Condillac and the History of Rhetoric

Catherine Hobbs Peaden

doi:10.1525/rh.1993.11.2.135

Rhetorica May 1993

Condillac and the History of Rhetoric

Catherine Hobbs Peaden University of Oklahoma

Abstract

Abstract: Four decades after the publication of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (5th ed.), a French text appeared which attempted to revise and perfect Lockean theory. This text, the 1746Essay on the Origin of Human Understanding by Etienne Bonnot, Abbéde Condillac (1714r–80), and several later works by the same author add to Lockean theory what Locke himself suggests but never fully carries out, a developmental account of understanding. But Condillac's developmentalism results in dual rhetorics—an aesthetic, expressive rhetoric and an empirical, referential rhetoric. This article discusses aesthetic expressivism in Condillac in relation to his speculations about the origins of language, with that discussion linked to the familiar opposition of referential scientific and expressive literary language.

Journal: Rhetorica
Published: 1993-05-01
DOI: 10.1525/rh.1993.11.2.135
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Topics: rhetorical criticism composition theory
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Condillac and the History of Rhetoric

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