Kant on Language and the (Self‐)Development of Reason
-
Huaping Lu-Adler
Abstract
The origin of languages was a hotly debated topic in the eighteenth century. This paper reconstructs a distinctively Kantian account according to which the origination, progression, and diversification of languages is at bottom reason’s self-development under certain a priori constraints and external environments. The reconstruction builds on three sets of materials. The first is Herder’s famous prize essay on the origin of languages. The second includes Kant’s explicit remarks about language – especially his notion of “transcendental grammar,” his argument that language cannot be innate, his contrast of “Oriental” symbolic (intuitive) and “Occidental” discursive languages, and his treatment of the latter as a sine qua non of humanity’s cultural and moral progress. The third includes the concepts that we need to make sense of those remarks, such as Kant’s epigenetic theory of biological formation and his account of categories as originally acquired.
Bibliography
All translations are quoted from The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (1996) and the quotation rules followed are those established by the Akademie Ausgabe. Kant, Immanuel (1900 ff): Gesammelte Schriften. Hrsg.: Bd. 1 – 22 Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Bd. 23 Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, ab Bd. 24 Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Berlin.
Almond, Ian (2009): History of Islam in German Thought: From Leibniz to Nietzsche, London.10.4324/9780203867280Suche in Google Scholar
Aravamudan, Srinivas (2011): Enlightenment Orientalism: Resisting the Rise of the Novel, Chicago.10.7208/chicago/9780226024509.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Baumeister, David (2022): Kant on the Human Animal: Anthropology, Ethics, Race, Evanston.10.2307/j.ctv296mnpdSuche in Google Scholar
Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb (1757): Metaphysica, Halle.Suche in Google Scholar
Battersby, Christine (2007): The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference, London.Suche in Google Scholar
Cohen, Alix (2009): Kant and the Human Sciences: Biology, Anthropology and History, London.10.1057/9780230280779Suche in Google Scholar
Cowie, Fiona (2017): Innateness and Language, in: Edward Zalta (ed.): The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/innateness-language/.Suche in Google Scholar
Dascal, Marcelo, and Taro Senderowitcz (1992): How Pure is Pure Reason? Language, Empirical Concepts, and Empirical Laws in Kant’s Theory of Knowledge, in: Histoire Épistémologie Langage 14, pp. 129 – 52.10.3406/hel.1992.2358Suche in Google Scholar
DeSouza, Nigel (2012): Language, Reason, and Sociability: Herder’s Critique of Rousseau, in: Intellectual History Review 22, pp. 221 – 40.10.1080/17496977.2012.693745Suche in Google Scholar
Forster, Michael (2014): Kant’s Philosophy of Language? in: Frank Schalow and Richard Velkley (ed.): The Linguistic Dimension of Kant’s Thought, Evanston, pp. 81 – 104.Suche in Google Scholar
Forster, Michael (2018): Herder’s Philosophy, Oxford.10.1093/oso/9780199588367.003.0008Suche in Google Scholar
Germana, Nicholas (2017): The Colossal and Grotesque: The Aesthetics of German Orientalism in Kant and Hegel, in: Gendered Encounters between Germany and Asia, edited by Joanne Cho and Douglas McGetchin, Cham, pp. 23 – 39.10.1007/978-3-319-40439-4_2Suche in Google Scholar
Herder, Johann Gottfried (1772): Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache, Berlin.Suche in Google Scholar
Herder, Johann Gottfried (1784 – 85): Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, Parts 1 – 2, Riga and Leipzig.Suche in Google Scholar
Herder, Johann Gottfried (2002): Treatise on the Origin of Language (1772), in: Michael Forster (ed. and trans.): Philosophical Writings, Cambridge, pp. 65 – 164.10.1017/CBO9781139164634.007Suche in Google Scholar
Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1999): On Language: On the Diversity of Human Language Construction and Its Influence on the Mental Development of the Human Species, edited by Michael Losonsky and translated by Peter Heath, Cambridge.Suche in Google Scholar
Ingensiep, Hans (1994): Die Biologischen Analogien und die Erkenntnistheoretischen Alternativen in Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft B §17, in: Kant-Studien 85, pp. 381 – 93.10.1515/kant.1994.85.4.381Suche in Google Scholar
James, David (2011): Rousseau on Needs, Language and Pity: The Limits of “Public Reason,” in: European Journal of Political Theory 10, pp. 372 – 93.10.1177/1474885111406390Suche in Google Scholar
Kaitaro, Timo (2022): Language, Culture and Cognition from Descartes to Lewes, Leiden.10.1163/9789004507241Suche in Google Scholar
Kaul, Suvir (2019): Styles of Orientalism in the Eighteenth Century, in: Geoffrey Nash (ed.): Orientalism and Literature, Cambridge, pp. 35 – 49.10.1017/9781108614672.002Suche in Google Scholar
Klein, Joel (2018): Kant’s Distinction between Historie and Geschichte, in: Violetta Waibel, et al. (ed.): Natur und Freiheit: Akten des XII. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, Berlin, pp. 2565 – 72.10.1515/9783110467888-253Suche in Google Scholar
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1989): Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas (1684), in: Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber (ed. and trans.), Philosophical Essays, Indianapolis, pp. 23 – 7.Suche in Google Scholar
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1996): New Essays on Human Understanding, Cambridge.10.1017/CBO9781139166874Suche in Google Scholar
Lewis, Charlton (1890): An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York.Suche in Google Scholar
Lifschitz, Avi (2012): Language and Enlightenment: The Berlin Debates of the Eighteenth Century, Oxford.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199661664.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Lu-Adler, Huaping (2018a): Kant and the Science of Logic, Oxford.10.1093/oso/9780190907136.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Lu-Adler, Huaping (2018b): Epigenesis of Pure Reason and the Source of Pure Cognitions: How Kant is No Nativist about Logical Cognition, in: Pablo Muchnik and Oliver Thorndike (ed.): Rethinking Kant, vol. 5, Cambridge, pp. 35 – 70.Suche in Google Scholar
Lu-Adler, Huaping (2022a): Kant’s Use of Travel Reports in Theorizing about Race – A Case Study of How Testimony Features in Natural Philosophy, in: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 91, pp. 10 – 19.10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.10.020Suche in Google Scholar
Lu-Adler, Huaping (2022b): Kant on Lazy Savagery, Racialized, in: Journal of the History of Philosophy 60, pp. 253 – 75.10.1353/hph.2022.0017Suche in Google Scholar
Lu-Adler, Huaping (2022c): Kant and Slavery – Or Why He Never Became a Racial Egalitarian, in: Critical Philosophy of Race 10, pp. 263 – 94.10.5325/critphilrace.10.2.0263Suche in Google Scholar
Marwah, Inder (2012): Bridging Nature and Freedom? Kant, Culture, and Cultivation, in: Social Theory and Practice 38, pp. 385 – 406.10.5840/soctheorpract201238322Suche in Google Scholar
Mensch, Jennifer (2013): Kant’s Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy, Chicago.10.7208/chicago/9780226022031.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Mensch, Jennifer (2018): Songs of Nature: From Philosophy of Language to Philosophical Anthropology in Herder and Humboldt, in: International Yearbook for Hermeneutics 17, pp. 95 – 109.Suche in Google Scholar
Merritt, Melissa (2015): Varieties of Reflection in Kant’s Logic, in: British Journal for the History of Philosophy 23, pp. 478 – 501.10.1080/09608788.2015.1018129Suche in Google Scholar
Nawrath, Thomas (2010): Kant und die Sprachphilosophie. Eine systematologische Rekonstruktion der Möglichkeit von Sprache im Kritischen ldealismus, in: Ulrich Gaier and Ralf Simon (ed.): Zwischen Bild und Begriff: Kant und Herder zum Schema, München, pp. 207 – 235.10.30965/9783846750407_010Suche in Google Scholar
