Introducing the Enlightenment

Pierre Coste, who in 1700 translated Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, inserted a note to explain why he translated Locke’s term “consciousness” by the French conscience. First he cites Cicero’s conscientia (“moral awareness”, “knowledge of oneself”) but admits that he is “diverting” the French word conscience “from its ordinary sense, in order to give it one which has never been given it in [the French] Language”.

Locke’s empiricism distinguished two different kinds of experience: external sensation and internal reflection.