Locke, Language, and Early-Modern Philosophy
Cambridge University Press (2007)
| Abstract | 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 | |||||||||
| Keywords | Language and languages History | |||||||||
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| Buy the book | $124.00 direct from Amazon Amazon page | |||||||||
| Call number | B1297.D39 2007 | |||||||||
| ISBN(s) | 9780521852715 0521852714 | |||||||||
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Similar books and articlesHannah Dawson (2003). Locke on Private Language. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 11 (4):609 – 637.
Walter Ott (2007). Review of Hannah Dawson, Locke, Language and Early-Modern Philosophy. [REVIEW] Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (11).
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