Aristotle's Influence On John Locke

Given the popularity and influence Aristotle had in 17th century early-modern academia, it would have been almost impossible for Locke not to have been shaped by the Aristotelian tradition. Even Locke's most well-known idea—the human mind as a blank slate, a tabula rasa—was first raised in Aristotle's De Anima. This lineage is also evident in Locke's work on words and language, though on some points Aristotle's thought plays more the part of sparring partner than father to Locke's system. In order to see the development of such, however, it is important to first understand Aristotle's own account. Aristotle's De Interpretatione opens with a clarification of what words are, saying, “Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of

That language remain a consistent system when put into use was key for Aristotle's view; without this guarantee he can't account for communication. Yet Locke is suggesting that since all experience is personal and all word-assignment private, we can never really know whether the idea we have of “gold” when referencing the substance in question covers all the properties the substance has in the world, or, more importantly, all the properties of gold with which our listener is familiar. Several hundred years later, Wittgenstein would still be working out this problem with his famous thought-experiment of the beetle in the box, though his conclusions would be even more radical than what Locke proposes. While Aristotle arrives at the inter-human nature of language with satisfaction and as an assurance of stability, Locke sees this quality as calling for a departure into