Locke, in his discussion of essences, makes extensive use of a distinction he introduces between nominal and real essences. This distinction has always been found interesting and important, and in fact, R.I. Aaron said of it that ‘there is no more important distinction in the Essay.’ Nevertheless, to say there has not been general agreement about what Locke was getting at is putting it mildly. Interpretations of Locke's point in making such a distinction have varied widely, depending upon whether the (...) importance of the real or the nominal essence is stressed. Locke tells us we should distinguish the nominal essence, which is the abstract idea to which a general name is attached and for which it stands, from the real essence, which is the ‘real internal, but generally in Substances, unknown Constitution of Things, whereon their discoverable Qualities depend.’. (shrink)

It would be, at this hour of the day, supererogatory to argue the pre-eminence of Locke's influence on eighteenth-century thought. But though this claim has been made often enough, 1 and has often enough been shown to be true, it has not been shown for aesthetics. I believe it to be true of aesthetics as well, but that the fact has gone unremarked, because the line of influence here is not so overt as in the case of, say, political theory (...) or epistemology. It is, rather, oblique and devious; that the influence is there at all is, even, paradoxical. (shrink)

Locke's moral theory consists of two explicit and distinct elements — a broadly rationalist theory of natural law and a hedonistic conception of moral good. The rationalist account, which we find most prominently in his early Essays on the Law of Nature, is generally taken to consist in three things. First, Locke holds that our moral rules are founded on universal, divine natural laws. Second, such moral laws are taken to be discoverable by reason. Third, by dint of their divine (...) authorship, moral laws are obligatory and rationally discernible as such. Locke's hedonism, which is developed most fully in his later Essay Concerning Human Understanding, consists in the view that all good amounts to pleasure, with specifically moral good taken to consist in the pleasurable consequences of discharging one's moral duties. (shrink)

Leibniz avait certes raison d'opposer Locke à Descartes et de le situer plutôt dans la lignée de Gassendi et l'atomisme antique. Mais le problème est de distinguer entre Gassendi et ses disciples contemporains de Locke comme source immédiate d'inspiration pour celui-ci. Ses Commonplace Books attestent que Locke avait lu Gassendi avec attention, et son Journal indique que pendant ses séjours à Paris, il fut en contact avec des gassendistes tels Bernier et Launay, dont il acheta les oeuvres pour les emporter (...) en Angleterre. L'analyse que Locke fournit de l'espace est d'un intérêt particulier, car tout en témoignant de l'orientation que Leibniz attribuait à Locke, elle s'écarte nettement des vues de Gassendi sur la question. (shrink)