Language, history, nation - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Language, history, nation

MP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFX8S9aAgvwSlide2

Three lines of inquiry

1. Language culture and identity

2. German romanticism

3. NationalismSlide3

Talk about talk

Language as a gift from God

As originating in universal language of pain and pleasure

Conventional signsDistinctions from other animals

Oral and written culturesSlide4

Reflection on language:

18

th

C views

[I]n the beginnings of language, men seem to have attempted to express every particular event, which they had occasion to take notice of, by a particular word, which expressed at once the whole of that event. But as the number of words must, in this case, have become really infinite, in consequence of the really infinite variety of events, men found themselves partly compelled by necessity, and partly conducted by nature, to divide every event into what may be called its metaphysical elements, and to institute words, which should denote not so much the events, as the elements of which they were composed.

A Smith, Considerations on the first formation of languages

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s

A Discourse on Inequality

(1755): “[I]f men needed speech in order to learn to think, they needed still more to know how to think in order to discover the art of speech.”

Etienne

Bonnot

de

Condillac’s

history of human mind - says human language originates as expressive gesture and vocalization in the face of fear, and then desire. Language evolution runs from expressive origins to the philosophical present, in which it becomes analytically precise, but loses vivacity and immediacy. The arts of music, dance, and mime, retain some of the

flavor

of the original language of action, through prosody, accent, gesture, and so forth.Slide5

Language and reason

Aristotle

Distinguishing human end is the capacity for speech and reason

[speech and reason] = logos

Progressive account of development of union of two, household, village, to Polis

Need to see this as an increasingly articulate world – which reaches its summit in the

vita

contemplativa

But how to understand that ? Access to the universal? Or the making of the universal concrete within the particular. Slide6

Philosophy of nature

Romanticism rejects classical instrumentalism of language and discourse

Starts from a voice of nature within the individual

And endorses

expressivism

‘See the whole of nature, behold the great analogy of creation. Everything feels itself and its like, life reverberates to life.’ Man’s calling is ‘that he becomes the organ of sense of his God in all the living things of creation, according to the measure of their relation to him.’ HerderSlide7

F. Schiller (1759-1805): On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795)

Physical man actually exists, while moral man is merely

a problem yet to be solved

. Once reason abolishes the natural state, as it must do if it is to assume its place, it risks physical, actual man for the sake of moral man as yet unformed, risks the existence of society for a mere potential ideal society.(l.3)

The character of the age must therefore first lift itself from its deep degradation, free itself from the blind force of nature to which it was subject, and return to its simplicity, truth and substance (l.7)

Focus on aesthetics and cultureSlide8

Friedrich Schiller 1759-1805Slide9

An die Freude 1785

Joy, beautiful spark of divinity,

Daughter from

Elysium

,

We enter, drunk with fire,

Heavenly One, thy sanctuary!

Your

magics

join againWhat custom strictly divided;*All people become brothers,*Where your gentle wing abides.

Who has succeeded in the great attempt,

To be a friend's friend,

Whoever has won a lovely woman,

Add his to the jubilation!

Indeed, who calls even one soul

Theirs upon this world!

And whoever never managed, shall steal himself

Weeping away from this union.

All creatures drink of joy

At nature's breast.

Just and unjust

Alike taste of her gift;

She gave us kisses and the fruit of the vine,A tried friend to the end.[Even] the worm has been granted sensuality,And the cherub stands before God!Gladly, as His heavenly bodies flyOn their courses through the heavens,Thus, brothers, you should run your race,As a hero going to conquest.You millions, I embrace you.This kiss is for all the world!Brothers, above the starry canopyThere must dwell a loving Father.Do you fall in worship, you millions?World, do you know your creator?Seek him in the heavens;Above the stars must He dwell.

Freude, schöner Götterfunken,

Tochter aus Elysium,

Wir betreten feuertrunken,

Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!

Deine Zauber binden wieder

Was die Mode streng geteilt*;

Alle Menschen werden Brüder*

Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Wem der große Wurf gelungen

Eines Freundes Freund zu sein;

Wer ein holdes Weib errungen

Mische seinen Jubel ein!

Ja, wer auch nur eine Seele

Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund!

Und wer's nie gekonnt, der stehle

Weinend sich aus diesem Bund!

Freude trinken alle Wesen

An den Brüsten der Natur;

Alle Guten, alle Bösen

Folgen ihrer Rosenspur.

Küsse gab sie uns und Reben,

Einen Freund, geprüft im Tod;

Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben

und der Cherub steht vor Gott.

Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen

Durch des Himmels prächt'gen Plan

Laufet, Brüder, eure Bahn,

Freudig, wie ein Held zum siegen.

Seid umschlungen, Millionen!

Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!

Brüder, über'm Sternenzelt

Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen.

Ihr stürzt nieder, Millionen?

Ahnest du den Schöpfer, Welt?

Such' ihn über'm Sternenzelt!

