The Order of Knowing: Juan Luis Vives on Language, Thought, and the Topics

This article seeks to locate Vives’s work in the tradition of humanist thought that criticized the linguistic and philosophical abstraction of the scholastics. After discussing Vives’s views on language and knowledge as functions of man’s biological nature, the article argues that for Vives the topi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of the history of ideas Vol. 76; no. 3; pp. 325 - 345
Main Author Nauta, Lodi
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States University of Pennsylvania Press 01.07.2015
Subjects
Classical literature
Education reform
History of medicine and histology
History, 16th Century
Knowledge
Knowledge acquisition
Language
Language culture relationship
Language history
Latin literature
Linguistics
Logic
Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus)
Metaphysics
Philosophers
Philosophy
Philosophy - history
Philosophy of language
Pointing
Rhetoric
Semantics
Spain
Thinking
Vives
Spain
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Summary:This article seeks to locate Vives’s work in the tradition of humanist thought that criticized the linguistic and philosophical abstraction of the scholastics. After discussing Vives’s views on language and knowledge as functions of man’s biological nature, the article argues that for Vives the topics, as seats of argumentation, are a reflection of the ontological order and as such an instrument and heuristic aid for the human mind. They form a grid through which knowledge can be acquired and arguments be formulated. The topics bridge the world of (unknown) essences and man’s epistemic categories.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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ISSN:0022-5037
1086-3222
1086-3222
DOI:10.1353/jhi.2015.0018