The Implicit Philosopher: Hugo von Hofmannsthal in the Tradition of German Philosophy

THE

IMPLICIT

PHILOSOPHER

Hugo von Hofmannsthal

in the tradition of

The Implicit Philosopher

Hugo von Hofmannsthal in the Tradition of German Philosophy

June 2015

Author:

Carl Tertio Druml 10223649

Philosophy:

Thesis for the Degree of Master of Arts Universiteit van Amsterdam Supervisor: Dr. Elsbeth Brouwer

Second Reader: Dr. Michiel van Lambalgen

Abstract

For people familiar with the oeuvre of the Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) it may seem like a strange thesis to call him a philosopher. He was a poet, a playwright, a librettist, and an essay writer: but a philosopher? In this thesis, I investigate the counter-tradition of Ger-man philosophy, as brought forth by philosophers such as J.G. Herder and F. Schlegel, and their philosophy of language. After discussing some of Hof-mannsthal’s contemporary Viennese philosophers (for example, F. Mauth-ner) and writers (for example A. Schnitzler), I will place Hugo von Hof-mannsthal in this counter tradition. Especially in his essayistic work and diaries, we can find a plethora of evidence, that shows that Hofmannsthal was not only mindful to problems of language, he was also - if not a first-tier thinker - definitely in the second row of philosophy of language. As a literary figure, his works feature an often more belletristic-aesthetic, yet his oeuvre is definitely one of the most interesting accounts of (literary) investigation of the boundaries of language, and can be seen as partly anticipating later philosophers, for example Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 The “Implicit Philosopher” and his Origin 3

2.1 Herder and Hamann - Reaction to Kant . . . 3

2.2 Humboldt and Schlegel - Romantic Conception of Language . . . . 9

2.3 Nietzsche - Ethics and Language . . . 15

3 Fin de Si`ecle Vienna and Language 20 3.1 Mauther and Mach - Philosophy and Science . . . 21

3.2 Bahr and Kraus - Cultural and Social Critique . . . 27

3.3 Jung Wien and Sprachskepsis . . . 30

4 Hugo von Hofmannsthal 34 4.1 Hofmannsthal’s Philosophy of Language . . . 35

4.1.1 Ein Brief - Philosophy of Language . . . 45

4.1.2 Der Schwierige - Silence and Parole . . . 48

4.2 Hofmannsthal’s General Philosophy . . . 51

5 Conclusive Remarks 56

Acknowledgements

I am especially grateful to Dr. Elsbeth Brouwer for her supervision with my thesis, her excellent feedback on my writing, and her suggestions for further readings. My warmest thanks also to Prof. Dr. Michiel van Lambalgen for agreeing to be the second reader. Additionally I would like to thank Arian Lehner for the design of the cover. Lastly I would like to thank Mag. Michael Berthold for getting me acquainted with the topic in the first place.

1

Introduction

Sprechen ist ein ungeheurer Kompromiss

- Hugo von Hofmannsthal, 20.20.1921

While the quote above fits the topic of this thesis perfectly: constructing the Hofmannsthal the Artist

language philosophy of Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929), I should start it o↵ with a contradiction: Hofmannsthal was no philosopher. He was not a philosopher, but an artist. His body and soul strived into the artistic domain, from his first poems in his tender teenage years, to his most mature work, the play der Turm, nothing can be said with more certainty than this: Hofmannsthal was an artist.

One only has to consider the poetry of his youth, which was never the poetry of a young person,1 _{or his oeuvre for the stage, which goes from poetic-lyrical plays}

to blunt comedies and into sublime opera-librettos; one has to read his almost mythological short stories, or the flamboyantly colored essayistic work, which has perhaps no equal in the German language. The conclusion will always be the same: Hofmannsthal could have never expressed anything outside the aesthetic form.

Hofmannsthal’s contemporary Otto Weininger wrote that there are no new Art and Philosophy

philosophical or artistic ideas, because both of them are timeless,2 _{and exactly this}

is where the solution to the paradox lies: Hofmannsthal was so much an artist, that his artistic ideas crossed back into the philosophic realm. Any aesthetic inquiry into the soul of the world will, if it goes deep enough, necessarily be a philosoph-ical investigation. In his gorgeous collection of aphorisms, the Buch der Freunde, Hofmannsthal asserts that “Das Plastische entsteht nicht durch Schauen, sondern durch Identifikation”3 _{which goes right into the core of the matter. According to}

Hofmannsthal you could not form a three dimensional opinion about any object by mere observation: only through identification can we achieve recognition. Hof-mannsthal was therefore not a mere thinker, philosophy is not a precise term for his inquiries; he identified with every matter always as an artist.

Yet the dusty wooden banalities of our every day can come to life in the eye of the artist! Hofmannsthal managed to describe the lure of the cinema in the bleakest tones, to paint the “prehistoric” mountains of Austria in the most vivid color, and more than one of his discussions of other writers is actually more plea-surable to read than the very authors he discussed. As a writer and retired poet, however, one of the topics of the utmost importance to him remained the question 1_{“Hofmannsthal (hat) niemals, nicht einmal in den ersten Gedichten, wirkliche Jugendlyrik} geschrieben (...).” Hermann Broch, Hofmannsthal und seine Zeit (M¨unchen: R. Piper & Co, 1964) p.149.

2_{See chapter quote of section 2 for the full quote. Otto Weininger, “Die Kultur und ihr} Verh¨altnis zum Glauben”, ¨Uber die letzten Dinge (Wien, ¨Osterreich: Matthes und Seitz, 1904) p.118.

3_{Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Buch der Freunde [1922]”, Reden und Aufs¨atze III: 1925-1929,} Aufzeichnungen, ed. Bernd Schoeller, Ingeborg Beyer-Ahlert, and Rudolf Hirsch (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1980) p.292.

of the possibilities and boundaries of language. Hofmannsthal proved there, with his fondness for identification and immersion, that his thoughts surpassed mere aesthetic consideration by far. He already asked questions in his adolescence, that would only reach philosophical mainstream half a century later! Therefore Her-mann Broch called HofHer-mannsthal’s essayistic work his “philosophisches Tagebuch im Ereignis des Daseins”.4

But also the artist, and especially one as mindful to the tradition as he was must have been influenced by other writers and philosophers! This is also where the essay will start: there exists a German counter-tradition in philosophy, that demanded a philosophical language which is closer to a natural or artistic way of writing - this thesis will explain why Hofmannsthal was the epitome of such a development. At the same time, inquiries into the nature of language have a strong tradition in the German-speaking world: the second topic of interest is to reconstruct the material that must have influenced Hofmannsthal’s view of language and critique thereof.

