Royal Institute of Philosophy

Locke's Doctrine of Intuition Was Not Borrowed from Descartes

Author(s): Thomas A. O'Kelley
Source: Philosophy, Vol. 46, No. 176 (Apr., 1971), pp. 148-151
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal Institute of Philosophy
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3749446 .
Accessed: 08/03/2011 18:58

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Cambridge University Press and Royal Institute of Philosophy are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,
preserve and extend access to Philosophy.

http://www.jstor.org
 LOCKE'S DOCTRINE OF INTUITION WAS NOT
BORROWED FROM DESCARTES1

THOMASA. O'KELLEY

THERegulae ad directionem ingenii of Rene Descartes is an unfinished

Latin work, written about 1628, which sets forth twenty-one rules to be
followed in acquiring reliable knowledge. The manuscript remained
unpublished until 1701, although a few handmade copies were circulated
among the Cartesians. The Port Royal Logic (1664) contains part of the
material; Leibniz purchased a copy in Holland in 1670; and a Flemish
translation was made il 1684.
John Locke published the Essay Concerning Human Understandingin
1690, but two different drafts were written in 1671. These have been
newly discovered in the present century and were published-along with
certain of Locke's journal entries. They are currently referred to as
Draft A2 and Draft B.3 During the two decades after writing the drafts
and before completing the Essay Locke made two extended visits to the
Continent. He travelled in France from 1676 to 1679 and endured a self-
imposed exile in Holland from 1683 to 1688. Because of these European
sojourns, and because of the remarkable similarity of portions of the
Essay and the Regulae, several commentators on these works have con-
cluded that Locke probably encountered a copy of the Regulae while in
Europe and borrowed from it certain important doctrines which are
developed in the Essay. I propose to show here that this inference is a
mistake.
The most persistent claim made by the commentators and biographers
is that Locke's doctrine of intuition was borrowed from the Regulae. I
shall cite some of these claims and refute them as unwarranted by pre-
senting satisfactory evidence that such borrowing is highly improbable.
This is done in the hope of correcting what is almost certainly an error in
the history of philosophy.
There are two significant items found in Locke's journals which he kept
while travelling in France. Under the date line 'Sunday Aug. 8' in the
journal for 1677 we find a catalogue of Cartesianwritings with the heading:
Cartesii opera omnia.4 This list makes no mention of the Regulae, from
which it follows that Locke was not aware of such a writing as late as 1677.
Also, in a journal entry for March 7, 1678, a lengthy article appears-
in faculty French-entitled Methodepour bien etudierla doctrinede Mr. de
Cartes.5 An excerpt from the article is translated as follows:
One must, nevertheless, expect from the reading of his Methode
alone a comprehensive synopsis in which Descartes establishes the
foundation of all parts of the doctrine which he wishes to impart. For
he gives only four rules of logic and a very few principles of physics...
It is true that he teaches in no other place of logic, claiming that the
four rules which he gave, if well applied, must fulfill all that is necessary
in this area...
This is convincing evidence that Locke did not know of a Cartesian writing
containing twenty-onerules of logic as late as 1678.
Locke specificallydenies that he borrowed any doctrines from Descartes.
In his First Letter to Stillingfleet he says, 'I am so far from entitling his
[Descartes'] writings to any of the errors or imperfections which are to be
found in my Essay ... they were spun barely out of my own thoughts.'6
148
 LOCKE'S DOCTRINE OF INTUITION WAS NOT BORROWED
FROM DESCARTES

Also, in a letter to Edward Clark dated January 1, 1685, he denies that he

is expressing the opinions of others and claims to have 'purposely avoided
the reading of all books that treated any way of the subject, so that I
might have nothing to bias me any way'.7
In the face of this evidence, however, the commentators continue to
propagate the opinion that the doctrine of intuition is borrowed from the
Regulae. Elizabeth Haldane reasoned that the manuscript 'must have
been circulated through Holland, for Locke appears to have read it when
there'. James Gibson proposes that Locke's 'conception of intuition ...
is due directly or indirectly to the influence of Descartes [the Regulae] .. .'.9
Richard Aaron concludes that the Regulae was 'not improbably' beside
Locke when he formulated his theory of knowledge. 'If IV.ii of the
Essay be compared with the opening sections of Descartes' Regulae the
measure o' indebtedness will be appreciated.'10 Aaron's conviction is
apparent from the following:
The opening chapters of Book IV ... have no counterpart in the drafts
of 1671 and were not, apparently, part ot the original scheme. They
are the products of Locke's reflections between 1671 and 1690. ... It
was the intuitionism of Descartes, made most explicit in his Regulae ....
But whether he was directly acquainted with it or not, he certainly
learnt its contents fully from the Cartesians, and had made the theory
set forth in its pages his own.11
Other commentators who are convinced that Locke borrowed his doctrine
from the Regulae are Leslie J. Beck,12 Charlotte S. Ware,13and Maurice
Cranston.14
Descartes' doctrine of intuition appears in the Regulae but it remains
undeveloped there and is hardly mentioned in his later works. I propose
to show conclusively that Locke did set out a doctrine of intuition in both
of the drafts of 1671-long before he visited the continent. If this is
satisfactorily established, then the claim that the doctrine is borrowed
from the unpublished Cartesian manuscript is remote and most likely
erroneous.
The doctrine of intuition Locke sets out in Draft B is somewhat different
from the doctrine of the same name as it appears in the completed Essay.
The earlier writing does not clearly distinguish between intuition and
demonstration.
When we would arrive at that great certainty which we call DEMONSTRA-
TION, we usually appeal to our eyes, and look for no greater certainty
than what our eyes can afford us; the whole evidence of this appearance
being no more than what the word DEMONSTRATION does naturally
import, which is to show anything as it is, and make it be perceived; so
that in truth what we come to know this way is not by proof, but
intuition. Draft B: 44.
According to this, Locke is saying that the meaning of the term 'demon-
stration', as he is using it, is a knowledge of certainty that is immediate
and does not requireproof. But this is what we, in the present century,
ordinarily take to be the 'natural import' of the term 'intuition', not of
'demonstration'. Yet it is clear that, in Draft B, Locke is using the two
terms synonymously. Now although the term 'intuition' does not appear
in Draft A, we find the term 'demonstration' occurring frequently. This
demands a careful inspection of Draft A to determine how Locke applies
the term 'demonstration' in that earliest writing.