Über Sternen muß er wohnen.Slide10

Johann Gottfried Herder1744-1803

Born Prussia

Taught by Immanuel Kant and Johann Georg Hamman – polar contrast of rationalism and subjectivism.

Became clergyman

Met Goethe in Paris, influential in the

sturm

und

drang

literary movement.1772 Origin of Language.Slide11

Barnard ed., Herder on Social and Political Culture

‘A sentient being cannot confine any vivid sensation within itself; it must give utterance to it at the first moment of surprise, without deliberation or intention…In all original languages the remnants of these natural sounds can still be heard. (but…they are not the main thread of human speech, not its roots, merely the sap which vitalizes these.)’I.i.118-9

All original languages are intended to express out innermost passions…the vibrations of emotion tend to transpose the sympathetic creature into the same key.’ 122-4

Mind in man is wholly different from natural instinct in animals. If man had the senses of animals he would have no reason. 131-2 Man is therefore endowed with mind from the beginning – he is a thinking being, not dominated by instincts. And by his first act of spontaneous reflection invented language. 134-5

Reflection = resisting the ocean of sensations rushing in, to isolate and retain one single wave –identifying the characteristics that distinguish one image/object from another.

Even the first elementary operation of the reasoning power of the mind is inconceivable without the use of language…man himself had to find a language by operating his own powers.Slide12

Man is a free, thinking, and creative being whose faculties operate in a continuous progression: hence he is disposed for language. II, v, 153

Man is by nature a gregarious creature, born to live in society; hence the development of language is both natural and essential to him. … No man lives for himself alone; he is knit into the texture of the whole.. I.v.161-3

In picking up his fist words, the infant imperceptibly absorbs the emotional flavour given to them by his parents – with every new word he repeats not just the sound but the feelings. 163.

The formation of diverse national languages is a natural corollary of human diversity.

Clashes between primitive tribes are ‘a matter of collective opinion and tribal honour, the bone of contention is far more divisive than mere interests. 168

Nature elected the development of man in society, elected the development of groups among other groups, and elected that the highest form of cultural development is the transmission of social cultures internationally. 172-4Slide13

Historicism

Three central theses of historicism (F

Beiser

, Enlightenment, Revolution and Romanticism (1992)

1. social, political and cultural institutions and activities are subject to change and are adapted to their circumstances, so there is no single ideal constitution, language, religion or culture

2. a culture is a non-recurring unique whole, an organic unity or individual, whose values, beliefs, institutions, traditions, and language are all inseparable from one another

3. the development of every culture is organic, showing the stages of growth of any living being – birth, youth, maturity, decay and death.

Herder was critical of enlightenment optimism, defensive toward national cultures and cultural diversity, and saw in historicism grounds for attacking claims to authority based on supernatural revelation. Uses his historicism less for conservative than for critical purposes but is conscious of the need to find a middle path between enlightenment optimism and relativism – finds it in the claim that ‘Humanity remains only humanity, and still a plan of progress is visible.’ Story of phases in the self-education of humanity.Slide14

Brothers Grimm

Grimm’s Fairy Tales

.

Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm

(b. January 4, 1785,

Hanau

, Hesse-Kassel [Germany]—d. September 20, 1863, Berlin) and

Wilhelm Carl Grimm

(b. February 24, 1786, Hanau, Hesse-Kassel [Germany]—d. December 16, 1859, Berlin) together compiled other collections of

folk music and folk literature

, and Jacob in particular did important work in

historical linguistics

and Germanic

philology

. Slide15

K P Moritz (1756-1793) and W Goethe (1749-1832)Slide16

G W F Hegel 1770-1831

Friedrich W J Schelling 1775-1854Slide17

Holy Roman Empire 1789Slide18

Holy Roman Empire/Germany

Long standing confederation of states from 10

th

C.

Each with own version of political system

German common language (although several forms)

Important role of German print culture and reformation

Widespread sense of vulnerability

Defortification

in late 18th

C

Rise of Prussia and Austria: Jena 1806

But growing sense of identification against other statesSlide19

Confederation of German states 1816-1866Slide20

Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772-1801): Christianity or Europe 1799

….concerning other European countries…one can only prophesy that

peace

will bring a new higher religious life and will soon consume all other

worldy

interests. In Germany though, one can point out with complete certainty the traces of a new world….Germany advances before the other European countries. While they are preoccupied with war, speculation and partisanship, the German diligently educates himself to be the witness of a higher epoch of culture; and such progress must give him superiority above over other countries in the course of time…Slide21

Who knows whether there has been enough war, whether it will ever cease, unless one seizes the palm branch, which a spiritual power alone can offer. Blood will continue to flow in Europe until the nations recognize their terrible madness. This will continue to drive them into circles until, moved and calmed by sacred music, they step before their past altars in a motley throng. Then they will undertake works of peace, celebrating with hot tears a great banquet of love as a festival of peace on the smoking battlefields. Only religion can reawaken Europe, make the people secure, and install Christianity with new magnificence in its old peace making office, visible to the whole world.’ (77-8)Slide22

