Linguistics, Anthropology and Philosophy in the French Enlightenment: A Contribution to the History of the Relationship Between Language Theory and Idealogy ... History of Linguistic Thought Series)

298 Pages·1993·0.92 MB·English

by  Ulrich Ricken

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
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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.
The present study is organized into two main parts. The first shows a few
of the important lines of development that led up to the programmatic
reception of Locke’s sensualism in France. The linguistic thought dependent
on the Cartesian dualism between spirit and matter went in two different and
even opposite directions. But even the contradictory conceptions of humanity
advocated by Descartes and his sensualistic opponents were formulated in
terms that had relevance for language theory as well.
The second, more extensive part treats those lines of development in
language theory that were significant for anthropology and social theory
from the seventeenth century to the Restoration. The conception of language
that was achieved as part of the general secularization of thought during the
eighteenth century was rejected by the leading lights of the Restoration in
France, whose counter-revolutionary program included the condemnation of
all manifestations of Enlightenment, whether expressed in language theory,
literature or philosophy.
With the exception of the sections on the “abuse of words” (Chapter 12)
and the discussion of neology (Chapter 14), in which it is important to cite
the French terminology in question, all longer quotations from French texts
Introduction ix
are rendered in English. Only when the French passage is especially
important have I quoted it with its translation.3 The present translations are
based on the French originals, or were corrected in consultation with the
original text.
Chapter 13 on “Language and knowledge: theoretical sources on the
‘Linguistic Relativity’ of thought,” as well as the section on the Ideologues
in Chapter 14, was written with the co-operation of Gerda Haßler. For help
in the preparation of the final manuscript I thank Regina Harloff, Sabine
Schwarze, Käthe Herrmann, Sigrid Hoffmann, Christine Renneberg, and
especially Susanne Thomaschewski. In addition, I am grateful to Heidrun
Wöllenweber for having prepared the bibliography and the index for the
original book. I also express my gratitude to the directorship of the
Department of Linguistics and Literary Science at the Martin-Luther-
Universität Halle-Wittenberg for its support of my work. Anneliese Funke
helped to improve the original manuscript in numerous ways through her
professional editorial care.