The remainder of this thesis will, therefore, be structured as follows: in

sec-The Struc-ture of this

Work tion (2), I will explore the philosophical underpinnings that Hofmannsthal and

his contemporaries built upon. It will be structured in a chronological way, with section (2.1) discussing the early language philosophy and opposition to Kant of the philosophers J.G. Herder and J.G. Hamann. Section (2.2) will investigate the Romantic extension to the system by W. von Humboldt and F. Schlegel. F. Ni-etzsche’s view on language and subjectivity will be discussed in section (2.3). In section (3.1) we will have arrived in Hofmannsthal’s time with a discussion of his contemporaries F. Mauthner and E. Mach and their influence. Section (3.2) will introduce the famous cultural and social critics H. Bahr and K. Kraus and their impact on the (literary) contemporaries, who will be discussed in section (3.3), this section will prove to be a literary overview, and provide reasons why Hugo von Hofmannsthal should be awarded a special place within the group of Austrian Sprachskepsis-writers. The third part of the thesis, the actual discussion of Hof-mannsthal, starts in section (4). His philosophy of language will be dissected in section (4.1) and will receive special scrutiny through a discussion of his major works Ein Brief (section 4.1.1) and the play Der Schwierige (section 4.1.2). Sec-tion (4.2) explicates some di↵erent, non-analytical, aspects of his philosophy. The essay concludes in section (5).

2

The “Implicit Philosopher” and his Origin

Es gibt keine neuen philosophischen Gedanken, ebenso wie es keine neuen k¨unstlerischen Themen gibt. Das liegt aber daran, daß Philosoph und K¨unstler als Individualit¨aten zeitlos sind, aus ihrer Zeit nie zu be-greifen und mit ihr nie zu entschuldigen. Im Philosophen und K¨unstler liegt Ewigkeit.

- Otto Weininger, Die Kultur und ihr Verh¨altnis zum Glauben, p.118

Just as science and philosophy were once indicated by the word philosophy Implicit Philosophy

alone, as scientific texts once read just like philosophical tractates (and of course as philosophical tractates were seen as scientific ones), there must have always been a counter-tendency to conjoin art and philosophy, to create texts of high philosophical - and aesthetic - value. Vienna in 1900, the city of decadence and art pour l’art par excellence might be the epitome of such movements. The literary Sprachskepsis movement radicalized the philosophical ideas about language that the Romantic philosophers had advocated for, scientists wrote in aestheticizing styles and all came together in bringing forward a notion of subjectivity heightened to its extreme. Philosophy of language, the language of philosophers and questions of subjectivity are the triad of questions that had been around for a long time in the German tradition, and will also serve as the basis for the further investigation. This tendency to conjoin art and philosophy did not originate in the Romantics, but in the times of the German enlightenment, and as many other movements, one might even see Kant as its initiator (even if for negative reasons).

2.1

Herder and Hamann - Reaction to Kant

Die Philosophie besteht darin, daß es gar keine Philosophie geben soll, sondern nur Aufkl¨arung.

- Friedrich Schleiermacher,5

In the introduction to his first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant writes Reactions to Kant

that eventually he discarded the idea to illustrate his philosophy by using examples, for they are “nur in popul¨arer Absicht notwendig”.6_{The real connoisseur of sciences}

does not need such an aid. This is exactly what philosophers like Johann Gottfried Herder or Johann Georg Hamann criticized: philosophy should not be a scientific system which can only be understood by a small group, but rather a system to educate everyone.

5_{Friedrich Schleiermacher, quote retrieved through: Egon Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der} Neuzeit [1931] , 17th ed. (M¨unchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, C.H.Beck, 2011) p.684.

6_{Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft [1787] , ed. Wilhelm Weischedel, Werkausgab} (Suhrkamp, 1968) A XIX.

Interestingly, “Kant himself tended to identify with Popularphilosophie”, as

Herder’s Uni-versal

Philos-ophy Forster points out,7 but soon relinquished easy understanding for philosophical

rigor and systematicity. Herder especially opposed the new direction of his old mentor and established a “counter tradition in German philosophy”,8 _{which sought}

to relinquish incomprehensible sophistic systems and make human beings the center of philosophy.9 _{Herder’s falling out with methodic philosophy, however, did not}

evolve in reaction to Kant itself, but is already developed in early writings such as How Philosophy can become more Universal and Useful for the Benefit of the People from 1765.10 _{In this prize essay, Herder investigates the possibilities of}

using philosophy for the benefit of the people and endorses some highly modern ideas for his time.11

At the same time, Herder criticizes the systematic philosopher with his system, sitting in an ivory tower, detached from the world. For philosophy to be fruitful for the masses, the philosophers should make the people the center of their investiga-tion, not just some abstract systems.12 _{This can be achieved by two things: firstly,}

philosophers should not remain in libraries, surrounded by books, but they should live with farmers in the countryside and live the way of (the, then, majority) of the population. Secondly, philosophers should abdicate from specialized language, but use the everyday language of the people.13

Herder pursued this kind of philosophy for most his life, and he, for example, expounded it in his fragments ¨Uber die neuere Deutsche Litteratur :

Alle B¨ucher, die in der Welt von Gegenst¨anden, Verrichtungen und Vorf¨allen zu Hause geh¨oren, in welcher der gemeine Mann lebt, k¨onnen sich nicht in einer neuen Sprache br¨usten, oder sie werden l¨acherlich, unverst¨andlich und unn¨utz.14

Literature, like philosophy, should use the language of the people it is written for, otherwise it will not only be hard to understand, but it might even be outright useless. Yet looking at what was written in his time, Herder endorsed a rather bleak outlook:

7_{Michael N. Forster, After Herder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) p.14.} 8_p.12

9_{Johann Gottfried Herder, “How Philosophy can become more Universal and Useful for the} Benefit of the People [1765]”, Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans. Michael Forster (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 2004) p.21.

10_{And hence published 16 years before the first edition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason} 11_{For example his view on women’s education; p.21, p.26 Herder, “How Philosophy can become} more Universal and Useful for the Benefit of the People [1765]”.

12_{Herder, “How Philosophy can become more Universal and Useful for the Benefit of the People} [1765]” p.21.

13_p.19

14_{My emphasis. Herder actually references to aesthetics and philosophy in this quote, rather} then simply to literature. Johann Gottfried Herder, Ueber die neuere Deutsche Litteratur. Frag-mente, als Beilagen zu den Briefen, die neueste Litteratur betre↵end. Dritte Sammlung (Riga: Hartknoch, 1767) p.55.

Nun gehe man nach diesem Gesichtspunkte die Wochenschriften, die Erbauungsb¨ucher, die Predigten durch, alles soll f¨ur den gemeinen Mann sein, und wenig ist f¨ur ihn.15

Essentially, Herder was criticizing the same phenomenon that we can observe nowa-days; in order to sound smarter or have a more rigid system, scholars assumed that a systematic language is necessary, when every day language could suffice.16

But Herder not only occupied himself with an appropriate use of language in Herder’s Philosophy of Language

philosophy; he also had a tremendous interest in (and influence on) philosophy of language itself: some scholars even call him the “founder of modern philosophy of language”.17 _{While contemporary philosophers, such as the British Empiricists,}

considered thought and language as (in theory) separable, Herder endorsed a con-flicting view: thought and language are interconnected and dependent on one another:18 _{“Seele und [...] Sprache sind zwo Schwestern, in Gesellschaft erzogen,}

zu einander gew¨ohnt, und unabtrennbar[...]”.19 _{Without language there can be no}

thought.

