61 
 

On the scholastic background of the Lockean concept of the knowing subject 

Sauli Salmela 

University of Tampere – Finland 

 

Abstract  

Locke is an important figure to 

curriculum theory. His philosophy is a common 

starting-point for both the German and Anglo-

American traditions. It has been usual to take 

Locke for an example of the “early modern” 

thinkers, which implies his having done 

something more or less radically new when 

compared to his predecessors. In this paper I 

show, that many of his central ideas related to 

the knowing subject originate in medieval 

Aristotelian philosophy, as the paradigm of 

which I use Aquinas. 

 

The study of curriculum history is a 

welcome counterbalance to the postmodern 

trend of denying all “grand narratives”, such as 

religions, philosophical systems and science 

offering “objective” knowledge about the “real 

world” or the “rational subject”. This, of course, 

results in both moral and epistemological 

relativism.
1
 However, if one wants to be 

postmodern he at least should have an idea of 

the modernity he thinks he does not belong to or 

criticizes. Until quite recently it has been 

common to think that modern philosophy and 

modernity has its origins in the 16
th

 or 17
th

 

century. From the point of view of history of 

ideas it is usually said to have begun with René 

Descartes (1596-1650) in France or with Francis 

Bacon (1561-1626) in England. Before modern 

times, it has been said, there was the 

Renaissance, and before that the Middle Ages.  

The use of the word “modernity” clearly 

implies that there is a break between medieval 

and post-medieval or modern thinking, and each 

possesses characteristics which the other does 

not. Philosophers like Descartes and Bacon 

were certainly convinced that they were making 

a new start, and there was a sharp division 

between “the old” (and “wrong”) and what they 

themselves were doing. Their most important 

target was Aristotle, whose philosophy, 

especially his teachings on logic and 

metaphysics, they saw as an impediment to the 

advance of knowledge. Bacon declares in his 

New Organon: “It is futile to expect a great 

advancement in the sciences from overlaying 

and implanting new things on the old; a new 

beginning has to be made from the lowest 

foundations, unless one is content to go round in 

circles for ever, with meager, almost negligible, 

progress”.
2
 

The more we study the Middle Ages, the 

more we find this view exaggerated. Instead of 

a split or a sudden and abrupt transition and 

awakening there can be seen continuity between 

medieval and modern thought. Firstly, many of 

the modern phenomena could not have taken 

place without medieval innovations. One 

example of this is the rise of the experimental 

science in the 17
th

 century. Without the 

nominalist philosophy of the early 14
th

 century 

there would not have emerged such skeptical 

attitude toward man‟s possibilities of gaining 

certain knowledge of the world, and due to that, 

need of experimental and empirical study. 

Within the traditional Aristotelian natural 

philosophy there was no demand for 

experimental study: the world was supposed to 

have an eternal, conceptual structure, and it 

could be grasped and learned completely just by 

reading certain books carefully. 

Secondly, many of the metaphysical 

assumptions and postulates of the medieval 

times were transmitted to the modern times, 

such as the concept of God, and that of 

substance, ontological realism, correspondence 



62 
 

theory of truth, theories of cognition including 

descriptions of the faculties of mind to name but 

a few. The “new” theories were largely 

assembled with materials borrowed from 

philosophy‟s past, from ancient schools and 

from Aristotle himself. 

Thirdly and closely related to the 

previous, a great deal of the conceptual 

framework of medieval Aristotelian 

scholasticism was still being widely used in the 

University of the 17th century. The new 

corpuscularianism and mechanical philosophy 

of nature had not become a serious alternative to 

substitute for the Aristotelian tradition, which 

had dominated the educated opinion through 

most of the previous millennium in Europe.
3
 

John Locke (1632-1704) is considered 

one of the most prominent representatives of 

modern times and new experimental natural 

philosophy, that is to say, science. He is also 

known to have been opposed to the Latin-

speaking Aristotelian scholasticism. He openly 

expressed his dislike toward disputations, 

Aristotelian logic and reading classical authors 

in Latin and Greek. “The only philosophy then 

known at Oxford was the Peripatetic, perplexed 

with obscure terms and stuffed with useless 

questions”, Locke is reported to have said.
4
 

Locke has also been considered a representative 

of the modern interpretation of the concept of 

the knowing subject. It is true the Cartesian self-

conscious subject was something new, indeed, 

when compared to the traditional view of the 

age, but in many respects Locke is not that 

modern a thinker after all, and his philosophy 

has its roots deep in scholastic Aristotelian 

philosophy of the medieval times. As a matter 

of fact, the big epistemological picture of Locke 

resembles a lot of that of Thomas Aquinas 

(1224-74). 

