Johann Gottfried Herder : Sprache und die Natur des Menschen

Abstract

The question of the origin and genesis of human language was a central issue in the debate on the philosophy of language in the eighteenth century - a debate in which Johann Gottfried Herder (17 44-1803) was an important participant. Herder proposed that the phenomenon of language was a product of a complex process which encompassed the whole of human nature - sensory, intellectual, corporeal, and social. The aim of this dissertation is to bring together the anthropological aspects in Herder's philosophy of language; to compare them with earlier theories on the origin of language, such as those of Etienne Bonnet de Condillac, JeanJacques Rousseau and Johann Peter SOBmilch; and to show that Herder's views were strongly influenced by contemporary thought on the nature of man. The discussion focuses on two of Herder's works, his Abhandlung ilber den Ursprung der Sprache (written in 1770, and published in 1772), and the first and second parts of his ldeen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-1785). Together they make up the core of Herder's ideas on the genesis of language. We begin with a description of Herder's concept of an interconnection and interaction between soul and sense organs (the auditory, in particular) without which language cannot be formulated. Herder's assessment of sensory perception and the accentuation of the sense of hearing is presented against a background of contemporary interest in sound, hearing, and the processes involved in the production of speech. Herder came to regard man's upright posture, with its accompanying enlargement of the brain, as the main force which increased the potential in man's mental powers and paved the way for human language. In the present analysis, his views are presented within the framework of the natural histories written by Georges-Louis-Marie Comte de Button, Charles Bonnet and others, as well as against the background of another interest of his time, the then new study of comparative anatomy. Herder believed that, despite the advantages nature has bestowed on man in his mental and physical make-up, man's natural predisposition to language is realised not through instinct, but only through many years of learning and interaction in a social framework. These views are presented in the context of the writings of Hermann Samuel Reimarus, which were, at the time, at the forefront of the discussion on instinct. We also investigate Herder's ideas on the role played by the mother tongue, through which a child learns to speak and to think. Language, reason, and social life enables man to evolve intellectually and culturally to his end: humanity.