Linguistics, Anthropology and Philosophy in the French Enlightment

Linguistics, Anthropology and Philosophy in the French Enlightenment In the long and controversial debates that unfolded among intellectuals from the seventeenth century to the French Revolution, language was affirmed as an indispensable tool of human creativity. Ulrich Ricken presents an explanation and analysis of their debates and of the influence of those debates on the development of philosophical, anthropological and social theory in the European Enlightenment. Through his careful analyses of works by the most influential thinkers of the time, Ulrich Ricken demonstrates that the central significance of language in the philosophy of the Enlightenment both reflected and contributed to contemporary understandings of humanity as a whole. The understanding of language offered an analysis of the intellectual faculties of man and promised the articulation of a new vision of human creativity and thought. Although principally focused on French thought between 1650 and 1800, the author also discusses developments in England, Germany and Italy and covers an unusually broad range of writers and ideas, including Leibniz, Wolff, Herder and Humboldt. This study places the history of language philosophy within the broader context of the history of ideas, aesthetics and historical anthropology and will be of interest to scholars and students working in these disciplines. Ulrich Ricken founded and directed and is now Emeritus Professor of the International Centre for Research on the European Enlightenment at the University of Halle, Germany. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the history of ideas, the history of language, and the history of linguistic theories in their philosophical context. Robert E.Norton is Associate Professor of German at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. He is the author of Herder’s Aesthetics and the European Enlightenment and of articles on Lessing, Schiller and George Eliot. Routledge History of Linguistic Thought Series Series Editor: Talbot J.Taylor College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia Language in Linguistic Thought: The Western Tradition from Socrates to Saussure Roy Harris and Talbot J.Taylor Language, Saussure and Wittgenstein Roy Harris Changes in Language: Whitney, Bréal, and Wegener Brigitte Nerlich Linguistics in America 1769–1924 Julie Andresen Linguistics, Anthropology and Philosophy in the French Enlightenment Language Theory and Ideology Ulrich Ricken Translated from the German by Robert E.Norton London and New York First published in German as Sprache, Anthropologie, Philosophie in der Französischen Aufklärung © Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1984 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. First published in English in 1994 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 English edition © 1994 Routledge All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for ISBN 0-203-21979-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-22027-7 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-07679X (Print Edition) Contents Introduction vii Part I The overture to the Enlightenment debate: language in the interstices of the intellectual and physical nature of humanity 1 1 Interpretations of language as an argument for and against dualism: Descartes and his sensualistic opponents in the seventeenth century 3 2 Language and the affects in the Port-Royal Logic 24 3 Cordemoy and dualism: consequences of a Cartesian theory of signs 33 4 The Cartesian argument: rationalism and empiricism in Bernard Lamy’s conception of language 38 5 Language and sense perception in the controversy between Arnauld and Malebranche 44 6 Language and the epistemological evaluation of the senses from Descartes to Locke and Du Bos: the outcome of the seventeenth century 51 Part II Language, anthropology and history in the Enlightenment 61 7 A century of controversy 63 8 From Locke to Condillac: the development of the sensualistic theory of language 70 On the status of language in Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding 70 Condillac and the further development of Locke’s sensualism 77 9 Grammar, philosophy, anthropology: the problem of word order 111 10 The origin of language and the historical view of humanity 134 11 Language and evolutionary thinking 149 v vi Contents 12 The “abuse of words” 160 13 Language and knowledge: theoretical sources of the “Linguistic Relativity” of cognition 174 14 The French Enlightenment and its aftermath: linguistic theory and language debates from the Enlightenment to the Restoration 191 The “grammairien-patriote” Urbain Domergue 192 Louis-Sébastien Mercier and his “Néologie” 199 The Ideologues: continuation and retraction of the sensualist theory of language 206 The verdict of the Restoration 220 15 Concluding remarks: assessment of the discussion of language in the French Enlightenment 226 Notes 233 Bibliography 259 Index 281 Introduction The interest in the history of academic disciplines that has increased dramatically during the last few years has caused the publications concerning the specific field of linguistics to amass in a proportionate fashion. This, in turn, has opened the discussion concerning the object and methods of a formal history of linguistics. A number of demands are being made of this venture, among them that one ought to integrate linguistics into the more general history of the humanities and that one should attend to the interaction of linguistic theories with other disciplines, such as philosophy and the natural sciences. One must ask whether the history of linguistics can contribute to the current understanding of this discipline by revealing the factors involved in the development of linguistic thinking and laying bare its role in the abstract interrelations of ideas within the history of the humanities as a whole. Our expectation of a positive answer to this question lends the history of all academic disciplines its relevance to modern theories of their present-day counterparts. A methodology that typically adopts the characteristics of a “hunt for predecessors” would hardly be suited to uncovering the historical motivations of inquiries into the nature of language. Rather, it runs the risk of becoming a historicizing self-confirmation of present perspectives and, to that end, of selectively isolating disparate elements of the past and wrenching them out of their historical context. A similar danger resides in modernizing historical views under the aegis of current concerns by couching them in modern linguistic terminology. Such a methodology holds out little hope of revealing the status of linguistic theory in connection with the general development of knowledge and ideology. The dependence of linguistic theories on philosophical presuppositions has been emphasized often enough. Yet linguistic theories are not just an expression, but rather frequently the constitutive element of philosophical systems. Ever since antiquity, language has been the object of theoretical reflection within systematic philosophy. Conceptions of language were, and hence are (although perhaps today less directly so than in previous centuries) vii viii Introduction not only co-determined by ideology and theories of disciplines, they can also count among their constitutive components. Tracing the patterns of linguistic thought within the development of the history of academic disciplines and of ideology generally speaking can thus help us focus on the conditions that enabled theories of language to assume their characteristic forms. I have chosen as the object of such an investigation certain linguistic problems that arose within the larger debates about the status of humanity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for in these debates the theory of language was of the greatest consequence. As early as the seventeenth century anthropological questions were discussed in the context of linguistic reflection. And the secularized view of humanity and society that characterized the Enlightenment at its climax was intimately linked with the further development and re-evaluation of seventeenth-century language philosophy. Although the Enlightenment has recently attracted increased attention with respect to the history of anthropology1 and linguistics,2 the linguistic topics of this period have until now rarely been seen in their close connection with the most important interests of the Enlightenment, particularly as regards the debate among representatives of the sensualistic and the rationalistic schools of thought. Even when it came to the question about whether matter may be capable of thought, in both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries proponents as well as opponents of materialism used arguments drawn from the theory of language to support their views. The question of the origin of language and issues related to the relationship between language and thought were the object of lengthy debates, which then influenced later theories of evolution and contributed to the formation of a fully secularized conception of humanity and society.

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