Etienne Bonnot de Condillac - Biography

Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, born on September 30th, 1715, in Grenoble, was a French philosopher of empiricist orientation. Born into a prominent family, Condillac relied on his inherited resources in order to devote his whole life to speculation. Like his brother, Condillac took holy orders at Saint-Sulpice, and became Abbot of Mureau. In the 1750’s Condillac was chosen to be the preceptor of Duke Ferdinand of Parma, who was the grandson of Louis XV. His Cours d'études, were written for the young Duke. After the completion of the young Duke’s education, in 1768, Condillac was elected to the French Academy, to succeed the Abbot of Olivet. During his life he came into contact with Denis Diderot’s circle, and befriended Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Condillac died on August 3rd, 1780, at his estate in Flux, near Beaugency.

Condillac’s thought can be divided into two broad periods. During the first, he concentrated on developing the theories of John Locke. In 1746, he published Essai sur l' origine des connaissances humaines, which was effectively a summary of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In 1749, Condillac published Traité des systemes, which takes aim at Rene Descartes, Nicolas Melanbranche, Gottfried Leibniz, Baruch Spinoza and other rationalist philosophers, in virtue of their innate ideas and abstract systems. In the second period, Condillac devotes himself to more original work, the central idea of which was to renew human understanding by a fundamental and rigorous analysis of the first data of mental experience. This latter period begins with Traité des sensations (1754), its sequel, Traité des animaux (1755), and continues with his Cours d'études, published in thirteen volumes, from 1767 to 1773.

In retrospect, Condillac’s importance is both in virtue of his work as a psychologist, and his systematic establishment of Locke’s ideas in France. Condillac, however, did not introduce Locke to the French, as his work was already popular, especially as a result of François-Marie Arouet, better known under his pen name, Voltaire. Moreover, Condillac is widely recognized as one of the first who helped turn psychology into a science. His rigorous analyses bore a marked difference from the desultory and genial observations made by Locke. Certainly, his analyses and conclusions seem, in light of much fuller knowledge, short-sighted, defective and naïve, but for their time, and for an extended period following his death, his work was considered quite rigorous and scientific.

In his first published work, Essai sur l' origine des connaissances humaines, Condillac keeps intimately close to the letter of Locke. His next important work, Traité des sensations, however, begins with a fundamental division from Locke, that is, Codillac rejects Locke’s deduction that human knowledge is founded on two sources, namely, sensation and reflection. In opposition to this dual foundation, Condillac proposes that all ideas and mental operations find their source in sensation alone. All ideas and operations are merely different stages in the development of sensations.

In Traité des sensations, Condillac uses the image of a statue, inwardly organized like a man, and possessing a soul deprived of ideas, and which has never yet received, or been penetrated by any sense-impression; in short, a tabula rasa, in order to illustrate the origin of everything mental from sensation alone. Briefly, Condillac attempts to show how this initially inert statue can acquire, one by one, all of the senses, from the most basic (smell) to the most perfect (touch). With the acquisition of touch, for example, this statue acquires the ability to distinguish between the self and the other, or non-self. Moreover, Condillac attempts to ground all the faculties of understanding in a progressive development of sensation.

Beginning with the sense of smell, that is, the sense which contributes least to human knowledge, Condillac derives what will be his main, or master principle determining the operations of the mind, namely, pleasure and pain. Condillac argues that the experience of smell initially completely occupies consciousness. This occupancy of consciousness, he claims, is what we call attention, in other words, attention is nothing but exclusive sensation. Attention to the experience, subsequently, produces pain or pleasure. If the object of the sensation is present, then we have actual sensation, the impression that remains after the objects removal or disappearance is called memory.

Attention, as exclusive sensation, is opposed to comparison, which is nothing more than double attention, that is, it is nothing more than paying attention to multiple objects. Since, Condillac continues, we cannot have attention on two objects, that is, we cannot perceive two objects, without comparing them, and the comparison of two objects is possible only in virtue of noting similarity and dissimilarity, or identities and difference. The perception of similarities and differences, Condillac argues, is precisely what we call judgment. Reason, then, is the process of drawing one judgment from another judgment. Comparisons, judgments, and reasoning become habitual. These faculties stored in the mind, and becoming automatic, form into series, out of which arises the principle of the associations of ideas.

All sensation is affective, that is, causes pain or pleasure. Sensations, consequently, are the source of all active faculties. Need, for example, is the result of the privation of some object whose presence is demanded either by nature of habit. Need, subsequently, directs all energy towards this missing object. This directionality, Condillac claimed, is what we call desire. Will is absolute desire, made vigilant by hope. In a Kantian twist, Condillac claimed that what is called substance is nothing but a collection or amalgamation of sensations, and the ego is no different. To the question of whether there is anything behind sensations - some ‘thing’ that supports them - Condillac claimed we could give no answer, and, in an Idealist twist, he hypothesized a negative one.

In the second section of Traité des sensations, Condillac invests the statue with the sense of touch, which first informs it of the existence of external objects. In a detailed and rigorous analysis, Condillac traces the development of the statue’s perception of extension, distance, shape and space. The third section combines the sense of touch with other senses, while the fourth dwells on the desires, activities and ideas of an isolated man, in full possession of his senses.

The general conclusion of Traité des sensations, can be rather crudely summarized as: in the natural order of things everything is founded on sensation, yet, this universal source is not equal in all men, that is, men vary widely in the degree of vividness or intensity in which they sense and feel. Moreover, man is nothing but what he has acquired – there are no innate ideas anymore than there are innate faculties.

Condillac, however, was not a naïve sensationalist. Certainly, he claimed that all knowledge is ultimately sourced in sensation, but added an expressionist theory of linguistic creation, which works to transform senses and emotions, that is, it develops them into higher mental faculties. The structure of language reflects the structure of thought, and to reason well consists in speaking well, otherwise put, progress in ideas is only progress in expression. This essential, and yet often overlooked element of Condillac’s thought anticipates later theories of thought and language, most directly, it makes him a predecessor of Johann Gottfried Herder.

Condillac, in the 1750s and 60’s published two works on history, Histoire ancienne and Histoire moderne (1758–1767), which illustrated how the painstaking experience and close observation of the past have aided man. History, he claimed, is not a mere retelling of the past, but also a source of information, which if referenced reveals not only what happened, but how, and why; consequently, history not only retells what has happened, but teaches what can and what cannot take place – we can say, that it is both memory and law.

Near the end of his life, Condillac turned his attention to politics and economics. In 1776, the same year that Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, Condillac published Le Commerce et le Gouvernement, wherein he reflected Physiocratistic theories, especially in considering taxation and proposals for reviving a slumping economy. Condillac introduces the notion of ‘vrai prix’, or ‘true price’, which lead him to divide human history into two broad phases: decline and progress. The latter is marked by rational development and use of resources, while the former is the result of ‘bad behavior’ on the part of the ruling classes, which then trickles down to the lower working classes, encouraging excess, luxury, and false prices, which ultimately do harm to the masses. The assurance of progress is conditional to following the principle of vrai prix, which is possible only in conditions of absolutely unimpeded interaction between supply and demand. Such unimpeded interaction is achieved through complete deregulation, in other words, progress is possible only on and through the free market. Condillac, on this account, was both a prophet and completely mistaken.