Update
The Oxford Biblical Studies Online and Oxford Islamic Studies Online have retired. Content you previously purchased on Oxford Biblical Studies Online or Oxford Islamic Studies Online has now moved to Oxford Reference, Oxford Handbooks Online, Oxford Scholarship Online, or What Everyone Needs to Know®. For information on how to continue to view articles visit the subscriber services page.
Dismiss

Related Content

Related Overviews

empiricism

Aristotle (384—322 bc)

St Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225—1274) Italian philosopher, theologian, and Dominican friar

John Locke (1632—1704) philosopher

See all related overviews in Oxford Reference »

 

More Like This

Show all results sharing this subject:

  • Philosophy

GO

Show Summary Details

Overview

nihil in intellectu nisi prius in sensu


Quick Reference

(Latin, nothing in the intellect unless first in sense (the senses)

The guiding principle of empiricism, and accepted in some form by Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Leibniz, however, added nisi intellectus ipse (except the intellect itself), opening the way to the view taken up by Kant, that the forms of reason form an innate structure conditioning the nature of experience itself.

Subjects: Philosophy


Reference entries