Communicating Thoughts through Bodies An Ontogenetic Approach to Spinoza’s Theory of Language

This article proposes to read Spinoza’s theory of language within a conceptual framework in which communication functions as a notio communis that underlies every form of corporeal interaction. Language, on this reading, is the culmination of a communicative continuum that begins at the most elementary level of physical reality. The argument proceeds in four stages, moving from the ontology of physical communication to the analysis of linguistic communication as a specific and derivative form of it, and finally to a brief application of the proposed framework to the question of the State as individual.