ABSTRACT
Concepts have long been a topic of philosophical thinking, and conceptual analyses date back to Plato and Aristotle. Plato devoted long dialogues to his quest for the meanings of ‘friendship’, ‘justice’, and ‘virtue’ as part of his theory of ideas. Aristotle’s Metaphysics Delta is dedicated to clarifying fundamental concepts that constitute his philosophical and scientific thought, concepts such as ‘beginning’, ‘cause’, ‘nature’, ‘one’, and ‘necessity’. Twentieth-century philosophers concentrated on both language and analytic methods of clarifying ideas through language. Recent developments in conceptual semantics and cognitive semantics have revealed regularities in the use of language, including those associated with abstract concepts, and have contributed to a better understanding of what makes language an effective tool for thinking, expressing and conveying thoughts, and communicating with others. Researchers, including the author of the present volume, have developed new approaches to meaning and meaning relations.