In the History of Philosophy Frederick 

Copleston writes: “Locke combined the 

empiricist thesis that all our ideas originate in 

experience with a modest metaphysics. And if 

there were no Berkeley and no Hume, we might 

be inclined to look on Locke's philosophy as a 

watered-down form of Scholasticism, with 

Cartesian elements thrown in, the whole being 

expressed in a sometimes confused and 

inconsistent manner.”
5
 Copleston was not the 

first to notice that many of Locke's basic 

assumptions are not that far from what the 

Aristotelian tradition had been proposing since 

the time of the Greeks. As a matter of fact even 

Leibniz likened Locke to Aristotle and himself 

to Plato in his book New Essays Concerning 

Human Understanding in 1704. For some 

reason or another it seems no one has really 

taken this question up. 

These philosophical issues are of 

essential importance for curriculum theory, 

because all education has the learner and 

knowing subject as its starting-point. As a clear 

example of this one may recall Herbert M. 

Kliebard‟s description of four “interest groups” 

or educational reform movements of the 20
th

 

century America with distinct views on the 

concept of the knowing subject.
6
 What seems to 

be of particular interest is that all the different 

interpretations Kliebard presents can be shown 

to be resulting from the ferments of the 

centuries of 1300-1600 when the so-called 

modern subject and rationality is usually said to 

have been born. However, in the recent times 

the post-modern philosophy has denied there 

being any humanity or essence or other core 

common to all people. This, of course, poses 

problems for education, too, for unless we share 

an idea of the subject we are about to educate 

there can be no general theory of education. 

That being intolerable, we need to 

counterbalance the situation by studying the 

historical backgrounds of curriculum theory and 

philosophy of education. It is not possible to see 

the future without seeing the past at the same 

time. 

I begin with considering Locke‟s 

importance in curriculum history. After that I 



63 
 

proceed to discussing the question about 

medieval Aristotelian aspects in Locke's 

philosophy. 

 

On Locke’s importance to curriculum theory 

There have been two “super-discourses” 

or “mega-paradigms” in the field of education 

from about the 20
th

 century on. One is the 

German Bildung or Didaktik theory, and the 

other is the Anglo-American Curriculum 

tradition.
7
 These two traditions have shaped 

curricular thinking in many countries across the 

World. John Locke is a central figure for both of 

these traditions.
8
 When making Locke‟s 

thinking explicit it is necessary to resort to 

medieval philosophy. The philosophy of Locke 

opens vistas to many directions. In addition to 

being a common basis for American and 

German educational theories, there culminate 

many ideas with origins in the Medieval or 

Ancient times (regarding virtues, faculty 

psychology, empiricism etc.) in Locke. This can 

also be shown by taking a look at the curricula 

of Locke‟s University of Oxford of the 17
th

 

century with text-books largely made by 

Spanish Jesuits passing on the Thomism and 

Aristotelian tradition of the (late) 

scholasticism.
9
 

In this paper I consider four important 

traits in Locke‟s philosophy influential on 

curriculum theory. They are individualism, 

rehabilitation of Epicurean ethics, associationist 

psychology and empiricism. They merge, or act 

in concert. All these ideas, however, can be 

traced back to the scholasticism of the 13
th

 and 

14
th

 century or even further. I try to say 

something about each of these. 

Locke‟s views on ethics were based on 

his individualist concept of human being. He 

did not consider man as example or fulfiller of 

some universal humanity common for mankind, 

such as Plato‟s transcendental idea ‒ or 

Aristotelian immanent species supported by 

Aquinas. The origins of individualism can be 

found in the beginnings of the 14
th

 century 

resulting from the nominalist ideas put forward 

by William of Ockham (1285-1347), who 

maintained that every existent is individual 

through itself. Before Ockham, John Duns 

Scotus (1266-1308) had taught a doctrine, 

according to which an individual is a common 

nature with a formally distinct individuating 

difference (lat. haecceitas, “thisness”). One 

remarkable motivation for philosophically 

legitimating individuality sprang up from 

religion: it had to be assured that God could 

know each and every individual instead of 

knowing universal human nature common for 

all people only.  

Individualism was basically an 

ontological view denying that universals and 

classes are real and assigning reality to 

particulars only. After Locke there was 

emphasized a sense of uniqueness in 

individualism. For example Johann Gottfried 

Herder (1744-1803), Wilhelm von Humboldt 

(1767-1835), Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) 

and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) in 

Germany put their emphasis on individuality, on 

that which makes an individual unique and 

distinguishes one individual from another. This 

was also an important ingredient in the thought 

of John Stuart Mill (1806-73). Moreover, it was 

not uncommon among them to stress the unique 

individuality of nations and cultures.  

