In his Essay on Human Understanding, Locke picks up where his predecessors in epistemological theory had left off stopped and directs the study towards a more empiricist approach. Among the complexities of his theory, the notions of “substance”, “nominal essence” and “real essence” are fundamental and allow, according to Locke, to explain the nature of the things we perceive. In this essay, I will aim to explain the theory that ties these three concepts together and, in turn, examine their role in the overall framework. However, as is often the case in early philosophical works, we find among commentators opposing interpretations of its meaning; I will endeavor to examine the points of contention and ultimately report what appears to be the natural reading. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay To begin, I would like to examine Locke's conception of "substance." Locke offers us two levels at which we can speak of substance; at the general level (“the notion of pure substance in general (Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II. XXIII, 2)) and at the level of particular or individual things (“ideas of particular types of substance”). , II, XXIII, 3)) Aside from this distinction simply stated in the Essay, however, the rest of Locke's conception of substance is controversial and much debated. The way this first appears in the Essay, and the way Locke's view has traditionally been interpreted, is that he conceives of substance as acting in a supporting role; the qualities or properties that an object possesses, both at the constitutional level and at the observable level, must be anchored by something. The properties that come together to form an object cannot simply exist as a set of properties; they must be linked to something that Locke calls a “substrate.” This substrate would be essentially devoid of properties. As Locke explains: "The idea which we then have, to which we give the general name of substance, being nothing other than the supposed but unknown support of those qualities, we find existing, which we imagine not cannot subsist, sine re substantive, without something. to support them we call this support substantia, which according to the true meaning of the word is in plain English, to stand under or support. » (ibid. II, XXIII, 2) How Locke actually views this unknowable substance which is supposed to anchor all qualities is open to debate; Ayers puts the problem succinctly: “The question is: Does Locke regard the “substance” or “substrate” of observable properties as an entity distinct from all its properties? or “is the unknown “substance” or “substrate” nothing in addition to the unknown “true essence”? (M. Ayers “The Ideas of Power and Substance in Locke's Philosophy” in I. Tipton (ed.), p.77) It seems that either interpretation poses problems for Locke; if he wants to maintain that the substrate does indeed exist, distinct from all qualities, can we really say that it is anything? “How is a totally featureless “something” different from nothing at all? (EJ Lowe Locke on Human Understanding ch.4, p.75) Conversely, however, if the substrate were not distinct from the properties, it would have its own properties which, according to Locke's framework, would require grounding or a support. (ibid.) Scholars have suggested many ways to support the idea that Locke viewed "true essence" as fundamentallyinterchangeable with “substance”. Lowe, for example, suggests that Locke may be using the notion of substance as a name for the basic microstructure of objects: "remembering...Locke's sympathy for atomism, might we not suppose that this What he means by the "substrate" of a macroscopic object like a tree is the complex and organized assemblage of material atoms which are its ultimate substantial constituents - what he elsewhere calls the "true essence" (ibid.). An interpretation like this can undoubtedly find textual support; Locke speaks of simple ideas arising “from the particular internal constitution, or unknown essence of that substance.” (Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, XXIII,3) The conjunction “or” here suggests an equality and interchangeability of the two notions. However, we cannot simply rely on grammatical nuances to establish a solid interpretation of Locke; it seems that if Locke were to consider that the substratum was not simply a means of expressing the constitution of an object, he would adhere to the Aristotelian notion of "prime matter" which, given the philosophical climate in which Locke wrote, could have been embarrassing. As Ayers argues, "it is improbable, to the point of impossible, that Locke, who is an anti-Aristotelian corpuscularian of the school of Boyle, could himself, using the very term substrate, advance a view so analogous to what Berkeley describes as "the outdated and much-ridiculed notion of materia prima found in Aristotle and his disciples." (M. Ayers “The Ideas of Power and Substance in Locke's Philosophy” in I. Tipton (ed.), p.78) Locke does indeed seem to speak of a characterless substrate in a rather pejorative manner: “Those who first encountered the The notion of accidents, as a sort of real beings, who needed something inherent, were forced to find the word Substance, to