Educational Philosophy in the French Enlightenment

From Nature to Second Nature

Natasha Gill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754662891
• eBook ISBN: 9781317145684
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Though Emile is still considered the central pedagogical text of the French Enlightenment, a myriad of lesser-known thinkers paved the way for Rousseau's masterpiece. Natasha Gill traces the arc of these thinkers as they sought to reveal the correlation between early childhood experiences and the success or failure of social and political relations, and set the terms for the modern debate about the influence of nature and nurture in individual growth and collective life.

Gill offers a comprehensive analysis of the rich cross-fertilization between educational and philosophical thought in the French Enlightenment. She begins by showing how in Some Thoughts Concerning Education John Locke set the stage for the French debate by transposing key themes from his philosophy into an educational context. Her treatment of the abbé Claude Fleury, the rector of the University of Paris Charles Rollin, and Swiss educator Jean-Pierre de Crousaz illustrates the extent to which early Enlightenment theorists reevaluated childhood and learning methods on the basis of sensationist psychology. Etienne-Gabriel Morelly, usually studied as a marginal thinker in the history of utopian thought, is here revealed as the most important precursor to Rousseau, and the first theorist to claim education as the vehicle through which individual liberation, social harmony and political unity could be achieved. Gill concludes with an analysis of the educational-philosophical dispute between Helvétius and Rousseau, and traces the influence of pedagogical theory on the political debate surrounding the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1762.

PART 1
The Educational Philosophy of John Locke

Prologue:
Locke’s Educational Theory in Relation to his Philosophical and Political Thought

John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education encapsulates the principal developments in seventeenth-century pedagogical thought and sets the stage for the major innovations and tensions in eighteenth-century French educational theory.¹ The treatise also adds a new dimension to our understanding of Locke as a thinker, for his educational inquiry compelled him to confront the practical implications of his philosophical and political views. In Some Thoughts he could not merely theorize about the origins of liberty, the principles of individual rights, or the nature of the mind. He had to give a full account of how a child could simultaneously be subjected to authority and granted freedom, how an individual who was allowed space for self-expression could become other-oriented, and how an infant born without innate ideas could acquire reason or attain virtue and moral consciousness.

Some Thoughts was written between 1684 and 1691 at the request of Locke’s friend Edward Clarke, who asked the philosopher’s advice on how to raise his son. The book was published in 1693, and the first French edition appeared in 1695. It went through at least nine French editions in the course of the eighteenth century as well as several revisions by its translator, Pierre Coste. Notwithstanding Locke’s modesty concerning the quality of his educational advice (he insists in his dedication that the primary purpose of Some Thoughts is to help his friend’s son), the treatise had an enormous influence on educational thought, particularly in France.² Almost all eighteenth-century French educational writers, from prominent philosophers like Rousseau to obscure teachers, referred to the lessons of Some Thoughts in their works. This influence was due in part to the stature of the book’s author, whose Two Treatises of Government and Essay Concerning Human Understanding had been published in 1689 and 1690 respectively, and in part to the fact that it was a well-organized summary of seventeenth-century educational ideas.³ Locke assimilated themes from Plato and Quintilian, the Renaissance humanist pedagogy of Michel de Montaigne and Johann Amos Comenius, and the religious educational writings of Jansenists Pierre Nicole and Blaise Pascal.⁴ But the most important reason for the impact of Some Thoughts is that it was far more than a treatise on educational methods. In the work, Locke transposed key themes from his philosophy into an educational context, confronting questions of how liberty, individual identity, moral responsibility, and sociability could be experienced or instilled through the educational process. In addition, in his treatment of childhood he set the stage for the eighteenth-century debate over “nature versus nurture,” which in the late seventeenth century was described as the proper balance between nature and habit.

Although the specific intent of these introductory chapters is to discuss Locke’s educational views, and in particular those principles of Some Thoughts that had such a strong impact on French educationists, I first take a moment to examine the philosophical assumptions that underlie, or appear to shape, the work. Some Thoughts made no pretensions to being a philosophical tract in support of either the Essay Concerning Human Understanding or the Second Treatise of Government, and we should be careful when projecting philosophical concepts onto a text that was identified by its author as a practical manual of child-rearing. However, it is impossible to overlook the extent to which, in his educational treatise, Locke drew upon the central principles informing his earlier works, and it is this ambiguous mingling that had the greatest effect on his followers.

