After reading John Locke’s”experience “Rene Descartes’s”book of the world” and Jean Jacques Rousseau”book of nature”. I found how they were looking at education at a different perspective.

Rene Descartes stated that school isn’t the only way of learning education, people should always get out of what can only see, go outside of school, have the freedom of gaining education of what people really need. Descartes believed that everything has an answer but in order for him to believe the answer is to proved the answer by himself. And that is the reason Descartes did’t believed in school systems, he did not like the way of school educate students, which is giving out an answer without proving it. Which i found is similar to John Locke’s “experience”, John Locke believed everything that we learned from life are from experience. He states that, “children and idiots have not the least apprehension (Locke, page 2)” proving that knowledge isn’t something we are born with. Locke also questions, “Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge?” and answers with, “in one word, from experience (Locke, page 5).”

On the other hand Rousseau more focus on nature and education, he stated that men are naturally good, is the society change people, the way of how people thinks, and how people learn. Rousseau also stated that children should be taught differently by age, and nothing against their will.

John Locke, Rene Descartes and Jean Jacques Rousseau have some similar and different conceptions of state of nature and education.

John Locke believed that humans begin as a blank slate and gradually acquire knowledge through experience. Everyone is equally endowed with nature because God made them so. For Locke, everyone obeys the laws given by God in order to create a safe society. In a similar way, Descartes admires God, he thinks God is perfect. According to Rousseau, “God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil” (1).

The idea of nature penetrates throughout Emile, it is the ultimate goal of education. He says “The inner growth of our organs and faculties is the education of nature” (Rousseau, 1). Children should use this growth as tools for education. Rousseau believes that the state of nature has unlimited freedom. It is unspoiled; everyone starts out perfect. Anyone can find happiness in his natural state. Children, unlike adults, are naturally good and uncorrupted by the influences of society and traditional schooling. The job of educators is to stay out of the way of spoil them and let their nature blossom. Compare to Locke, Rousseau take a more hands-off approach of education. He proposed that “freedom, not power, is the greatest good. That man is truly free who desires what he is able to perform, and does what he desires” (Rousseau, 5). Rousseau thinks that children have complete freedom of what and when to learn. Educators should only give children information when it’s meaningful to them, that way they’ll learn much effectively when they want it themselves. In contrast, Descartes believes in deductive reasoning, that knowledge is built from a simple foundation. He says “with the examination of the simplest objects, not anticipating, however, from this any other advantage than that to be found in accustoming my mind to the love and nourishment of truth” (12).

Rousseau sees the artificial “habit” as bad. He is very pleased with Emile for that “His body is healthy, his limbs are supple, his mind is accurate and unprejudiced, his heart is free and untroubled by passion” (Rousseau, 23). Similarly, Descartes says “a man of good sense using his natural and unprejudiced judgement draws respecting the matters of his experience” (8).

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s novel Emile tells the life story of a fictional man names Emile. In the story, Rousseau connects Emile’s development and the education he receives in his life. In his first couple books, Rousseau focuses on children. He says “they retain sounds, form, sensation, but rarely ideas, and still more rarely relations.” (Rousseau, 11).  According to Rousseau, younger children in the Age of Nature must emphasize the physical side of their education. They use their physical senses to acquire knowledge. Rousseau also believes that that a person should begin formal education in his teenage years. However the education he suggests is working with a private tutor. Rousseau believes that “a student will develop reasoning” under the guidance of a tutor. He also believes that the adolescence stage is the best time to begin studies because a man is fully developed. In the adult years of Emile’s life, Rousseau proposes that a man should focus his education on religion.

In comparison to Descartes “Book of the World” and Locke’s “experience, Rousseau takes a more planned approach in life. He maps out how education should flow in a man through his life. For example, Rousseau uses Emile’s life and separates them by books to show the steps in how education came to Emile. However, it is quite similar to Locke’s idea that no man has natural abilities and must start from scratch. Rousseau recognizes that there is no “natural man” in modern society. Locke and Rousseau share the idea that human development grow around experience. Descartes and Rousseau share that idea that studies are important. This is shown through Rousseau’s focus on formal education during adolescence years. However, Rousseau is different from both these philosophers in that he thinks aside from how a person should learn and focuses on the “when” part. “It is only after long training, after much consideration as to his own feelings and the feelings he observes in others, that he will be able to generalize his individual notions under the abstract idea of humanity” (Rousseau, 30). According to Rousseau, a man will finally adjust to a society once he has gone through his course of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood and understands how education flows through himself.

