# 051 - Modern Philosophy Chapter 59 French Empiricism

An episode of [History of Philosophy](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1877164155), 28 Feb 2026, 13 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/69897671/051_modern_philosophy_chapter_59_french_empiricism.mp3

Dive into the captivating journey of philosophical thought through the ages with History of Philosophy. This podcast unravels the rich tapestry of philosophical opinions, systems, and schools of thought, exploring the lives of influential philosophers and the intricate connections between different schools of philosophy. Discover the origins of Ancient Philosophy across cultures like Babylon, China, India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, as well as the profound insights of the Christian Era, featuring thinkers such as St. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and William of Ockham. Journey into Modern Philosophy with giants like Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel, all guided by the insightful narration of Beth Thomas. This episode includes AI-generated content.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Chapter fifty nine of History of Philosophy. This is a
[0:05] Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
[0:10] Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
[0:17] Speaker 1: Recording by David Brenet. History of Philosophy by William Turner,
[0:23] Speaker 1: Chapter fifty nine French Empiricism. When in seventeen twenty nine
[0:30] Speaker 1: Montesquieu and Voltaire returned to France from England and introduced
[0:35] Speaker 1: among their fellow countrymen the ideas prevalent among the English
[0:39] Speaker 1: deists and empiricists, an impetus was given to a French
[0:43] Speaker 1: empirical movement which, with characteristic disregard for the restraints of
[0:48] Speaker 1: convention and positive religion, advanced from psychological empiricism to materialism
[0:54] Speaker 1: in metaphysics, hedonism in ethics, and unbelief and revolt in
[0:59] Speaker 1: mass matters of religious conviction. The social, political, and religious
[1:04] Speaker 1: conditions of France in the eighteenth century contributed to this result.
[1:10] Speaker 1: The Court of Versailles had become a synonym for frivolity,
[1:14] Speaker 1: if not licentiousness, and even after due allowances made for
[1:18] Speaker 1: the exaggerations of historians prejudiced against the old regime, it
[1:22] Speaker 1: must be admitted that the grievances of the subjects of
[1:25] Speaker 1: the monarchy were many and serious. The Church, whose duty
[1:30] Speaker 1: it was to inculcate justice and forbearance, was identified in
[1:34] Speaker 1: the minds of the people with the monarchy, which they
[1:37] Speaker 1: feared and detested. Thus it was that the poets, philosophers,
[1:41] Speaker 1: and essayists of the latter half of the eighteenth century
[1:45] Speaker 1: found in the popular mind a field ready to receive
[1:48] Speaker 1: the seeds of the materialism and naturalism which flurried in
[1:52] Speaker 1: the days preceding the Revolution and bore fruit in the
[1:55] Speaker 1: revolution itself. In England, the old order gradually yie yielded
[2:00] Speaker 1: to the action of the new forces. In France, the
[2:04] Speaker 1: old order maintained an attitude of unyielding antagonism. In England,
[2:08] Speaker 1: the establishment of a new political ideas was in the
[2:12] Speaker 1: nature of a slow assimilation. In France, the destruction of
[2:16] Speaker 1: the ancient political system assumed the proportions of a cataclysm
[2:21] Speaker 1: speculative sensism. The first to formulate a thoroughgoing system of
[2:26] Speaker 1: sensesm as a logical development of Locke's empiricism, was the
[2:31] Speaker 1: ab Contilac seventeen fifteen to seventeen eighteen in his treat
[2:37] Speaker 1: de San sacent he reduces all knowledge to experience, and
[2:42] Speaker 1: all experience to sensations. In fact, consciousness, with all its contents,
[2:48] Speaker 1: is nothing but transformed sensations. Saint sacion Al sur meers.
[2:55] Speaker 1: To illustrate this, Condillac imagines a statue which is first
[2:59] Speaker 1: endowed with the sense of smell, and then with the
[3:01] Speaker 1: other senses in succession, the sense of touch being last,
[3:06] Speaker 1: for it is by means of the sense of resistance
[3:09] Speaker 1: that we distinguish between self and not self. Before being
[3:14] Speaker 1: endowed with the sense of touch, the statue refers odor, color,
[3:18] Speaker 1: and so forth to itself. After it has acquired the
[3:22] Speaker 1: sense of touch, it refers its sensations to the external world.
