Paving the Way of Ideas: Pierre Gassendi’s Epistemology and Its Reception up to Locke

Abstract

This paper aims to outline some features of Pierre Gassendi’s epistemology and its reception in John Locke. To do so, I will also analyze a few potential intermediaries between Gassendi and Locke, that is, the socalled Port-Royal Logic and Gilles de Launay’s Essais logiques. Then, I will address Locke’s manuscript drafts of his well-known Essay, showing the extent to which he endorses Gassendi’s objections to Descartes. According to the present interpretation, Gassendi’s epistemology is mainly a polemical weapon for Locke. Accordingly, the present tentative inquiry aims to place Locke’s ‘New Way of Ideas’ in a wider context of anti-Cartesian claims. Ironically, the framework in which both Gassendi and Locke articulated these anti-Cartesian claims is entirely Cartesian, resulting from his epistemological shift towards ideas.