tabula rasa definition
tabula rasa is John Locke’s concept. It means that every human being is born without a prior knowledge, and gains this knowledge through own experience. In a similar way, Sartre believes individuals are born without a prior essence, and that they become men through their acts and choices.
tabula rasa. , however, really means a slate that is blank because it has been ‘scraped clean’ (the meaning of ‘rasa’) of what had been written on it previously.71 (This approach was supported by Locke’s friendship with the scientist, Robert Boyle, and the latter’s scientific method of starting from first principles.) Is this not similar to the situation in which the American states found themselves after the end of the War of Independence? They had thrown off the rule of Great Britain, and were starting national government ‘from scratch’, but had legacy systems of state government and state taxation. A key question was how to fit the state and national systems together, not least in terms of taxation, as imposing taxation at national level might not seem so different from the British imposts which they had fought to abolish. It needed to be something to which all parties agreed.