The Debate about Philosophy and Education in Some Thoughts

Scholars have taken starkly different positions concerning the relationship between Some Thoughts and Locke’s other major works. While some argue that “Locke did not consciously make any link between his philosophy and the advice addressed to his friend,”⁵ others believe that in Some Thoughts Locke “applied his philosophy specifically to pedagogy”⁶ or that his pedagogical theory reveals the underlying agenda found in his broader philosophy.⁷ These disagreements are significant, as they point to the interpretive problems we encounter when reading Some Thoughts. It is never clear to what extent Locke intended to link various aspects of his thought or to imbue his advice on instruction and training with moral or philosophical import. But many of the issues treated in the educational work gained force for Locke’s readers precisely because of the ways in which they recalled—or seemed to endorse—his political philosophy or theory of the mind.

Despite their differences, most Locke scholars agree on at least one point: Some Thoughts revisited some of the unresolved issues from Locke’s earlier works and for this reason provides important clues to his thought. In our analysis of Some Thoughts we attempt to unravel these clues, and in subsequent chapters we follow the trail of French theorists as they did the same. First, however, I offer some preliminary remarks about the interface between philosophical and educational ideas in Locke’s treatise.

Some Thoughts and the Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Two main philosophical problems from Locke’s Essay make their way into Some Thoughts. First, there is in the work an apparent clash between hedonistic and rationalist interpretations of human motivation (pedagogically this is linked to the question of what virtue is and how it is attained).⁸ Second, the treatise raises the dilemma of “nature versus nurture,” or innate tendencies and individual characteristics versus the open, malleable nature of human beings. I outline these briefly below before discussing them in more detail in Chapter 1.

Human Motivation

In pedagogical theory, the position taken on human motivation has a direct effect on decisions about how much attention is given to children, when and whether to meet their demands, how they are to be rewarded or punished, and by what means they are taught to respect the needs of others. Locke holds two positions in Some Thoughts concerning human motivation and subsequently concerning the definition of virtue as motive or consequence of action. On the one hand, drawing from his Essay, he argues that human beings are malleable and driven by their desire to avoid pain and maximize pleasure. He insists that the senses are primary in the learning process, and that in order for education to succeed it must provide children with sensually pleasurable experiences. In this interpretation, habit formation appears to be the key to a good education. Locke argues that the best way to lead children to morality is to appeal to their immediate needs and desires, conditioning them with rewards and punishments to find pleasure in those things that produce what the educator defines as virtue.

On the other hand, Locke argues that human beings are capable of using their reason to resist their desires and of acting virtuously as a result of this resistance. He reaches beyond a simple interpretation of the pain–pleasure impulse⁹ and suggests that higher motivations can be instilled in or brought out of children. When arguing this case, Locke implies that moral responsibility must be expected of young people and forcefully condemns parents for allowing pleasure to act as a motivating force for their actions. He cautions parents to treat children as rational beings (rather than as conditioned animals) capable of understanding of God’s law, and he insists they be taught to find pleasure only in virtuous acts chosen by rational calculation rather than in those accidentally stumbled upon in the course of pursuing self-interest. Locke thus encourages parents to reason with children as early as possible, teaching them to distinguish intellectually between good and bad actions.

Charles Taylor and James Tully have identified these issues of motivation in Locke’s work as critical in the formation of the modern identity. According to Taylor, Locke contributes to the creation of the modern individual who possesses the ability to take a distance from his desires and determine the nature of his actions by rational and objective analysis—in other words, to reach freedom through control and self-mastery.¹⁰ Although Locke validates pleasure as a motive of action, as Tully argues, in Some Thoughts it is clear that Locke intends for individuals to learn to use their wills against their desires—to invoke a greater, future good at the expense of immediate pleasure. This future good will provide them with satisfaction, but only because the nature of their satisfaction has been altered in the process.¹¹ But while it is true that Some Thoughts puts forward an explicit method for creating the “punctual self,”¹² the complicated legacy of Some Thoughts consists partly in this: that although Locke’s practical discussion of virtue and motivation leads him to a purely external, habit-based educational method, he does not abandon the ideal of a virtue linked to transcendent sources or motivated by innate moral consciousness. In Some Thoughts he does not fully recognize this as a conflict, but the consequences will be clear in the work of eighteenth-century theorists influenced by his work.

