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CONDILLAC'S OTHER AMBITIONS: Scholarship after the Heyday of Heydays

CONDILLAC'S OTHER AMBITIONS: Scholarship after the Heyday of Heydays Page 286 CONDILLAC’S OTHER AMBITIONS Scholarship after the Heyday of Heydays Downing Thomas If we were to sketch out a standard history of ideas of language to determine, within it, the place of Étienne Bonnot, Abbé de Condillac, he would probably not shake out as a major player — not insignificant, surely, but not a fundamentally original thinker. Given his epistemological concerns, this story goes, Condillac is an Enlightenment thinker in the tradition of John Locke. His primary accomplishment, even for Condillac supporters such as Hans Aarsleff, is an ancillary one — the development and expansion of Locke’s insights in specialized areas, notably the question of origins. Most revealing in this context is the subtitle to the 1756 English translation of Condillac’s Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines (1746): A Supplement to Mr. Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding. Condillac’s project, as initially set forth in the Essai, would be to trace knowledge to its origins in order to set right the misdirection in reasoning brought about by ill-conceived language. Because the symbiosis of language and knowledge is a necessary and delicate one, it must be monitored constantly. For the entire “Classical age,” Foucault wrote, language represents things http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

CONDILLAC'S OTHER AMBITIONS: Scholarship after the Heyday of Heydays

Thomas, Downing
Common Knowledge , Volume 9 (2) – Apr 1, 2003
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2003 by Duke University Press
ISSN
0961-754X
eISSN
1538-4578
DOI
10.1215/0961754X-9-2-286
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Abstract

Page 286 CONDILLAC’S OTHER AMBITIONS Scholarship after the Heyday of Heydays Downing Thomas If we were to sketch out a standard history of ideas of language to determine, within it, the place of Étienne Bonnot, Abbé de Condillac, he would probably not shake out as a major player — not insignificant, surely, but not a fundamentally original thinker. Given his epistemological concerns, this story goes, Condillac is an Enlightenment thinker in the tradition of John Locke. His primary accomplishment, even for Condillac supporters such as Hans Aarsleff, is an ancillary one — the development and expansion of Locke’s insights in specialized areas, notably the question of origins. Most revealing in this context is the subtitle to the 1756 English translation of Condillac’s Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines (1746): A Supplement to Mr. Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding. Condillac’s project, as initially set forth in the Essai, would be to trace knowledge to its origins in order to set right the misdirection in reasoning brought about by ill-conceived language. Because the symbiosis of language and knowledge is a necessary and delicate one, it must be monitored constantly. For the entire “Classical age,” Foucault wrote, language represents things

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Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2003

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