Deafness, Gesture, and Sign Language in the 18th Century French Philosophy by Josef Fulka (review)

How familiar are you, really, with the philosophy of the French Enlightenment that informed the thought of Épée and Sicard? Could you characterize the era's intense interest in language, its origin, and its role in human thought processes? Are you confident discussing the work of Condillac, which so decisively influenced Sicard, or that of Joseph Marie de Gérando, who used the evidence of deaf education to argue against Rousseau but that has never been available in English translation? Well, join the club: me neither. And we're in good company, because neither was Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, who studied under Sicard and another Condillac disciple, the Scottish philosopher Thomas Brown, yet scorned to expose himself to the writing of any French Enlightenment philosophe on the grounds that all these men were infidels!

But now, no more excuses, because we have a terrific new book that goes a long way toward repairing this weak point in our understanding of the philosophical roots of our disciplines: Josef Fulka's Deafness, Gesture and Sign Language in the 18th Century French Philosophy. Despite its rather pedestrian title, Fulka's summaries and explanations are so engaging, lively, and accessible that I read every single footnote and was sorry when I finally had nothing left to read and had to put the book down. And that's amazing, because, clearly, English is not the man's native language. Yet Fulka, who teaches deaf studies in the Czech Republic, appears to be perfectly at home not only in English, but also in French (he provides fresh translations of Gérando and others) and, presumably, any number of sign languages, as he makes informed statements concerning home signs, methodical signs, contact signing, and natural sign languages. There is one recurrent "foreignism" (or "deafism"?) in his written English that at first seemed odd but soon felt natural, and that is his use of the word "deaf" as a singular, not collective, noun, as in the noun phrase "the deaf of Chartres" meaning "the deaf man of Chartres." Is this a conscious choice on his part?

After showing how the seventeenth-century English philosophers Hobbes and Locke cleared away the medieval claptrap about our minds being endowed with innate ideas, and thus established that everything we know comes to us by way of our sensory perceptions, Fulka makes it obvious why the existence of deaf people posed an interesting question for philosophy: what kinds of things could any person be able to know without auditory input? Fulka begins by explaining that he has organized his study into three parts: (1) philosophers who see deafness as a deficiency; (2) philosophers who see deafness as a difference; and (3) philosophers who see deafness as an opportunity to study the origin of language. As he admits, there is a lot of overlap, but this grouping gives him a rough outline for presenting his material. He cautions readers that in the eighteenth century, there was no clear distinction between gesture and sign language (note that this book is published in Adam Kendon's Gesture Studies), and, further, that any signing deaf persons mentioned in the text would surely be using home signs. He also points out that it was common for nonfiction writers to use fictional or "conceptual" examples, so we should not take their deaf men (and they are always men) to be actual persons.

Fulka covers just about everyone who wrote on the topic, not excluding Desloges. He begins with the deficiency model and Condillac's "impossible beginning" of human language. Condillac's "deaf of Chartres" is a young man who, prior to his rather abrupt acquisition of hearing and speech, had had no communication with others, no language and, therefore, according to Condillac, no capacity for abstract thought, imagination, or memory...