While the empiricists considered language to be a spontaneous product of the impressions we receive, for Herder it was much more of an organic product of our nation and surroundings. We could not invent language, for this would mean that we had to cross a “b¨ohmischen Wald”20_{of di↵erent means of communication, before}

we arrived at out own language. Our own language, however, is a development over ages, and it comes with its own worldview.21_{Every language imprints in us a matter}

of thinking, and this leads to a problem in hermeneutics: for us to understand a text in a di↵erent language, according to Herder, we need to understand every word in its original context and all the possible references of the word. In short we can never disregard the history of the language.22

This focus on the history of language, so to say, is another point that Herder disagreed on with his old mentor Kant. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant tried to expound the workings of the mind on an absolute basis, by solely focusing on our perception and the representations we receive. He did so while ignoring the workings of language at the same time. Herder, like Hamann (see further 15_{Herder, Ueber die neuere Deutsche Litteratur. Fragmente, als Beilagen zu den Briefen, die} neueste Litteratur betre↵end. Dritte Sammlung p.60.

16_{This is something that even other philosophers, like Schopenhauer who was much indebted} to Kant’s theories, criticized in Kant: Kant used many stilted words for seeming rigor, even though contemporary words would have sufficed. Schopenhauer gives an example with the terms: “transcendentale synthetische Einheit der Apperception” and “Einheit der Synthesis”, and asserts that they could have easily been replaced by “Vereinigung”. Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung [1819] , ed. Arthur H¨ubscher (K¨oln: Anaconda, 2009) p.377.

17_{Forster p.55.} 18_Ibid.

19_{Herder, Ueber die neuere Deutsche Litteratur. Fragmente, als Beilagen zu den Briefen, die} neueste Litteratur betre↵end. Dritte Sammlung p.52.

20_p.50

21_{As Foster expounds. Forster p.64↵f.} 22_{Forster p.65.}

down), opposed a construction of reason which did not incorporate language and the history of meanings. When we developed our mental capacities further, we also developed a language for expression:

Je mehr sich die Gegenst¨ande erweitern, die Menschlichen Geisteskr¨afte sich entwickeln, desto mehr ersterben die F¨ahigkeiten der sinnlichen Thierseele. Die Ausbreitung der Wißenschaften verengert die K¨unste, die Ausbildung der Poetik die Poesie; endlich haben wir Regeln, statt Poetischer Empfindungen; wir borgen Reste aus den Alten, und die Dichtkunst ist todt!23

Thus, in order to get to know thought and our development better, it is also important to invest oneself in linguistic history.

Since thought is dependent on (the) language (we speak), the implications for literature are also important. A literary person should not tarnish his thoughts and emotions with a language not befitting the task:

[S]o wird f¨ur den, der meistens aus dieser Quelle sch¨opfen muß, f¨ur den, der gleichsam der Oberherr dieser Sph¨are gewesen, [...] f¨ur ihn, muß der Gedanke zum Ausdrucke sich verhalten, nicht wie der K¨orper zur Haut, die ihn umziehet; sondern wie die Seele zum K¨orper, den sie bewohnet: und so ists f¨ur den Dichter.24

To expound his point by paraphrasing Herder’s words: His contemporaries mis-understood language, because they treated is more as the clothing of the thought. They assumed the thought needs beautiful garbs, while lavish clothes actually corrupt thinking.

One reason for this is that more natural language is closer to our feelings. Herder defines a primeval form of language; the language of emotion: “Es gibt [...] eine Sprache der Empfindung, die unmittelbares Naturgesetzt ist”.25 _{As humans}

evolved from animals, their language evolved necessarily with the development of their cognitive capacities, as evidenced from the quote above. The poet can be more truthful to thought, by keeping the development of language in mind, and, by not trying to invent a new (system for his) language.

The last point, however, also has di↵erent implications: our primeval language, as a language of emotions and development, is necessarily a very subjective lan-guage. Everybody can feel only their own emotions (and often not even guess the others’ emotions), therefore a language that will stay true to one’s feelings, will be better at conveying one’s own subjectivity than a scientific language, which is at 23_{Johann Gottfried Herder, “Fragmente einer Abhandlung ¨uber die Ode [1764]”, Herders} S¨ammtliche Werke 32, ed. Bernhard Suphan (Berlin: Weidemann, 1899) p.69.

24_{Herder, Ueber die neuere Deutsche Litteratur. Fragmente, als Beilagen zu den Briefen, die} neueste Litteratur betre↵end. Dritte Sammlung p.65.

25_{This sentence is all in emphasis in the original. Johann Gottfried Herder, Abhandlung ¨uber} den Ursprung der Sprache [1772] (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 1997) p.6.

best of “gl¨anzende Trockenheit”.26_{This means that a poet who writes in a natural}

way, will also have an approach to writing that will stay more truthful to himself, and the entire language-community that he stems from, than a scholar who tries to achieve neutral language. When historically-mindful language is more subjec-tive, invented, systematic language `a la Kant, necessarily is its artificial analogue, since it disregards the linguistic preferences of the subject and tries to be outside tradition.

If Herder represents the tame bookmannish opposition to “systematic” philosophy, Johann Georg Hamann

then Johann Georg Hamann represents his irrational brother in arms.27 _Hamann

wrote in a dark nebulous style, using a cornucopia of obscure references to contem-poraries (that often do not make much sense anymore nowadays) and to ancient literature, philosophy, and scripture. His writings made him become known as a pioneer of a subjective sensualist irrationalism,28 _{and later philosophers would}

have conflicting views on Hamann, such as Hegel who characterized reading him with a “Bewußtsein der Achtung und der Ungenießbarkeit”.29

J.G. Hamann’s philosophy of language, however, is easily characterized despite Hamann’s Philosophy of Language

the “Ungenießbarkeit” of his writings: language and thought cannot be separated. In 1784, for example, he wrote in a letter to Herder:

Wenn ich auch so beredt w¨are wie Demosthenes, so w¨urde ich doch nicht mehr als ein einziges Wort dreimal wiederholen m¨ussen: Vernunft ist Sprache - o o&. An diesem Markknochen nage ich und werde mich zu Tode dar¨uber nagen.30

In the same year, he also wrote a critique of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, the Metakritik ¨uber den Purismus der Vernunft. Here he attacked Kant’s construction of pure reason as fallacious in that it ignores the means of language that underly actual reason:

Nicht nur das ganze Verm¨ogen zu denken beruht auf Sprache, [...] son-dern Sprache ist auch der Mittelpunct des Missverstandes der Vernunft mit ihr selbst, theils wegen der h¨aufigen Coincidenz des gr¨oßten und kleinsten Begri↵s, seiner Leere und F¨ulle in idealischen S¨atzen, theils wegen des unendlichen der Rede- vor den Schlußfiguren, und dergle-ichen viel mehr.31

26_{As Schopenhauer calls Kant’s style of writing. In Schopenhauer p. 376.}

27_{Texts that deal with both thinkers usually put them in a relation to each other - one} influ-encing the other - as I am not a specialist on either, I will simply present them as contemporary thinkers with similar thoughts and di↵erent techniques.