The main influence of Locke on 

curriculum theory is, perhaps, that education, 

teaching and learning are being viewed from a 

psychological viewpoint. There are at least two 

significant Lockean ideas related to this. Firstly, 

Locke re-introduced the principle of pleasure 

into ethics: It is uneasiness that motivates us and 

puts us into action. In Essay we read: “This 

uneasiness we may call, as it is, desire; which is 

an uneasiness of the mind for want of some 

absent good. All pain of the body of what sort 

so ever, and disquiet of the mind, is 

uneasiness.”
10

 This view was made famous by 



64 
 

Epicurus (341-270), a notable proponent of the 

ancient atomic theory, and revived in the 

Renaissance through the writings of Lucretius 

(95-54) and Diogenes Laërtius (2
nd

 – 3
rd

 

century). In the early 17
th

 century the 

Frenchman Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) made 

the ancient theory of atoms acceptable as both a 

scientific and a religious theory. Epicurean 

ideas became widely known after 1650‟s when 

the works of Lucretius and Gassendi appeared 

in English.  

Applications of the idea that all action is 

for the sake of the agent‟s pleasure or 

advantage, appeared in American behaviorist 

psychology as Thorndike's “law of effect” and 

later it shows in Skinner‟s ideas of 

reinforcement/extinction of emotions and 

behavior.
11

 Consider these two quotes, the first 

being from Locke, the second from John B. 

Watson: 

 

I may say that of all the men we meet 

with, nine parts of ten are what they are, 

good or evil, useful or not, by their 

education.
12

 

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-

formed, and my own specified world to 

bring them up in and I‟ll guarantee to 

take any one at random and train him to 

become any type of specialist I might 

select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-

chief, and yes, even beggar-man and 

thief, regardless of his talents, 

penchants, tendencies, abilities, 

vocations and race of his ancestors.
13

 

Locke did think it is possible to 

condition behavior but he rejected training 

through extrinsic motivation and warned about 

physical punishment. Instead of conditioning 

children are to be educated. Instead of appealing 

to their desires and aversions their faculty of 

reason is to be strengthened and their capacity 

to resist their desires increased.  

Aristotle taught much in the same way: 

the end of education – and the end of life as 

well – is intellectual activity in accordance with 

virtue. There are irrational (or vegetative), 

appetitive and rational human powers.
14

 

Education is a process for developing the 

appetitive (habits) and rational powers 

(intellect). First and foremost education is the 

acquisition of moral and intellectual virtue, for 

education should promote a sound development 

of the appetitive and rational powers: “the 

function of man is an activity of soul in 

accordance with, or not without, rational 

principle”.
15

 The intellectual virtue is the 

primary goal, for it means perfecting the highest 

and essential human faculty, which makes 

human nature to be what it is, “since intellect 

more than anything else is man”.
16

 Locke, of 

course, did not approve Aristotle‟s metaphysical 

premises but agreed with the conclusion. 

Another Locke‟s idea important for 

curriculum theory is the associationist 

psychology according to which all mental 

phenomena and processes result from our 

combining simple ideas we acquire through the 

senses or introspectively “by reflection”. So, our 

thinking is “association of ideas” and can be 

described in mechanistic terms. Locke did not 

only have impact on “anti-mentalist and 

objectivist” behavioral psychology studying 

only behavior and functions one can observe. 

Locke's psychology influenced “mentalist and 

subjectivist” theories as well, especially German 

structuralism towards the end of the 19
th

 century 

with Wilhelm Wundt in the lead.  

Structuralism can be defined as 

psychology as the study of the elements of 

consciousness. Hermann Ebbinghaus made the 

study of learning and memory quantitative and 

experimental. Many Americans went to Leipzig 

to study with Wilhelm Wundt and brought this 

new experimental and associationist psychology 

to the United States, where it took a more 

functional flavor. In response to structuralism, 

an American perspective emerged under the 

influence of thinkers such as Charles Darwin 

and William James. American psychology grew 



65 
 

rapidly and many experimental laboratories 

were founded in the last two decades of the 19
th

 

century.
17

 One important German figure was 

Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841), who 

embraced Wundt's structuralism and tried to 

translate it into mathematical terms and create 

“mechanics of the mind” according to the 

scientific model laid by Newton. Herbart‟s 

scientific pedagogy was the first internationally 

received system of education, successful in 

almost every civilized country, although only 

after Herbart‟s death in 1841. 

John Locke‟s empiricism connects him 

to the Aristotelian scholasticism in an explicit 

way. Empiricism was also to be the 

epistemological basis of logical positivism – 

and later logical empiricism – as a scientific 

paradigm, which produced such ideas as 

behaviorism denying the phenomena not 

directly observable. Elements of Locke‟s 

empiricism can easily be found in Locke‟s 

educational writings. In Some Thoughts 

Concerning Education Locke describes the 

child as “white paper, or wax, to be molded and 

fashioned as one pleases” but the context 

suggests some caution. Locke says each child 

has “an original temper” or “character”, which 

“God has stamped” and “may perhaps be a little 

mended but can hardly be totally altered and 

transformed into the contrary”.
18

 

Locke had a great impact on both 

German and American philosophy. In the 18th 

century a great deal of British empiricism was 

being translated to German in a relatively short 

time. Among the most influential of the British 

besides Locke were David Hume (1711-76), 

Thomas Reid (1710-96) and lord Kames (Henry 

Home, 1696-1782). Such German Bildung-

theorists as Herder and Georg Friedrich Meier 

(1718-1777) took in ideas from British 

philosophy and Locke, of course, too. Later 

Locke's and Herders's influence passed on to 

Humboldt and Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) 

and hermeneutic philosophy in general. During 

the past decades there has emerged in the study 

of curriculum theory an interest in “starting a 

dialogue” between German Didaktik and 

American Curriculum traditions and their 

cultural differences in understandings of 

teaching, schooling and the teaching profession. 

