Description
Book SynopsisThis book offers a history of the idea that human thought is structured like a language, from Plato and Aristotle up to the fourteenth century when William of Ockham gave it a new importance and developed it in a systematic way.
Trade Review"Mental language was no twentieth-century philosophical invention, and Claude Panaccio's book, Mental Language: From Plato to William of Ockham, first published in French in 1999, remains the best guide to the many theories that were formulated in antiquity and the Middle Ages. There is no more complete or authoritative work on the subject. The book is philosophically astute and sophisticated, but eminently readable. A postscript brings the work completely up to date, with an exhaustive discussion of the copious literature that has appeared on the topic in the past fifteen years." -- -Richard Cross University of Notre Dame
Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Part I: The Sources 1. Plato to Aristotle The soul's dialogue with itself, -- The locus of logical relations, -- The composition of thought 2. Logos Endiathetos A Stoic notion?, -- Philo and allegorical exegesis, -- From Plutarch to Plotinus, -- John Damascene and his source 3. Verbum in Corde The battle against Gnosis, -- The emergence of Latin theology, -- Augustine: the development of a doctrine 4. Oratio mentalis The case of Porphyry, -- The testimony of Ammonius, -- The commentaries of Boethius, -- The passage through Islam Part II: Thirteenth-Century Controversies 5. Triple is the Word Anselm's Augustinianism, -- The play of triads, -- Sermo in mente 6. Act versus Idol The Thomistic synthesis, -- The first criticisms, -- Back to the things themselves 7. Concept and sign Signs in the intellect, -- John Duns Scotus and the question of the significate, -- The language of angels 8. What Is Logic About? Logic, composition and truth, -- Deep structure and logical form, -- The subject of the Perihermeneias, -- The elements of syllogism Part III: The Via Moderna 9. Ockham's Intervention The object of knowledge, -- The ontology of the intelligible, -- The semantics of concepts, -- Natural signification 10. Reactions The nature of mental language, -- The structure of mental language, -- Parisian nominalism Conclusion Postscript (2014) On the Ancient and Patristic Sources, -- On Augustine and Boethius, -- On Abelard and the twelfth century, -- On Aquinas and the thirteenth century, -- On Ockham and the Late Medieval Period, Bibliography Index