[3:27] Speaker 1: Personality is therefore the sum of our sensations. Condilact teaches,
[3:33] Speaker 1: that is, by the superiority of the sense of touch,
[3:37] Speaker 1: that man differs from brutes, That every sensation is accompanied
[3:41] Speaker 1: by pleasure or pain, that desire springs from the remembrance
[3:46] Speaker 1: of pleasant sensations. That the good, as well as the beautiful,
[3:51] Speaker 1: denates a pleasure giving quality. With Condilac is associated Charles
[3:56] Speaker 1: Bonnet seventeen twenty to seventeen ninety ten three, who in
[4:01] Speaker 1: his eser der Psicolugi advocates a mitigated form of sensationalism,
[4:09] Speaker 1: ethical sensism. The ethical deductions from sensistic psychology appear in
[4:16] Speaker 1: the writings of Elvituse seventeen fifteen through seventeen seventy one,
[4:21] Speaker 1: author of De le Sprite and De l'me. Elvitus teaches
[4:26] Speaker 1: that all men are equally endowed by nature, that the
[4:29] Speaker 1: difference between men arises from education, and that susceptibility to
[4:34] Speaker 1: pleasure and pain, which declares itself in self interest, is
[4:38] Speaker 1: the ultimate element in the human character and the source
[4:41] Speaker 1: of all mental and moral activity. Education, legislation, and positive
[4:47] Speaker 1: religion are doomed to failure as long as they refuse
[4:51] Speaker 1: to recognize the truth that all that is good and
[4:55] Speaker 1: noble and virtuous in human conduct is based on self interest.
[5:00] Speaker 1: Skeptics and materialists. Voltaire sixteen ninety four to seventeen seventy eight,
[5:07] Speaker 1: although not a professed philosopher, exercised a widespread influence on
[5:12] Speaker 1: the philosophic thought of his century. His Dictionnaire Philosophic Portatif
[5:19] Speaker 1: was written for the purpose of ridding philosophy of cumbersome
[5:23] Speaker 1: technical terminology and presenting it in a popular form. This
[5:29] Speaker 1: necessitated superficiality of treatment. But, as Erdmann says in Voltaire's
[5:36] Speaker 1: superficiality lies his strength. Voltaire was not an atheist. Not
[5:42] Speaker 1: only did he believe that the existence of God is
[5:45] Speaker 1: proclaimed by all nature, but he was even of the
[5:48] Speaker 1: opinion that if God did not exist, we should be
[5:51] Speaker 1: under the necessity of inventing a God. He defended immortality
[5:56] Speaker 1: on the ground of practical necessity and openly declared that
[6:00] Speaker 1: materialism was nonsense. It was characteristic of the superficiality of
[6:06] Speaker 1: the man that the earthquake of Lisbon in seventeen seventy
[6:10] Speaker 1: five should change him from an optimist to a pessimist.
[6:15] Speaker 1: He attacked Christianity as a positive form of religion, waging
[6:19] Speaker 1: unwearied war against the scriptures, the Church, and the most
[6:23] Speaker 1: sacred beliefs of Christians. In this way, by helping to
[6:27] Speaker 1: undermine the belief in the supernatural, he aided the cause
[6:30] Speaker 1: of materialism and atheism. Materialism and atheism were openly taught
[6:36] Speaker 1: and defended in the famous encyclopedia dicxeur reison dessare de
[6:41] Speaker 1: sciance et de metier. The work was skeptical, irrelevant, and
[6:47] Speaker 1: brilliant with keen wit and caustic satire. It was by
[6:51] Speaker 1: the charms of its style, rather than by the force
[6:54] Speaker 1: of its arguments, that it did so much towards sapping
[6:58] Speaker 1: the popular belief in God, in spirituality, in human liberty,
[7:03] Speaker 1: and in the sacredness of the traditional ideas of morality.
[7:07] Speaker 1: The physician Lamete seventeen o nine to seventeen fifty one,
[7:12] Speaker 1: author of listeau naturelle de la mout and l'onme machine,
[7:18] Speaker 1: was one of the most outspoken defenders of materialism. He
[7:22] Speaker 1: taught that everything spiritual is a delusion, and that physical
[7:27] Speaker 1: enjoyment is the highest aim of human action. The soul,
[7:31] Speaker 1: he maintained, is nothing but a name, unless by it
[7:34] Speaker 1: we mean the brain, which is an organ of thought.
