Condillac, EB de

Name: Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

Nickname/Alias: Born Étienne Bonnot

Achievements: The leading advocate in France of the ideas of the 17th-century English philosopher John Locke.

Born: September 30, 1715; Grenoble, France

Died: August 2/3, 1780; Flux, France (Aged 64)

Field & Discipline: Philosophy; Psychology; Economics; Logician

Language: French

Father: Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1666-1726)

Mother: Catherine de la Coste

Siblings: Jean; Gabriel

Spouse: None

Children: None

Education: Saint-Sulpice Seminary (1729-34); Sorbonne, Paris (1734-40)

Major Work:

“Traite des Sensations” (1754 “Treatise on the Sensations”)

Life & Times:

Condillac became a priest in 1740, but, although he remained in holy orders for the rest of his life, he wasn’t a very active priest, and celebrated Mass only once in his life.  Instead, he spent his time studying philosophy and, in particular, [studied] Descartes*, Malebranche, [studied] Leibniz* and [studied] Spinoza*.

During his years in Paris Condillac visited the salons regularly, where he became a lifelong friend of [a pal of] Rousseau* and met people like[a pal of] Diderot* and the group of writers, known as the “Encyclopaedists,” which included [a pal of] d’Holbach* and [a pal of] d’Alembert*.

He was a prominent member of the “Philosophes,” a group of French thinkers who applied  Newtonian mathematical methods.

Condillac was heavily influenced by the work of the English empirical philosopher [translated] Locke*, whose “Essay concerning Human Understanding,” published in1690,  he read in French translation.  He had also read [studied] Voltaire's* books on Newton and, in 1746,  he established himself in the salons with the publication of his first book, “Essai sur l'Origine des Connaissances Humaines” (“Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge”), which had the subtitle “A Supplement to Mr. Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding.”

Condillac was more than just a popularizer of Locke, whom Voltaire had already made fashionable in France.  Like Locke, he maintained an empirical sensationalism, based on the principle that observation made through perception by the senses as opposed to the “innate ideas” of Descartes,  is the foundation for human knowledge.

He tried to improve on Locke, by arguing that sensation alone, rather than sensation coupled with reflection, was the source of knowledge, and that language affected the growth and reliability of knowledge.

In 1749, his next work “Treatise on Systems,” argued that language had misled the great 17^th-century philosophers, Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza, into mistaken concepts of the mind and human knowledge.

Around the middle of the century, Condillac was at his greatest and at the centre of  a group of Paris intellectuals including not only the “Philosophes,” but also other distinguished people like the naturalist [a pal of] Buffon*, the philosophers [a pal of] Helvetius* and [a pal of] de la Mettrie* and the physiocrat [a pal of] Quesnay*.

In 1752, Condillac was elected to the Berlin Academy and, two years later, he published his best known work, “Traite des Sensations,” (Treatise on Sensations), which elaborated further on Locke’s ideas.  Central to the book is a statue whose senses are activated one by one, demonstrating how all the higher cognitive faculties of the mind could derive from the notice the mind takes of the primitive inputs of the sense organs.

His “Traité des Animaux,” (“Treatise on Animals”), followed in 1755, and three years later, Condillac was given a job tutoring Prince Ferdinand of Parma, Italy, with whom he spent the following nine years. During his time in Parma, Condillac wrote a thirteen-volume course of studies based on his lessons for the Prince, published between 1769 and 1773 and encompassing history, grammar, poetics, education, political economy and scientific methodology.

Condillac went home to Paris in 1767 and the following year was elected to the Académie Française.  He found that Paris had changed in his absence and , unhappy with the now irreligious attitudes of intellectuals, he retired to his estate in Flux, near Beaugency, in 1768 and there he lived the last twelve years of his life.

He continued to write and, in 1776, produced a work on economics, “Le Commerce et le Gouvernement Considérés Relativement l'Un à l'Autre” (“Commerce and  Government Considered in Relation to One Another”), which argued that the value of anything depended not on labor input,  but on utility. The need for something useful, he argued, gave rise to value, while prices resulted from the exchange of valued items.

Extra Connections:  His work related to that of  [work related to] Kant*, and [work related to] Bichat*.

Assessment:  One of the first to bring methodical observation to the dynamics of cognitive functions like attention, memory, and habit formation.

Oneliner:  Etienne de Condillac,  18^th century French intellectual

Bibliography:

• Knight, Isabel F., The Geometric Spirit: the Abbe de Condillac and the French Enlightenment, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1968.