Étienne Bonnot de Condillac was a French philosopher, and epistemologist. He was considered the leading advocate of the ideas of John Locke in France.
Background
Condillac was born on September 30, 1714, at Grenoble, France, into a legal family. He was the third son of Gabriel de Bonnot, Vicomte de Mably, magistrate and member of the noblesse de la robe in Dauphiny.
His two older brothers Jean and Gabriel took names associated with one of the family's properties at Mably, Loire, and were each known as "Bonnot de Mably". Étienne identified with another property at Condillac, Drôme, was known as "Bonnot de Condillac."
Education
Condillac's education began only in his teens, first under the direction of a local priest, then at Lyons, where he went to live with his older brother, Jean, after the death of their father. Perhaps because of his reticence and his late learning, his family regarded him as possessing limited intellectual abilities. He nonetheless managed to continue his education as a seminarian in Paris, at Saint-Sulpice and at the Sorbonne.
Career
From 1758 to 1767 Condillac served as tutor to the young grandson of Louis XV, the orphaned duke of Parma, for whom he prepared a series of works which reflect his educational theories; then he returned to Paris, only to retire in 1770 to a small property near Beaugency. There he remained, except for occasional visits to Paris, until his death, completing La logique - done at the request of the government of Poland for use in Palatinate schools - and other works. His reputation as a philosopher, together with his writings (renowned for precision, clarity, and simplicity), won him membership in the Royal Academy of Berlin in 1752 and in the French Academy in 1768.
Condillac's writings fall into three categories: the philosophical, the educational, and the economic. His systematization, exposition, and development of Locke's philosophy, together with his appreciation of Newton's empiricism, constitute four books, the most important of which, Traité des sensations, “no student of the history of philosophy can afford to neglect.” In Essai sur I'origine des connoissances humaines, he dealt with the origin of the faculties of mind and soul, the acquisition of knowledge, and the role of language in transforming sensation into reflection and in generating the highest operations found in thinking. In his Traité des systèmes he criticized in detail the doctrines of Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, and Spinoza, rejected recourse to fixed ideas and abstract principles, and urged reliance upon observation and experience. In his Traité des sensations Condillac made simple sensation the sole source of man's ideas and mental powers as well as of reflection and instinct or habit. Condillac explained the formation of general ideas, the genesis of attention, memory, judgment, reasoning, and various sensations as originating in the experience of pleasure or pain. To the Traité des sensations he appended a short Dissertation sur la liberté in which he showed that experience, cognition, and reflection lead man to apprehend the consequences of alternative courses of action and to choose the preferable course. In the Traité des animaux he criticized Buffon's animal psychology and his neglect of the role of language in the differentiation of man from animal.
Condillac's political economy is found almost entirely in Le commerce et le gouvernement considérés relativement I'un à I'autre, only the second part of which conforms to the title. Therein he illustrated his opinion that economic science, while complicated and requiring (as does every science) a special language to convey its ideas, can be formulated in simple terms and yet serve analytical needs. He also showed how commerce can be constrained, as it was in France, and how, if it is free of all impediments, it fosters the growth and spread of wealth and prosperity.
Condillac's psychological and epistemological theories exercised great influence in the eighteenth century and some influence in the early part of the nineteenth century. His views on pedagogy also seem to have exercised influence until the early nineteenth century; indeed, Joseph Neef's translation of La logique was used as a guide for education at Neef's school. Condillac's work on economics, however, exercised little influence. It appeared when Turgot and the physiocrats (with whose opinions his own were incorrectly identified) were in disfavor. Later, Condillac's economic ideas were overshadowed by the work of Adam Smith and J. B. Say - the latter dismissed Condillac's work as “ingenious trifling.” Only in the later nineteenth century did the expounders of utility theory appreciate Condillac's merit as an economist.
Views
Condillac considered language as the vehicle by which senses and emotions were transformed into higher mental faculties. He believed that the structure of language reflects the structure of thought, and compared ideas to the sounds of a harpsichord. His theories had a major effect on the development of linguistics.
Quotations:
“Whether we rise to heaven, or descend to the abyss, we never get outside ourselves - it is always our own thoughts that we perceive.”