A History of Philosophy in EpitomeSchwegler, Albert
Philosophy
A History of Philosophy in Epitome
Schwegler, Albert
Philosophy -- History
Condillac, like Locke, started with the proposition that all our
knowledge comes from experience. While, however, Locke had indicated two
sources for this knowledge, sensation and reflection, the outer and the
inner sense, Condillac referred reflection to sensation, and reduced the
two sources to one. Reflection is, with him, only sensation; all
intellectual occurrences, even the combination of ideas and volition,
are to be regarded only as modified sensations. It is the chief problem
and content of Condillac’s philosophizing to carry out this thought, and
derive the different functions of the soul out of the sensations of the
outer sense. He illustrates this thought by a statue, which has been
made with a perfect internal organization like a man, but which
possesses no ideas, and in which only gradually one sense after another
awakens and fills the soul with impressions. In such a view man stands
on the same footing as the brute, for all his knowledge and all his
incentives to action he receives from sensation. Condillac consequently
names men perfect animals, and brutes imperfect men. Still he revolts
from affirming the materiality of the soul, and denying the existence of
God. These ultimate consequences of sensualism were first drawn by
others after him, as would naturally enough follow. As sensualism
affirmed that truth or being could only be perceived through the sense,
so we have only to reverse this proposition, and have the thesis of
materialism, viz.: the sensible alone is, there is no other being but
material being.
SECTION XXXI.
HELVETIUS.
_Helvetius_ has exhibited the moral consequences of the sensualistic
standpoint. While theoretical sensualism affirms that all our knowledge
is determined by sensation, practical sensualism adds to this the
analogous proposition that all our volition springs from the same
source, and is regulated by the sensuous desire. Helvetius adopted it as
the principle of morals to satisfy this sensuous desire.
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