The Great Ocean of
Knowledge.
The Influence of Travel Literature on the Work of John Locke
by Ann Talbot
Leiden/Boston: Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History vol. 184, 2010
Reviewed by María G. Navarro
The resercher Ann Talbot presents in
this book one of the more complex and in-depth studies ever written about the
influence of travel literature on the work of the British philospher John Locke
(1632-1704).
At the end
of the 18th century the study of travel literature was an alternative to
academic studies. The philosopher John Locke recommended with enthousiasm these
books as a way to comprehend human understanding. Several members of the Royal
Society like John Harris (1966-1719) affirmed that the learning that could be
obtained through these books was different from the one that provided the
educative system of that time. Travel literature could make see the source of
the ignorance of the ancients; it stressed the curiosities and extraordinary
facts and led to a revision of beliefs and scientific theories of the ancient
world. Besides the account of a broad diversity of sujects contributed to the
creation of matters of fact, and this was important in order to put rational
limits to the descriptions of the world that were commonly accepted.
In a
library of more that 3600 books, 269 works could be classified today as
philosophy and 275 as travel or geography. This significant proportion is
forwarded as an evidence of Locke’s interest for this kind of literature. But,
what did he thought about this material? What did it mean to him?
First,
Talbot raises these questions and analyses them as an historian. Aftewards she
does it as a critique of the historiographical conceptions of modernity about
the origins of Enlightment. And finally, she analyses them as an expert in the
political and moral thought of Locke.
The result
is a reference work about the thought of Locke, but also about the history of
the ideas of Enlightment and about research models of historiography to deal
with all this, and to present it. That is why, in my opinion, this book is an
innovative work in all the three above mentionned fields.
Two
important factors influenced Locke. In the first place, the absolutist society
he lived in, a society where the learning model was based on the study of the
classics and of the Bible. In the second place, his knowledge of the research
techniques he learned of two authors influenced by Bacon, Robert Boyle and
Thomas Sydenhan. Locke used what he had learned from them in a unique way to
examine contemporary questions on politics, human behaviour, beliefs and
religion.
The 275
works of travel literature in Locke’s library are classified by Talbot into
four categories: books related to projects of the fellows of the Royal Society,
clearly linked to baconian tradition; works influence by the Neo-Thomist School
of Salamanca, in Spain; books that linked Confucianism to atheism and
materialism and, finally, travel books that had an utopian character. The author
analyses the influence of each of these works of travel literature on the
theory of knowledge of Locke, and also on his political and moral philosophy.
Locke’s
library was comparable to those of other fellows of the Royal Society, but the
impact of this literature on his work was unique and non comparable to any
other case. It seems that Locke selected his books paciently, in the same way a
doctor looks for indexes, signales, evidence, exceptional and challenging cases
for himself and his theories. His bibliographic quest, similar to the one of a
collector, was filled with true scientific and philosophical passion, as he saw
each travel book as an opportunity to evaluate and check what he had proposed
in his own work.
The problem
of what laws do govern human behaviour, the variations between one society and
another, questions that have to do with the problem of the universality of
moral or the origin of human knowledge, can no longer be understood without the
image of this library rich in travel literature, where Locke spent most of his
life reading and writing, chewing, ruminating all these stories of
extraordinary places and people.
The question of human nature transforms itself into a fascinating philosophical investigation thanks to Talbot’s book, and it is so for two reasons: it helps us to approach the figure of John Locke and the philosophical and political meaning of Enlightment, and it does it without breaking its relationship with the experiency of the discovery of other human beings and unknown places. A radical experience both for Europeans and for its ‘others’ that was made possible by Enlightment by means of travel literature.
The question of human nature transforms itself into a fascinating philosophical investigation thanks to Talbot’s book, and it is so for two reasons: it helps us to approach the figure of John Locke and the philosophical and political meaning of Enlightment, and it does it without breaking its relationship with the experiency of the discovery of other human beings and unknown places. A radical experience both for Europeans and for its ‘others’ that was made possible by Enlightment by means of travel literature.
The book is
structured in fourteen chapters and a conclusion to which two appendices are
added. In them, the author offers a list of the travel books cited by Locke,
and a complete bibliography of the manuscript sources.
In my
opinion, the work of Talbot offers an interpretation of the thought of Locke
made from the point of view of social anthropology.
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