Publication: Ricerca della verità ed etica della comunicazione in John Locke
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Date
2016
Authors
Poggi, Davide
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste
Abstract
In this paper, I aim to underline that the problematic background of John Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding is not only tied to the relationship between ideas and words with regard to issue of knowledge (which results in a philosophy of communication as a philosophy of language and is then adopted and developed, in particular, by Condillac – but in a perspective which is far from Locke’s original theory), but also to specific rules which must guide communication in an ethical sense. These rules operate on two levels: on the one hand, within the context of the logico-semiotic approach to communication (according to which the act of communication is the mere construction of verbal propositions that stand for the speaker’s internal conceptions and excite them in others), they develop the Cartesian ideal of clarity and distinctness of ideas taken up after reading Port-Royal Logique; on the other hand, they do not propose any moral system, which one ought to adhere to, but the ideal of an inquiry which is true, antidogmatic, and unanimous, too (where the concepts of friendship and tolerance play a central role), a path without end towards truth which arises from the idea of “searching for truth” itself.
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Keywords
Communication ethics, language, rhetoric, friendship, toleration, commonwealth of learning, fairness, indifferency
Citation
Davide Poggi, "Ricerca della verità ed etica della comunicazione in John Locke", in: "Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics (2016) XVIII/2", Trieste, EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2016, pp. 133-152