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Orwell and the Anti-Realists
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
Extract
The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.
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References
1 Orwell, G., Nineteen Eighty-Four (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1954; first published 1949), 241.Google Scholar
2 Orwell, , op. cit., 241f.Google Scholar A similar point was made by Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan ch. 5: ‘If a man should talk to me of “a round quadrangle”, or “accidents of bread in cheese”; or “immaterial substances”; or of a “free subject”; or “free will”; or any “free”, but free from being hindered by opposition, I should not say he were in error, but that his words were without meaning, that is to say, absurd’.
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