[7:38] Speaker 1: Thought is the function of the brain. Man excels brutes
[7:42] Speaker 1: simply because his brain is more highly developed. Death ends
[7:47] Speaker 1: all things, and consequently we should enjoy this world and
[7:51] Speaker 1: hasten the reign of atheism, for men will never truly
[7:55] Speaker 1: be happy until theologians will have ceased to trouble and
[7:59] Speaker 1: nature have asserted her claims. The materialistic monoism, thus fluently
[8:05] Speaker 1: defended by Lametry, was taught with more pretension to scientific
[8:09] Speaker 1: seriousness in the work entitled Sistem del Natieu, which was
[8:15] Speaker 1: published pseudonymously in seventeen seventy, and of which Hobart seventeen
[8:21] Speaker 1: twenty three to seventeen eighty nine is now universally admitted
[8:26] Speaker 1: to be the author. The work may be said to
[8:30] Speaker 1: be the bible of the materialists of the end of
[8:32] Speaker 1: the eighteenth century. The last representative of psychological materialism in
[8:37] Speaker 1: the eighteenth century was the physician Cabinis seventeen fifty seven
[8:42] Speaker 1: to eighteen oh eight, who taught that the body and
[8:45] Speaker 1: mind are identical, that the nerves of a man, and
[8:49] Speaker 1: that thought is a secretion of the brain. Les cervous
[8:53] Speaker 1: de gerreuur les ens prechent ill fei organimont la sicrecien
[8:59] Speaker 1: de la poncis footnote rapont de physique et de mooral
[9:05] Speaker 1: de la mmes cross reference Dictionaire des science philosophique article
[9:11] Speaker 1: by Cabinists and footnote political Philosophers. It was Montesquieu sixteen
[9:18] Speaker 1: eighty nine to seventeen fifty five, author of De l'esprite
[9:22] Speaker 1: de Lois, who first introduced luxe empiricism into France. In
[9:27] Speaker 1: his lere Perisson, he had shown himself an ardent admirer
[9:32] Speaker 1: of the federal form of government. But in the work
[9:36] Speaker 1: de l'esprite de Laois, written after his return from England,
[9:40] Speaker 1: he holds up the English constitutional monarchy as the ideal
[9:44] Speaker 1: of political organization. He contends that right is anterior to law,
[9:51] Speaker 1: advocates the independence of the judicial power with respect to
[9:54] Speaker 1: the executive and legislative powers, and defends the extension of
[9:59] Speaker 1: the legislature authority of representative assemblies. He teaches that laws
[10:05] Speaker 1: should be adapted to the character and spirit of the nation,
[10:09] Speaker 1: and following the empirical method, he traces the influence of climate, manners, religion,
[10:15] Speaker 1: et cetera on national character. Jean Jacques Rousseau footnote consult
[10:23] Speaker 1: Morley Rousseau, London, eighteen seventy three and footnote seventeen twelve
[10:31] Speaker 1: through seventeen seventy eight was in one respect the most
[10:35] Speaker 1: consistent representative of the movement which we have been studying,
[10:39] Speaker 1: a movement to establish the individualistic point of view in religion,
[10:44] Speaker 1: philosophy and politics. Yet in another respect he was a
[10:49] Speaker 1: most uncompromising antagonist of the movement, for instead of insisting
[10:54] Speaker 1: on the advantages of enlightenment and civilization, he advocated a
[11:00] Speaker 1: return to primitive feeling into the state of nature. Emil
[11:05] Speaker 1: a philosophical romance, is devoted to an account of his
[11:09] Speaker 1: ideal education, and the treatise entitled concred Sociale to an
[11:15] Speaker 1: exposition of his political philosophy. He draws an ideal picture
[11:20] Speaker 1: of man as he originally existed in the state of
[11:23] Speaker 1: nature before entering into the social contract by which society
[11:27] Speaker 1: was first formed, and he teaches that all authority resides
[11:32] Speaker 1: in the sovereign will of the people. He maintains the
[11:35] Speaker 1: right of the people to assemble for the purpose of confirming, altering,
[11:40] Speaker 1: and abrogating all authority in the state. Thus he rejects
[11:44] Speaker 1: the division of legislative, judicial, and executive powers, substituting for
[11:50] Speaker 1: them the rule of popular assembly. In his religious doctrines,
[11:55] Speaker 1: he is a deist rather than an atheist. Historical position,
[12:00] Speaker 1: the so called French Enlightenment of the eighteenth century is
[12:04] Speaker 1: a one sided development of the empiricism inaugurated in England
[12:08] Speaker 1: by Locke and introduced into France by Montesquieu and Voltaire.
[12:13] Speaker 1: If we except Rousseau, the representatives of the age of
[12:17] Speaker 1: Enlightenment were men of meager or at most mediocre intellectual ability,
[12:22] Speaker 1: who failed to leave any lasting impression on the development
[12:26] Speaker 1: of speculative thought. Indeed, Voltaire, who certainly knew the age
[12:31] Speaker 1: in which he lived, pronounced it to be an age
[12:35] Speaker 1: of trivialities. Rousseau alone spoke as one who had seriously
[12:40] Speaker 1: studied the spirit of his time when he demanded the
[12:43] Speaker 1: abandonment of artificial culture and conventional refinement in favor of
[12:48] Speaker 1: what is natural, simple, and therefore of permanent value in
[12:52] Speaker 1: human life. To this cry of an age of unrest,
[12:56] Speaker 1: the French Revolution was the answer. End of chapter fifty nine.

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