This chapter explores Shakespeare's rethinking of human nature in *The Tempest*, focusing on Caliban's uniqueness as a "linguistic animal." Through the linguistic philosophies of Percy and Merleau-Ponty, it analyzes how linguistic capacity shapes Caliban's lived experience and meaning, interrogating what kind of world language opens beyond the natural universe.

Naming and Cursing

This section examines the deep philosophical implications behind Prospero's linguistic instruction of Caliban. By introducing Aristotle's "four causes" and Plato's linguistic view in *Cratylus*, the author points out that Prospero regards language as a dual tool reflecting world order and expressing inner feelings, arguing that Caliban's progression from "gabbling" sounds to mastering the "art of naming" constitutes the crucial transition from ignorance to civilization. The chapter further integrates sixteenth-century English Christian philosophy of language, emphasizing the era's attention to the ethical dimension of language—the "fall" of language stems from the speaker's moral deficiency rather than the sign itself. The author distinguishes the fundamental differences between Augustine's and Saussure's views on signs: the former points to external reality and the Word of God, while the latter treats language as a closed system. On this basis, the chapter corrects the twentieth-century critical tendency to misread Caliban's "curses" as spirit of resistance, noting that in early modern English context, cursing signified defiance against the divinely created order, and Caliban's use of learned language to turn against his instructor precisely confirms the absence of purity in the language user's mind.

Language and Magic

This section explores the significant transformation in sixteenth to seventeenth-century English philosophy of language, namely the shift from viewing language as a sacred bridge between humans and God, humans and truth, toward understanding it as a teleologically neutral tool-sign. This transformation marks the rupture of the traditional relationship between "human word" and "Holy Word"; language gradually degenerated into a rational tool resembling mathematical algorithms, becoming part of the "I think," leading to the severing of spiritual bonds between self and world. Empirical philosophers such as Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke, while vigilant against linguistic ambiguity, simultaneously harbored intense longing for a "perfect language"—this contradictory attitude contrasts with the nature of metaphorical thinking revealed by modern cognitive linguistics.

The analysis turns to the instrumental rationality characteristic of Prospero's magic, noting that his "magical thinking" resembles modern scientism, exaggerating the independent existence of natural laws and treating science as immutable objective knowledge. Caliban's comical attitude toward the magic books—believing that possessing or destroying them could control the island—exposes both his naïve foolishness and metaphorically represents modern society's superstitious faith in technological artifacts, as well as the "Humean problem" that reveals the crux of modernity: natural scientific research is mistakenly understood as pure, objectively neutral, teleologically disengaged means, while neglecting its ethical and vital value dimensions.

The discussion further notes that Shakespeare keenly discovered that early modern solipsism characterized by the "I think" would inevitably face the trial of skepticism and nihilism. When the natural order and transcendent order in essentialist philosophy become disconnected, the universe degenerates into object, and the problem of other minds emerges accordingly. The play's nested structure of multiple dramatic illusions—spirits playing actors, actors playing spirits—profoundly questions "reality" itself: if all that is seen is illusory, does the inseparability of life and drama imply the nothingness of existence? Prospero's sudden disillusionment at the moment of revenge's triumph embodies this dilemma most concentratedly. He ultimately comprehends that magic is by no means omnipotent, that the magic of art and the art of life cannot be equated, and that art must be sacrificed for the sake of life. At the play's conclusion, Prospero steps out of character to address the audience directly, merging life and theater, suggesting that returning to the world of language becomes the necessary path out of the solipsistic predicament.

The "Embodied" Expressive Power of Language

This section explores Caliban's uniqueness as a "linguistic animal," revealing the embodied expressive power of language through contrasting two fundamentally different philosophies of language represented by Prospero and Caliban. Prospero embodies a Platonist view of language, treating it as a tool of "naming" and essentialism, constantly stigmatizing Caliban with labels such as "slave" and "thou earth"; Caliban, conversely, demonstrates the embodied characteristics of language as primal expression of life—his "gabbling" is essentially distinct from animals' conditioned reflex symbol recognition, and his language acquisition process constitutes an inaugural "event" in which the body seeks expression and ultimately moves toward language.

The author draws upon Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological philosophy of language to point out that words reside in objects to convey meaning, that speech is a genuine action, and that gesture is the key to humanity's sensible connection with the world. Because Caliban's life is rooted in the earth, his language is saturated with natural imagery, presenting a pastoral, embodied world-picture. Although his curses lack supernatural efficacy, this very "ineffectiveness" testifies to language's unique capacity for self-transcendence—from immersive emotional expression to reflection upon language itself, marking the awakening of linguistic consciousness.

More ironically, Caliban, having acquired human language, can never return to the "pre-linguistic" primitive state; language is both the medium through which he understands the world and the root of his existential predicament. Ultimately, language is not a neutrally objective tool-algorithm but an existential dimension that shapes us even as we shape it—this insight finds profound expression through Caliban, an "undefinable" living individual.

The Transcendence and Intersubjectivity of Language

This section explores how language fundamentally reshapes the meaning of Caliban's existence. Drawing upon the philosophical perspectives of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, the author points out that language enables Caliban to transcend animal existence, becoming a living being capable of creating meaning and constructing a poetic world. Heidegger's proposition that "language speaks" is employed to illustrate: it is not humans who possess language, but language that possesses humans; through the fusion of listening and speaking, Caliban comes to "dwell poetically" in the homeland of being.

The chapter simultaneously reveals the complex landscape of linguistic communication in *The Tempest*. Though Prospero commands magic and power, he exposes the limits of his cognition before Caliban's conspiracy, his anger stemming precisely from helplessness at the violation of his "private domain." In contrast, Caliban's famous passage about the island's sounds demonstrates language's world-opening power, yet this power depends upon genuine listeners—the drunken sailors cannot comprehend poetic language, while Gonzalo treats the island description as cliché.

The author further employs Merleau-Ponty's theory of intersubjectivity to analyze communicative scenes in the play: Ferdinand and Miranda's encounter is likened to the reenactment of human language's origin, while Prospero's direct "invitation" to the audience at the conclusion breaks theatrical illusion, achieving genuine communication between stage and auditorium. These intertwined types of "failed" and "successful" encounters collectively present language's transcendence—it is both the medium through which self and other establish "being-with," and gains renewed opportunity through self-negation in "words failing to exhaust meaning." Caliban's ever-changing linguistic styles embody precisely this vitality: every word seems used for the first time, every utterance an improvised emotional outpouring, thereby winning readers' resonance across ages.