Hobbes's extreme political views have commanded so much
attention that they have eclipsed his work on language and mind,
and on reasoning, personhood, and group formation. But this work is
of immense interest in itself, as Philip Pettit shows in "Made with
Words," and it critically shapes Hobbes's political philosophy.
Pettit argues that it was Hobbes, not later thinkers like
Rousseau, who invented the invention of language thesis--the idea
that language is a cultural innovation that transformed the human
mind. The invention, in Hobbes's story, is a double-edged sword. It
enables human beings to reason, commit themselves as persons, and
incorporate in groups. But it also allows them to agonize about the
future and about their standing relative to one another; it takes
them out of the Eden of animal silence and into a life of
inescapable conflict--the state of nature. Still, if language leads
into this wasteland, according to Hobbes, it can also lead out. It
can enable people to establish a commonwealth where the words of
law and morality have a common, enforceable sense, and where people
can invoke the sanctions of an absolute sovereign to give their
words to one another in credible commitment and contract.
Written by one of today's leading philosophers, "Made with
Words" is both an original reinterpretation and a clear and lively
introduction to Hobbes's thought.
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