Claude Adrien Helvetius Quotes on Knowledge
Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715–1771) gave the most uncompromising statement of French sensationalist empiricism in De l'Esprit (1758), pressing the Lockean derivation of all ideas from sensation into the doctrine that all human mental faculties — judgment, memory, imagination, the moral sentiments themselves — are reducible to particular configurations of sensation under the shaping influence of education, interest, and the passions. The book was burned by the Paris parlement and condemned by both the Sorbonne and the Pope, and the consequent scandal made the framework one of the most discussed positions in late Enlightenment philosophy of mind. Bentham later credited it as the principal influence on his own utilitarian psychology.
Quotes
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Attributed to Claude Adrien Helvetius:
“Education makes us what we are.”
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Attributed to Claude Adrien Helvetius:
“The variations among men are not natural, but the result of education.”
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Attributed to Claude Adrien Helvetius:
“All knowledge comes from sensation.”
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“All men have an equal disposition for understanding.”
p. 286 -
“Most events spring from causes equally small: we are unacquainted with them because most historians have been themselves ignorant of them, or have not had eyes capable of perceiving them. It is true, that, in this respect, the mind may repair their omissions; for the knowledge of certain principles easily compensates the lack of knowledge of certain facts .”
La plupart des évènements ont des causes aussi petites. Nous les ignorons, parce que la plupart des historiens les ont ignorées eux-mêmes, ou parce qu’ils n’ont pas eu d’yeux pour les appercevoir. Il est vrai qu’à cet égard l’esprit peut réparer leurs omissions : la connoissance de certains principes supplée facilement à la connoissance de certains faits . | Essay III, Chapter I -
“La plupart des évènements ont des causes aussi petites. Nous les ignorons, parce que la plupart des historiens les ont ignorées eux-mêmes, ou parce qu’ils n’ont pas eu d’yeux pour les appercevoir. Il est vrai qu’à cet égard l’esprit peut réparer leurs omissions : la connoissance de certains principes supplée facilement à la connoissance de certains faits .”
Most events spring from causes equally small: we are unacquainted with them because most historians have been themselves ignorant of them, or have not had eyes capable of perceiving them. It is true, that, in this respect, the mind may repair their omissions; for the knowledge of certain principles easily compensates the lack of knowledge of certain facts . -
“Essay III, Chapter I”
Most events spring from causes equally small: we are unacquainted with them because most historians have been themselves ignorant of them, or have not had eyes capable of perceiving them. It is true, that, in this respect, the mind may repair their omissions; for the knowledge of certain principles easily compensates the lack of knowledge of certain facts . -
“The degree of genius necessary to please us is pretty nearly the same proportion that we ourselves have.”
Essay II, Chapter X, note. -
“Essay II, Chapter X, note.”
The degree of genius necessary to please us is pretty nearly the same proportion that we ourselves have. -
“To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdain.”
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