Weltansicht – Reflexionen Über Einen Begriff Wilhelm Von Humboldts
Summary
The main theme of Humboldt’s philosophy of language concerns questions of the diversity of languages and its influence on the spiritual growth of mankind. While assuming the universality of an underlying structure — in agreement with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) —, Humboldt attributes the diversity of languages to a formative process which corresponds to the work of an artist trying to find an adequate form for a given substance. This process is guided by the immaginative faculty (Einbildungskraft) quite in accordance with Kant’s Critique of the Aesthetic Faculties (1790) and the discussion of the beautiful among German classic writers. Hence, the diversity of languages is primarily an aesthetic phenomenon and less important to the cognitive development than has generally been assumed by Humboldt’s followers. A beautiful language symbolizing the ‘deep structure’ in its ‘surface structure’ is said to influence and stimulate the intellect. The resulting Weltansicht can only be found in the literature of a language; that is to say in the use of the language by its poets and philosophers. The conditioning factor, in Humboldt’s view, of the diversity of languages is the a priori of the spiritual peculiarity of the nations.