28_{Josef Simon, “Einleitung zu J.G.Hamanns Schriften zur Sprache”, Schriften zur Sprache, ed.} Hans Blumenberg et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967) p.10.

29_{G.W.F. Hegel, retrieved through: Simon p.10.}

30_{J.G.Hamann letter to Herder, retrieved through: Fritz Mauthner, Beitr¨age zu einer Kritik} der Sprache [1902] , 3rd ed. (Stuttgart und Berlin: J.G. Cotta, 1921) p.178.

Hamann faults Kant for using language in order to create a system which should precede language. Hamann maintained that Kant’s system, and his whole under-standing of reason, derives from his language. A system of thought, according to the critique on Kant’s critical philosophy, necessarily needs to be a system of language.

As language and thought are the same thing for Hamann, it is absurd to create

Hamann and the Language of

Philosophers a di↵erent scheme of language for philosophy:

[V]erarbeitet durch diesen gelehrten Unfug die Biderkeit der Sprache in ein so sinnloses, l¨aufiges, unst¨ates, unbestimmtes Etwas = x, daß nichts als ein windiges Sausen, ein magisches Schattenspiel, h¨ochstens [...] der Talisman und Rosenkranz eines transcendentalen Aberglaubens an entia rationis, ihre leere Schl¨auche und Losung ¨ubrig bleibt.32

Language should not be used in a specialized jargon, but the tradition has to be embraced to generate more understanding:

An Philosophie lohnt es garnicht der M¨uhe zu bedenken; desto mehr systematische Kalender! - mehr als Spinnenweben in einem verst¨orten Schlosse.33

Especially the usage of general terms was an issue for Hamann:

F¨ur Leser von orthodoxem Geschmack geh¨oren keine gemeine Ausdr¨ucke noch unreine Sch¨usseln - - Impossibilissimum est, communia proprie dicere - Siehe! darum geschieht es, daß ein Autor, dessen Geschmack acht Tage alt, aber beschnitten ist, lauter weißen ¨uberzogenen Entian - zur Ehre menschlicher Nothdurft - in die Windeln thut.34

For Hamann, general terms, the vocabulary of the philosopher, were comparable to a dirty bowl that gets filled up with the intellectual droppings of the writers.

All these problems can easily be circumvented: The optimal usage of language is one that stays true to the original meaning of words, and indefectible writings are literary, for “Poesie ist die Muttersprache des menschlichen Geschlechts”.35

Therefore, Hamann usually coupled his writings on philosophy of language with aesthetic and literary ideas.36_{Simultaneously, words should be analyzed especially}

in their literary (and religious) meanings, since “myth and metaphor”37 _{are the}

true origins of meaning rather than abstract philosophical texts.

down. Johann Georg Hamann, “Metakritik ¨uber den Purismus der Vernunft [1784]”, Schriften zur Sprache, ed. Hans Blumenberg et al., 1st ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967) p.224.

32_p.223

33_{Johann Georg Hamann, “Aesthetica in Nuce [1760]”, Schriften zur Sprache, ed. Hans} Blum-berg et al., 1st ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967) p.115.

34_p.111 35_p.107

36_{p.26 Simon ; this is also a method that we will see again in Schlegel (section 2.2) and} Hofmannsthal (section 4).

37_{Jonathan Gray, “Hamann, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein on the Language of Philosophers”,} Hamann and the Tradition, ed. Lisa Marie Anderson (Northwestern University Press, 2012) p.109.

With his fondness for the metaphoric, it should be apparent that Hamann also objected to rigid methods of hermeneutics: everybody should keep to their subjective understanding. In his Aesthetica in Nuce, he writes that “die große und kleine Masore38 _{der Weltweisheit hat den Text der Natur, gleich einer S¨}

und-fluth, ¨uberschwemmt”.39 _{Language essentially is ambiguity, which should not be}

changed. Here the “center of misunderstanding” as evidenced by the quote above40

also comes back; just because systematic language is used, ambiguity cannot be abolished, therefore, the systems are solely unnatural, or, as he puts it in his Metakritik : the “¨asthetische L¨uge [transcendentaler Schriften]”.41,42

With Kant, Herder and Hamann, German philosophy had changed for ever; Kant The Counter-tradition

published his Critique of Pure Reason, the first major philosophical work in Ger-man language,43 _{which bred a plethora of reactions and further investigations in}

systematic philosophical language. Herder and Hamann established the counter tradition, one where literature, language and thought would be closely intertwined; where reason would be a development, not an absolute system like in Kant. Lan-guage, as the driving factor of thought, should not be altered for more clarity, but embraced. A constructed system could never capture our true inner thoughts nor express them in any way. Within the next decades, philosophers would advance the philosophy of language both in systematic ways, like Wilhelm von Humboldt, or through aesthetic critique, like Friedrich Schlegel.

2.2

Humboldt and Schlegel - Romantic Conception of

Lan-guage

In die Bildung und in den Gebrauch der Sprache geht [...] die ganze Art der subjektiven Wahrnehmung der Gegenst¨ande ¨uber.

- Wilhelm von Humboldt, ¨Uber die Verschiedenheit [...] p.58

With the nineteenth century, there seemed to have dawned an era of language The Roman-tics and Lan-guage

studies for Germany; Herder had already laid foundations to fields such as analyt-ical philosophy, hermeneutics and translation, and now the subsequent generation expanded on these accomplishments by founding comparative language studies 38_{Masore is the Rabbinical fixing of the meaning of the biblical writings. Hamann uses it here} as a symbol for positivistic systems that annihilate ambiguity of language. Simon p.238.

39_{Hamann, “Aesthetica in Nuce [1760]” p.117.} 40_{See the quote on page 7.}

41_{Hamann, “Metakritik ¨uber den Purismus der Vernunft [1784]” p.218.}

42_{Hamann also seemed to follow a di↵erent agenda with his critique of language; often his} obscure references are directed against the (socio-political) system, Hamann apparently tried to oppose the social leveling within the state by attacking the leveling of language through the philosopher, for if we can change the usage of language, we can change the people within.

through Friedrich Schlegel, Indogermanic studies through Franz Bopp and Ger-man philology through Jacob Grimm.44 _{While di↵erent forms of language studies}

became more and more established as separate fields, philosophers also took a big-ger interest in the workings of language and its interplay with thought.

