Locke, Language and Early-Modern PhilosophyCambridge University Press, 7 juin 2007 In a powerful and original contribution to the history of ideas, Hannah Dawson explores the intense preoccupation with language in early-modern philosophy, and presents an analysis of John Locke's critique of words. By examining a broad sweep of pedagogical and philosophical material from antiquity to the late seventeenth century, Dr Dawson explains why language caused anxiety in various writers. Locke, Language and Early-Modern Philosophy demonstrates that developments in philosophy, in conjunction with weaknesses in linguistic theory, resulted in serious concerns about the capacity of words to refer to the world, the stability of meaning, and the duplicitous power of words themselves. Dr Dawson shows that language so fixated all manner of early-modern authors because it was seen as an obstacle to both knowledge and society. She thereby uncovers a novel story about the problem of language in philosophy, and in the process reshapes our understanding of early-modern epistemology, morality and politics. |
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argues Aristotelian Aristotle Arnauld and Nicole Bacon belief Boyle Burgersdijk Cartesian chapter characterisation Cicero claim Collegium Conimbricense Comenius communication complex ideas concepts concern declares Descartes discourse distinct early-modern elocutio epistemology Essay essentialist example existence explains express Gassendi grammarians Harrison and Laslett Hobbes human images individuals knowledge Lamy Latin linguistic Locke f Locke’s Lockean logic logicians Malebranche meaning mental metaphor mind mixed modes Montaigne 1991 moral names notions objects obscure ontology particular Pascal passions perception Peter of Spain philosophers philosophy of language Port-Royal propositions Pufendorf 1703 Puttenham qualities Quintilian rational real essences reason rhetoric rhetoricians Royal Grammar says scepticism scholastic Scripture semantic instability sense sensible words seventeenth century Sextus signs simple ideas sounds speak speaker species speech Spinoza substances theory thereby things Thomas of Erfurt thought Trieu trivium truth Tully understanding universal verbal Wilkins words signify writes Yolton
Fréquemment cités
Page 233 - Thus the ideas, as well as children, of our youth often die before us; and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching; where though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away. The pictures drawn in our minds are laid in fading colours; and if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear.
Page 200 - And thus here, as in all other cases where we use words without having clear and distinct ideas, we talk like children; who being questioned what such a thing is, which they know not, readily give this satisfactory answer, that it is something; which in truth signifies no more, when so used either by children or men, but that they know not what; and that the thing they pretend to know and talk of, is what they have no distinct idea of at all, and so are perfectly ignorant of it, and in the dark.
Page 143 - The names of such things as affect us, that is, which please and displease us, because all men be not alike affected with the same thing nor the same man at all times, are in the common discourses of men of 'inconstant
Page 142 - Good, and evil, are names that signify our appetites, and aversions; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different; and divers men, differ not only in their judgment, on the senses of what is pleasant, and unpleasant to the taste, smell, hearing, touch, and sight; but also of what is conformable, or disagreeable to reason, in the actions of common life...
Page 160 - It seems to me that Pygmalion's frenzy is a good emblem or portraiture of this vanity; for words are but the images of matter, and except they have life of reason and invention, to fall in love with them is all one as to fall in love with a picture.
Page 142 - Every man, for his own part, calleth that which pleaseth, and is delightful to himself, good; and that evil which displeaseth him...
Page 181 - From the same it proceedeth that men give different names to one and the same thing, from the difference of their own passions: as they that approve a private opinion call it opinion, but they that mislike it, heresy: and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion, but has only a greater tincture of choler.