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  1. Home
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  3. Locke, Language and Early-Modern Philosophy
  • Cited by 56
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
September 2009
Print publication year:
2007
Online ISBN:
9780511490484
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511490484
Subjects:
History of Ideas, History, Early Modern Philosophy, Philosophy, History of Ideas and Intellectual History
Series:
Ideas in Context (76)
Information

Book description

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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