A Philosophical History of the Concept / edited by Stephan Schmid, Hamid Taieb.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Schmid, Stephan, editor.

Taieb, Hamid, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Concepts--History.

Concepts.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (482 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2026.

Summary:

The concept of concept plays a central role in philosophy, serving both as a subject of study in disciplines such as logic, epistemology, and philosophy of mind, and as a methodologically central notion for those who think that philosophy is essentially concerned with analysing, deconstructing, developing, or ameliorating concepts. But what exactly are concepts, and why have they become so significant in philosophy? The chapters of this volume explore critical moments in the history of the concept of concept, investigating why and how philosophers across different eras and cultures have addressed concepts' nature, acquisition, and relationship to the entities to which they apply. Spanning classical Greek to modern Western philosophies, and incorporating Chinese, Indian, and Islamic traditions, the volume examines concepts as means for categorizing the world - tracing their evolution from elements of thought to foundational components of reality, and the transformation of the concept into the key notion of philosophy.

Contents:

Cover

Half-title page

Title page

Imprints page

Contents

List of Figures

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction: A Philosophical History of the Concept

I.1 The Centrality of Concepts in Western Philosophy

I.2 Ways of Conceiving of Concepts

I.3 A Philosophical History of the Concept of Concept

References

1 Concepts in Classical Greece: Aristotle and His Predecessors

1.1 Plato and Before

1.2 Concepts in Ordinary Thought

1.3 Aristotle's Empiricism

1.4 How Understanding Comes About

1.5 Simple Concepts and Abstraction

1.6 Complex Concepts and Propositions

1.7 Conclusion

2 Concepts in Epicurean and Stoic Philosophy

2.1 Epicurean Preconceptions, Conceptions and Concepts

2.2 Stoic Preconceptions, Conceptions and Concepts

2.3 Conclusion

3 Concepts in Late Antiquity

3.1 Common Notions and Ordinary Concepts

3.2 Abstraction and Universal Concepts

3.3 Plotinus on Concepts and Recollection

3.4 Psychic Logoi and Universal Substances

4 Concepts in Early Chinese Philosophy

4.1 Introduction: Looking for Concepts in Early China

4.2 Language and Meaning in Early China

4.3 Xunzi on Correct Naming

4.4 Problematizing the Objective Basis of Names

4.5 Determining Categories

4.6 Killing Thieves, Not People

4.7 Conclusion

5 Buddhist Theory of Concepts

5.1 Introduction and Background

5.2 Realist Objections to Dignāga's Apohavāda

5.3 Dharmakīrti's Defence of Apohavāda

5.4 Kantian Schemata

5.5 A Kantian Reading of Ekapratyavamarśa

5.6 Conclusion

6 Concepts in Brahmanical Philosophy in Classical India

6.1 Imagistic Theories of Concepts

6.2 Grammatical Theories and Theories of Concepts in Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika

6.3 Conclusion

References.

7 Concepts in Islamic Philosophy

7.1 The Semantic Framework

7.2 The Acquisition of Concepts

7.3 Inadequate Concepts

7.4 Concept and Definition: Two Twelfth-Century Challenges

7.5 Conclusion

8 Concepts in the Latin Medieval Tradition

8.1 Concepts in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries in the Latin West

8.2 Concepts in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

8.3 The Concept of Concepts in the Late Middle Ages

8.4 Conclusion

9 Concepts and Ideas in Suárez, Descartes and Beyond

9.1 Concepts and Ideas in Francisco Suárez

9.2 Ideas in Descartes

9.3 Ideas after Descartes: Locke and Malebranche

9.4 Conclusion

10 Concepts in British Empiricism

10.1 Locke on Abstract Ideas

10.2 Berkeley's Rejection of Abstract Ideas

10.3 Hume on Linguistic Meaning and General Thought

10.4 Shepherd's Defence of Abstraction

11 The Leibnizean Alternative: Logical-Conceptual versus Presentational Models

12 Kant on the Epigenesis of (Empirical) Concepts

12.1 Leibniz's Innatism

12.2 Kant on the Epigenesis of Pure Concepts

12.3 The Epigenesis of Empirical Concepts

12.4 Conclusion

13 The Concept in German Idealism

13.1 A Conspicuous Phenomenon

13.2 The Copernican Revolution and the Problem of Universals

13.3 Subjective versus Objective Idealism

13.4 Regulative versus Constitutive

13.5 Hegel's Defence of Constitutive Status

13.6 The Mighty Concept and the Overcoming of Dualism

14 Concept, Value and World: Neo-Kantianism, Dilthey and Nietzsche

14.1 Hermann Cohen

14.2 Ernst Cassirer

14.3 Heinrich Rickert

14.4 Dilthey

14.5 Nietzsche

15 Concepts in the School of Brentano, Husserl and Early Phenomenology

15.1 Corpus and Methodology

15.2 Ordinary Concepts.

15.3 From Ordinary to Scientific Concepts

15.4 Pure Concepts

16 Two Concepts of Concept in Early Analytic Philosophy

16.1 Concept as Opposed to Intuition: From Kant to Bolzano

16.2 Concept as Opposed to Object: Frege

16.3 Conclusion

17 Concepts in Pragmatism

17.1 The Pragmatic Maxim: Concepts as Practical Habits

17.2 Experience Understood as 'Given'

17.3 Pragmatist Accounts of Experience

17.4 Peirce's Theory of Perception

17.5 From Pictures to Predicates: Peirce's Pragmatist Account of Concept Formation

17.6 The Peircean Symbol as Habit

18 Concepts, Meaning and Use: Wittgenstein and His Legacy

18.1 A Profound Irony?

18.2 Questions about Concepts

18.3 The Priority Question 1: From Meaning to Explanation and Understanding

18.4 The Priority Question 2: From Concepts to Concept Possession

18.5 Concept Possession

18.6 Concepts and Abilities

18.7 Concepts, Techniques and Rules

18.8 Meaning and the Individuation of Concepts

18.9 Wittgenstein's Legacy

19 Concepts in Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer

19.1 Heidegger

19.2 Merleau-Ponty

19.3 Gadamer

19.4 Conclusion

20 Poststructuralist Approaches to the Concept

20.1 The Critique of the Origin

20.2 French Pre-structuralist Approaches to the Concept

20.3 Derrida on Différance

20.4 Deleuze's Image of Thought

20.5 Foucault on Genealogy

20.6 Conclusion

21 Carnap, Quine, Putnam and Burge on Concepts

21.1 Tarski's Method of Defining Truth

21.2 Semantic Ascent and Our Practical Ability to Use Our Words in Inquiry

21.3 Two Tasks for a Theory of Concepts

21.4 Carnap on Concepts

21.5 Quine contra Carnap: There Are No Concepts

21.6 Putnam contra Carnap and Quine: There Are Concepts But They Have No Essences.

21.7 Burge on Concepts as Senses: Incomplete and Complete Understanding

21.8 Inquiry without Concepts

22 Concepts and Conceptual Engineering

22.1 Conceptual Engineering

22.2 The Psychological Account of Concepts

22.3 The Semantic Account of Concepts

22.4 The Representationalist Account of Concepts

22.5 Conclusion

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Feb 2026).

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-009-27380-9

1-009-27383-3

OCLC:

1570889423