Locke

John Locke was an English philosopher who lived a.d. 1632

1704. He was the founder of the modern school of philosophy
known as Empiricism, the principal doctrine of which is that all
knowledge or truth, is to be obtained only through experience, as
opposed to the theory of innate ideas. Locke developed the
Baconian idea that experience was the true source of knowledge,
and that general truths should be reasoned inductively from
observed facts of experience. He held that in empirical facts
we may find the only source of knowledge, since the mind
has no innate ideas. His teaching was that the materials for
thought and reason are impressed upon the mind from outside,
and that the sole activity of the mind is that of linking and
combining together the ideas so obtained. He argued from this
that our knowledge of the external world, resting, as it does,
upon sense-perception; must be merely upon the plane of
probability. He, however, violated his fundamental principle
by assuming a rationalistic ideal including the assertion that
we have an intuitive knowledge of the existence of the self,
the existence of God, and of mathematical and moral truths.
While under the influence of Bacon, he was nevertheless largely
influenced by the rationalism of Descartes. While apparently
advancing the full doctrine of empiricism, he managed to point
out the way for its reconciliation with rationalism, which way
was pursued by Kant in after years.
Hume
David Hume, a Scotch philosopher (a.d. 1711 1776), afterward
carried Locke s fundamental theories to their logical conclusion,
and held that there was naught knowable other than conscious
experiences; that is, impressions and their reflection, ideas.
Hume held that we cannot transcend this knowledge, although
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we may combine the ideas by association, etc., according to the
established principles of psychology. Hume taught that we
cannot prove the existence of God, of self, or of matter all of
which ideas are the illusions of imagination, having no basis in
actual experience. He carried empiricism to the realm of pure
skepticism.
Berkeley
George Berkeley was a bishop of the Church of England, who
lived a.d. 1685 1753. He was the founder of the modern school
of Idealism, which system he developed largely upon the basis
of Locke, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibnitz. He held that matter
cannot be conceived to actually exist, the only real substance
being mind; and that the material world is nothing but a
complex of mental impressions which appear and disappear
in accordance with established laws of nature. He held that
the reality of sense objects consisted in their being perceived,
and that the assumption of an object apart from its idea is
fallacious. He denied the individual existence of object apart
from the subjective idea of it, and of both subject and object
apart from the mind of God, or the Absolute. He held that,
there being no real external world, the phenomena of sense
must depend upon God continually, necessitating perception.
Berkeley set out to prove the existence of God by his idealistic
theory, but reasoned in a circle when he assumed the existence
of God to make his theory tenable. His opponents endeavored
to confute him by the familiar illustration of one kicking a stone
and realizing the reality of the effect produced, but he and his

followers logically explained that the said effect was merely a

sensation known by the mind, and not a thing outside of the
mind. Idealism, in various forms, has permeated many later
philosophical systems. Fichte, Schelling and Hegel have made
the doctrine parts of their respective systems, and it is heard
from in the metaphysical systems and theories of to-day.
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Kant
Immanuel Kant, the great German philosopher, lived a.d.
1724 1804. His work created a new era in modern philosophy,
and has profoundly affected all subsequent philosophical
thought, even in systems which are apparently opposed to his
fundamental principles. He was the founder of the modern
school of Critical Philosophy. He, following the skepticism of
Hume as to the idea of causality, enunciated the proposition
that the faculty of knowledge, and the sources of knowledge,
must be critically examined before anything could be definitely
determined regarding objective truth. He aimed to separate
the intuitive, or a priori mental forms, from those obtained
empirically, or through experience; and also to define and
determine the limits of human reason and the knowledge
obtained therefrom. He attributed to the faculties of sense,
understanding, judgment and reason, certain innate ideas,
intuitive truths, or a priori forms, which must be valid and real
because of their necessity, as, for instance, the ideas of time
and space, cause and effect, action and reaction, reality, unity,
the idea of the Absolute, and certain moral truths, such as his
famous categorical imperative which held as axiomatic the
idea that one should Act only on that maxim whereby thou
canst at the same time will that it should become a universal
law the latter being claimed by him to be a moral law which
admits of no condition or exception.
He held that theoretical knowledge was limited, inasmuch as
the universal ideas existing in the mind would yield knowledge
only when excited thereto by the presentation of their
corresponding objects in actual experience, and that even then
what we really know is not the thing-in-itself, but merely the
thing-as-it-appears the phenomenon, not the noumenon.
The result of his reasoning is that certain things-in-themselves
must be unknowable, as they can never appear to the mind
as objects of actual experience in consciousness, and are to be
thought of only as belonging to the noumenal, or the world
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of things-in-themselves. These unknowable things are the
transcendental thought-postulates in psychology, cosmology,
and theology, as, for instance, God, freedom, and immortality
of the soul, and the opposites or contradictions which
reason meets in considering the ideas of infinity, as infinite
time, infinite space, infinite chain of cause and effect. As an
authority says of Kant s teachings: His point is that though it is
unquestionably necessary to be convinced of God s existence, it
is not so necessary to demonstrate it. He shows that all such
demonstrations are scientifically impossible and worthless. On
the great questions of metaphysics immortality, freedom,
God scientific knowledge is hopeless.
It will be seen that Kant ambitiously essayed to harmonize
and blend the opposing principles of rationalism and
empiricism of a priori and a posteriori knowledge of innate

ideas and ideas arising from experience. He held that knowledge

is composed of two factors, as follows: (1) A priori, innate in
the mind itself, antedating experience and necessary to make
experience possible; and (2) a posteriori, coming from without,
as the raw material of sensation, through experience. He held
that the a priori knowledge is not usable without the material
of sense experience; and that the a posteriori knowledge would
fail to take form in consciousness were it not for the mold ideas
innately existing in the mind. He held, therefore, that while
theoretical reason or scientific inquiry is necessarily limited
to the realm of experience and phenomenon, still practical
reason is valid in postulating belief in the moral law and order,
and belief in the existence of a world of transcendental reality;
Practical reason, he held, made it necessary for us to postulate
the existence of God, freedom, and immortality, and to
manifest our belief in our moral life, although pure reason
was absolutely unable to demonstrate their existence. Thus did
Kant endeavor to build a structure of faith upon a foundation
of reason.
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