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Full Idea
If men needed speech in order to learn to think, they had a still greater need for knowing how to think in order to discover the art of speaking.
Gist of Idea
Language may aid thinking, but powerful thought was needed to produce language
Source
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I)
Book Ref
Rousseau,Jean-Jacques: 'The Basic Political Writings', ed/tr. Cress,Donald A. [Hackett 1987], p.49
A Reaction
I take language to be a consequence of the emergence of meta-thought in humanity, so I thoroughly endorse Rousseau's view. The idea that rationality, and even consciousness, are mainly facilitated by language strikes me as quite wrong.
| 8155 | Without speech we cannot know right/wrong, true/false, good/bad, or pleasant/unpleasant [Anon (Upan)] |
| 19758 | Language may aid thinking, but powerful thought was needed to produce language [Rousseau] |
| 7084 | What can be said is what can be thought, so language shows the limits of thought [Wittgenstein, by Grayling] |
| 23065 | If only we could write like a reptile, of endless sensations and no concepts! [Cioran] |
| 11144 | Concepts are only possible in a language community [Davidson] |
| 12592 | Concepts in thought have content, but not meaning, which requires communication [Harman] |
| 18577 | The word 'grandmother' may be two concepts, with a prototype and a definition [Machery] |