Johann Gottfried von Herder

Abstract

Throughout his philosophical career, Herder emphasized two themes in philosophy of language. One was the tremendous variety to be found across human tongues; the other was the relationship between language and thought. At times, Herder is tempted by the idea that sophisticated thinking requires an external, social language which the agent internalizes. (Given the great variety of languages, human thought would vary greatly as well – a very important conjecture for later German Romanticism.) In the article included here, on the origin of language, he pursues instead the view that language arises as a result of a distinctively human but pre-rational cognitive capacity: the individual’s capacity to single out and become aware of a particular mental state within her stream of consciousness. That capacity allows her to focus on a characteristic sensory mark of something – the bleating sound of sheep, say – and to treat it as a sign thereof. Thereby do inner words of the soul arise, these being prior to public language spoken words.