No Letters

Hobbes and 20th-Century Philosophy of Language

Bibliographic Data

ID10928491
AuthorsW P Grundy (University of Cambridge), William Grundy (University of Cambridge, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume38
Issue4
Pages486-512
Publication date2008-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhilosophy of the Social Sciences (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0048-3931 • E-ISSN: 1552-7441
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0048393108323862
OpenAlexW2002241134
LanguageEN
References cited17

The author argues that Thomas Hobbes anticipates a set of questions about meaning and semantic order that come to fuller expression in the 20th century, in the writings of W.V.O. Quine, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Donald Davidson, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty. Despite their different points of departure, these 20th-century writers pose a number of profound questions about the conditions for the stability of meaning, and about the conditions that govern the use of the term “language” itself. Though the more recent debate benefits from a set of philosophical tools unavailable in the seventeenth century, the author further argues that Hobbes performs a number of maneuvers in his texts from which his 20th-century successors would profit

Epistemology · Expression (computer science) · Meaning (existential) · Order (exchange) · Quine · Set (abstract data type) · Computer Science · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought