Locke, Language and Early-Modern Philosophy

by Hannah Dawson

• ISBN13: 9780521852715
• ISBN10: 0521852714
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-07-02
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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 a groundbreaking 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 writers such as Montaigne, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Gassendi, Nicole, Pufendorf, Boyle, Malebranche and Locke. Locke, Language and Early-Modern Philosophy demonstrates that new 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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. x
Notes on the text	p. xii
Introduction	p. 1
Language in the Trivium	p. 11
Language in logic	p. 13
Language in grammar	p. 41
Language in rhetoric	p. 64
Philosophical Developments of the Problem of Language	p. 89
The relationships between language, mind and word	p. 91
Semantic instability: a containable threat	p. 129
Under cover of sensible and powerful words	p. 154
Locke on Language	p. 183
Words signify ideas alone	p. 185
Semantic instability: an inherent imperfection	p. 210
A life of their own	p. 239
Locke in the face of language	p. 277
Bibliography	p. 305
Index	p. 349
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.