Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Critique of a Hegelian Understanding of Modernity. A Contribution to the Debate on (Post)Colonialism

Abstract

Since Edward W. Said’s Orientalism, many polemics on the role of European philologies in cultural reflection have emerged. A point missed so far in this debate is the historical fact that imperial universalism had entered a crisis already shortly after the French Revolution, and not only in the Romantic rejection of its French variant. Alongside this existed attempts to mediate between the force of the universal legal claim and the diversity of the world. Both G. W. F. Hegel and Wilhelm von Humboldt clearly represent this position, but while Hegel unsentimentally observes the disappearance of non-European languages and cultures in historical progress, Humboldt lucidly foresees the danger of a monotonization of the world, and tries to establish a dialogical approach which does not neutralize the ‘other’ as always also the same. This is where the possibility of thinking a more diverse modernity finds its historical depth.