations. Is there behind these sensations a

something which supports them? We do not know. We express and summarize

our sensations by means of words; we give the same name to all the individual

object which we judge to be similar; this name is what we call a general idea.

Through general ideas or names we bring order into our knowledge; and this is

precisely the purpose of reasoning and it is what constitutes science. Good

reasoning, therefore, consists essentially in speaking well. Ultimately the work of

human thought is to pass from the confused and complex content of the primitive

sensations to clear and simple concepts; the essential and the unique method is

analysis based on the principle of identity, and the perfect analytical method is

the mathematical method. To reason is to calculate; what we call progress in

ideas is only progress in expression. A science is only a well-constructed

language, une langue bien faite, that is, simple, with signs precisely determined

according to the laws of analogy. The primitive form of language is the language

of action which is innate in us, synthetical and confused. Under pressure of the

need of communication between men, these actions are interpreted as signs,

decomposed, analyzed, and the spoken language takes the place of the

language of action.

Condillac's theory of education is based on the idea that the child in its

development must repeat the various states through which the race has

passed--an idea which, with certain modifications, still survives. Another of his

principles, more widely received at present, is that the educative process must

be shaped in accordance with natural development. He also insists on the

necessity of establishing a connection between the various items of knowledge,

and of training the judgment rather than burdening the memory. The study of

history holds a large place in his system, and religion is of paramount

importance. He insists that the prince, for whom the "Course d'études" was

written shall be more thoroughly instructed in matters of religion than the

subjects whom he is later to govern. On the other hand, Condillac has been

justly criticized for his attempt to make the child a logician and psychologist,

even a metaphysician, before he has mastered the elements of grammar--a

mistake which is obviously due to his error concerning the origin of ideas. The

system of Condillac ends, therefore, in sensualistic empiricism, nominalism, and

agnosticism.

If Condillac's works evince a certain precision of thought and vigour of reasoning

they clearly betray a lack of observation and of the sense of reality. Most of the

time he is blinded by the tendency to reduce all processes of thought to a single

method, all ideas and principles to a single source. This tendency is well

exemplified in his hypothesis of the statue. He supposes it to be mere passivity;

and by this very supposition, instead of a man he makes it a machine or, as

Cousin says, a sensible corpse. He attempts to reduce everything to mere

sensation or impression, and in reality every step in what he calls a

transformation is made under the influence of an activity and a principle which

dominate and interpret this sensation, but which Condillac confounds with it. It is

the operation of this activity and principle essentially distinct from sensation, that

enables him to speak of attention, comparison, judgment, and personality. An

attempt has been made to show that Condillac was the forerunner, in

psychology, ethics, and sociology of the English school represented by Mill,

Bain, and Spencer (Dewaule, Condillac et la psychologie anglaise

contemporaine, Paris, 1892); but this view seems to overlook the influence of

Locke upon his successors in England and the traditional tendency of English

philosophical thought (cf. Picavet in Revue philosophique, XXXIX, p. 215).

G. M. Sauvage

Transcribed by Rick McCarty

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IV

Nihil Obstat. Remy Lafort, Censor

Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

The Catholic Encyclopedia: NewAdent.org