ABSTRACT
The key to understanding the function of translations of the New Philosophy in the Dutch Early Enlightenment lies in their form. Studying the linguistic purism in these editions reveals that the translators involved challenged the rationalist principle that language is an unreliable medium for rational knowledge. This chapter introduces the implications of that principle by reading two philosophical novels as an allegory of the philosophical and linguistic reorientation implied by the New Philosophy: Het leven van Philopater (1691) and Vervolg van ’t leven van Philopater (1697). In response to Quentin Skinner’s work on Thomas Hobbes, this chapter argues that Dutch lexicographers and translators of the New Philosophy proposed an alternative to that reorientation in their views on language and reason.
