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A Gentleman’s “moderate knowledge”: Mediocrity as the Appropriate Measure of Learning in John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education

fr Il s’agit ici d’étudier la spécificité des recommandations qu’adresse Locke aux professeurs sur le choix d’un programme d’études approprié dans Some Thoughts Concerning Education, dont le caractère essentiel semble être la modération. L’excellence dans les savoirs classiques et modernes est inutile à la formation d’un homme accompli, l’éducation ayant pour but d’inspirer des habitudes vertueuses, ce pour quoi suffisent des manières modestement raffinées et un aperçu des diverses sciences. Ce « savoir suffisant » semble devoir être rapproché de « l’état de médiocrité » qui, selon l’Essay Concerning Human Understanding, est propre à l’homme dans sa vie terrestre. C’est la leçon que Locke juge nécessaire de rappeler à la noblesse de son temps : la médiocrité qu’il prête à l’ensemble des êtres humains est particulièrement propre à décrire la condition de la noblesse dans les dernières décennies du xviie siècle, marquées par l’inquiétude.

en The paper aims to investigate the specificity of the curricular recommendations which Locke addressed to young gentlemen’s tutors in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, markedly characterized by moderation: excellence in either scholarly or modern learning was rejected as not being a gentleman’s main business. What Locke insisted on was the acquisition of virtuous habits as the chief scope of a gentleman’s education; a “taste” of the various sciences, as well as a modest refinement of manners, were sufficient to this end. Such “moderate knowledge” appears to be closely connected with the “state of mediocrity” which, in the Essay, he describes as proper to man in his earthly life. This was a lesson Locke probably thought the gentry of his time should be reminded of: the mediocre state he attributed to the generality of human beings appeared to be particularly appropriate when describing the gentry’s condition in the last few decades of the seventeenth century, which was significantly marked by uneasiness and anxiety.

Di Biase, Giuliana

Société d'études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles

XVII-XVIII

2016-04-04

info:eu-repo/semantics/article

article

urn:doi:10.4000/1718.355

http://journals.openedition.org/1718/355

en

info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/0291-3798

info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/2117-590X

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess