The Convergence Between John Locke and St. Thomas Aquinas in Rebutting Innate Ideas
Introduction
In this paper, I will be arguing
there is a convergence between John Locke and St. Thomas Aquinas’s perspectives
on innate ideas. It should be stated from the start that both thinkers argue
against innate ideas, and so I will be defending their criticism. It is my goal
to show how their positions converge. I will begin by describing the terms that
we need to understand before comparing these perspectives. Next, I will lay out
how John Locke and St. Thomas deal with the theory of innate ideas. Then, I
will show how St Thomas’s perspective on innate ideas converges with Locke’s.
And last, we will conclude by summarizing.
Definitions
The first term that we need to
define is idea. Locke defines this term loosely. He says, “It being the term,
which, I think, serves best to stand for whatever is the object of the
understanding when a man thinks, I have used it to express whatever is meant by
phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed
about in thinking.”[1] As
we can see, this is a very open definition. The key point to emphasize is that
ideas are the object of the understanding. So, whenever a person thinks, or
calls something to mind, the thing that is brought up or thought about, is an
idea.
The more difficult part to define is
the term innate. This is a term that Saint Thomas doesn’t use directly. Locke
does use the term explicitly, and it is the entire point of Book 1 of the work
we are analyzing.[2] However,
he doesn’t give an explicit definition for the term, like he does for the term
idea. However, he does explain what he means by it. He says, “It is an
established opinion among some men that there are in the understanding certain
innate principles…primary notions, characters, as it were, stamped upon the mind
of man, which the soul receives in its very first being and brings into the
world with it.”[3] He
goes on to give a couple examples, “Whatever is, is” and “It is impossible for
the same thing to be and not to be.”[4] These are
often called the Law of Identity and the Law of Non-Contradiction respectively.
John Locke and St. Thomas Aquinas on Innate Ideas
John Locke has two main problems
with the concept of innate ideas. The first is that “universal consent proves
nothing innate.”[5]
Locke thinks that even if I grant you that these ideas exist, it doesn’t follow
that they come innately. He is perfectly content to say that these ideas are
self-evident, even if they are not innate. He says, “Universal and ready assent
upon hearing…is (I grant) a mark of self-evidence; but…not [of] innate
impressions.”[6] The second problem is that innate ideas don’t seem to be
universally assented to.[7] He
describes how “children and idiots”[8]
don’t have explicit knowledge of these innate ideas. As evidenced by the fact
that they cannot articulate these laws. He asks, how can these laws be
universal, if there are people who do not know them in any meaningful sense? He
thinks it is absurd to hold that someone has knowledge of something that they
don’t know about.
St. Thomas also argues against
innate ideas. In his disputed questions on truth he articulates the Platonic
position that knowledge is latent in the mind and needs to be drawn out of us. [9]
For this to be the case, the ideas that
make up knowledge must be innate, or pre-existing in us. This position seems to
be broader than the one that Locke is responding too, in that it claims that all ideas are innate. The Platonists
that Locke was responding to, like Descartes, held that only these fundamental
laws of logic are the innate ideas, and that all other knowledge could be drawn
out from them.[10]
Despite the difference in scope, Thomas’s response still gives us an insight
into what he thought about innate ideas.
St. Thomas responds to this Platonic
reasoning by saying that it leads to an absurdity.[11] His
reasoning is as follows. Removing impediments is only to cause accidentally. To
teach, based on the Platonic theory that learning is remembering, would mean
only to remove impediments. Therefore, Platonic teaching is only an accidental
cause, which is absurd. Saint Thomas says that such
a position runs afront to what we see in the rest of creation: God allowing
secondary causes to cause. He says, “this derogates from the order of the
universe, which is made up of the order and connection of causes, since the
first cause, by the pre-eminence of its goodness, gives other beings not only
their existence, but also their existence as causes.”[12]
How Locke and Aquinas Converge
Now that we have laid out how both
thinkers summarize and object to the theory of innate ideas, I will now show
three ways that Locke and Aquinas have converged in their disputes with innate
ideas. The first convergence between St. Thomas and John Locke on this question
is that they both admit of the possibility of innate powers, while maintaining
their objections to innate ideas. John Locke cites the eyes ability to see
color as an example of a natural power that we possess which gives us the
possibility to learn through the senses.[13]
Saint Thomas agrees that there are innate
powers which give us the capacity to know. He says “in this way all knowledge
is in a certain sense implanted in us from the beginning (since we have the
light of the agent intellect) through the medium of universal conceptions which
are immediately known by the light of the agent intellect.”[14]
This long quotation shows that St. Thomas thinks there is a natural power (the
agent intellect) which is innate. He also holds up that in this respect, we can
see the value of the Platonic view of innateness of knowledge, so long as you
distinguish powers from ideas.