John Locke is one common starting-point for 

both traditions.
19

  

Next I shall take up some examples of 

how Locke's philosophy can be seen in relation 

to Aquinas's scholastic Aristotelian philosophy. 

Watered-down version of scholasticism? 

The philosophy of Locke cannot be 

understood unless considered in relation to the 

Aristotelian tradition prevailing in the curricula 

of the universities of the 17
th

 century. In a 

nutshell, Locke wants to abandon metaphysics 

altogether whereas for Aquinas metaphysics 

was the starting-point of everything. It 

happened, however, that Locke – like everyone 

necessarily does – needed some fundamental 

ontological presuppositions to base his 

philosophy on, and regarding these Locke 

turned skeptical.  

In this paper it is not possible to examine 

closely all the different aspects there is to 

Locke‟s medieval background. So, I content 

myself with presenting a list of the essential 

points including things I think are common for 

both Aquinas‟s and Locke‟s theories of 

cognition. Then I try to say something general 

to make the list understandable. At least the 

following ideas of Aquinas seem to be present 

in the Lockean concept of the knowing subject: 

 

 Basic ontological presuppositions: 

God-postulate, ontological realism 

(supposing the extra-mental world 

independent of the perceiver/knower), 

correspondence theory of truth, 

postulation of some substrate as an 

unchanging core lying under the 

perceivable and changing qualities of 

material things 



66 
 

 Human being as knowing subject is 

autonomous. 

 Human being is by nature a political 

animal. “God having designed Man for 

a sociable creature, made him - - under 

a necessity to have fellowship with 

those of his own kind.”
20

  

 Empiricism (or sensibilism): Nihil est 

in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in 

sensu. (“Nothing is in the intellect 

without being prior in sense.”) 

 Cognition is a natural (biological) and 

causal process. 

 There is no innate knowledge. 

 Representational realism (indirect 

realism) 

 The working of the human intellect 

can be explicated by analyzing its acts 

and operations. 

 Aristotelian terminology and concepts. 

 

Aquinas and Locke have empiricism in 

common. They repeat what Aristotle said in the 

first book of Metaphysics: “it is through 

experience that men acquire science and art”.
21

 

And it is through the senses that men acquire 

experience: “Nothing is in the intellect without 

being prior in sense”. Or, to quote Arthur 

Schopenhauer, “This is the true meaning of the 

doctrine ascribed to Aristotle: Nihil est in 

intellectu nisi quod antea fuerit in sensu. It is 

likewise the sense of Locke's philosophy that 

made an epoch in philosophy for all time by 

finally starting the serious discussion of the 

question of the origin of our knowledge”.
22

 In 

short: there is no innate knowledge, says Locke, 

and Aquinas had thought the same 400 years 

earlier. 

But there is, to be exact, difference 

between Aquinas and Locke in this issue. In the 

20
th

 and 21
st
 century the standard way of 

categorizing early modern thinkers has been 

dividing them into rationalism and empiricism. 

To articulate the difference between Aquinas 

and Locke we need another conceptual 

distinction. Instead of speaking of “rationalism” 

and “empiricism” it is more illustrative to speak 

of “sensibilism” and “intellectualism”. 

According to the sensibilist view – this is the 

how Wayne Waxman puts it – “all our 

ideas/perceptions/representations originate in 

being perceived and have no existence 

independently of their immediate presence to 

consciousness in perception”. Intellectualism is 

the negation of sensibilism. It means that 

concepts, mental structures or faculties 

constitutive of intellection do exist prior to their 

being perceived in sensation”.
23

 In other words, 

sensibilism denies that we have the “pure 

intellect” Kant spoke of. Locke exemplifies 

sensibilism whereas Aquinas is more of an 

intellectualist. 

Aquinas‟s theory of cognition rests on 

metaphysical premises. Especially central is the 

concept of species. In the medieval Aristotelian 

cognition theory, a species is somehow a 

representation of the thing cognized, between 

the external object and the mind. The external 

object is material but the grasp of the mind is 

not. External objects are particular but the mind 

contemplates universals. By means of the 

species, the act of cognition and the object of 

cognition can come together. There are three 

kinds of species: species in the air or other 

media between object and percipient (species in 

medio), species in the sense organs (species 

sensibiles) and species in the intellect (species 

intelligibiles). All cognition, says Aquinas, 

takes place “through some species of the 

cognized thing in the cognizer”.
24

 Cognition 

was thought to be a causal process, a causal 

chain of species, each one generated by the one 

before it, linking external object and the 

knower.
25

 External things are not simple but 

composite, they are composed of matter and 

form, Aquinas teaches exactly like Aristotle did. 

