Abstract
A painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, “Tower of Babel,” depicts a strange minaret-like structure, ramshackle, unfinished, and already decaying. The project has miscarried, according to the Biblical tale on which the painting is based, due to the confusion of languages imposed by a wrathful divinity on vain humankind. In the distant background is a noble and placid succession of mountains, providing an effective foil to the frenzied but ultimately pointless activities of the linguistically confused builders, assembled together from the surrounding depopulated plain and swarming around their structure like so many droning insects. This strikes me as an apt image for the predominant attitudes underlying the vast majority of readings of the tradition of German Idealism, beginning already early in the 19th century and continuing unbroken to today. Like the majestic peaks rising in the distance of Bruegel’s work, the great systems of German Idealism have generally been regarded as pinnacles of modern metaphysical speculation, proceeding with their sublime business admirably unconcerned by and oblivious to the mindless hordes, both historically preceding and succeeding them, who have fallen into the trap of focusing upon language and its never plumb resources rather than “the eternal truths” themselves.
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References
Among scholars who have studied this period in detail, the major exception to this is Bruno Liebrucks in his massive Sprache und Bewußtsein (Frankfurt/M., 1964ff.), Bd. 1–7. While there are a great number of helpful insights here, especially with regard to the problem of language in Hegel, his project is rather different than the one I outline and limited (despite its monumental length) by not taking sufficient account of Hegel’s immediate philosophical predecessors.
See my Language and German Idealism: Fichte’s Linguistic Philosophy (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, 1996) and also my forthcoming Metacritique: The Linguistic Assault on German Idealism (New York, 1999) for fuller details regarding the “metacritical debate” and its relation to the development of German Idealism.
For an example of such an attempt, see Dimitrios Markis, “Das Problem der Sprache bei Kant,” in Brigitte Scheer and Günter Wohlfart (Hrsg.): Dimensionen der Sprache in der Philosophie des Deutschen Idealism, (Würzburg, 1982), 110–54.
The most sustained treatment of Kant’s “repression” of linguistic issues, with an indispensable discussion of the historical background for considering the broader problem of language in German Idealism, is Jürgen Villers, Kant und das Problem der Sprache: Die historischen und systematischen Gründe fir die Sprachlosigkeit der Transzendentalphilosophie (Konstanz, 1997). This work, which became available to me while in the process of writing the present essay, argues a somewhat stronger thesis about Kant than the one I present, but confirms my own conclusions in their essentials. However, it does not deal with the question of language in transcendental philosophy after Kant, especially the very important case of Fichte.
Kants Werke, Akademie-Textausgabe (Berlin, 1968), IV, 322–23.
For a survey of some of the passages in Kant’s writings relevant to these issues, see Villers, Chap. 2.
Again, Villers provides some penetrating insights into these issues. Cf. section 6.3 of his work, cited above.
Kant’s entire “Methodenlehre” concluding the first Critique is devoted to just this point, reinforced by several pointed remarks in the Preface to the 2nd edition.
For full documentation, background, and a much more detailed discussion of Fichte’s position on these matters, refer to my Language and German Idealism (cited above). This section summarizes parts of the research presented there. My earlier work also contains translations into English of Fichte’s essay on language as well as selections from some of Fichte’s manuscripts for the later lectures referred to in the main text following.
For a more detailed discussion of the relation between Fichte’s linguistic views and those of Bernhardi, see my forthcoming work on “Metacritique” cited above. This work also contains English translations of selections from Bernhardi’s provocative but little-known Sprachlehre.
The best available study of the development of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre after his departure from Jena in 1799 is Michael Brueggen, Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre: Das System in den seit 1801/02 entstandenen Fassungen (Hamburg, 1979). Unfortunately, the author gives little attention to the very conspicuous and not insignificant changes in Fichte’s basic terminology nor to the increasingly important role in his presentations which metaphors and other tropes begin to play.
