from Part I - Linguistic Implications of Kant’s Thought
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 September 2025
Much useful attention has been focused on Kant’s views of the relation between language and thought, as well as the relation between grammar and logic, asking especially whether Kant thinks that the activity of thinking depends on or involves linguistic phenomena – that is, whether Kant upholds the linguisticality of thinking. Here I focus instead on the relation between language and ‘the senses,’ and sensibility more generally. After sketching what such an interpretation might look like and providing some initial textual grounds for its support, I then turn to some of the details of accounts of the linguisticality of sensibility among Kant’s historical predecessors (Berkeley, Baumgarten), to help round out and deepen our understanding of what sorts of commitments might go into such a view, before returning to the closer examination of Kant’s own texts. I conclude that Kant does in fact maintain a fairly well-developed version of the linguisticality interpretation of sensibility, and raise some questions about what this means for the linguisticality of thought itself.
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