Humboldt's 'thinking language': Poetics and politics
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Volume
53
Pagination
95 - 107
Publisher
DOI
10.1093/fmls/cqw083
Journal
Forum for Modern Language Studies
Issue
ISSN
0015-8518
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The thesis I develop in this article, based on the Humboldtian tradition of Sprachdenken [thinking language], is that language is a paradigm for our ideas on the way communal life functions. If that is the case, our theory of language is of utmost political importance. Poetics becomes political. Wilhelm von Humboldt’s reflections on the dual offer a vision of politics which is based on dialogical thinking and hence on a form of community which allows for individual freedom. This is demonstrated and elaborated throughout his work, embedding the political dimension of Sprachdenken in his anthropology of language, which even offers the beginnings of a poetological anthropology.
Authors
Pajevic, MCollections
- Language Centre [39]