Condillac

Condillac, Étienne Bonnot De - ātyĕnˈ bônōˈ də kôNdēyäkˈ, 1715–80, French philosopher who developed the theory of sensationalism (i.e., that all knowledge comes from the senses and that there are no innate ideas). He took holy orders, and in 1768 he became a member of the French Academy of Sciences. His Read More...

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Condillac

1 .

Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge
by Etienne Bonnot de Condillac. 225 pgs.

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Condillac's Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, first published in French in 1746 and offered here in a new translation, represented in its time a radical departure from the dominant conception of the mind as a reservoir of innately given ideas. Descartes had held that knowledge must rest on ideas; Condillac turned this upside down by arguing that speech and words are the origin of mental life and knowledge. His work influenced many later philosophers, and also anticipated Wittgenstein's view of language and its relation to mind and thought.

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Title Page

Camridge Texts in the History of Philosophy

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chronology

Futher Reading

Note on the Text and Translation

Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge

Introduction

Part I: The Materials of Our Knowledge and Especially the Operations of the Soul

Section 1

1: The Materials of Our Knowledge and the Distinction of Soul and Body

2: Sensations

Section 2: Analysis and Generation of the Operations of the Soul

1: Perception, Consciousness, Attention, and Reminiscence

2: Imagination, Contemplation, and Memory

3: How the Connection of Ideas, Formed by Attention, Brings Forth Imagination, Contemplation, and Memory

4: The Use of Signs is the True Cause of the Progress of Imagination, Contemplation, and Memory

5: Reflection

6: Operations That Consist in Distinguishing, Abstracting, Comparing, Compounding, and Decompounding Our Ideas

7: Digression on the Origin of Principles and of the Operation That Consists in Analysis

8: Affirming. Denying. Judging. Reasoning. Conceiving. the Understanding

9: Defects and Advantages of the Imagination

10: The Source of the Charms That Imagination Gives to Truth

11: On Reason and on Intellect and Its Different Aspects

Section 3: Simple and Complex Ideas

Section 4

1: The Operation by Which We Give Signs to Our Ideas

2: Facts That Confirm What Was Proved in the Previous Chapter

Section 5: Abstractions

Section 6: Some Judgments That Have Been Erroneously Attributed to the Mind, or the Solution of a Metaphysical Problem

Part II: Language and Method

Section 1: The Origin and Progress of Language

1: The Language of Action and That of Articulated Sounds Considered from Their Point of Origin

2: The Prosody of the First Languages

3: The Prosody of the Greek and Latin Languages And, En Passant, the Declamation of the Ancients

4: Progress of the Art of Gesture Among the Ancients

5: Music

6: Musical and Plain Declamation Compared

7: Which is the Most Perfect Prosody?

8: The Origin of Poetry

9: Words

10: The Same Subject Continued

11: The Signification of Words

12: Inversions

13: Writing

14: Origin of the Fable, the Parable, and the Enigma, with Some Details About the Use of Figures and Metaphors

15: The Genius of Languages

Section 2: Method

1: The First Cause of Our Errors and the Origin of Truth

2: The Manner of Determining Ideas or Their Names

3: The Order We Ought to Follow in the Search for Truth

4: The Order to Be Followed in the Exposition of Truth

Index
2 .

Philosophical Writings of Etienne Bonnot, Abbe de Condillac, Vol. 1
by Etienne Bonnot de Condillac. 422 pgs.

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Contents

Preface

BOOK I: A TREATISE ON SYSTEMS

1 Three Sorts of Systems Should Be Distinguished

2 On the Uselessness Of Abstract Systems

7 Fifth Example: Taken From Malebranche

10 Eighth and Last Example: Spinozism Refuted

BOOK II: A TREATISE ON THE SENSATIONS

Part One: On Senses That By Themselves Do Not Judge External Objects

Part Two:: ON TOUCH, OR THE ONLY SENSE THAT JUDGES EXTERNAL OBJECTS ON ITS OWN

Part Three: How Touch Teaches The Other Senses To Judge External Objects

Part Four: On the Needs, Skills And Ideas of an Isolated Man Who Enjoys All His Senses

BOOK III: LOGIC, OR THE FIRST DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ART OF THINKING

Part One: How Nature Itself Teaches Us to Analyze; And How with This Method We Explain the Origin And Development of Either Ideas or the Faculties Of the Mind

Part Two: Analysis Considered In Its Means And Effects, or the Art Of Reasoning Reduced To A Well-Formed Language
3 .

Philosophical Writings of Etienne Bonnot, Abbe de Condillac, Vol. 2
by Etienne Bonnot de Condillac. 174 pgs.

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Title Page

Contents

Preface

Essay on the Origin Of Human Knowledge

Introduction

Part I: The Ingredients of Our Knowledge And Particularly The Operations of the Mind

Part II: Language and Method

Course of Study for The Instruction of The Prince of Parma

Introduction to the Course Of Study

Index
4 .

The Authority of Experience: Sensationist Theory in the French Enlightenment (Chap. 1 "Condillac and the Meaning of Experience")
by John C. O'Neal. 284 pgs.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

A Note on the Selection and Translation of Texts

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

PART I: THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH HISTORY OF AN IDEA

1: Condillac and the Meaning of Experience

2: Bonnet's Mind-Body Continuum in the Economy of Our Being

3: Helvýtius's Seminal Concept of Physical Sensibility

PART II: AESTHETICS

4: The Sensationist Aesthetics of the French Enlightenment

5: An Exemplary Yet Divergent Text: Graffigny's Lettres D'Une Péruvienne

6: The Perversion of Sensationism in Laclos and Sade

PART III: THE POLITICS OF SENSATIONISM

7

8: Materialism's Extension of Sensationist Principles

9: The Adoption and Critique of Sensationism by the Idéologues

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index
5 .

