Locke and French Enlightenment Histories of Philosophy

Abstract

This paper examines Locke’s place in French Enlightenment historiography. In particular, it is concerned with the manner in which Locke features in two important and influential histories of philosophy from the period, namely, Jean Le Rond d’Alembert’s “Preliminary Discourse” of 1751 and Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, marquis de Condorcet’s The Sketch of 1795. It argues that both histories accord Locke a crucial role in the emergence of a new approach to the study of the human mind and, for Condorcet, a new method for the sciences in general. Moreover, the connections that d’Alembert and Condorcet make between Locke and Descartes are shown to contrast with those made by Voltaire. The paper concludes with some reflections on the implications of d’Alembert’s and Condorcet’s histories for the historiography of eighteenth-century philosophy today.