The next two convergences will show
how St. Thomas is similar to Locke in that both thinkers have similar
conceptions of knowledge. In their responses to the theory of innate ideas,
both lay out similar epistemologies. The second convergence, then, is that both
thinkers see knowledge as starting in the senses. Both see the senses being the
beginning of knowledge. Locke says, “this great source of most of the ideas we
have, depending wholly upon our senses and derived by them to the
understanding, I call SENSATION.”[15]
St. Thomas agrees, in one place saying, “it is true that our mind receives
knowledge from sensible things.”[16]
Both thinkers argue that we first have to sense a thing in order to get knowledge
off the ground.
The third convergence is that both
thinkers see the mind recreating what was observed through the senses. Although
they use different terminology for this process, these thinkers both articulate
this phenomenon. Locke calls this process reflection.[17]
“External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which
are all those different perceptions they produce in us.”[18]
We see here that the raw material that the reflective part of our mind has to
work with, comes from what we have obtained through our senses. St. Thomas
calls this power the agent intellect, which takes the sense knowledge and
converts these things so that they are “made actually intelligible”[19]
Here again, both thinkers are positing a similar phenomenon.
Conclusion
We have
seen two thinkers who argue against a Platonic notion that ideas are innate. Both
thinkers converge in formulating their own theories of knowledge while debating
this question. They converge in finding that there are in fact innate powers,
that give us the capacity for knowledge. Even though the ideas themselves are
not innate, the powers by which we can know ideas are. They also converge in
finding that knowledge starts in the senses. And lastly, they converge in
finding that knowledge is recreated in the mind to make our sense data
intelligible.
[1] Locke, John. Essay Concerning Human Understanding found in Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources, 1, 1, 8, 318.
Ed. Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2009. Print.
[2] Locke, John. Essay, Book 1 Title, 316.
[3] Locke, John. Essay, 1, 2, 1, 318.
[4] Locke, John. Essay, 1, 2, 4, 319.
[5] Locke, John. Essay, 1,2,3, 319.
[6] Locke, John. Essay, 1, 2, 18. 322.
[7] Locke, John. Essay, 1,2,4, 319.
[8] Locke, John. Essay, 1, 2, 5, 319-320.
[9]
Aquinas, Thomas. On the Teacher found
in Thomas Aquinas Selected Writings, 1,
1, 198. Ed. and trans. Ralph McInerny. London, England: Penguin, 1998. Print.
[10]
Interestingly, Locke attempts to push the Cartesian perspective into embracing
the ancient perspective. See 1,2,5, 320.
[11] Aquinas, Thomas. Teacher, 1, 1, 198.
[12]
Aquinas, Thomas. The 29 Questions on
Truth, 11, 1. Trans. Robert Mulligan SJ, found on https://documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/1225-1274,_Thomas_Aquinas,_The_29_questions_on_Truth_(Mulligan_Translation),_EN.pdf
, 1952, 347.
[13]
Locke, John. Essay, 1, 2, 1, 319.
[14]
Aquinas, Thomas. The 29 Questions on
Truth, 10, 6. Trans. Robert Mulligan SJ, found on https://documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/1225-1274,_Thomas_Aquinas,_The_29_questions_on_Truth_(Mulligan_Translation),_EN.pdf
, 1952, page 311.
[15]
Locke, John. Essay, 2, 1, 3, 323.
[16]
Thomas, Aquinas. 29 Questions, 10, 6,
311.
[17]
Locke, John. Essay, 2, 1, 4, 323.
[18]
Locke, John. Essay, 2, 1, 5, 323.
[19]
Aquinas, Thomas. 29 Questions, 10, 6,
311.
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