Trần Đức Thảo: A Marxist Theory of the Origins of Human Language
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/ths.2016.007Keywords
Marxism, Phenomenology, Origins of Language, Tool-Making, Social CognitionAbstract
This paper will explore Trần Đức Thảo’s (Từ Sơn, Bắc Ninh, September 26th, 1917 – Paris, April 24th, 1993) work from historical, philosophical, and linguistic points of view. Most notably it will focus on Thảo’s Recherches sur l’origine du langage et de la conscience (1973). According to Marx and Engels, Thảo argued that language was originally constituted during collective cooperative activities. And he also suggested that human specific skills appeared for the first time with the production of first tools. To him, language arose as gestural and verbal indication involved in task-oriented cooperative activities already in hominid societies. Trying to integrate Piaget’s child development psychology with the findings of Spirkin’s anthropology, Thảo described six stages of evolution of genus Homo.
References
With the abbreviation Hua is here indicated Husserliana. La Haye: Nijhoff; Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer.
With the abbreviation MEW is here indicated Marx-Engels-Werke. Berlin: Dietz Verlag.
Arbib, M. A. (2005). Beyond the Mirror: Biology and Culture in the Evolution of Brain and Language. Oxford (CN): University Press.
Baribeau, J. (1986). The provocative Tran Duc Thao theses. On the Origin of Language and Consciousness. A Review Essay. Science and Nature 7/6: 56–62.
Barthes, R. (1951). Phénomenologie et matérialisme dialectique. Combat, 11 octobre 1951.
Benoist, J. (2013). Une première naturalisation de la phénoménologie?. In Benoist and Espagne (eds.) (2013: 25–48).
Benoist, J., Espagne, M. (eds.). (2013). L’itinéraire de Tran Duc Thao. Phénoménologie et transfert culturel. Paris: Armand Colin.
Bickerton, D. (1998). Catastrophic evolution: The case for a single step from protolanguage to full formed language. In Hurford, R., James, Studdert-Kennedy, Michael, Knight, Chris (eds). Approaches to the Evolution of Language: Social and Cognitive Basis, 341–358. Cambridge: University Press.
Bickerton, D. (2009). Adam’s Tongue,Hill and Wang.
Borghi, M. A., Cimatti, F. 2015. WAT (Words As social Tools): Una prospettiva socio-corporea della cognizione umana. Sistemi intelligenti 2015 (2): 361–372.
Bottomore, T. (ed.). (1991). A Dictionary of Marxist Thought. Malden (MA): Blackwell Publishing.
Burling, R. (1999). Motivation, conventionalization, and arbitrariness in the origin of language. In B.J. King (ed.). The Origins of Language: What Nonhuman Primates Can Tell Us, 307–350. Santa Fe, NM: School for American Research Press.
Corballis, C. M. (2003). From Hand to Mouth: The Origins of Language. Princeton: University Press.
Claesges, U. (1972). Zwischendeutigkeiten in Husserls Lebenswelt-Begriff. In Claesges, Ulrich and Heid, Klaus (eds.). Perspektiven transzendentalphänomenologischer Forschung, 85–101. Den Haag: Nijhoff.
Clark, H. Herbert, Brennam, E. Susan. (1991). Grounding in communication. In Resnick, Lauren, Levine John, Teasley D. Stephanie (eds.). Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition, 127–149. Washington: American Psychological Association.
Deacon, T. W. (1998). The Symbolic Species. The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. New York – London: W.W. Norton.
Federici, S. (1970). Viet Cong Philosophy: Tran Duc Thao, Telos 6: 104–117.
Feron, A. (2014). Qui est Trần Đức Thảo? Vie et œvre d’un philosophe vietnamien. Contretemps, Blog. February, 5. http://www.contretemps.eu/interventions/qui-est-tr%E1%BA%A7n-%C4%91%E1%BB%A9c-th%E1%BA%A3o%C2%A0-vie-%C5%93uvre-dun-philosophe-vietnamien.
Fitch W. T., Hauser D. M., Chomsky, N. (2005). The evolution of the language faculty: Clarifications and implications. Cognition 97: 179–210.
Harman, C. (1986). Base and Superstructure. International Socialism 2 (36): 3–44.
Hémery. D. (2013). Itinéraire I. Premier exil. In Benoist and Espagne 2013: 47–61.
Herrick, T. (2005). “A book which is no longer discussed today”: Tran Duc Thao, Jacques Derrida, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Journal of the History of Ideas 66 (1): 113–131.
