Abstract
Unsurprisingly, Leibniz’s philosophy of language was sophisticated and far-ranging, as well as extremely influential. He was in particular an astute and vigorous critic of Locke’s reflections on language. Leibniz thought considerably about the origins and sources for language and especially regarding its capacity to express thought. He also devoted considerable attention and effort to the connections between the real definitions of things and their nominal or linguistic definitions. Like a few others, he questioned the alleged arbitrariness of language and the word-thing relationship. In this regard, he can be seen as working within the ideal language tradition of the seventeenth century. This would have considerable significance for the role that language can play in not only expressing thought, but in actually constituting thought and developing and perfecting it.
Text from New Essays excerpted from: Remnant, P. and J. Bennett. eds. 1996. Leibniz: New Essays on Human Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
“On Freedom”, “Preface to a Universal Characteristic” and “Meditations on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas” excerpted from: Ariew, R. and D. Garber. eds. 1989. G.W. Leibniz: Philosophical Essays. Indianapolis: Hackett.
“The Nature of Truth” excerpted from: Parkinson, G.H.R. ed. 1973. Leibniz: Philosophical Writings. London: Dent.
“On the Connection between Things and Words, or the Origin of Languages”, “The Analysis of Languages” and “Verbal Characteristic” excerpted from: Dascal, M. ed. 1987. Leibniz: Language, Signs, and Thought. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
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Notes
- 1.
[Locke: “a voluntary imposition … made arbitrarily.” Coste’s change. Coste translates “imposition ” by “institution.”]
- 2.
[Leibniz : “vif-argent”. In French, “vif” means “alive,” as “quick” used to in English.]
- 3.
[Virgil.]
- 4.
[Horace.]
- 5.
[A fusee is a conical grooved pulley from which the string unwinds onto a cylinder containing the watch’s mainspring.]
- 6.
[“Extract from a letter concerning the principle of exactness in portable watches.”]
- 7.
[“New system of the nature and communication of substances.”]
- 8.
[On the Combinatorial Art.]
- 9.
[Plato, Symposium 180c.]
- 10.
[St. Thomas Aquinas , Summa Theologiae 1, q. 2 art. 1 ad 2.]
- 11.
[Hobbes , De Corpore, Pt. 1, Chap. 3, sec. 7–9.]
- 12.
[The term “reduplicative proposition” refers to such propositions as “Man, in so far as he is an object of the senses, is perishable,” (Aristotle, Prior Analytics, 49a11ff; Jungius Logica Hamburgensis [1st ed., 1638], Bk. 2, Ch. 11). An example is to be found in one of Leibniz’s logical papers, C 261: “Though a triangle and trilateral are the same, yet if you say ‘A triangle, as such, has 180°,’ ‘trilateral’ cannot be substituted. There is in it something material.” The implication seems to be that it cannot be said that a trilateral, as such, has 180°, because the term “trilateral” contains no reference to angles.]
- 13.
[Jacques Golius (1596–1667), mathematician and orientalist. He was a well-known traveler and usually brought home precious old manuscripts. The opinion Leibniz ascribes to him, about the artificiality of the Chinese characters, was rather widespread in the seventeenth century. An interesting rapprochement was usually made, then, between the Chinese characters and cryptographic systems, and this view had some influence upon the projects of a “philosophical language” mentioned in the next note.]
- 14.
[The references are to George Dalgarno’s The Art of Signs (London, 1661) and John Wilkins ’ An Essay toward a Real Character and a philosophical Language (London, 1668).]
- 15.
[This is certainly a slip of the tongue, for in propositions nothing occurs. Leibniz probably means “propositions which describe unexpected events.”]
- 16.
[The “formal” or “grammatical” distinction “abstract” vs. “concrete” is thus assimilated to the “epistemological” or “semantic ” distinction “per se” vs. “per accidens”. That is, Leibniz’s grammatical analysis is not purely formal, but rather his grammatical categories have a “notional” content, as in Aristotle.]
- 17.
[Raymundus Lullus (1235–1315). Leibniz refers here to Lull’s Great Arts, a work with which he was very well acquainted.]
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Di Salle, R. (2017). Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. In: Cameron, M., Hill, B., Stainton, R. (eds) Sourcebook in the History of Philosophy of Language. Springer Graduate Texts in Philosophy, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26908-5_30
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