Wilhelm von Humboldt was one of the 19th century homini universalis: He was

Wilhelm von Humboldt

a diplomat, an educator, and an explorer among other professions. At the same time, one of his main interests lay in the nature of language, as he even mentioned in a letter:

Im Grunde ist alles, was ich treibe, Sprachstudium. Ich glaube die Kunst entdeckt zu haben, die Sprache als ein Vehikel zu gebrauchen, um das H¨ochste und Tiefste und die Mannigfaltigkeit der ganzen Welt zu durchfahren.45

Humboldt was the first who postulated an interdisciplinary approach to language studies.46 _{He left behind a tremendous body of work on languages, yet, for the}

revolutionary system of language that he had in mind, his own mind was to un-systematic and flaky.47

Especially from his last major work, ¨Uber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen

Humboldt’s Philosophy

of Language Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluß auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts,48

we can read that Humboldt actually had a system of transcendental-language phi-losophy in mind.49_{When Kant defined space and time as the objective prerequisites}

for empirical cognition, but at the same time determined by our subjective selves; Humboldt did the same for human language: “Die Sprache ist das bildende Organ des Gedanken”.50 _{This means that, according to him, we cannot separate thought}

and language. At the same time, however, since the world of representations can deceive us, and we are bound to language for our interpretation of reality, we even have to perceive it as something which is external to us.51

In his view of language he partly anticipated Chomsky, claiming that there is a di↵erence between (universal) Language and (ethnic, or even personal) language:

Denn so wundervoll ist in der Sprache die Individualisierung innerhalb der allgemeinen ¨Ubereinstimung, daß man ebenso richtig sagen kann, 44_{Michael B¨ohler, “Nachwort zu Humboldts Schriften zur Sprache”, Schriften zur Sprache, ed.} Michael B¨ohler (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1995) p.236.

45_{1805, letter to Wolf, retrieved through: B¨ohler p.234.} 46_{B¨ohler p.237.}

47_{In the postscript to his works, it is called a tendency for the unfinished. B¨ohler p.229.} 48_{Which is the perfect example for his unsystematic way of working, his tendency for the} unfin-ished: it is, despite being considered his major work on language, namely solely the introduction to another work of his.

49_{Jochem Hennigfeld, “Sprache als Weltansicht”, Zeitschrift f¨ur philosophische Forschung 3.30} (1976): p.436.

50_{Wilhelm von Humboldt, ¨Uber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren} Einflußauf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts (Berlin: K¨onigliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1836) p.50.

daß das ganze Menschengeschlecht nur Eine Sprache, als daß jeder Men-sch eine besondere besitzt.52

The universal qualities of language are innate, but they are activated in di↵er-ent ways by di↵erdi↵er-ent languages.53 _{This di↵erent activation, however, is also where}

Humboldt’s and Chomsky’s views part ways; Chomsky would say that all lan-guages retain the architecture of the mind, i.e. that there is only one overarching grammatical structure. Humboldt, on the other hand, would agree to some initial cognitive makeup of the mind, yet this is completely molded by the language we first acquire, and it retains the structure of our first language, even if we learn another one.54

While some may take such a mental, a priori-ist, representation of language to Subjectivity and Objectivity

say that language is an entity with objective value, Humboldt would disagree. Of course, as mentioned above, there is the architecture of our mind which is Lan-guage, but even within nations, there are tremendous di↵erences between speakers. Humboldt even goes as far as asserting:

[D]ie Individualit¨at einer Sprache [...] [ist] auch nur vergleichungsweise eine solche [...] die wahre Individualit¨at [liegt] nur in dem jedesmal Sprechenden.55

Every speaker speaks a di↵erent language: “Erst im Individuum erh¨alt die Sprache ihre letzte Bestimmtheit.”56_{This may sound like Humboldt would oppose}

Wittgen-stein’s private language argument, claiming that there is indeed a certain subjec-tivity to language which can never fully be translated, but such a reading is not correct. Humboldt asserted before:

In der Erscheinung entwickelt sich jedoch die Sprache nur gesellschaftlich, und der Mensch versteht sich selbst nur, indem er die Verstehbarkeit seiner Worte an Andren versuchend gepr¨uft hat.57

Yes, every person has their own language, but they also need communication to make their own language work. Language essentially is the interplay of subjectivity and objectivity:

Die Sprache ist gerade insofern objectiv einwirkend und selbstst¨andig, als sie subjectiv gewirkt und abh¨angig ist.58

For Humboldt, the language is an objective vessel, that we fill our subjectivity into. Our subjectivity comes from our personal understanding and emotions in an objective language. Our subjectivity heightens the objectivity.

52_{Von Humboldt p.47.} 53_{Von Humboldt p.56f.}

54_{See chapter Natur und Bescha↵enheit der Sprache ¨uberhaupt (p.48↵f) in von Humboldt.} 55_{Von Humboldt p.64.}

56_{Von Humboldt p.64.} 57_{Von Humboldt p.53.} 58_{Von Humboldt p.63.}

Humboldt already spoke of a distinction between the subjectivity of the private

Translation

language and its dichotomy with the shared language. This disparity essentially expresses itself in problems of hermeneutics:

Alles Verstehen ist daher immer zugleich ein Nicht-Verstehen, alle ¨ Ubere-instimmung in Gedanken und Gef¨uhlen zugleich ein Auseinanderge-hen.59

Meaning that language is a duality between understanding and misunderstanding; we will always understand each other to a certain extent, but never fully.

If we consider, not translation between people, but between languages, they are similar enough so there will always be some general understanding, but at the same time, they di↵er in that they express the inner character of a people:

Die Sprache ist gleichsam die ¨außerliche Erscheinung des Geistes der V¨olker; ihre Sprache ist ihr Geist und ihr Geist die Sprache, man kann sich beide nie identisch genug denken.60

The pedantic soul of the pedantic German is expressed through his language, there-fore, if we learned the German language, we can become more German.

Nations are similar, because their Language-facilities have been influenced by

Nation and Language

their surroundings, and the perception of their surroundings was later reinforced by their language.61 _{Humboldt asserts that our world view is completely and utterly}

molded by our language, and as in the quote mentioned above, there is always misunderstanding in language, for we can never evoke the same images with other people.62 _{Language essentially is subjectivity:}

In die Bildung und in den Gebrauch der Sprache geht aber nothwendig die ganze Art der subjektiven Wahrnehmung der Gegenst¨ande ¨uber.63

Due to the di↵erences between the world-views that are created by language, there can never be one final philosophy, i.e. all philosophies are bound by language and therefore a German will create di↵erent philosophical systems as a Frenchman. The special place that language is awarded in Humboldt’s system is that it can possibly prove philosophical ideas. His first biographer Rudolf Haym claimed that Humboldt’s study of language was an attempt to give evidence for Kant’s critical philosophy through the structure of language.64 _{If concepts such as the “pure}

intu-itions” time and space, as Kant calls them, have a preponderance even in language, 59_{Von Humboldt p.64.}

60_{My emphasis. von Humboldt p.37.}

61_{“Der Form steht freilich ein Sto↵ gegen¨uber; um aber den Sto↵ der Sprachform zu finden,} muß man ¨uber die Gr¨anzen der Sprache hinausgehen.” von Humboldt p.45.

62_{“Denn das Wort entsteht eben aus dieser Wahrnehmung, ist nicht ein Abdruck des} Gegen-standes an sich, sonder des von diesem in der Seele erzeugten Bildes.” von Humboldt p.58.

63_{Von Humboldt p.58.}

64_{Rudolf Haym, Wilhelm von Humboldt: Lebensbild und Charakteristik (Berlin: Verlag von} Rudolph Gaertner, 1856) p.446↵f.

then the study of language, and only this study, will be able to tell us something objective about human nature.

