Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on citation style
- Abbreviations and works cited by title
- Introduction
- 1 The question of moral relativism
- 2 Happiness and the moral life
- 3 History and human destiny
- 4 The concept of race
- 5 Language and world
- 6 The place of reason
- 7 Religious diversity
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Language and world
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on citation style
- Abbreviations and works cited by title
- Introduction
- 1 The question of moral relativism
- 2 Happiness and the moral life
- 3 History and human destiny
- 4 The concept of race
- 5 Language and world
- 6 The place of reason
- 7 Religious diversity
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Although there is at times a racial component in Herder's understanding of the character of peoples, by far the greater part of that character is, for Herder, acquired through culture rather than inherited through biology. Language, as many scholars have noted, appears to be the most crucial determinant of cultural identity within Herder's analysis. It both expresses and shapes the perspective of a people, articulating a specific form of human consciousness, passed on from one generation to the next. Because Herder proposes that there is an intimate relation between language and thought, moreover, he is often credited with having invented, albeit not ex nihilo, a theory of language sometimes referred to as “linguistic constitutivism.” Against older conceptions of language that construed it as external to thought, a sort of clothing placed on ideas for the purpose of communication, this theory holds that thought is essentially dependent upon language, and that language is creative rather than merely descriptive. In his Fragments on Recent German Literature, Herder writes that language is “more than a tool,” for “words and ideas are intimately connected” (Fragments, 177). And in On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, he says of the human inventor of language: “In naming everything, and ordering it in relation to himself and his sensitivity, he becomes the imitator of divinity, the second creator, thus also poiesis, a poet” (Hebrew Poetry, 963).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Herder on Humanity and Cultural DifferenceEnlightened Relativism, pp. 160 - 191Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011