Coventry

Paper 2

The Empiricists

November 18, 2010

Portland State University

Locke [successfully establishes or fails to establish] in Essay III.iii.12 that “abstract ideas are the

essences of genera and species.”

In deference to my own nihilism, and very diligent incredulousness, I cannot personally see

that Locke successfully establishes anything, much less that “abstact ideas are the essences of

genera and species.”

What he does seem to demonstrate to me, almost inarguably, are syntax, capitalization,

phonetics, circumlocution, and a diligent respect for authority, scribomania, and simultaneous

propensity to lead authority towards his way of thinking. He distinguishes the concept of the

proper particular name, from the general concept to which it pertains.

As a teacher, Locke has an enchanting flow to his phraseology, buttressed by the semi-

colon, to his thoughts which seem to issue forth from his mind, with such naturalness and

sincere attempts to discover truthy aspects of his own capabilities of perception. His prolific

germanic Capitalizations of proper Nouns adds a lofty weight to the modern eye’s appraisal of

his purported concepts.

What actually occurs within the text as we modern humans read it is primarily linguistic and
illustrative of a complexity of cognition, such that Locke demarcates a taxonomy of his own

essentialist tendencies, for the pleasure of his “lordship.” Locke, in his sycophantic sophistry

writes in the most baroque style, deprived of actual content or substantive matter, limiting his

scope to the content of his own mind. While this pattern of mental calisthenics holds a certain

archaic linguistical allure, and power of exercising our cognition upon its reading, inside it very

little happens. As Julian Assange wrote of the difference between philosophy and mathematics,

the difference is in the measure of pomposity, or willingness to scrap drivel:

“Sat 23 Sep 2006 : Philosophy vs. Mathematics

It has often been said that mathematics is the cheapest university department to run, for all one

needs is pencil, a desk and a waste paper basket. This is not so. Philosophy is cheaper still, since

in philosophy we do not even need the basket. “

http://web.archive.org/web/20071020051936/http://iq.org/#ThecreamofAustralianPhysics

And so too it must be remembered that with excesses of humility, greatness might be

suppressed, presuming such a thing might be. Kafka’s burn order would have annihilated all his

body of work, much as he was prone to starving himself to death in his own living re-enactment

of “the Hunger Artist.” And so too, Beckett’s garbage can held magnificent “Texts for Nothing.”

And so if it were arrogance that might permeate Locke’s quest to prove the scope of

knowable, heirarchies of thought, so too, in the self-reification of his confidence, we might feel

the transcendentally human, the essence of man, unfold, in his sublime artfulness, in a sort of

wabisabi Haiku, designed to impress his peers and superiors.

Locke’s writing holds an archaic elegance, despite its circumlocutions. In the circularity
of the distinctions he attempts to make, he tries to use words to distinguish essence down to a

certain human core. The premise of all taxonomies resides in a certain presumed namability,

such that genus or species might be some thing, distinguishable to men, in the conceptions within

their minds.
Most important it seems for Locke is to reify, by declaration, the concept of what

we call “human” and which was then called “Man.” This persistent striving towards

demonstrable “Man” underscores the futurity of his philosophy of mind, and of natural rights

theory. It would be unfortunate for Locke to admit of much uncertainty in his quest to instill

a moral order, by discrediting such core concepts as “species” or more generally “genera,”

Latinate declensions of taxonomy particular to the thinking hominid’s linguistics of self-

appraisal, homo sapiens, determined to exert species narcissism, to others of its kind, via

language and other means.

In this sense, I personally can only distinguish Locke as artfulness, as I presume language to

transpire in a vacuum of meaning, with only shades of meaning available towards working

word systems, which are invariably different for all differing humans, in the sum of experiential

currency with which they are imbued. His writing towards distinctions, occur in beauty, in

syntax, in turns of phrase, but they do not have necessary levels of meaning for me to construe

them into purposeful activities available to be construed in terms of success or failure.

He succeeds in thinking, and allowing words to unfold from his mind, nurtured in a particular

time of history and value systems, in his era contextualized by his own participation as an actor,

through linguistic manipulation towards his own instincts towards power and survival. That he

might triumph in survival, in that, his words hold truth/power, as they bought him time, in the

currency of cognitive commerce and esteem. What were his personal motives beyond survival
and the perpetuation of cognition? Could he even know that himself? We might know and

presume he cared for moral order, as that which kept him safe. At that time it was not safe to

advise of meaningless, nihilistic, anarchistic world-views, in which all human action and words

were devoid of meaning.