The human intellect has the power to abstract 

universal natures of things from the sense-data 

and produce universal concepts, and, after 

concepts have been produced, propositions 



67 
 

joining and separating these concepts. It is not 

possible to isolate epistemology from 

metaphysics or vice versa. Knowing is a special 

way of being. “It is not the stone that is in the 

mind, but the form [species] of the stone”, 

Aquinas says borrowing his expression from 

Aristotle.
26

 

Locke rejects the species-based 

metaphysical theory altogether and speaks about 

ideas instead. Locke's philosophy can be 

crystallized in three words: it is a theory of 

ideas. The most central concept in his whole 

philosophical system is the concept of the idea, 

which Locke borrowed from Descartes. John 

Carriero, interesting enough, points out, that 

according to Aquinas “the Latin forma is the 

term traditionally used to translate the Greek 

idea. So the term idea carries with it overtones 

of a thing‟s structure.” Carriero sees “that this 

overtone continues with Descartes, so that for 

him, too, an idea is some form or structure – 

some „reality‟ – existing objectively in the 

mind”.
27

 This supports the opinion about the 

scholastic background of the most essential 

concept in Locke‟s philosophy.  

The essential features of Locke‟s theory 

of ideas are as follows: 

 

 Idea stands for whatsoever is the 

object of the understanding, when a 

man thinks.” Locke uses the word idea 

to “express whatever is meant by 

phantasm, notion, species or anything 

the mind can be employed about in 

thinking. (Essay I.i.8) 

 All ideas come from experience. There 

is no innate knowledge. The mind is a 

“white paper, void of all characters”, 

as Locke says. (Essay II.i.2) 

 Experience can be external or internal. 

External experience means sensory 

experience which gives us ideas of 

sensation, Locke says. External things 

cause ideas in our minds. (Essay 

II.i.25) 

 Another source of experience is 

reflection. When the mind reflects on 

its own operations, there come to be 

ideas of these operations in the 

understanding. This is the reason of 

our calling Locke an empiricist: 

whatever we are thinking, we are 

thinking of ideas, and every one of 

these ideas comes from experience and 

no idea comes from the understanding. 

And so we have ideas of yellow, red, 

heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter and the 

like, but also do we have ideas of 

perception, thinking, doubting, 

believing and reasoning. (Essay II.i.2-

5) 

 The basic unit of our thinking is a 

simple idea, in the reception of which 

the understanding is passive. It is like 

the mirror in that it cannot refuse to 

have or alter what has been imprinted 

in it. (Essay II.i.25) 

From these principles one could conclude that 

there must be a “veil of ideas” between our 

minds and the external world. If the immediate 

objects of our consciousness are ideas, how can 

we be sure there is anything behind those ideas? 

As is well known, George Berkeley said we 

can't. Locke, however, was not skeptical about 

there being extra-mental reality. Today we say 

that Locke's theory of ideas is an example of 

representational realism. It means the immediate 

objects of our knowledge are not external things 

but ideas received from experience instead. 

Another name for representational realism is 

indirect realism. In his Introduction to 

Epistemology Jonathan Dancy describes it in the 

following way: 

 

Locke's theory of perception is a classic 

instance of indirect realism. - - Locke 

held that there is a double awareness, 

each with its own object. The internal 

object, which he called the idea, is 

perceived and the external object, the 

material thing, is seen. In perceiving an 

idea, then, in favorable cases we are 

seeing a material thing. So there is a 



68 
 

double awareness, one for the internal 

and one for the external object.
28

 

 

Aquinas‟s species-based theory of 

cognition can be interpreted in much the same 

way. Aquinas says the species is not what we 

perceive (id quod) but it is that by which (id 

quo) we perceive external things.
29

 Of course, 

there are different interpretations of Aquinas‟s 

theory but I think we can justifiably consider 

both Aquinas and Locke to be representational 

realists. Their views are not exactly the same, 

though. For Aquinas to know means that the 

metaphysical nature inherent in the external 

thing exists in a different way in the intellect at 

the same time during the act of knowing. In 

other words, the one and qualitatively the same 

metaphysical nature exists in “two places” at the 

same time, and, in a way, the external thing “is” 

in the intellect. Locke does not support this kind 

of metaphysics but only says external things 

have powers to produce ideas in us, and how 

this happens simply is beyond our 

comprehension.  

