Linguistic Idealism and the Genealogy of Negation

Abstract The chapter presents an argument for linguistic idealism based on the nature of negation. It is attractive to locate the core idea of negation in the operation of exclusion, but exclusion is both a real and a verbal phenomenon: which status drives which? The chapter considers the nature of positivity and negativity, explores some of the symmetries and asymmetries between them, and argues that negation essentially imports the idea of incompatibility ranges. These are in turn to be identified with categories, in the sense of distinct subject matters of discourse, so that the phenomenon of negation—not merely verbal negation but also real—depends essentially on language.