Nature and Habit

The problem of “nature versus habit” is related to Locke’s position on “innatism” in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke’s battle with innatism is directed primarily against the idea that human beings are born with general truths and principles already formed in their minds. Innatism was problematic for education because the belief in innate ideas made moral training a somewhat redundant exercise, intended merely to bring out that which was already present in children.¹³ This belief also led teachers to enforce strict disciplinary measures, since children who disobeyed rules that they were expected to know intuitively were more deserving of punishment than those who did not understand rules in the first place. The rejection of innatism opened the door to the possibility that human beings were malleable and could be reformed externally, and paved the way for a gentler approach to discipline.

Although Locke’s French disciples, in particular Etienne Condillac and Claude Adrien Helvétius, carry the idea of the malleable mind to extreme conclusions, Locke’s own position is modest. As we will see, while Locke’s focus on the inculcation of habits shows that he assigns great significance to the influence of the environment, much of Some Thoughts is taken up with an impassioned defense of the innate, individual temperaments and tendencies in children and the necessity for educators to mold their methods around these individual differences. Further, while it is true that for Locke the mind involuntarily receives ideas, it is not necessarily passive, lacking entirely in activity. The mind also has innate faculties that make possible its reception of these impressions and their combination in a certain order.¹⁴ This point becomes essential in Some Thoughts because Locke tries paradoxically to portray children as active participants in a process that in reality is being determined by adults, and because he hopes to create a natural link between internally motivated actions and externally driven habits. It is also significant because the issue of an active or passive mind, and “positive” versus “negative” education, becomes central to the struggle between Rousseau and Helvétius, Locke’s most prominent disciples in educational theory.

Some Thoughts and the Second Treatise of Government

If some of the unanswered questions from the Essay make their way into Locke’s educational theory, the situation is similar in the case of Locke’s political philosophy. In particular, the ideas Locke formulates in the Second Treatise— about individuality, liberty, human nature, and social life—are echoed in his educational work and act as a balance to the views on human nature that he draws from the Essay. In Some Thoughts we meet the same individuals to whom we were introduced in the Second Treatise: free and rational beings, living in a power structure that is not absolute or arbitrary but rather based on mutual need and consent. Both works attempt to establish how free and moral individuals can live together harmoniously in civil society.

The ideas developed in the Second Treatise have consequences for Some Thoughts in three areas, all of which are particularly relevant to eighteenth-century discussions about how to form the individual and the citizen through education. First, the work puts forth various and often incompatible representations of freedom and of the relationship between freedom and authority. Second, Locke’s attack on paternalistic politics and paternal power in the Second Treatise shapes his ideas on parental authority (and children’s freedom) in Some Thoughts. This becomes important for eighteenth-century French educationists because, like Renaissance humanists, they apply new visions of political relations to parents and children, and teachers and students.¹⁵ As we will see below, they project Locke’s view of the contractual association between ruler and subject onto the educational relationship, redefining it as one of mutual respect and reciprocity and focusing on the liberty and privileges of both the student–subject and the teacher–ruler. Third, there are significant—although inconsistent—similarities between the “state of nature” and childhood. We briefly review these issues before turning to an analysis of the text itself.

Freedom and Authority

Trying to solve the problem of whether freedom consists of doing what one wants or what reason commands, Locke endeavors to develop a similar position in Some Thoughts as he had in the Second Treatise, when he said of freedom that it is “a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence.”¹⁶ Locke’s goal in the Second Treatise is practical and political. In response to the threat posed by the absolutist policies of the Stuart King James II during the late 1680s, he argues that legitimate governments are those based on a contract, entered into by rational individuals with the intent of protecting their natural rights. He claims that people learn about their liberty, as well as its limits, through a knowledge and appreciation of God and His law and a consequent respect for the life and property of other human beings. In Some Thoughts Locke draws in part on this view of political liberty, and struggles with how best to develop a sense of independence in childre...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1 The Educational Philosophy of John Locke
• Part 2 Early Enlightenment Educational Theory: Claude Fleury, Charles Rollin, and Jean-Pierre de Crousaz
• Part 3 The Educational Philosophy of Étienne-Gabriel Morelly
• Part 4 The Helvétius–Rousseau Controversy
• Part 5 The Crisis of 1762: “Children Belong to the State”
• Conclusion: Disciples and Critics: The Impact of French Enlightenment Educational Thought
• Appendix 1 Rousseau’s Appropriation of Morelly
• Appendix 2 Helvétius’s Critique of Rousseau’s Educational Theory
• Appendix 3 Education in the Encyclopédie
• Works Cited
• Index