Condillac: Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge

✍ Scribed by Etienne Bonnot De Condillac, Hans Aarsleff

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 274
• Series: Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 6
Acknowledgments......Page 9
List of abbreviations......Page 10
Introduction......Page 12
Chronology......Page 40
Further reading......Page 42
Note on the text and translation......Page 45
Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge......Page 48
Introduction......Page 50
PART I The materials of our knowledge and especially the operations of the soul......Page 56
1 The materials of our knowledge and the distinction of soul and body......Page 58
2 Sensations......Page 62
1 Perception, consciousness, attention, and reminiscence......Page 66
2 Imagination, contemplation, and memory......Page 74
3 How the connection of ideas, formed by attention, brings forth imagination, contemplation, and memory......Page 79
4 The use of signs is the true cause of the progress of imagination, contemplation, and memory......Page 83
5 Reflection......Page 88
6 Operations that consist in distinguishing, abstracting, comparing, compounding, and decompounding our ideas......Page 91
7 Digression on the origin of principles and the operation that consists in analysis......Page 93
8 Affirming. Denying. Judging. Reasoning. Conceiving. The understanding......Page 98
9 Defects and advantages of the imagination......Page 101
10 The source of the charms that imagination gives to truth......Page 108
11 On reason and on intellect and its different aspects......Page 110
Section 3 Simple and complex ideas......Page 118
1 The operation by which we give signs to our ideas......Page 125
2 Facts that confirm what was proved in the previous chapter......Page 131
Section 5 Abstractions......Page 139
Section 6 Some judgments that have been erroneously attributed to the mind, or the solution of a metaphysical problem......Page 148
PART II Language and method......Page 158
Section 1 The origin and progress of language......Page 160
1 The language of action and that of articulated sounds considered from their point of origin......Page 161
2 The prosody of the first language......Page 167
3 The prosody of the Greek and Latin languages and, en passant, the declamation of the ancients......Page 170
4 Progress of the art of gesture among the ancients......Page 179
5 Music......Page 185
6 Musical and plain declamation compared......Page 193
7 Which is the most perfect prosody?......Page 195
8 The origin of poetry......Page 197
9 Words......Page 203
10 The same subject continued......Page 211
11 The signification of words......Page 216
12 Inversions......Page 220
13 Writing......Page 225
14 Origin of the fable, the parable, and the enigma, with some details about the use of figures and metaphors......Page 229
15 The genius of languages......Page 232
1 The first cause of our errors and the origin of truth......Page 243
2 The manner of determining ideas or their names......Page 247
3 The order we ought to follow in the search for truth......Page 255
4 The order to be followed in the exposition of truth......Page 264
C......Page 268
H......Page 269
M......Page 270
S......Page 271
W......Page 272