The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity

Taylor (philosophy emeritus, McGill Univ., Canada; Sources of the Self) contrasts two theories of language. The first, which he rejects, stems from the ideas of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac. The HLC (Hobbes, Locke, Condillac) theory, as Taylor calls it, takes words to describe ideas and objects in the world that exist before they are named. The rival HHH concept, after Johann Georg Hamann, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Wilhelm von Humboldt, stresses the creative sway of language. Words often do not designate what preexists them but rather help call into being the phenomena they designate. Language is expressive, not just descriptive. The HHH theory was integral to the Romantic movement, and Taylor shows its application to music and poetry. The HLC idea has not gone away; Taylor argues that it underlies much of analytic philosophy of language after Gottlob Frege. He criticizes the vastly influential semantic theory of Donald Davidson for its failure to absorb the lessons of HHH, and Robert Brandom has in his opinion also insufficiently escaped the presuppositions of HLC. Taylor uses his approach to language to challenge both Humean and Kantian accounts of ethics. He displays great learning and has an uncanny ability to penetrate to the essence of a position.