Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de

(1715-1780)

   philosopher

   Born in Grenoble, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac left the priesthood in 1740 and traveled to Paris, where he became an acquaintance of the philosophes (denis Diderot, jean-jacques rousseau) and at this time wrote his Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines (1749) and the Traité des sensations (1755), this latter being regarded as a decisive contribution to the science of psychology. From 1758 to 1767, Condillac was the tutor to the son of the duke of Parma. He then returned to the Abbey of Flux, where he wrote Le Commerce et le Gouvernement considérés relativement l'un à l'autre (1776), a treatise on political economy. The leading French advocate of the ideas of the English philosopher John Locke, Condillac argued that all human knowledge and conscious experience are derived from sensory perception. He also tried to clarify and support Locke's theory of knowledge, asserting with Locke the impossibility of innate ideas. Some of Condillac's theories were anticipated by the 16th-century thinker pierre gassendi. Condillac, whose writings also were precursors of modern linguistic theories, was elected to the Académie Française in 1768.