Etienne BonnotDecodillac (Etienne Bonobotde,1765438+September 30-August 3, 2004 1780),/KLOC-0, a famous French writer and philosopher in the 8th century, was born in Grenoble, France and died in Laayoune Valley, France.
Born in a family in New Noble, he studied at Jesuit College in Lyon and was keen on literature, philosophy and mathematics. He kept close contact with famous contemporary writers Rousseau, Diderot and D'Alembert, and wrote articles for Encyclopedia. 1767 was an academician of French academy of sciences, and 1772 retired.
Chinese name: Etie Bona de Condillac.
Nationality: France
Place of birth: Grenoble, France
Date of birth: A.D.1765438+September 30, 2004.
Date of death: A.D.1August 3, 780.
Occupation: writer, philosopher
Belief: Deism
Main achievements:18th century famous French writer and philosopher.
Representative works: On the Origin of Human Knowledge, On the System of Exposing Shortcomings and Advantages, On Feeling.
resume
17 14 was born in a new noble family in Grenoble, southern France, and studied at Jesuit College in Lyon. Later, his eldest brother, Father mably, let him enter the monastery of Saint Sulbis. But he is not interested in theology, but he is keen on literature, philosophy and mathematics. He kept close contacts with Diderot, Rousseau and D'Alembert, and wrote articles for Encyclopedia. 1767 was an academician of French academy of sciences, and 1772 retired.
achievement
philosophical work
The main philosophical works are: On the Origin of Human Knowledge (1746), On the System of Exposing Shortcomings and Advantages, Sensation Theory (1754) and so on.
Theoretical origin
Condilac developed Locke's materialist empirical psychology into sensualism psychology. He pointed out: the mind has its own development ability, and knowledge is formed by ideas caused by feelings. All psychological processes are transformed from feelings, all of which are disguised feelings; The complexity of psychology is not due to the diversity of feelings, but a feeling can also transform all advanced psychological functions, such as memory, judgment, abstraction and so on. He pointed out: the closer you feel, the easier it is to remember; The more vivid the feeling, the easier it is to remember. Condilak also pointed out that the feeling process is always accompanied by pleasure and unhappiness. Pleasant experiences will continue to repeat, and unpleasant experiences may stop. In this way, Condilac formed the ideological system of sensualism psychology.
Personal point of view
Condilak is a deist. Although he affirmed that God was the origin of the universe, he strongly advocated and promoted Locke's empiricism, further developed the principles of empiricism, and criticized the "metaphysics" in the17th century. He emphasized that human knowledge comes from feeling, which is obtained by external things acting on our senses, and feeling is the basis of understanding. He said that when things act on the senses, the mind will receive something. "Let's take a look at the first moment of a person's birth. His soul first experienced different feelings, such as light, color, pain, happiness, movement and stillness: these were his initial thoughts. " According to this principle of sensory theory, Condilac proved that soul introspection also comes from senses. He pointed out that when things act on the senses, the soul accepts something, and the soul first experiences different feelings. On this basis, the soul's self-reflection activities carry out "all kinds of cooperation and find all kinds of relationships they contain" Therefore, all ideas come from feelings, and there is no idea that is not acquired. It all comes from feelings. From this perspective, Condilak denied Locke's view that knowledge has two sources, namely feeling and reflection. He pointed out that there is actually only one source of knowledge, and that is feeling. "On the one hand, this is because reflection is only the feeling itself in principle. On the other hand, it is not so much the source of ideas as the way in which ideas are derived from feelings." He pointed out: Locke's inaccuracy about the source of knowledge seems slight, but his system has cast many vague shadows, which makes him unable to carry out the empirical principle to the end.
Condilac criticized Descartes' theory of natural concept from the standpoint of materialist sensualism. He pointed out: Descartes thinks that feelings will only lead us astray and cannot provide a definite idea of things, so they make a hullabaloo about, and they would rather give up feelings in pursuit of truth. Condilak said, is it possible to determine the face of things more definitely with the concept of talent? In fact, the concept of talent does not exist at all. What people call natural concepts are often abstract concepts, because it is not easy to observe how these abstract concepts originated from feelings, so they are mistaken for natural concepts. Condilak pointed out: Philosophers will inevitably make great mistakes in understanding from this innate concept. Because it makes people not start from sensory experience, but stay away from sensory experience and be keen on empty definitions and abstract principles. This can only produce some absurd opinions, and no real knowledge can be obtained.
Two conceptual theories
Condilak pointed out that feeling is not an idea, but what is preserved by memory is an idea. Concepts can be divided into two categories: simple concepts and complex concepts. What a single feeling forms is a simple concept; The combination of several senses is a compound concept. For example, white, firmness and shape are simple concepts, while the concept of white paper is a collection of simple concepts such as firmness, white and shape, which is a composite concept. He pointed out: abstract concept is a form of compound concept, "just some ideas formed by the common ground between several separate concepts." For example, the concept of animals is extracted from the factors that also belong to people in the concepts of people, horses and apes. "This abstract concept is absolutely necessary to organize our knowledge, because it points out which category each specific and special concept belongs to. However, the abstract concept itself is derived from concrete and special concepts, so it cannot be regarded as a newly discovered principle. Here we can see that Kandilak does not think that the development from simple concept to abstract concept is a deepening movement from phenomenon to essence, but only a change in quantity, thus showing a narrow empirical tendency.
This narrow empirical tendency also leads Kandilak's epistemology to agnosticism. Kandilak pointed out that feeling is the source of our knowledge, and the concept formed by feeling is the essence of the object of representation. At first, the sense of smell, hearing, sight and taste obtained from foreign objects seem to be our own various ways of existence, but later, when combined with touch, they are connected with objects, and we are used to treating these feelings as the manifestations of foreign objects. However, different feelings only reflect the nature of one aspect of things. For example, smell is just smell, taste is just taste, and hearing is just noise and music. They only describe things according to their relationship with us. These concepts can't make us know what things are, that is, we can't have a complete understanding of things. Therefore, it is impossible for philosophers to understand the nature of things. Kandilak's agnostic tendency was criticized by philosophers such as Diderot and Holbach at that time.
Social basis of human concept
Condilak pointed out: the ideas in inner life, like things in the material world, are subject to an interrelated relationship, which is our own communication with others. The biggest foundation of human concept is based on the exchange of ideas between people. Without such a foundation, there will be no normal activities of people's thoughts. Kangdilake gave an example to prove this point. He said that a Xiong Haizi found in the forest, although a human being, was deprived of the opportunity to communicate with others since he was a child, and he lost the inherent characteristics of normal people's conceptual activities, so it is impossible to have a human concept. Here, Kandilak saw the role of language in forming people's thoughts. He believes that people form their own ideas with the help of language symbols, which proves the dynamic role of spirit. But language is not born, it is the result of a long historical evolution and development. A language symbol is closely related to its environment, so in order to express words accurately, we must put ourselves in the environment of feeling and watching things. In this way, the ambiguity caused by the abuse of symbols can be avoided.
Kandilak's theory has obvious characteristics of the times. We can see that he adhered to the materialistic theory of sensation, criticized the theory of innate ideas popular in17th century, elaborated many aspects of epistemology in more detail, made new achievements, and promoted the development of materialistic epistemology. Marx spoke highly of this. He said, "Hellock, who was directly taught, and Condilac, who explained Locke in French, immediately opposed17th century metaphysics with Locke's sensory theory. He proved that the French have every right to abandon this metaphysics because it is the unsuccessful result of fantasy and theological prejudice. "