When Locke speaks of “essence” it is almost as if he speaks of a language of flowers, a

certain bouquet or aroma, an imperceptible sixth sense of existence, rooted in a presumption of

inculcation. When I say flowers, I presume you know, generally that to which I refer, etc.

The question of authorship will shed light onto the preposterousness and magnificence

of Locke’s text. He was of course, writing into the future of thought, writing the unsaid, the

unsayable, in defiance of older regimes of power, Holy Roman and otherwise, attempting to

instill a certain humanity in a humanistic vision of ourselves.

All the things he so easily assays, such as “being” would then become problematized by

such naysayers or soothsayers as Heidegger, such that my mind is poisoned by a deconstructive

approach to all things.

When Locke underscores the bare essence of Words, “what kind of signification that

General Words have” it might be said, that he operates within a very conflict of interest. If

he were entirely to knock the wind out of words, his entire profession might have the seeming

of quackery and charlatanism. He most certainly wouldn’t want to do that to himself, so in

a sanctimonious motion towards meaning-imbued language, separate from any linguistic

deconstruction.

But in fact what one might argue, is that Locke accomplishes a certain measure of

deconstruction and demonstration of subjectivity, within the parameters of his acceptable means.
When he says,”Whereby it is evident, that the essences of the sorts, or (if the Latin word pleases

better) species of things, are nothing else but these abstract ideas.” What he then goes on to say

becomes a slippery tautology regarding ideas as abstractions in the mind describe essences. The

essences seem to pull their valuation from some premise of consensus reality, especially as he

writes for other humans, presuming they speak his language, and know what he is speaking of!

Even a deconstruction of the word abstract yields assistance. The “tract” is the dragging out

from Latin, and became employed in all manner of figurative ways. The “ab” is the outward

projection, the way our visions hurl themselves out of our heads so to speak, where they might

lie in alphabets.

Beyond troublesome I find his play with the idea “right to that name.” Do we have a right

to name ourselves, man, or human? The presumption of “rights” to me is an obvious walk off

the plank towards total presumptuous oblivion, but one humans are so superstitiously adherent

towards, that there is almost no arguing the point, lest one want bloody knuckles word with

punching at the brick wall. Such that it seems, by definition, our species is one that wants to

name itself, and recognize a certain species self-reification and narcissicism, making needful to

ask, where does the human begin or end, from fetus to cyborg, to coma, what is human, but a

willing talking, writing thinking thing, subject to vast amounts of narcissicism? This “essence”

of the human does not quite smell of roses, but in the artfulness of a sanitized text, distinguishes

itself from the animal core of our material existence. And in the assertion of a right to be

named, then so too might other rights follow, the right to think freely and self-identify, were it

of religion, gender, or nation-state allegiance or lacks thereof, or as nihilist, devoid of meaning,

self-less, transpersonal, devoid of rights of any kind in a cacophany of cheap babel or a den of

human snakes.
p39-42 PDF from Google Books John Locke An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

http://books.google.com/books?

id=TDMVAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=locke&hl=en&ei=aHzlTJbLNof0swPBlMCx

Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=fal

se

captioned:

“abstract ideas are the essences of the genera and species”

ch 3 section 12

“the next thing therefore to be considered, is, what kind of signification it is, that general words

have. for it is evident, that they do not signify barely one particular thing; for then they would

not be general Terms, but proper names; so on the other side, ‘tis as evident, they do not signify

a Plurality; for man and men would then signify the fame; and the distinction of numbers (as

the Grammarians call ‘em) would be superfluous and useless. That then which general Words

signify, is a sort of things; and each of them does that, by being a Sign of an abstract idea in

the mind, to which idea, as things existing are found to agree, for they come to be ranked under

that name; or, which is all one, be of that sort. Whereby it is evident, that the essences of the

sorts, or (if the Latin word pleases better) species of things, are nothing else but these abstract

ideas. For the having the Essence of any species, being that which makes any thing to be of that

species, and the conformity to the idea, to which the name is annexed, being that which gives a
right to that Name, the having the essence, and the having that conformity, must needs be the

same thing: since to be of any species, and to have s right to the name of that species, is all one.

as for example, to be a man, or of the species man, and to have right to the name man, is the

same thing. Now since nothing can be a man, or have a right to the name man, but what has the

conformity to the abstract idea the name man stands for; nor any thing be a man, or have a right

to the species man, but what has the essence of that species, it follows, that the abstract idea for

which the name stands, and the essence of the species, is one and the same. from whence it is

easy to observe, that the essences of the sorts of things, and consequently the sorting of this, is

the workmanship of the understanding that abstracts, and makes those general ideas.”