The Origin of Language: Aspects of the Discussion from Condillac to Wundt
by G. A. Wells. 137 pgs.

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Preface

1: The Enlightenment Investigators and Their Followers

2: Herder

3: Nineteenth-Century Resistance To The Idea That Language Is An Invention

4: The Relation Of Language To Thought

5: Alternatives To Invention

Epilogue

Notes

References

Index
6 .

Mutual Misunderstanding: Scepticism and the Theorizing of Language and Interpretation (Discussion of Condillac begins on p. 51)
by Talbot J. Taylor. 267 pgs.

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Mutual Misunderstanding presents a strikingly original analysis of the rhetorical patters underlying Western linguistic thought, as exemplified in the works of John Locke, Jacques Derrida, Gottlob Frege, Jonathan Culler, Noam Chomsky, Ferdinand de Saussure, H. Paul Crice, Michael Dummet, Stanley Fish, Alfred Schutz, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Harold Garfinkel, and others.

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Contents

Preface

To Remedy the Abuse of Words

One: On Addressing Understanding

Two: On How We Ought to Understand

Communicational Codes

Three: On How We Naturally Understand

Four: On What Understanding Must Be

Five: On Knowing What We Understand

Communicational Reasoning

Six: On Reaching an Understanding

Seven: On Understanding What to Do

Communicational Practice

Eight: On Believing We Understand

Nine: On Acting like We Understand

Ten: On Doing "Understanding"

Denouement

Eleven: On Whether (we Believe) We Understand Each Other

References

Index
7 .

The Theories of Instinct: A Study in the History of Psychology (Chap. IX "Empiricist and Nativist Controversies of the Eighteenth Century: Condillac and Reimarus")
by E. C. Wilm. 188 pgs.

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Preface

Chapter I: The Pre-Socratic Period

Chapter II: The Systematic Period Atomism, Plato and Aristotle. the Peripatetic School: Strato and Theophrastus

Chapter III: Post-Aristotelian Schools Stoicism and the Epicureans

Chapter IV: Psychologizing Tendencies Plutarch, Celsus, and Porphyry

Chapter V: Scholasticism

Chapter VI: The Renaissance Montaigne

Chapter VIII: Materialistic Developments Gassendi, Hobbes, and Borelli

Chapter IX: Empiricist and Nativist Controversies Of the Eighteenth Century Condillac and Reimarus

Chapter X: Philosophical Writers of The Nineteenth Century

Chapter XI: Evolution Theories Instinct as Inherited Habit. Lamarck and The Lamarckians

Chapter XII: Evolution Theories Natural Selection. Darwin and Neo-Darwinism

Index
8 .

Condillac: Language, Thought, and Morality in the Man and Animal Debate, in French Forum
by R. Christopher Coski. 19 pgs.

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9 .

Reading the French Enlightenment: System and Subversion (Chap. 4 "Condillac and the Identity of the Other")
by Julie Candler Hayes. 243 pgs.

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Reading the French Enlightenment offers an ambitious reinterpretation of a crucial aspect of eighteenth-century thought, the rationalizing and classifying impulse or "systematic spirit." Julie Candler Hayes surveys the past fifty years of philosophical reflection on the Enlightenment, and takes issue both with traditional liberal and with contemporary critical accounts, arguing instead for a new understanding of "systematic reason" as complex, paradoxical, and ultimately liberating. Through close analysis of philosophical, scientific, and literary texts, she emphasizes the urgency of maintaining a dialogue between past and present, Enlightenment and modernity.

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Title Page

Cambridge Studies in French

Contents

Acknowledgments

Author's Note

Prologue—despotic Enlightenment

Introduction — the Critique of Systematic Reason

Chapter 1: Système—origins and Itineraries

Chapter 2: The Epistolary Machine

Chapter 3: Physics and Figuration in Du Chdtelefs Institutions De Physique'

Chapter 4: Condiuac and the Identity of the Other

Chapter 5: Diderot—changing the System

Conclusion—labyrinths of Enlightenment

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Cambridge Studies in French
10 .

The Western Tradition from Socrates to Saussure (Chap. 11 "Condillac on the Origin of Language and Thought")
by Roy Harris, Talbot J. Taylor. 234 pgs.

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As readers are introduced to the main issues and themes that have determined the development of the Western linguistic tradition, an evolution of linguistic thought quickly becomes apparent.

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Contents

Preface to the First Edition

Preface to the Second Edition

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: Socrates on Names

Chapter 2: Aristotle on Metaphor

Chapter 3: The Bible on the Origin and Diversification of Language

Chapter 4: Varro on Linguistic Regularity

Chapter 5: Quintilian on Linguistic Education

Chapter 6: Thomas of Erfurt on the Modes of Signifying

Chapter 7: Caxton on Dialects

Chapter 8: The Port-Royal Grammar: Arnauld and Lancelot on the Rational Foundations of Grammar

Chapter 9: Wilkins on a Real Character

Chapter 10: Locke on the Imperfection of Words

Chapter 11: Condillac on the Origin of Language and Thought

Chapter 12: Horne Tooke on Etymological Metaphysics

Chapter 13: Humboldt on Linguistic and Mental Diversity

Chapter 14: Müller on Linguistic Evolution

Chapter 15: Frege on Sense and Reference

Chapter 16: Saussure on Language and Thought

Bibliography and Suggestions for Further Reading

Index

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