The translation of "tabula rasa" from Latin is best known (in its literal version) as "blank board". However, it can be very often found in scientific, artistic and journalistic texts, as well as in the speech of people familiar with the Latin language. It became a stable expression many centuries ago, significantly changed its meaning since then, absorbed new semantics, however, it remained in the language, settled down firmly and - moreover, is understood by all countries involved in European culture today, or its so-called “ heirs ”(countries of the American continents).
History of Expression
The history of the expression "tabula rasa" (for simplicity we will write in Russian letters) has its roots in ancient literature and philosophy. For the first time it is found in the famous treatise of Aristotle "On the soul." He has a “tabula rasa” - it’s simply a waxed board used for writing. Which were, of course, familiar to every literate person of those distant times. With her, the thinker compares the human mind.
Do not forget: the meaning of expression, as already mentioned, changes with the development of history. The phrase is used more than once in the Middle Ages (in particular, by a Persian doctor and philosopher, an Eastern follower of the ideas of Aristotle, Avicenna). But it gets the most significant distribution in the Enlightenment thanks to the famous English cultural figure John Locke (1632-1704).
Term in the philosophy of enlightenment
In Locke's writings, “tabula rasa” is the pure, not clouded by ideas and knowledge, mind of only a born person. Being a sensualist, a supporter of the ideas of empiricism, Locke opposed the ideas of human innate knowledge; he calls such an expression any soul before its life experience. He believed that everything that makes up a person’s personality and character, the baggage of his skills and the load of complexes - all this is formed solely as he accumulates his own life experience.
In Locke, the term "tabula race" was first used in his philosophical treatise of 1690 under the title "Experience of Human Understanding." It is important to note that in the Enlightenment, in contrast to the traditions of the Middle Ages, such works are already written in the author's language (in this case, respectively, in Latin). Thus, Latin “tabula race", as a medium of its inception, already dead and having lost its former relevance, overcomes, invading along with the intellectual and ideological revolution, in different countries and their languages.
Tabula rasa as the phraseology of our day
Despite the fact that the expression “tabula rasa” is a whole story with its own twists and turns (semantics change), names and references, the expression is still used today, and not in such pathos contexts as our philosopher predecessors do.
For example, in addition to the sublime poetic meaning already explained in the article, it can be used in an ironic context. In this case, “tabula rasa” is perhaps a humorous name for a student or student who has just been explained the whole topic in detail and with chewed up examples, and who soon forgot everything right there. Of course, a poor teacher or teacher has to start explaining, as they say, "from scratch."
Use
However, even the joking admonition mentioned is clearly not an inhabitant of your active vocabulary. In an ironic sense, it is only appropriate to use such phraseology in the university environment or in the circle of educated people who studied Latin at the university.
So, today the “tabula race” is a kind of archaism, but archaism with its own taste: you can see it in texts where Latinisms such as “ad hoc”, “nota bene”, “et cetera” are also used " other.