ABSTRACT
Descartes’s transformation of the notion of ideas deeply influenced subsequent thinking about their nature and epistemic significance in philosophical inquiry. By 1662, the transformation had become so fundamental in some quarters that Arnauld and Nicole would write, “Some words are so clear that they cannot be explained by others, for none are more clear or more simple. ‘Idea’ is such a word” (Arnauld 1964, 31). By the end of the seventeenth century, Locke was pleased to have his philosophy characterized as an example of the “way of ideas,” notwithstanding his considerable disagreements with Descartes – a way he took to encompass every human effort to “employ our minds in thinking upon something” (W 4:72). The developing new understanding of ideas was part and parcel of a broader philosophical transformation underway.
