Felipe Kouznetz de Souza e Silva Fernandes

The project has as its objective to read Condillac in light of his relationship with music, understood as a language. In the context of his works, a language is already a metaphysics, with his goal being to grammatically correct the misleadings of traditional philosophy. Music is important because, in the first moment of his genealogical method, speech and chant are one and the same — a tableau complemented by pantomime, the language of action. Music is also the model for a successful formalization based on minimal principles, thanks to Rameau's work, which had great prestige in the French Enlightenment. The musician is quoted by Condillac in his Essay Concerning the Origin of Human Knowledge and Treatise on Sensations. Rameau's theory uses harmony as its foundation, understood as the basis for the analogy between sounds. Rousseau figures as a counterpoint, rejecting Rameau's theory because it treats music as a positive science. Instead of harmonic calculation, Rousseau suggests melodic drawing — imitation instead of analogy. From this confrontation, the project seeks a new interpretation of Condillac's work.