According to Locke, thinking means 

joining and separating these simple ideas. Now 

there raises the question: does this organizing of 

ideas happen systematically and in a regular 

way? If it does, maybe we could make a theory 

out of it. How could we do that, and which 

method should we use? Introspection is the 

answer. This means the justification and 

beginning of the associationist psychology and 

of the introspective method and the 

psychological paradigm called structuralism. 

Both Aquinas and Locke were of the 

opinion that intellect should be the guide and 

conductor of man. They did not see the role of 

reason in the same way, however. Aquinas 

shared Aristotle's conception of the world as 

understandable with its objective structure 

man's reason is naturally capable of 

comprehending. From that it followed that the 

goal of reasoning is truth. Actualizing one's 

intellectual capacities is also a moral obligation. 

Living the good life means the kind of living 

that concentrates on actualizing man's essential 

qualities, the differentiating of which is 

rationality. So, what the “right reason” (recta 

ratio) should do is to reach for and find out the 

metaphysical structure of the world, and when 

that has been done, reason has been perfected 

and complete and it has reached its end. The 

Truth (Verum) and the Good (Bonum) are, 

medieval philosophers thought, “transcendental 

terms” which means they refer to entities which 

transcend the boundary between any two 

categories (in the Aristotelian sense) and are 

coextensive with being (ens). The end of the 

reason is Truth and the end of the will is the 

Good, and after all they fall together, or unite. 

Being equals to Truth which equals to Good.  

During the 14
th

 century the Aristotelian 

natural philosophy and world-view had to give 

way to the “modern way” (via moderna). The 

rise of nominalist philosophy meant abandoning 

the traditional assumption of the world with an 

eternal, necessary and knowable metaphysical 

structure. Intellectual perfection or actualization 

of the reason could not be considered the end of 

thinking any more. The role of reason had to 

change. The reason became instrumental. It 

became means and method to forming beliefs 

and acquiring “true” - or rather true-like, that is 

probable information about the world. So, the 

Lockean reasonableness means arranging and 

dealing with ideas that have their origins in 

experience, be it via sense-organs or by 

reflection. 

To Conclude 

From the view of curriculum theory, 

Locke was a follower of the scholastic 

Aristotelian tradition in that like Aquinas Locke 

spoke up for the idea of man as an autonomous 

knower and learner. Knowing and learning 

happens in a natural way and there are no 

supernatural conditions or need for asceticism 



69 
 

or other requirements one has to meet in order 

to gain knowledge. The intellectual illumination 

comes from within us, not from outside. This 

obviously was an essential postulation of the 

Enlightenment with Immanuel Kant‟s slogan 

sapere aude, meaning “you are able to think for 

yourself, do not believe what the authorities say 

but open their claims to question”. How our 

thinking actually happens, Locke does not say 

because he thinks it is something we cannot 

know. Using the terminology of today we could 

say Locke did not stick to materialism regarding 

the mind-body problem. It is possible that 

matter can think, Locke says, but would also be 

possible for God to somehow “super-add” 

thinking ability to matter.  

The big epistemological picture of 

Locke, however, resembles a great deal of that 

of Aquinas. The main difference lies in their 

attitudes to metaphysics in explicating how 

knowing, learning and other mental phenomena 

take place. But otherwise they think much in the 

same way. In times of Aquinas there was no 

epistemology separated from metaphysics. The 

“epistemological turn” was to take place not 

until some four centuries later. These 

philosophical issues are of essential importance 

for curriculum theory, because all education has 

the learner and knowing subject as its starting-

point. For example, Herbert M. Kliebard in The 

Struggle for the American Curriculum describes 

four “interest groups” or educational reform 

movements of the 20
th

 century with distinct 

views on the concept of the knowing subject.
30

 

Furthermore, both Locke and Aquinas 

emphasized that the aim of education is self-

control, which means that the intellect or our 

rationality conducts our behavior and controls 

the impulses resulting from our will and 

appetite. Of course, Locke and Aquinas did not 

think exactly the same about this, for Aquinas 

held an intellectual determinist position, 

according to which the intellect determines the 

will, whereas Locke adhered to nominalism and 

did not approve any metaphysical suppositions 

about any real and distinct faculties of the soul 

determining each other. But despite of this 

difference both accentuated the role of morality 

as the goal of education process. “Morality is 

the proper science and business of mankind of 

general”, Locke says.
31

  

In a way both Aquinas and Locke 

present us with a secular picture of education. 

The child is not born with ideas of God or moral 

truths. The child does not possess innate moral 

goodness but the education may turn the self-

centered infant into the virtuous man. To use a 

peripatetic expression, the child is “potentially 

good”. The educator‟s business is – Locke says 

– “to set the mind right, that on all occasions it 

may be disposed to consent to nothing but what 

may be suitable to the dignity and excellency of 

a rational creature”.
32

 Like Aquinas, Locke 

thinks it is possible to have demonstrative 

certainty about moral ideas, but let us leave 

discussing Locke‟s “moral epistemology” to 

another occasion.  

