Épistémologie et rationalité nouvelle au début du XIXe siècle en France: la notion de « point de vue »
Epistemology and a new rationality in the early nineteenth century in France: the concept of point de vue

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to analyse how spatial experience is reformulated into the experience of the mental ‘horizon’, which reveals the process of conceptualization of point de vue (point of view). The review of French dictionaries and discourses from the early 19th century shows the ambiguity and semantic haziness of the term point de vue. It also shows the evolution of the metaphorical use of the term: from spatial experience (the sensory perception of space and location) to a cognitive category (the mental processing). The point de vue becomes in this way a heuristic element introducing an ‘intellectual view’.

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