Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714 to 1780) was a French philosopher and Catholic priest who worked mainly on psychology and the philosophy of mind. Born in Grenoble into a legal family, he took holy orders at Saint-Sulpice in Paris and moved in the circle of Denis Diderot and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge (1746) and Treatise on the Sensations (1754) carried the principles of John Locke into France and pushed them further, deriving all knowledge from sensation in a doctrine known as sensationalism. He spent several years in Parma as tutor to the young duke, for whom he wrote his thirteen volume Course of Studies, and his late works include the Logic and the unfinished Language of Calculations.