Johann Gottlieb Fichte 1762-1814

Addresses to the

German Nation

1807Slide23

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Fichte's transcendental account of natural right proceeds from the general principle that the I must posit itself as an

individual

in order to posit itself at all, and that in order to posit itself as an individual it must recognize itself as “summoned” or “solicited” by

another

free individual—summoned, that is, to limit its own freedom out of respect for that of the freedom of the other. The same condition applies, of course, to the other; hence, mutual recognition of rational individuals turns out to be condition necessary for the possibility of I-hood in general. This is the

a priori

deduction of

intersubjectivity

.Slide24

See also Closed Commercial State ,https://www.marxists.org/archive/fichte/1800/commercial-state.htm.

and the recent book on it by Isaac

Nakhimovsky

(Princeton 2016)

Addresses

… delivered in French occupied city of Berlin Dec 1807

To a German Nation

…when there is none (41 separate territories); and with Patriotism a local feeling.

Christin Martin Wieland: I see Saxon, Bavarian, Württemberg, and Hamburg patriots … but German patriots who love the entire

Reich as their fatherland…Where are they?Drawing on Herder’s sense that ‘the nation is coextensive with the people or

Volk

, the totality of a given cultural and ethnic community…’ (

eg

Grimm project)

Committed to French Revolution – even in dark days

‘We carry our charter of freedom, given and sealed by God, deep in our bosom’ We have certain inalienable rights: to say and think and do whatever we want, so long as it is in accord with our conscience…in defence of these rights, revolution is always justified, indeed, is a duty.Slide25

Characteristics of the present age 1803

Describes the unfolding of a providential world plan

In Five stages or epochs of history

1. Noble savagery – the state of innocence2. Absolutism and unconditional obedience (State of Progressive Sin)

3. Arid intellectualism, empty, licentious freedom (state of completed sinfulness – the present age)

4. embracing of truth as the highest of all things (the state of progressive justification

5. having apprehended reason (the state of completed justification and Sanctification).Slide26

Republican language of virtue and corruption

A people can be thoroughly corrupt – that is, selfish, for selfishness is the root of all other corruption – and yet not only endure but perform outwardly glorious deeds, if only its government be not corrupt also…but [it] goes under with the first serious attack launched against it… (Preliminary)

But…selfishness is annihilated through its highest development, and those who willingly chose to posit no other end but themselves have imposed upon them, by an alien power, a different end… ‘ (

ie

Napoleon)

Such a people can save itself only through a quite novel means – the creation of an entirely new order of things – and the cultivation of a completely new self –through an entirely new system of national educationSlide27

Education

If you want to have influence over him – the citizen – ‘you must fashion him, fashion him such that he cannot will anything save what you want him to will.’

Previous education assumed that each loves and wills his own sensuous well-being and being motivated solely by hope and fear for that sensuous well-being, whether in the present or future life…necessity compels us to will the cultivation of men who are intrinsically and fundamentally good, for only in them can the German nation live on. We must therefore replace this self-love with one that aims directly at the good, simply as such and for its own sake…

ie

taking the form of pleasure in the good itself in one’s life.

Teaching to value the end in and for itself, not as instrumental to selfish ends. Objectivity of the end underpinned by knowledge. The pupil must project for himself an image of the good which he takes as regulative. Like the love of learning itself.Slide28

Language and Religion

‘What an immeasurable influence the constitution of its language may have on the entire human development of a people, this language that accompanies the individual into the innermost recesses of his mind as he thinks and wills, and either hinders him or gives him wings; which unites in its domain the mass of men who speak it into a single common understanding; which is the true point where the world of sense and the world of spirit meet, and the extremities of both are fused so that one cannot say to which language belongs.’ 4

th

Address

Luther and reformation as an infusion of spirit within the German people and more widely abroad, and have also drawn on the philosophy of other nations – the foreigner prepared it and Germans have completed it.

…the German has brought every step in the development of culture to completion (and for this he has been uniquely spared in the modern world)

….in Germany all culture proceeded from the people... The German nation is the only modern European nation that has for centuries shown by the deeds of its burgher class that it is capable of supporting the republican constitution.Slide29

Germany as the future

All who either live creatively, bringing forth the new in themselves, or, should this not have fallen to their lot, at least decisively abandon things of vanity and keep watch to see whether somewhere they will be caught by the stream of original life, or….at least have an inkling of freedom and do not hate or fear it, but love it: all these are original men; they are, when viewed as a people, an original people, the people as such: Germans.

Those who believe in spirituality and in the freedom of this spirituality, who desire the eternal progress of this spirituality through freedom – wherever they were born and whichever language they speak – are of our race, they belong to us and they will join us. 97-8.Slide30

Johannes Brahms, Ein

Deutsches

Requiem 1865-8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIw2DUM-3kU