Since literature will become an important tool for the communication of philo-sophical ideas for some of the figures discussed further below, it may be interesting to also consider the tacit implications of Humboldt’s theories for literature. Lan-guage grants a strange duality between objectivity of the thing, and subjectivity of the person.65 _{Nowadays, one can often read (popular) articles that claim reading}

literature increases our empathy, and I believe that Humboldt is, aside Herder, one of the first who would have made such a claim. As we read a book, we can increase our own vantage point, by being introduced into the subjective worlds of other people. This happens, because we delve into the world of thought of either an individual who wrote in our language, or of the collective world of thought of a di↵erent language.

When Humboldt was the scientist, investigating the nature of psychology and Friedrich Schlegel

language, Friedrich Schlegel was the aesthetician who, in the tradition of Hamann, combined literary and language studies. According to Schlegel, in real, artistically valuable prose everything would have to be underlined.66 _{This is the case, because}

the ideal piece of literature is a combination of literature, science and philosophy. In one of his Athen¨aum-fragments, Schlegel even writes:

Vermischte Gedanken sollten die Kartons der Philosophie sein. Man weiß, was diese den Kennern der Malerei gelten. Wer nicht philosophis-che Welten mit dem Crayon skizziren, jeden Gedanken, der Physiog-nomie hat, mit ein paar Federstrichen charakterisieren kann, f¨ur den wird die Philosophie nie Kunst, und also auch nie Wissenschaft wer-den. Denn in der Philosophie geht der Weg zur Wissenschaft nur durch die Kunst, wie der Dichter im Gegenteil erst durch Wissenschaft ein K¨unstler wird.67

Philosophy can only be attained by the artist. Everybody else is simply creating Potemkin-like cities of thought without any content.

The artist can attain more, because the (Romantic) poetry, for example, is Art and Philosophy

“always in progress toward the unconditional highest”,68 _{i.e. poetry is always a}

process, while systems lead to stagnation:

65_{This is the case, because we subjectively use terms for the appearances in the world, rather} than having objective terms for the things-in-themselves: “Denn die Sprache stellt niemals die Gegenst¨ande, sondern immer die durch den Geist in der Spracherzeugung selbstth¨atg von ihnen gebildeten Begri↵e dar.” in: von Humboldt p.96.

66_{“In wahrer Prosa, muß alles unterstrichen sein.” Friedrich Schlegel, ”Athen¨aums”-Fragmente} und andere Schriften [1798] , ed. Andreas Huyssen (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 2005) p.128. 67_{My emphasis. I believe thatWissenschaft is, in this context, rather referring to the humanities} (history, philology and a systematized idealism) than natural sciences. Schlegel p.113.

68_{Friedrich Schlegel, ¨Uber das Studium griechischer Poesie, retrieved through: H. Jackson} Forstman, “The Understanding of Language by Friedrich Schlegel and Schleiermacher”, Sound-ings: An Interdisciplinary Journal Vol. 51, 2.2 (1968): p.153.

Es ist gleich t¨odlich f¨ur den Geist, ein System zu haben, und keins zu haben. Er wird sich also wohl entschließen m¨ussen, beides zu verbinden.69

The problem with a system, however, is that it can never be absolute according to Schlegel.70 _{The Romantic philosopher can also be like a romantic poem; one that}

philosophizes as a process, rather than in a system:

Man kann nur Philosoph werden, nicht es sein. Sobald man es zu sein glaubt, h¨ort man auf es zu werden.71

One should not think in systems, because it kills creativity, yet a system is necessary in order to form thought.

In the same way that the stagnation had been overcome in the political world by the French revolution, Schlegel expected a similar aesthetic-revolution, that would rejoin subjectivity and objectivity,72 _{by lifting the boundaries between philosophy,}

religion, science and art.73 _{In this post-revolutionary world, every work of art}

would be a work of philosophy, science etc..

Therefore, while Schlegel advocated for a more artistically driven philosophy, to bring about this revolution, he also tried to establish a poetics that would lead to a philosophication of art: “[Der romantischen Poesie] Ihre Bestimmung ist [...] die Poesie mit der Philosophie und Rhetorik in Ber¨uhrung zu setzten”.74

The optimal art, in analogy with the optimal philosophy, would be one that could express philosophical ideas while being beautiful:

Der dichtende Philosoph, der philosophierende Dichter ist ein Prophet. Das didaktische Gedicht sollte prophetisch sein, und hat auch Anlage, es zu werden.75

While the beautiful is central in Schlegel’s philosophy, he seems to contest a notion of absolute truth:

K¨onnte es nicht noch vor der Abfassung der logischen Konstitution eine provisorische Philosophie geben; und ist nicht alle Philosophie provi-sorisch, bis die Konstitution durch die Akzeptation sanktioniert ist?76

Philosophy, and with it our view of the world, is strongly determined through social convention. As a post-Kantian philosopher, he would have argued that truth is unattainable, yet the necessary aim of our intellectual endeavors.77

69_{Schlegel p.82.}

70_{Friedrich Schlegel, retrieved through: Forstman p.152.} 71_{Schlegel p.82.}

72_{Andreas Huyssen, “Nachwort zu Schlegels ”Athen¨aums”-Fragmenten”, ”Athen¨} aums”-Fragmente und andere Schriften, ed. Andreas Huyssen (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 2005) p.230. 73_Ibid. 74_{Schlegel p.90.} 75_{Schlegel p.107.} 76_{Schlegel p.110.} 77_{Forstman p.153.}

As for his view on language, Schlegel had a similar construct of language in mind Schlegel’s Philosophy of Language

as Humboldt and Hamann: language is what separates animals from humans, and the structure of humanity is to be found in the structure of language.78 _{The study}

of philology is, therefore, a science of the utmost importance, for it can tell us a myriad about thought. Philosophy can, in his opinion, only gives us answers, when we also investigated language:

Die einzige Art, die Philologie auf die Philosophie oder, welches noch weit n¨otiger ist, die Philologie auf die Philosophie anzuwenden, ist, wenn man zugleich Philolog und Philosoph ist.79

Schlegel already hinted towards, what in the previous, 20th century had become practically a mainstream position:80 _{the thought that a fruitful philosophy}

neces-sarily has to be a philosophy of language.

The image of directionality and motion was important in Schlegel’s general phi-losophy, and therefore also comes back in his philosophy of language. According to him, humans have a dualistic nature, torn between the finite word that strives towards the infinite, and the infinite spirit that strives towards finiteness. This also means that language which does not embrace this directness is dead. The roman-tic poem is, as mentioned above, always a development, and it therefore expresses language better, and with it human nature.

The original postulates that had been set up during the enlightenment period Outcomes of the Movement

by Herder and Hamann, had developed in the Romantic period. Language and thought were not only much more strongly correlated, but language was even said to be the determining factor of our worldview.

2.3

Nietzsche - Ethics and Language

[Nietzsche] war ein tellurisches Ereignis, nicht bloß sein Volk, nicht bloß den Erdteil, sondern die Erde ersch¨utternd und durch ein langan-dauerndes Beben beunruhigend.

