In a powerful contribution to the history of ideas, Hannah Dawson explores the intense preoccupation with language in early-modern philosophy, and in conclusion presents a groundbreaking analysis of John Locke's critique of words. By examining a broad sweep of pedagogical and philosophical material from antiquity to the late seventeenth century, Dr Dawson explains why language caused such intense unease to writers such as Montaigne, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal, Spinoza, and Boyle. Locke, Language and Early-Modern Philosophy demonstrates that new developments in philosophy, in conjunction with weaknesses in linguistic theory, resulted in serious concerns about the reality and stability of meaning, and the duplicitous autonomy of words themselves. Dr Dawson shows that language so fixated all manner of early-modern philosophers and seeped on to the pages of texts about nature, human understanding, morality, religion and politics, because it was seen as a problem, as an obstacle to both knowledge and society.