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Although there are both common and specialised senses of the term variation, (the OED lists dozens) there seems to be no well defined use of this term in philosophy. The main task of my thesis is to demonstrate that variation can be defined as a cognitive technique. I suggest that variation has been frequently used by philosophers, although not always in an overt manner. Moreover, I attempt to show that it is reasonable to talk about the relative importance of variation by examining the role of variation in Locke's Essay, Husserl's and Reinach's phenomenology, cognitive science, and thought experiments.

This research project will examine the concept of sovereignty in Vermont for the years 1750-1791. As with most conceptual studies, it is necessary to first examine the history of the concept. I begin with René Descartes (1596-1650), and his re-conceptualization of Man in a natural state. It is my contention that his metaphysical and ontological findings in Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) were then adopted by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) in Leviathan (1651), and John Locke (1632-1704) in Two Treatises of Government (1689). Basing their philosophies on Descartes's "revised" depiction of Man in nature, both Hobbes and Locke envisioned a Man who naturally made both rational and passionate decisions, as communities transitioned, via the process of government formation, from the state of nature into the state of "civil society," as they termed it. Contemporaneous with this theoretical evolution was the inclusion of "the people" in British governance through the rise of Parliament at the turn of the seventeenth century. Juxtaposed with real events, the philosophers' reconceptualization demonstrates an evolving concept of sovereignty in the British state. By the time of the American Revolution, the concept of popular sovereignty was born, and "the people" ascended in both political theory and political reality. Because the eighteenth-century concept of sovereignty was based heavily on the metaphor of the state of nature, I chose the inhabitants of the New Hampshire Grants as a case study. These residents believed they resided in something close to a literal state of nature from 1760-1777, and that they had lived the theoretical philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and other contemporary theorists. Once the theoretical description of a natural state is juxtaposed with the socio-political history of the Grants region, it is clear that inhabitants believed the Colony of New York, the appendage of the British state which claimed authority in the region, did not provide efficient governance for the residents. After the American Revolution broke out, Grants residents claimed it was their natural right to erect a state and systematically replace New York. Once Vermont's constitution went into effect in 1778, the concept of sovereignty was expressed in response to two simultaneous processes: the first, the geo-political stabilization of the state in the midst of both war and constant challenges to the state's existence; the second, the Vermont people transforming from a blend of "Yorkers" and "Yankees" into Vermonters. Both of these processes were complete by the mid-1780s as surrounding states and former Yorkers grew to accept the legitimacy of Vermont. By the late 1780s, as the United States Constitutional Convention was underway, Vermont was no longer considered a "pretended state," and was able to face the convention on its own terms, representing its own sovereign people.

This study offers a close, interdisciplinary reading of several specific instances in which health and sickness were discussed or considered by Locke and his contemporaries. Medical historians have long known that Locke was a medical adviser and practitioner of sorts, and his medical 'cases' have traditionally been scrutinised for details of his medical career and for details of past illnesses and treatments, read against a context of specifically medical thought. In a departure from that tradition, this study presents several of Locke's health-related interactions in their contemporary social contexts, These contexts are not exclusively medical, and it is shown how health issues overlapped with and permeated discussions of land, literature, gender, politics and religion. Focussing on specific micro-historical scenes, this study explores the myriad ways in which health was configured in Locke's world. In this study, we see Locke engaged in presenting the health of a colony in Carolina in America; employed in the management of Anthony Ashley Cooper's festering abscess; writing to the Fletchers of Saltoun about nature-hastening medicines and ignorant practitioners; subduing rumours about Matthew Slade, a mentally unstable scholarly friend; helping Elizabeth Northumberland to describe her searing pains, and more. In this thesis, stories of health from Locke's world are interwoven with similar short scenes of health from his published works to show the reader how Locke himself considered health-related scenes stimulating and illuminating.

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Writers from the Romantic period embraced Locke's principle of linguistic arbitrariness as they reacted to the threat to their literary authority posed by the standardizers of English such as Samuel Johnson. Their texts articulate a desire to maximize the potential for authorial freedom that Locke's theory of language offers. By exploiting arbitrary properties of language, writers hoped to transcend the linguistic limits imposed by the standardizers and thus to confirm their status as creative practitioners of the English language. Priestley, one of such writers, capitalizes on the arbitrariness of signs as described by Locke when he envisions a perfect language that shall be universally used in the future millennial kingdom. Predicated upon the arbitrary connection between words and "things of considerable consequence," Priestley's universal language scheme allows the writer to ponder meanings outside the semantic range of standard lexicography. In Pigott's Political Dictionary (1795), Locke's semantic theory becomes the means to radicalize Locke's political ideas, especially the idea of the right of revolution. The arbitrariness (or voluntariness) of signification encourages Pigott to revise Johnson's standard definitions in a way that articulates French Revolutionary principles. Wordsworth sides with Francis Grose--the author of A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785)--in placing a high value on vulgar English. But unlike Grose, he contends that rural language is "more permanent," i.e. durable, than a refined language. Wordsworth's description of how rustics' language achieves durability reveals that he is deeply conscious of all linguistic signs being arbitrary. Furthermore, the naturalism that Wordsworth attributes to his poetic diction results from his appropriation of the arbitrariness that rules the language of rustics. Coleridge emphatically denies the role of linguistic arbitrariness in his theorization of the symbol. The signifying process that produces the symbol, however, operates by seizing on the possibilities for semantic expansion that the arbitrary quality of the sign opens up. As a result, the privileged status of the symbol, and hence of the "natural" in Coleridge's system, is thrown into question. My reading of Coleridge deconstructs the opposition of natural / arbitrary in his thinking about language. By exerting arbitrary power over the ways in which words stand for ideas, Romantic authors sought to restore the vitality of their literary language and to lead the continued progress of their mother tongue.

Although there are both common and specialised senses of the term variation, (the OED lists dozens) there seems to be no well defined use of this term in philosophy. The main task of my thesis is to demonstrate that variation can be defined as a cognitive technique. I suggest that variation has been frequently used by philosophers, although not always in an overt manner. Moreover, I attempt to show that it is reasonable to talk about the relative importance of variation by examining the role of variation in Locke's Essay, Husserl's and Reinach's phenomenology, cognitive science, and thought experiments.

Texte remanié de: Ph. D. diss.--Princeton (N.J.)--University. / Bibliogr. p. 191-198. Index.

The purpose of the thesis is to situate John Locke's political ideas in the context of the debate of the late seventeenth-century. In recent scholarship, it is argued that Locke held only a marginal position in the debate. However, this view is improper; there were rich intellectual exchanges between Locke and his contemporaries. They shared strong concern with modes of communication and those of moral cultivation, and a set of concepts in terms of which these issues were discussed. The thesis examines similarities and dissimilarities between Locke's ideas and those of four of his contemporaries: Edward Stillingfleet, Algernon Sidney, Samuel Pufendorf, and William Temple. Through this analysis the thesis shows both the significance and the limit of Locke's liberal ideas in the late seventeenth-century.

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