Ian Westbury has recommended “starting 

a dialogue” between Didaktik and Curriculum 

traditions, for they are concerned with the same 

set of issues:  

 

 teaching and learning goals,  

 the topics and contents that follow,  

 organizational forms and teaching and 

learning methods and procedures,  

 teaching and learning media,  

 prerequisites, disturbing factors, and 

unintentional auxiliary effects, and 

 the ways in which learning results and 

forms can be controlled and 

evaluated.
33

  

  

Westbury believes both traditions can 

offer each other insights and knowledge 

especially in those areas where each tradition 

has its own shortcomings. Curriculum theory 

can teach the Didaktik tradition about the 

relation of school and society and about 



70 
 

educational planning. Didaktik tradition can, in 

its turn, help the curriculum theory toward 

issues of “teaching as a reflective practice” and 

thinking about teaching.
34

 Prior to dealing with 

any of Westbury‟s issues, anyhow, it is 

necessary to make explicit the way we consider 

and define the concept of the knowing subject in 

the core of curriculum theory. Studying John 

Locke‟s philosophical backgrounds is basic 

research, which in turn makes possible a deeper 

understanding when comparing these traditions. 

References 

Aristotle, Aristotle in twenty-three volumes, 

Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University 

Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980 

(1933). 

Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle I-II, 

the revised Oxford Translation, edited by 

Jonathan Barnes, Princeton University 

Press, 6
th

 printing with corrections, 1995 

(1984). 

Autio, Tero (2006), Subjectivity, Curriculum 

and Society: Between and Beyond the 

German Didaktik and Anglo-American 

Curriculum Studies, Lawrence Erlbraum 

Associates, Mahwah, New Jersey. 

Carriero, John (2009), Between two Worlds. A 

Reading of Descartes’s Meditations, 

Princeton University Press, Princeton and 

Oxford. 

Copleston, Frederick (1993-), A History of 

Philosophy, Volumes I – IX, Doubleday, 

London and New York (1946). 

Dancy, Jonathan (1985), Introduction to 

Contemporary Epistemology, Blackwell 

Publishing, Oxford, UK. 

Doll, William E. (1993), A Post-Modern 

Perspective on Curriculum, Teachers 

College Press, New York and London  

Horlacher, Rebecca (2004), “Bildung – a 

Construction of a History of Philosophy of 

Education”, Studies in Philosophy and 

Education 2004/23, p. 409-426. 

Kliebard, Herbert M. (2004), The Struggle for 

the American Curriculum 1893-1958, third 

edition, RoutledgeFalmer, New York and 

London. 

Kraye, Jill (2008), “British Philosophy Before 

Locke”, in A Companion to Early Modern 

Philosophy, edited by Steven Nadler, 

Blackwell Publishing, p. 283-297. 

Locke, John (1975), An Essay Concerning 

Human Understanding, Edited with a 

Foreword by Peter H. Nidditch, Clarendon 

Press, Oxford. 

Locke, John (1996), Some Thoughts Concerning 

Education and Of the Conduct of the 

Understanding, edited and with introduction 

by Ruth W. Grant and Nathan Tarcov, 

Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis. 

Lyotard, Jean-Francois (1984), The postmodern 

condition: A report on knowledge, translated 

by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, 

Manchester University Press, Manchester 

(La condition postmoderne, 1979). 

Palmer, Joy (ed.) (2001), Fifty Major Thinkers 

on Education. From Confucius to Dewey, 

advisory editors Liora Bresler and David E. 

Cooper, Routledge, London and New York. 

Pasnau, Robert (1997), Theories of Cognition in 

the later Middle Ages, Cambridge 

University Press, Cambridge, New York and 

Melbourne. 

Rutherford, Donald (2004) (ed.), The 

Cambridge Companion to Early Modern 

Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. 

Schopenhauer, Arthur (1966), The World as 

Will and Representation. In two volumes, 

translated by E. F. J. Payne, Dover, New 

York (1819, 1844, 1859) 

Sheenan, Paul (2004), “Postmodernism and 

Philosophy”, in The Cambridge Companion 

to Postmodernism, edited by Steven Connor, 

Cambridge University Press, p. 20-42. 

Spangler, Mary Michael (1998), Aristotle on 

Teaching, University Press of America, 

Lanham. 



71 
 

Thomas Aquinas (1882), Opera omnia iussu 

impensaque Leonis XIII P.M. 

Waxman, Wayne (2005), Kant and the 

Empiricists – Understanding 

Understanding, Oxford University Press, 

Oxford 

Wertheimer, Michael (1970), A Brief History of 

Psychology, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 

New York. 

Westbury, Ian & Hopmann, Stefan & Riquarts, 

Kurt (eds.) (2000), Teaching as a reflective 

practice. The German Didaktik Tradition, 

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, 

New Jersey. 

