Condillac: Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge

A highly influential work in the history of philosophy of mind and language.

Etienne Bonnot De Condillac (Author), Hans Aarsleff (Edited and translated by)

9780521584678, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 September 2001

276 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.58 kg

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. He argued, further, that language has its origin in human interaction and in our natural capacity to react spontaneously and instinctively to the expression of emotions and states of mind in others. The importance of this pointedly anti-Cartesian view, and its relevance to both aesthetics and epistemology, were quickly understood, and Condillac's work influenced many later philosophers including Herder, Rousseau, and Adam Smith. His conception also anticipated Wittgenstein's view of language, its usage, and its relation to mind and thought.

Part I. The Materials of our Knowledge and Especially the Operations of the Soul: Section 1
Section 2. Analysis and generation of the operations of the soul
Section 3. Simple and complex ideas
Section 4
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
Section 2. Method.

Subject Areas: History of Western philosophy [HPC]