Rousseau from the beginning expresses a view that man, meddles, forces, destroy and defaces all things. Man will not like anything as nature made it, so the need to change or alter with what is natural, but he said these are things we are taught after being plugged into particular social conditions. Rousseau feels that we are born sensitive to everything and what we are subjected and taught does affects us from birth. Isolating a child from these elements are essential and importing to developing them. Rousseau prefers that you raise the child in a state of nature, or free form where there not corrupted and natural as possible, able to become aware of elements, learn rights from wrong . That is an example of isolation because Rousseau does not want any interference from the parent to suggest to the child what is write and what is wrong behavior, not to ruin their harvest as Rousseau phrased it. Individualism does goes hand in hand with this method of parenting because the child is encouraged to find activities and hobbies of interest, it make it a completely individualistic experience because there not placed or encouraged to do anything that they don’t  find interesting . Later on at different ages it seems as Rousseau does want you to teach them but he does not want you to correct them but more allow them to find mistakes on their own, present things in a way where the child come up with their own answer to their question with out you having to correct or discredit them.

Both Descartes and Locke are skeptical of the possibility of certain knowledge. Descartes went to a great school and received an education, however later on he questioned what he had learned in the institution. He thought that he gained education from “excellent books”, but he also expressed that “books should not be the basis of our knowledge” (Descartes 3). Descartes believed that there were still things that he needed to know, and questions that needed to be answered that school had not given him answers to, leading him to think that school does not designate our future. He shows his disappointment with his education by stating, “as soon as I had finished the entire course of study… I found myself involved in so many doubts and errors, that I was convinced I had advanced no farther… than the discovery at every turn of my own ignorance…” (Descartes 1) in his published treatise “Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences”. According to Descartes, knowledge depends on absolute certainty, and he believes that there are some principles which are immediately known by the humans. These being principles which are “revealed to [us] by natural light” and “cannot in any way be open to doubt” (Descartes 1). As a result, Descartes concludes that these principles are innate.

In contrast, Locke does not believe that there is any certain knowledge. In fact, Locke says that “all ideas come from sensation and reflection; all knowledge is founded on experience” (Locke 2) in his writing “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”. He rejects the idea of innate principles, and believes that innate ideas do not exist, otherwise they would be known to children, but they are not. (Locke 2) Being that he is an empiricist, he has this idea of the tabula rasa, meaning that “From experience: in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself.” (Locke 2) He describes the mind at birth, at a blank state, which is later on filled with experience, not some divine natural light through which the mind can gain knowledge as we go.

1)     Descartes’s opinion of the relationship between experience and knowledge differs from Locke’s in a few ways.  Descartes, although enthusiastic about how we learn the most through day to day experiences, puts an emphasis on how education grants pupils with better ability to process thoughts and experiences.  He looks at schooling as something helpful, but not necessary to the learning process, an example being the passage that starts with him saying “I was aware that the languages taught in them (schools) are necessary to the understanding of the writings of the ancients”, concluding; “but I believed that I had already given sufficient time to languages” (Part 1).  Descartes doesn’t dismiss schooling entirely, but notes that his own investigation of the “book of the world” accompanied him “with greater success than it would have been had I never quitted my country or my books” (1).
Locke is adamant about the importance of experience, but describes it in a more visceral, simplistic way.  He highlights the role our senses play in our ability to process information and “furnish” the “white page” of our minds (2, Book II, Ch. I).  Regarding the innateness of thoughts, I think the two men can agree that, in a nature vs. nurture sense, a person is shaped more by their experiences than their nature.  Descartes, in the fourth paragraph of Section II, discusses “the very different characters” he observed through his travels.  That, after observing people of similar minds raised in different countries, significant differences can be found.

2)   A maxim that shapes many parts of society is the principle that we should treat others how we’d like to be treated ourselves.  The only way to process this maxim however, is through experience.  Only through experience do we learn what we like, and don’t like in our interactions with others.  Without engaging in life outside of school, their is no way to gauge our own needs and desires, and in turn how we should treat those around us.

Rene Descartes and John Locke are philosophers that have intricate views on life. One similarity between both is that they like to explore the truths about life rather than have things come to them. Both men believe that it is essential to have knowledge about life and used experience in their reasoning. “I entirely abandoned the study of letters, and resolved no longer to seek any other science than the knowledge of myself, or of the great book of the world.”(Descartes 5) According to Descartes, to find the truth about life, a person must abandon their regular studies and educate themselves. At a youth age, Descartes began traveling to gain experience. “I spent the remainder of my youth in traveling, and visiting courts and armies, in holding intercourse with men of different dispositions and ranks, in collecting varied experience” (Descartes 6). Descartes used his experience to find the truth of life as well as his growth in knowledge. Locke also believed that people can only learn from their personal experiences such as their sensation and reflections on life. Locke says “All ideas come from sensation or reflection.” (Locke, 1). Locke is basically saying that all ideas that people have come from what they feel, see, and experience. His belief in universal truth derives from personal experience and ideas.

A difference in both men’s philosophy is that Locke deeply believes that knowledge comes only from experience. Whereas, Descartes believes that personal studies is a big part of knowledge. Descartes feels that books are helpful however people should not base their learning method with books but can use it as a foundation. On the other hand, Locke believes that people should start from scratch and build their knowledge based solely on their personal experiences. If both men spoke to each other, they would concur on experience being important however, they would disagree on their approach