Etienne Bonnot de Condillac

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Etienne Bonnot de Condillac

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (born September 30, 1714 in Grenoble , † August 3, 1780 in Flux near Beaugency ) was a French clergyman ( Abbé of Mureau ), philosopher and logician in the Age of Enlightenment . Starting from John Locke , this enlightener developed a sensualistic epistemology .

Live and act

His father Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1666–1727) and his mother, a Madame de la Coste (* 1675), had other children besides Étienne Bonnot de Condillac: Jean Bonnot de Mably (1696–1761), Anne Bonnet (* approx . 1698), François Bonnot de Saint Marcellin (1700–1785), Gabriel Bonnot de Mably , Georges Joseph Bonnot (* 1711).

De Condillac suffered from a chronic eye disease up to the age of twelve, which impaired his efforts to learn to read and, as a consequence of the illness, repeatedly forced him to interrupt his writing activities in later years.

In Paris he regularly visited the Salon of Claudine Guérin de Tencin . When Jean-Jacques Rousseau left Lyon for Paris on July 10, 1742 , he met the future banker Daniël Roguin from Yverdon in the French capital . Through this acquaintance he came into contact with Denis Diderot and became friends with him. In Lyon, Rousseau worked as a tutor and educator for the children of Gabriel Bonnot de Mably , de Condillac's brother. Through Rousseau, in turn, Diderot met de Condillac. Rousseau, de Condillac and Diderot met regularly and dined at the Panier fleuri . There the three developed the plan to publish a literary-critical magazine, it should be published with the title Le Persifleur . Rousseau edited the first edition, but a second no longer appeared.

De Condillac's birthplace at 13 Grand Rue in Grenoble

In Traité des systèmes (1749), Condillac differentiates between signs that happen to be related to the subject, natural signs and artificial or conditioned signs (language and writing). The secret of knowledge lies in the correct application of these signs. Breaking down complicated terms into their simplest elements avoids errors.

In 1754, in Traité des sensations , Condillac traced all functions of the soul (feelings, desires, acts of will) back to the sensations on which they are based. The sensation itself and the psychic experience were intellectualized by him. The mind sees more than the eye, writes Condillac.

In 1757 he was called to Parma to take over the education of the Infante and Crown Prince Ferdinand , who later became Duke of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla. He took on this task for nine years, at the same time as Auguste de Keralio (1715–1805), who worked for "moral education" in the sense of the Enlightenment .

In the works La logique ou les premiers dévelopments de l'art de penser (1780) and La langue des calculs (1798), Condillac starts from the thesis of the indivisibility of thought and language and explains the development of language from actions. By dissecting the action for the purpose of communication - and thus by dissecting the ideas whose signs these actions are, the language of the action becomes the analytical method.

What de Condillac and Diderot have in common is that they both grasp the language very broadly. Both understand it to mean any form of human, communicative utterance, whether z. B.  facial expressions , gestures or the melodic-rhythmic voice guidance, therefore the articulated language is seen as only one way of human expression. For Diderot, however, language is more based on emotionality, affects and thus on the art of poetry and music than on rational thinking and logic.

In Condillac's logic, knowledge is interpreted as a sure conclusion for reasons of reason that has more than just probability.

Works (selection)

  • Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines 1746
  • Traité des systèmes 1749
  • Traité des sensations 1754
  • Traité des animaux 1755
  • Cours d'études 1775
  • Le Commerce et le gouvernement considérés relativement l'un à l'autre 1776
  • La Logique ou l'art de penser 1780
  • La Langue des calculs 1798 posthumously.

literature

Secondary literature

  • Nonnenmacher, Kai: Up close and personal with the imagination: From Condillac's self-contact of the statue to Jean Paul's feeling threads. In: Bär, Katja, (ed.) Text and Truth: Results of the interdisciplinary conference Facts and Fictions of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Mannheim, 28. – 30. November 2002. Lang, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 289-303. ISBN 3-631-52368-8 .

Web links

Wikisource: Étienne Bonnot de Condillac  - Sources and full texts (French)
Wikiquote: Etienne Bonnot de Condillac  - Quotes
Commons : Étienne Bonnot de Condillac  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Abbaye de Mureau ( Memento from August 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (French)
  2. ↑ Family genealogy
  3. ^ Volkmar Mühleis: Art in the Loss of Sight. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, (2005) ISBN 3-7705-4125-1 , p. 129
  4. ^ Leopold Damrosch: Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius. Houghton Mifflin, 2007, ISBN 978-0-618-87202-2 , p. 160.
  5. ↑ Julia Luisa Abramson: Learning from Lying: The Paradoxes of Literary Mystification: Paradoxes of the Literary Mystification. University of Delaware Press 2005, ISBN 0-87413-900-7 , p. 157, footnote 18
  6. ↑ Soëtard, Michael: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Life and work. CH Beck, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-63197-9 , pp. 43-44.
personal data
SURNAME Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French philosopher of the Enlightenment
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1714
PLACE OF BIRTH Grenoble
DATE OF DEATH August 3, 1780
Place of death Flux at Beaugency