O’Neill, Onora (1986): The Public Use of Reason, in: Political Theory 14, pp. 523 – 51.10.1177/0090591786014004001Suche in Google Scholar
Park, Peter (2013): Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon 1780 – 1830, Albany.10.1353/book22395Suche in Google Scholar
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (2017): The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, translated and edited by Victor Gourevitch, Cambridge.10.1017/9781316584804Suche in Google Scholar
Schalow, Frank (2014): The Language of Time in Kant’s Transcendental Schematism, in: Frank Schalow and Richard Velkley (ed.): The Linguistic Dimension of Kant’s Thought, Evanston, pp. 53 – 69.10.2307/j.ctv47wc8t.8Suche in Google Scholar
Schalow, Frank, and Richard Velkley (2014): The Linguistic Dimension of Kant’s Thought, Evanston.10.2307/j.ctv47wc8tSuche in Google Scholar
Sikka, Sonia (2011): Herder on Humanity and Cultural Difference: Enlightened Relativism, Cambridge.10.1017/CBO9780511783012Suche in Google Scholar
Sloan, Phillip (2002): Preforming the Categories: Eighteenth-Century Generation Theory and the Biological Roots of Kant’s a Priori, in: Journal of the History of Philosophy 40, pp. 229 – 53.10.1353/hph.2002.0038Suche in Google Scholar
Surprenant, Chris (2014): Language in Kant’s Practical Philosophy, in: Frank Schalow and Richard Velkley (ed.): The Linguistic Dimension of Kant’s Thought, Evanston, pp. 70 – 80.10.2307/j.ctv47wc8t.9Suche in Google Scholar
Vanzo, Alberto (2018): Leibniz on Innate Ideas and Kant on the Origin of the Categories, in: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 100, pp. 19 – 45.10.1515/agph-2018-0002Suche in Google Scholar
Wolff, Christian (1752): Vernünftige Gedancken von Gott, der Welt und die Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt, Renger.Suche in Google Scholar
Wood, David (2014): The Place of Language: From Kant to Hegel, in: Frank Schalow and Richard Velkley (ed.): The Linguistic Dimension of Kant’s Thought, Evanston, pp. 29 – 52.10.2307/j.ctv47wc8t.7Suche in Google Scholar
Zammito, John (2007): Kant’s Persistent Ambivalence toward Epigenesis, 1764 – 90, in: Philippe Huneman (ed.): Understanding Purpose: Kant and the Philosophy of Biology, Rochester, pp. 51 – 74.10.1017/9781580466950.003Suche in Google Scholar
Zammito, John (2012): The Lenoir Thesis Revisited: Blumenbach and Kant, in: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43, pp. 120 – 32.10.1016/j.shpsc.2011.05.011Suche in Google Scholar
Zöller, Günter (1989): From Innate to “A Priori”: Kant’s Radical Transformation of a Cartesian-Leibnizian Legacy, in: The Monist 72, pp. 222 – 35.10.5840/monist198972214Suche in Google Scholar
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Titlepages
- Table of Contents
- Articles
- Kant’s Transcendental Theory of Universal Grammar. The Cognitive Foundation of the Structure of Language
- Kant’s Semiotics and Hermeneutics in the 1760s
- Kant on First-Person Speech and Personhood
- Kantian Thoughts. Towards an Alternative to Russellian and Fregean Propositions
- Kant on Language and the (Self‐)Development of Reason
- Kant on Language, Communication and Objective Judgment
- Kant’s Philosophy of Language of Philosophy: On Philosophical Terminology
- Kant on Propositional Content and Knowledge
- Topics of the Kant Yearbook 2024, 2025 and 2026
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Titlepages
- Table of Contents
- Articles
- Kant’s Transcendental Theory of Universal Grammar. The Cognitive Foundation of the Structure of Language
- Kant’s Semiotics and Hermeneutics in the 1760s
- Kant on First-Person Speech and Personhood
- Kantian Thoughts. Towards an Alternative to Russellian and Fregean Propositions
- Kant on Language and the (Self‐)Development of Reason
- Kant on Language, Communication and Objective Judgment
- Kant’s Philosophy of Language of Philosophy: On Philosophical Terminology
- Kant on Propositional Content and Knowledge
- Topics of the Kant Yearbook 2024, 2025 and 2026