There has been very little written about Schelling’s linguistic views, although there is a rather extensive body of material to be considered. The four most important discussions, each mostly dealing with different texts and approaching them from very different perspectives, are: Jochem Hennigfeld, “Schellings Philosophie der Sprache,” Philosophisches Jahrbuch 91 (1984), 16–29;
Hartmut Rosenau, “Schellings metaphysikkritksche Sprachphilosophie,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 44 (1990), 399–424;
Lothar Zahn, Die Sprache als Grenze der Philosophie. Eine Interpretation der ‘Weltalter ‘-Fragmente von F. W. J. Schelling, München: Diss. 1957; and Wolfram Horgrebe, Prädikation und Genesis: Metaphysik als Fundamentalheuristik im Ausgang von Schellings ‘Die Weltalter ‘ (Frankfurt/M., 1989). Also, although somewhat dated and written from a more literary than philosophical perspective, still the most comprehensive account of the linguistic theory of the Romantiker, among whom Schelling is included, is Eva Fiesal, Die Sprachphilosophie der deutschen Romantik (Tübingen, 1927). I wish to thank the staff of the Schelling-Archiv (München) for their generous assistance during my research stay there.
Unless otherwise noted, all references in this subsection are to the text of Schelling’s Philosophie der Kunst (§73) in Manfred Schröter (Hrsg.), Schellings Werke, (München, 1965), Bd. III, 502–06.
Schellings Werke, II, 619ff.
Schellings Werke, III, 378.
Unless otherwise noted, all references in this subsection are to the text of Schelling’s Die Weltalter in Schellings Werke, IV, 575ff.
The full title is “Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und damit zusammenhängen Gegenstände” in Schellings Werke, IV, 223ff.
Schellings Werke, IV. 575.
Schellings Werke, IV, 577.
Schellings Werke, IV, 588ff.
All references in this subsection are to “Vorbemerkungen zu der Frage über den Ursprung der Sprache,” in Schellings Werke, 4. Ergänz. Bd., 503–10.
Among the leading works explicitly devoted the Hegel’s views on language are: Theodor Bodammer, Hegels Deutung der Sprache (Hamburg, 1969);
Daniel J. Cook, Language in the Philosophy of Hegel (Den Haag, Paris, 1973);
Thomas Sören Hoffman, “Hegels Sprachphilosophie,” in Tilman Borsche (Hrsg.), Klassiker der Sprachphilosophie (München, 1995);
Werner Marx, Absolute Reflexion und Sprache (Frankfurt/M., 1967);
Josef Simon, Das Problem der Sprache bei Hegel (Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln, Mainz, 1966);
Jere Paul Surber, Language, Time, and System: An Examination of Hegel’s Conception of Language, State College, PA: Diss. 1974; and
Günter Wohlfart, Der spekulative Satz (Berlin, New York, 1981).
Hegel’s discussions of language in the Jena “outlines” can be found in G. W. F. Hegel, Gesammelte Werke (hereafter Hegels Werke), hg. von der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Hamburg, 1968ff.), Bd. VI, 277–96 and Bd. VIII, 185–96.
Hegels Werke, IX, 42ff.
See my “Hegel’s Speculative Sentence,” Hegel-Studien, Bd. X (1975), 211–30; also my forthcoming essay in the Proceedings of the North American Fichte Society (1995), “Satz and Urteil in Kant and Fichte.”
Hegels Werke, IX, 63ff.
Support for this reading can be found at Hegels Werke, XX, 121. (This is §85 of the “Enzyklopaedie Logik” of 1830).
For example, Hegels Werke, XI, 45–55 (“Anmerkungen” 1, 2, and 3). Hegels Werke, XX, 451ff.
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Surber, J.P. (2000). The Problems of Language in German Idealism: An Historical and Conceptual Overview. In: Wiegand, O.K., Dostal, R.J., Embree, L., Kockelmans, J., Mohanty, J.N. (eds) Phenomenology on Kant, German Idealism, Hermeneutics and Logic. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 39. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9446-2_18
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