149
 PHILOSOPHY

And indeed demonstrations are not properly proofs or capable of any

or can be produced by argument and proof what ever we thinke but are
as the word denotes the bare shewing of the things or proposing them
tc the senses or understandings soe as to make us take notice of them.
. . .The demonstration manifests its self in the mind as evidently as
that one and one are two but hath noe other proofe of it but the puting
and observing them together .... Certain knowledg or demonstration
makes it self clearly appeare and be perceived by the things them selves
put together in our sight or their clear distinct Ideas put togeather and
as it were lyeing before us in view in our understandings. Draft A: 27.
There can be no question, then, that in 1671 Locke set out a doctrine of
immediateknowledgeand designated it by the term 'demonstration'. Yet,
in the completed Essay of 1690 we find a marginal title which announces:
Demonstrationdependson clearly perceivedproofs, and the accompanying
text makes it clear that 'demonstration' signifies mediated knowledge.
Those intervening ideas, which serve to show the agreement of any
two others, are called proofs; and where the agreement and disagree-
ment is by this means plainly and clearly perceived, it is called demon-
stration. Essay IV ii 3.
In the next paragraph Locke goes on to stipulate the difference between
the denotations of 'intuition' and 'demonstration'.
This knowledge [demonstration], by intervening proofs, though it be
certain, yet the evidence of it is not altogether so clear and bright, nor
assent so ready, as in intuitive knowledge.
Thus, the denotation of the term 'demonstration' in the Essay is dia-
metrically opposite to that of the same term when it appears in the drafts.
In 1671 it meant immediateunprovableknowledge,a synonym for 'intuition',
and in 1690 it meant mediated,provable knowledge. To finally establish
this point I present the following parallel passages from Draft A and the
Essay. The same terms are used to describe demonstrationin the earlier
writing and intuitionin the later one. Clearly what Locke is trying to say
is the same in both cases; the terms he used to designate it are different, but
the terms he used to describe it are the same. These are: 'no doubt', 'no
uncertainty', 'no hesitation', and 'clearest knowledge'. (The italics are
mine.)
Draft A: All such affirmations and negations are made without any
manner of doubt uncertainty or haesitation, as the clearest knowledge
we can have which indeed is internal and mentall demonstration.
Draft A: 27.
Essay: Such kinds of truths the mind perceives ... by bare intuition...
and this kind of knowledge is the clearest and most certain that human
frailty is capable of ... and leaves no room for hesitation, doubt, or
examination. Essay: IV ii 1.
Thus we may be sure that Locke's theory of knowledge embraced what
we understand as 'intuition' as early as 1671, but the doctrine was not as
mature as it was in 1690. He not only changed the terminology, he added
the important observation that intuition is necessary to explain how the
steps in a proof can be known to validity follow one another. This
function of intuition is not recognized by Descartes in the Regulae, where-
upon there remains no warrant for the claim that the unpublished manu-
script had any influence upon the Essay at all.
St. PetersburgJunior College, Clearwater,Florida.
150
 LOCKE'S DOCTRINE OF INTUITION WAS NOT BORROWED
FROM DESCARTES
'The subjectis covered in greaterdetail in the author's M.A. thesis acceptedat the
Florida State Universityin 1964.
2RichardI. Aaron and Jocelyn Gibb, An Early Draft of Locke's Essay togetherwith
Excerptsfrom his Journals(Oxford: The ClarendonPress, 1936).
3BenjaminRand, An Essay Concerningthe Understanding, Knowledge,Opinion,and
Assent,by JohnLocke (Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversityPress, 1931).
4Aaronand Gibb, op. cit., p. 91.
5Ibid.,pp. 105-11.
6TheWorksof JohnLocke (London: T. Tegg, 1823),IV, pp. 48-9.
7RichardAaron, JohnLocke (2nd ed., Oxford:The ClarendonPress, 1963),p. 54.
8ElizabethS. Haldane, Descartes:His Life and Times(London: John Murray,1905),
p. 135.
9JamesGibson,Locke'sTheoryof Knowledgeand its HistoricalRelations(Cambridge:
The UniversityPress, 1960), pp. 211-2.
'OAaron,op. cit., p. 10.
"Ibid., pp. 220-21.
12LeslieJ. Beck, The Method of Descartes: A Study of the Regulae(Oxford: The
ClarendonPress, 1952), p. 67.
13CharlotteS. Ware, "The Influenceof Descarteson John Locke: A Bibliographical
Study', RevueInternationalde Philosophie,XII (1950), p. 219.
14MauriceCranston,John Locke: A Biography(New York: The Macmillan Co.,
1957), p. 274.

151