- Egon Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit p.1402

In the tradition which has been discussed so far, Nietzsche is, in a sense, the Friedrich Nietzsche

odd one out. Considering the quintessential philosopher from the standpoint of some priors, like Herder, Nietzsche did in fact write philosophy in the right way, since he wrote it in a literary style and rather unsystematic. His philosophy is a giant collection of aphorisms that have some common threads and are, usually,

78_{Forstman p.150f.} 79_{Schlegel p.130.}

collected in thematic ways. Nietzsche even asserts that he despises schemes of organization:81

Ich misstraue allen Systematikern und gehe ihnen aus dem Weg. Der Wille zum System ist ein Mangel aus Rechtscha↵enheit.82

In another spot he writes that the best way to treat a problem is quickly: “[I]ch halte es mit tiefen Problemen, wie mit einem kalten Bade - schnell hinein, schnell hinaus”.83 _{Therefore, Nietzsche is staying true to Herder’s postulates, for he dealt}

with important topics in an accessible way, while additionally keeping it brief. Yet, he was also completely unlike Herder in other ways; while the ideal of the enlightenment philosopher Herder was to educate the masses, Nietzsche did not want his philosophy to be understood by everyone. Education is for the few, and he asserts that a broad enlightenment would even destroy thought:

[I]ch hasse die lesenden M¨ussigg¨anger. [...]

Dass Jedermann lesen lernen darf, verdirbt auf die Dauer nicht allein das Schreiben, sondern auch das Denken.84

So, while his writing style fitted the ideal of his intellectual forefathers, i.e. he wrote in the literary style that Herder, Schlegel (and especially) Hamann85 _would

have encouraged, his aim was completely di↵erent, in that it was aimed at a small circle, rather than to educate the masses.86

Herder, Hamann, Humboldt and Schlegel namely advocated for a language that minds history, that is poetic and conveys the real subjectivity of the individual, without trying to be outside of the tradition. Kant’s writing are bad(ly written) for they pretend that an absolute language outside tradition is possible; however someone like Nietzsche writes appealingly, for he minds the tradition (with literary references or references to classics) and still writes philosophy. In their philosophy of language, the aforementioned quartet launched a school of thought that investi-gated the connection between thought and language. Language was to be seen as the external expression of thought, and thought without language is impossible.

81_{Some scholars claim this to be an attack at philosophers like Kant or Hegel, and their systems} J. Gray p.110f.

82_{Friedrich Nietzsche, “G¨otzen-D¨ammerung [1888]”, Antichrist - Ecce Homo,} Dionysos-Dithyramben und Nietzsche contra Wagner, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin, New York: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, de Gruyter, 1967) _§1:26.

83_{Friedrich Nietzsche, “Die fr¨ohliche Wissenschaft [1882]”, Morgenr¨othe, Idyllen aus Messina,} Die fr¨ohliche Wissenschaft, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 8th ed. (Berlin, New York: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, de Gruyter, 1967)§381.

84_{Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra [1883] , ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari} (M¨unchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, C.H.Beck, 2010) p.41.

85_{Of course apart from his zealous atheism.}

86_{In his Twilight of the Idols, for example, Nietzsche advanced this thought in chapter Was} den Deutschen abgeht, paragraph 5, where he laments the “Niedergang der Deutschen Kultur” because of mass education. Nietzsche, “G¨otzen-D¨ammerung [1888]” p.107f.

While the four wrote texts aimed at the study of language, Nietzsche’s unsys- Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Language

tematic approach makes it difficult to find one position of pronounced language critique. Only a hand full of aphorisms concerning the use and boundaries of lan-guage are to be found in some of his texts. Yet, he already exhibits certain ideas of language skepticism, a view which would become more widely accepted a few decades later in Vienna:

Uns¨aglich mehr [...] liegt [daran], wie die Dinge heissen, als was sie sind. Der Ruf, Name und Anschein, die Geltung, das ¨ubliche Maass und Gewicht eines Dinges - im Ursprunge zuallermeist ein Irrthum und eine Willk¨urlichkeit, den Dingen ¨ubergeworfen wie ein Kleid und seinem Wesen und selbst der Haut ganz fremd - ist durch Glauben daran [...] dem Dinge allm¨ahlich gleichsam an- und eingewachsen.87

For Nietzsche, language is not God-given, as for Hamann, nor the determining aspect of the psychology, as for Humboldt. According to him, language is the development over decades and words have received their (seemingly necessary) meaning nowadays only because we are used to employing them in that way.

While language is determined by its incessant practice, its connections are rather arbitrary with respect to the system used. In Jenseits von Gut und B¨ose, Nietzsche gives an account of language that seems to anticipate, on one hand the idea of the conceptual scheme, and on the other, Saussure’s dichotomy between signifi´e and signifiant. Nietzsche writes:

Dass die einzelnen philosophischen Begri↵e nichts Beliebiges, nichts F¨ur-sich-Wachsendes sind, sondern in Beziehung und Verwandtschaft zu einander emporwachsen, dass sie, so pl¨otzlich und willk¨urlich sie auch in der Geschichte des Denkens anscheinend heraustreten [...] verr¨ath sich zuletzt noch darin, wie sicher die verschiedensten Philosophen ein gewisses Grundschema von m¨oglichen Philosophien immer wieder ausf¨ullen.88

Already Nietzsche’s vocabulary, and especially the word Grundschema, lends itself to the the first aspect. Conceptual schemes are “ways of organizing experience; they are systems of categories that give form to the data of sensation”.89_{One might}

claim that Nietzsche criticizes that di↵erent philosophies always coincide with the same concepts. As if there were x philosophies-in-themselves possible, and our vocabularies always coincide with the one or the other.

For the second aspect, it is necessary to stress the first half of the quote, and to explicate the di↵erence that Saussure makes between signifi´e and signifiant (and

87_{Nietzsche, “Die fr¨ohliche Wissenschaft [1882]”§58.}

88 _{Friedrich Nietzsche, “Jenseits von Gut und B¨ose [1886]”, Jenseits von Gut und B¨ose, Zur} Genealogie der Moral, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 13th ed. (Berlin, New York: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, de Gruyter, 1967)_§20.

89_{Donald Davidson, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme”, Proceedings and Addresses} of the American Philosophical Association 47 (1973): p.5.

only calls their combination the sign). The signifi´e is the mental representation of an object or concept, independent of the language. The signifiant is the word in our language, the actual sound patterns that evoke the signifi´e. Saussure introduced these terms in his courses on linguistics to stress that the sound patterns we hear are not to be intrinsically equated to the concepts.90 _{At the same time, the signifi´es}

and signifiants work as a network of reference: if we consider the two colors blue and white, they each have their own signifi´e and signifiant, however, if we would add a word for “light blue”,91 _{then the network will have to change and the signifi´e will}

split up in two distinct ones.92 _{Nietzsche can be read to anticipate this idea when}

speaking about philosophical vocabularies; there may be philosophical concepts that always remain more or less the same, however, any number of philosophical systems of naming and reference may or may not be equated to them. A more philosophical example would be the English word “love” and the two Greek words ↵ ↵⇡⌘ (agape, or compassionate love) and ✏⇢!& (eros, or erotic love). While in English both signifi´es fall underneath one signifiant, the net of reference is split up in Greek, where you have distinct signifi´es for the distinct signifiants.

