ANGLICAN CHURCH MEN, DESCARTES AND JOHN LOCKE ON INNATE IDEAS: RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN DIALOGUE

Résumé

At the beginning of his Essays Concerning Human Understanding, Locke argues that everyone is conscious thinking; and that the object of our thought is ideas. Thus, ideas occupy a significant place in the process of determining the capacity of human understanding. One of the fundamental enquiries in Locke‟s Essays is: how do these ideas come to the mind? This piece unveils the arguments that were already in place during Locke‟s immediate history in favour of innatism, which proposes some of our ideas to be innate. These include the nativism of Descartes, the Anglican Churchmen and the Cambridge Platonists. It is from this background that I bring out the polemics of Locke against nativism that does not just serve as an introduction to his Essays but also as a frame for his further arguments in the Essays.