Abstract

In this chapter, John Locke's anti‐Cartesian stances on the difference between body and space, on whether the soul always thinks, on the possibility of thinking matter, all connect back to the basic opposition to Cartesian overreaching in regard to essences. The chapter presents a summary of Locke's anti‐Cartesianism, which seems to fit with his own representation of his Cartesian inheritance, which, notoriously, is that it is minimal, consisting only in anti‐scholasticism. The only acknowledgment that Locke wishes to give Descartes is that reading his work helped him to shake off the influence of Aristotelianism. Descartes was not the only target of Locke's anti‐innatism, but he was surely a central one. Locke attacks the Cartesian doctrine of innate ideas because it poses a threat to his central empiricist commitments. Interestingly, he also sees the central tenets of Cartesian ontology as a threat.