Deaf and Sign Language Issues in the History of Philosophy:

from the Perspective of Aristotle and Wundt

Abstract

In the historical discussions left by philosophers, we can find not a few descriptions about sign language and deaf people. However, it is hard to say that the accurate translations on each description has been done and philosophical debate has been continuing to this day. The description about sign language and deaf people often includes the author’s own opinion associated with the belief how human’s intelligence should be cultivated and the reader also tends to interpret the description with his/her normative consciousness of scandalized body model. For this reason, the erroneous translations and the non-essential discussions were created and each discussion has been consumed as mere a thought, not as a philosophical problem. In this background, this paper focuses on the modern but the controversial interpretations of Aristotle’s literatures and Wundt’s discussions on sign language. In each discussion, the author shows the possible way how we can argue the original philosophical problem from the contemporary point of view.