Education, history of philosophy of

6. Descartes and Locke

René Descartes’ remarks on education are continuous with the classical tradition in identifying universal wisdom as the greatest good and proper aim of instruction, but he turned a deeply Augustinian account of reason against the curricula of Augustine, Aquinas and the scholastic university, and championed the free and methodical exercise of individual reason or self-instruction as the surest path to wisdom and the progress of science and human emancipation. He regarded the unrestrained use of reason in the pursuit of understanding as a natural and desirable expression of human nature, and held that the individual intellect can easily discover within itself a knowledge of God, the soul and good actions. Thus, he regarded the inward gaze of reason itself as the best guide for the conduct of life, and the means through which theological disagreements and the conflict arising from them may be resolved. However, he held that the purging of prejudice through doubt or the suspension of belief is a necessary prerequisite to the effective employment of reason.

With regard to the curricular proposals of Augustine, Descartes maintained that the revealed truths of Scripture are beyond the intelligence of even the best trained interpreter, and that in general it takes more skill to find what is true in books than to discover the truth for oneself. In answer to Aquinas and the scholastic tradition, he argued that instruction through syllogistic deductions undermines both the freedom and power of reason, because syllogistic deduction does not ensure any intellectual grasp of the propositions involved and does not enable one to discover new knowledge. Exercise with inquiries conducted on his own more natural method of reasoning is the recommended alternative (see Descartes, R. §2).

Descartes laid the foundations for the educational philosophy of the Enlightenment, but it remained to John Locke to provide an influential articulation of it. Locke deepened Descartes’ attack on second-hand knowledge by combining the latter’s view that knowledge can only be obtained through the perception of ‘clear and distinct’ ideas, with his own systematic development of the claim that one can only acquire ideas through one’s own experience. With this epistemic individualism as his starting point, he took the fundamental and humanizing goal of education to be the development of rational abilities and the habits of doubt, reflection and foresight required to form children into adults who will judge and act in accordance with the dictates of reason. This is consistent with his having put virtue, wisdom, and ‘breeding’ (that is, respect for self and others) before learning or the acquisition of knowledge, since he regarded virtue as a disposition to follow one’s desires only when doing so accords with the dictates of reason or natural moral law. Autonomy of judgment and action are thereby reconciled with virtue and sociability through the concept of self-mastery, and education is to be first and foremost a process of habituation to self-mastery.

Locke held that parents have a natural duty to educate their children to be self-governing and able to provide for themselves, but he proposed public action to ensure that even children of paupers would receive instruction in Christian morality and a trade: those who will never have the leisure for knowledge or science would have little use for more than this, he suggested. For the sons of landed gentry he counselled a general education through private tutelage, aimed to produce gentlemen ready to contribute to the wellbeing of the community. This education should encourage a breadth of experience and inquiry reaching down to the foundations of beliefs, and promote reflection on desires by refusing to gratify those that are excessive. It should exercise firm but gentle authority over the child, appeal early and often to the child’s reason, and make education enjoyable since autonomous learning cannot be coerced (see Locke, J. §9).