Lia Formigari

Ideologie et langage en Italie (L. Formigari) The author notes the influence of the Ideologists, after that of Condillac, on linguistic studies in Italy, in spite of the suspicion aroused by the materalist views that are supposed to accompany their philosophical positions. As early as 1796, there appears a trend of thought close to Ideology, which aims at theorizing on the relationship between language, society and culture. This was a fundamental problem for a country that had not yet found its linguistic or political unity. The substantial bibliography in this article brings up numerous points concerning research on the influence of the Ideologists.

Lia Formigari propone un recorrido en este libro que permite examinar ampliamente las teorías lingüísticas del Romanticismo alemán y su relación de continuidad y ruptura con los presupuestos de la Ilustración, así como con el nacimiento de la lingüística histórica en Europa. La lógica del pensamiento vivo es una obra que abarca un breve pero intenso periodo de la historia de la filosofía y de las teorías sobre el lenguaje, cubriendo la actividad filosófica de autores tan diversos como Hamann, Herder, Humboldt, Schelling y los hermanos Schlegel.

Theory and history combine in this book to form a coherent narrative of the debates on language and languages in the Western world, from ancient classic philosophy to the present, with a final glance at on-going discussions on language as a cognitive tool, on its bodily roots and philogenetic role.An introductory chapter reviews the epistemological areas that converge into, or contribute to, language philosophy, and discusses their methods, relations, and goals. In this context, the status of language philosophy is discussed in its relation to the sciences and the arts of language. Each chapter is followed by a list of suggested readings that refer the reader to the final bibliography."About the author" Lia Formigari, Professor Emeritus at University of Rome, La Sapienza. Her publications include: "Language and Experience in XVIIth-century British Philosophy." Amsterdam & Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 1988; "Signs, Science and Politics. Philosophies of Language in Europe 1700 1830." Amsterdam & Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 1993; "La semiotique empiriste face au kantisme." Liege: Mardaga, 1994.

This book tells the story of how 18th-century European philosophy used Locke's theory of signs to build a natural history of speech and to investigate the semiotic tools with which nature and civil society can be controlled. The story ends at the point where this approach to language sciences was called into question. Its epilogue is the description of the birth of an alternative between empiricism and idealism in late 18th- and early 19th-century theories of language. This alternative has given rise to such irreducible dichotomies as empirical linguistics vs. speculative linguistics, philosophies of linguistics vs. philosophy of language. Since then philosophers have largely given up reflecting on linguistic practice and have left the burden of unifying and interpreting empirical research data to professional linguists, limiting themselves to the study of foundations and to purely self-contemplative undertakings. The theoretical and institutional relevance to the present of the problems arising from this situation is in itself a sufficient reason for casting our minds back over a period in which, as in no other, linguistic research was an integral part of the encyclopaedia of knowledge, and in which philosophers reflected, and encouraged reflection, upon the semiotic instruments of science and politics.