support them. If the poor Indian philosopher (who imagined that the Earth also wanted something to support it) had thought of this word Substance, he should not have taken the trouble to find an elephant to support it, and a turtle to support its elephant. :The word Substance would have done it effectively.' (Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, XIII, 19) It could be, however, that this comparison simply indicates the level at which the substance is unknowable. As much as we might wish to assert that Locke was not inconsistent with his own and his contemporaries' rejection of Aristotelian raw material, it cannot be denied that this is so. Locke frequently reinforces the need for something to support the qualities: “…we cannot conceive how they should stand alone. (Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, XXIII, 4) And, as mentioned earlier, something intended for supporting qualities cannot have qualities of its own that require support. If substance were fundamentally equable to real essence or the constitution of objects at the atomic level, Locke would surely have made it more explicit. An undeniable distinction is made. As Lowe points out, the distinction is necessary for Locke's theory; the substrate has a “metaphysical role to play beyond any purely scientific explanatory role that might be offered by the doctrine of atomism.” (EJ Lowe Locke on Human Understanding ch.4, p.76) Atoms themselves have qualities and properties that require support. Therefore, it seems to me that the most obvious reading is one in which Locke espouses the idea of ​​an underlying supportive, characterless substance. Although it is disputed, it is undeniable that whatever Locke is trying to convey inspeaking of substance, this substance is completely unknowable. According to Locke, substances have two essences: their real essence and their nominal essence; this recognition of two distinct essences is crucial to the way Locke constructs his theory of how we come to classify objects. Locke defines “real essence” as that which exists at the level of the constitution; the true essence of a substance is what causes the qualities we can observe, but the true essence itself is unobservable. As its name suggests, true essence has its basis in reality and not simply in human conception. Nominal essence, on the other hand, is composed of the abstract, observable qualities of a substance, those that allow us to classify substances into different species or genera. Locke uses the term "nominal" to demonstrate that noting similar abstract ideas in a substance is an exercise in naming things. Locke offers numerous examples of how real and nominal essences interact; its most common example is that of Gold. The nominal essence of gold is the idea we have of gold which allows us to call it gold; some substances will have certain qualities which correspond to the nominal essence of the thing we call gold, for example weight, malleability, yellowness, etc. and we would also call this substance gold. However, the real essence of gold allows it to have the properties that constitute its nominal essence. It has been noted that in postulating his theory of essences, Locke was reacting against his scholastic predecessors, and even against their predecessors, notably Aristotle. He thought their inquiries were in vain; as Mackie puts it, they had an approach to essences that "was not only erroneous but seriously misleading, which had led thinkers for centuries to pursue erroneous and unsuccessful methods of investigation and made them "pretenders to a knowledge they did not have.” J. Mackie Problems From Locke ch.3) He firmly refutes the idea that, in their classification of objects into categories, his predecessors actually had some knowledge of their reality, that is to say, of what he would call their true essence, “the true essential nature.” things. (ibid.) Locke is adamant that what we perceive in objects is only an abstract idea of ​​what they really are; we categorize them according to these characteristics; the scholastic method, according to Locke, gives rise to the double misconception that we can have knowledge of the fundamental nature of things and that nature itself organizes substances into distinct species. Although nature provides the fundamental constitutions of substances that allow them to have the power to produce certain perceptions in us, it is humans who organize them according to these perceptions. It sometimes seems that Locke is asserting that the existence of natural kinds is an empirical question. and he wants to assert that our knowledge of the nominal essences of substances is not sufficient to deduce that there really exist natural kinds. (J. Mackie's Problems of Locke ch.3) However, it also seems that Locke is arguing for denial. of natural species on numerous occasions. For example, he claims that if nature were responsible for separating substances into species, we could not explain the number of cases in which substances do not seem to correspond to any species; he states that the view "which supposes these essences to be a certain number of forms or molds in which all natural things which exist are cast and equally participate, has, I imagine,..)