Language

The relationship of language to thought continues to vex thinkers. Peter Sharpe offers a way forward from the present confusion using Kant's notion of pure reason to present the whole of language as a symbolic form.

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The age-old question of the relation of language to thought has vexed thinkers from the time of Plato to the present. It still remains unresolved and if anything, it has become more complicated with claims advanced for a language faculty, a language instinct, and even a grammar gene. By clearing up the confusion that surrounds such key terms as 'concept', 'form' and 'function' this work uncovers a new avenue of investigation that leads the reader out of the present narrow confines of the debate. The Symbolic Path does this by introducing Kant's notion of pure reason as the most promising candidate for a language-less thought and Kant's philosophy as a third base that enables passage beyond rationalist and empiricist thinking that presently divide the study of language into formal and functional approaches. The author reaches beyond these pillars of analysis by presenting the whole of language as a symbolic form - one into which we are born and through which we express our lives and establish our identity.