 

                                                       
1
 I talk about “postmodernism” rather loosely 

and roughly in a Lyotardian (1984) sense, as 

“incredulity towards metanarratives”. 

According to Lyotard it is not possible to 

ground thinking in transcendental, ahistorical, 

universal principles. The death of the grand 

narrative means birth of the local narrative. 

Lyotardian thinking is closely related to 

Wittgenstein‟s later philosophy. In the 

posthumous Philosophical Investigations (1953) 

Wittgenstein sees language as motley of many 

different practices or “language games”, which 

are irreducible to a single basic pattern. 

Language is seen as anthropocentric: its 

meanings are based on human praxis instead of 

universal, absolute meanings. Yet, 

“postmodern” can mean many different things, 

and it may be impossible to give one accurate 

definition of it. See e.g. Sheenan 2004 and Doll 

1993,4-10 
2
 New Organon I.31, quoted in Rutherford 

2006,11. The title in Latin, Novum organon in 

itself is, of course, an allusion to Aristotle, 

whose logical works were known as the 

organon, „instrument‟. 
3
 See e.g. Kraye 2008. 

4
 Woolhouse 2007,18. 

5
 Copleston, History IV,26. 

6
 Kliebard 2004. 

7
 On Bildung see Horlacher 2004; Westbury & 

Hopmann & Riquarts 2000, 57-125. 

                                                                                        
8
 Autio (2006) has paid attention to this. He 

sketches a theoretical line from Reformation 

through Descartes, Locke, Kant (1724-1804) 

and Herbart (1776-1841) up to the American 

curriculum theory reaching its top in Ralph 

Tyler‟s rationale in the 1950‟s. Autio‟s 

theoretical position resembles a great deal of 

William Doll‟s (1993), who emphasizes the 

significance of Descartes in what comes to the 

change in the understanding of the role of 

reason in the 17
th

 century, too. 
9
 Author 2011 

10
 Essay II.xxi.31 

11
 Autio 2006, 98; Wertheimer 1970,107. 

12
 Thoughts § 1 

13
 Watson, John B., Behaviorism, Norton, New 

York, 1924 
14

 EN I.13,1102a5-1103a10 
15

 EN I.7,1098a8-17; Pol. VII.13,1332b5-11 
16

 EN II.1,1103a14-15; X.7,1178a1-8; Pol. 

VII.15,1334b14-28. Aristotle on education and 

teaching see e.g. Spangler 1998.  
17

 Wertheimer 1970,89-90 
18

 Thoughts §§ 48,66,216  
19

 Westbury & Hopmann & Riquarts 2000; 

Autio 2006 
20

 Essay III.i.1 
21

 Met. I.1,981a2 
22

 Schopenhauer 1966b,82 
23

 Waxman 2005, 3-5 
24

 I Sent. 36.2.3sc 
25

 Pasnau 1997,14 
26

 “Lapis non est in anima, sed species lapidis”. 

See ST Ia, q.76, a.2 ad 4; Ia, q.85, a.2 c; de An. 

III.8,431b28-432a2 
27

 Carriero 2009, 19. In Q.D. de veritate (q.3, 

a.1) Aquinas says we may translate “ideas” into 

“forms” or “species”: “sicut dicit Augustinus - -, 

ideas Latine possumus vel formas, vel species 

dicere, ut verbum ex verbo transferre 

videamur.” 
28

 Dancy 1985,166 
29

 ST Ia, q.85, a.2 
30

 Kliebard (2004, 1-25) says, after the status 

quo of the mental disciplinarianism based on 

[Christian] Wolffian psychology there emerged 

in the 1890‟s century four movements: the 

humanists (with e.g. Charles W. Eliot), the 

developmentalists (G. Stanley Hall), the social 

efficiency educators (Joseph Meyer Rice) and 



72 
 

                                                                                        
the social meliorists (Lester Frank Ward). In 

addition to these Kliebard mentions John 

Dewey, who did not belong to any of them but 

was “hovering over the struggle” (p. xix). 
31

 Essay IV.xii.2 
32

 Thoughts § 31 
33

 Westbury & Hopmann & Riquarts 2000,16 
34

 The curriculum tradition is organizational: 

teachers as employees of the school system are 

expected to “implement” the system‟s curricula. 

They are “conduits” of the system‟s curriculum 

decisions. In the German model, teachers are 

guaranteed professional autonomy. They are 

free to teach without the state curriculum 

(Lehrplan) controlling the teacher‟s own 

approach to teaching. The state curriculum only 

lays out prescribed content for teachers to 

interpret and to “give life”. Didaktik is not 

centered on the task of directing and managing 

the work of system of schools or of selecting a 

curriculum for this school or this district. 

Instead Didaktik provides teachers with ways of 

considering the essential questions what, how 

and why around their teaching of their students 

in their classrooms. These are the core issues at 

the heart of a reflective practice of teaching (p. 

17).