From empirics to empiricists

Abstract

Although the notion of empiricism looms large in many histories of early modern philosophy, its origins are not well understood. This paper aims to shed light on them. It argues that the notion of empiricism which is used in many histories of early modern thought does not have early modern, pre-Kantian origins. It first appeared and became widely used in Germany during the last two decades of the eighteenth century, in the course of the early debates on Kant’s Critical philosophy. The paper has seven sections. Section 1 locates the present inquiry within current debates on the historiography of early modern philosophy. Section 2 discusses Francis Bacon’s notions of empirical philosopher, physician, and politician, in order to establish whether Bacon employs or adumbrates the standard historiographical notion of empiricism. Sections 3 to 5 compare the notions of empirical philosopher, physician, and politician that can be found in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts, alongside related notions (e.g. “experimental philosophy”) and methodological stances, with the standard notion of empiricism. Having argued that none of those pre-Kantian notions anticipates the standard notion, I locate its origins in Kant’s Critical works and the early debates on his philosophy in late eighteenth-century Germany (Section 6). Some conclusions are drawn in Section 7. The paper focuses on two geographical areas: Great Britain and Germany. The focus