Jordan, A. Z. (1967). The Evolution of Dialectical Materialism. London: Macmillan.
Kerckhoven, G. (1985). Zur Genese des Begriffs ‘Lebenswelt’ bei Edmund Husserl. Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 29: 182–203.
Gärdenfors, B. P. (2003). How Homo Became Sapiens. Oxford: University Press.
Giao, N. N. (1988). Ecrits et reperes biographiques. In Thảo (1988: 57–62).
Levin, R., Lewontin, R. (1985). The Dialectical Biologist. Boston: Harvard University Press.
Lieberman, P. (1984). The Biology and Evolution of Language. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
McHale, S. (2002). Vietnamese Marxism, Dissent, and the Politics of Postcolonial Memory: Tran Duc Thao, 1946–1993. The Journal of Asian Studies 61 (1): 7–31.
Marx, K., Engels, F. [1845] 1989. Die Deutsche Ideologie. Kritik der neuesten deutschen Philosophie in ihren Repràsentanten Feuerbach, B. Bauer und Stirner, und des deutschen Soizalismus in seinen verschiedenen Propheten. MEW Bd. 3,11. Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag.
Mithen, S. (2005). The singing Neanderthals. The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body. Harvard: University Press.
Osvath, P., Gärdenfors, B. P. (2005). Quand les hommes inventèrent l’avenir. Les Grands Dossiers des Sciences Humaines 12: 58–63.
Papin, P. (2013). Itinéraire 2. Les exils intérieurs. In Benoist, Espagne (eds.) (2013: 62–89).
Parent, T. (2013). Externalism and Self-Knowledge. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), (Available online: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/self-knowledge-externalism/).
Perreau, L. (2010). Le monde de la vie. In Benoist, J., Gérard, V. (eds.) Husserl, 251–272. Paris: Ellipses.
Pinker, S., Bloom, P. (1990). Natural language and natural selection. Behavioural and Brain Sciences 13 (4): 707–726.
Pinker, S., Jackendoff, R. (2005). The faculty of language: What’s special about it? Cognition 95: 201–236.
Pleyer, M. (2011). The Biological Evolution of Language. Contributions to the Study of Language, Literature and Culture, 2011 (1): 75–97.
Reichenbach, H. (1947). Elements of Symbolic Logic. Dover: Macmillan Co.
Saussure, Ferdinand de. (1916). Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot. English translation by Wade Baskin. (1959; 1995). Course in General Linguistics. New York: Columbia University Press.
Spelke, E. (1990). Principles of Object Perception. Cognitive Science 14 (1): 29–56.
Stout, D., Toth, N., Schick, K., Chaminade, T. (2008). Neural correlates of Early Stone Age toolmaking: technology, language and cognition in human evolution. Philosophical Transaction of Royal Society 363(1499): 1939–1949.
Thảo, T. Đ. (1951). Phénoménologie et Matérialisme Dialectique. Paris: Minh Tan. English trans. by D.J. Herman, D.V. Morano. (1985). Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 49. Dordrecht Boston: D. Reidel.
Thảo, T. Đ. (1973). Recherches sur l’origine du langage et de la conscience. Paris: Editions Sociales. English trans. by Daniel J. Herman & Robert L. Armstrong. (1984). Investigations into the origin of language and consciousness. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 44. Dordrecht Boston: D. Reidel.
Thảo, T. Đ. (1974). De la phénoménologie à la dialectique matérialiste de la conscience (I). La Nouvelle Critique, 79–80 : 37–42.
Thảo, T. Đ. (1975). De la phénoménologie à la dialectique matérialiste de la conscience (II). La Nouvelle Critique 86: 23–29.
Thảo, Trần Đức. (1988). La Philosophie de Staline I. Paris: Editions May.
Thao, Van T. (2004). Les compagnons de route de Hô Chi Minh. Paris, Karthala.
Thao, Van T. (2013). Quelques jalons dans le parcours philosophique de Tran Duc Thao. In Benoist and Espage: 90–114.
Thomas, P. 2008. Marxism and Scientific Socialism: From Engels to Althusser. London: Routledge.
Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., Call, J., Behne, T., Moll, H. (2005). Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition. Behvaioural and Brain Science 28 (5): 675–691.
Tomberg, F. (1969). Basis und Überbau. Sozialphilosophische Studien. Berlin: Neuwied.
Waldenfels, B. (1971). Weltliche und soziale Einzigkeit bei Husserl. Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, 25(2): 157–171.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Stats
Number of views and downloads: 766
Number of citations: 0
