Condillac Theory | Reclaiming the 'Grounding' of Thought
Has philosophy ever been this tangible before? What Étienne Bonnot de Condillac developed in his book 'Logic' is not a flight into the clouds of high-flown concepts. It is an extremely radical intellectual deconstruction that dismantles the tool of language and pulls thought back down to the 'bare metal' level.
We often labor under the illusion that language is an independent entity in itself. Especially in the realm of philosophy, abstract concepts begin to walk on their own, devolving into 'symbols' for the sake of seeking approval or showing off knowledge. However, Condillac asserts that at the starting point of all thought lies 'bodily experience,' and the mind is always connected to the world through the boundary line of the skin.
The analytical flow he proposes is clear and cold-blooded.
'Bodily experience → Sensation → Comparison → Symbolization → Language → Abstraction'
This process is the very architecture of thought. As its etymology suggests, the act we call 'thinking' (penser) derives from the physical and sensory act of 'weighing' (peser) on a scale. Furthermore, 'substance' was not a cosmic mystery, but merely a word referring to a structural necessity: a 'pedestal' (stance) that 'supports from below' (sub).
Condillac valued nameless craftsmen more highly than famous philosophers because the craftsman's intelligence is always facing the 'resistance' of the external world. In the world of the craftsman, ambiguity in the definition of words leads directly to product defects or accidents. For them, language is a practical tool for accurately segmenting objects and controlling functions. There is no room there for 'wordplay' where one toys with concepts to indulge in self-satisfaction.
Just as the word 'pharmakeia' carries the ambiguity of both medicine and poison, truth always resides within the physical sensation of 'dose' or 'relationship.' When one climbs the ladder of abstraction too high and can no longer see the ground (experience), thought falls into a state of insulation and begins to spin in a vacuum.
What we need in the modern age is not abstruse theory as a sophisticated OS. Rather, it is to reactivate the interface of our 'sensory organs'—which come with skin sensation—and reclaim the 'grounding' of thought. Condillac's logic is not some antiquated dogma. It is the most wild and most scientific technique for escaping the labyrinth of language and 're-measuring' the world with one's own hands once again.
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