If signs are arbitrary, Nietzsche asked the next question: how is (linguistic)

Morality and Language

truth possible? For Nietzsche language use seems to have a moral dimension. Just as not everybody is cut out to read and write (as evidenced from the quote above p.16), our emotions and our sluggishness has led us to be “an’s L¨ugen gewohnt”.93

We do not even try to perceive the entirety of a tree, for example, because we find it easier to invent (“erdichten”) the majority of our experiences.94 _Adequate,

truthful language is not our aim, because, as Nietzsche claims, if it were there would never be that many languages in existence.95 _{Truths are, therefore, just a}

matter of social convention. In his Genealogie der Moral, Nietzsche claims that the problem with scientists is that “sie glauben noch an die Wahrheit”,96 _{for anything}

that wants to explain the world in absolute terms, needs to postulate a notion of absolute truth. Yet, language could never express absolute truths, for, according to Nietzsche, it is an entity of “Schein”.97 _{Communication is possible because we}

all collectively succumb to the postulated truths.

One way out of this conundrum seems to be art. Art is a good remedy

Art and Philosophy

against the groups that postulate truths, because in it, there exists a “Wille zur 90_{Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, ed. Charles Bally, Albert Sechehaye,} and Albert Riedlinger, trans. Wade Baskin (New York, Toronto, London: McGraw-Hill, 1915) p.67.

91_{As it already exists in many languages: Greek, Russian etc.} 92_p.120

93_{Nietzsche, “Jenseits von Gut und B¨ose [1886]”§192.} 94_Ibid.

95_{Friedrich Nietzsche, ¨Uber Wahrheit und L¨uge im außermoralischen Sinne (Literary Estate,} 1873) p.2.

96_{Friedrich Nietzsche, “Zur Genealogie der Moral [1887]”, Jenseits von Gut und B¨ose, Zur} Genealogie der Moral, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 13th ed. (Berlin, New York: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, de Gruyter, 1967)_§3:24.

T¨auschung”, and the lie is hallowed.98 _{In his work ¨Uber Wahrrheit und L¨uge im}

außermoralischen Sinne, Nietzsche even suggests that the origin of language is in poetry. Hence, if there is no truth, and education is for the few, evidence suggests that Nietzsche sets up a hyper-subjectivist philosophy. A philosophy where every person has to make their own truth, and which can be expressed in its most easy (but also most easily corrupted) way through the arts.

Finally we can summarize his view on language and truth from his essay ¨Uber Wahrheit und L¨uge im außermoralischen Sinne, which he never published:

Die Wahrheiten sind Illusionen, von denen man vergessen hat, dass sie welche sind, Metaphern, die abgenutzt und sinnlos kraftlos geworden sind, M¨unzen, die ihr Bild verloren haben und nun als Metall, nicht mehr als M¨unzen, in Betracht kommen.99

Truths are illusions; language cannot convey truth: a standpoint that Fritz Mau-thner picked up later and used for his own theory on language, most notably expressed in his Beitr¨age zu einer Kritik der Sprache.

98_{Strangely, the word “L¨ugen” he uses gives this passage a rather negative connotation.} Niet-zsche, “Zur Genealogie der Moral [1887]” _§3:25.

3

Fin de Si`

ecle Vienna and Language

Vienna in the fin de si`ecle, with its acutely felt tremors of social and political disintegration, proved one of the most fertile breeding grounds of our [last] century’s a-historical culture. Its great intellectual inno-vators - in music and philosophy, economics and architecture, and, of course, in psychoanalysis - all broke, more or less deliberately, their ties to the historical outlook central to the nineteenth-century liberal culture in which they had been reared.

- Carl E. Schorske, Fin-De-Si`ecle Vienna, p. xviii Aside from music and politics, Vienna had remained relatively inconspicuous

Wien, Wien nur du

allein... over the past centuries, but suddenly, around the turn of the century, there

ap-peared a paradigm shift. The “acutely felt tremors of social and political disinte-gration” that led to a breaking of “the historical outlook central to the nineteenth-century liberal culture”, as written by Schorske in the introduction to his book Fin-De-Si`ecle Vienna,100 _{also led to a radicalization of a triad of concepts:}

lan-guage of philosophers, philosophy of lanlan-guage and subjectivity.

In the counter tradition discussed so far, there had been an attempt to establish

The Tradition

Discussed a philosopher that remains mindful to the historical development of language and

would not try to invent artificial language systems. This question of the language of philosophers had been advanced so far in the Romantic period, that Friedrich Schlegel demanded a new poetics that would conjoin literature, the humanities, and philosophy. A good philosopher should be a writer with impeccable style, who does not need to compromise on aesthetically pleasing language for more clarity.

Herder had questioned the possibility of thought independent of language with his philosophy of language. The later-born philosophers considered the same prob-lems and advanced them further; what is the interplay between our outlook on life and our language? Is translation between the subjectivity of di↵erent people possible? What is the connection between a people and their language?

This also led to the next problem closely related to language. Is there an objectively real world, or is everybody the master of his own subjective world? How does our use of language interplay with the problem of subjectivity? Humboldt, for example, thought that our subjectivity feeds into the objectivity of language; objectivity would only be heightened by subjectivity.

Considering the further development of these questions in fin de si`ecle Vienna, there is no way around two major figures: the philosopher Fritz Mauthner and the physicist Ernst Mach.

3.1

Mauther and Mach - Philosophy and Science

- Ernst Mach, Die Analyse [...] p.20 If we consider their philosophical oeuvre, Fritz Mauthner and Ernst Mach are two figures virtually unknown outside of Austria101_{(and inside as well), but two figures}

that exerted a tremendous influence on the science, philosophy and literature of their (and later) times.

Janik and Toulmin characterize Fritz Mauthner rather as a journalist than a Fritz Mauthner

philosopher,102 _{which - in a way - is a misleading characterization since most}

writ-ers in fin-de-si`ecle Vienna also worked as journalists.103 _{Mauthner begot a large}

philosophical output, yet “only one of his eleven major works - a refutation of Aristotle - has been translated to English”,104 _{which led to his oblivion. In recent}

years, a negligible number of papers have been written about him, but to this day, strangely, his most important work, the Beitr¨age zu einer Kritik der Sprache105

(1901-1902), has not been translated. This fact is even more so peculiar, since the Beitr¨age are a work important in the history of philosophy as well as literature. Important for the history of philosophy since Wittgenstein was acquainted with it,106 _{and important for literary history since it influenced both James Joyce and}

Samuel Beckett.107

Mauthner expounded his personal understanding of philosophy in his W¨orter- All Philosophy is Language Critique

buch der Philosophie, the second part to his magnum opus of the Beitr¨age: [D]ie Philosophie ist Erkenntnistheorie, Erkenntnistheorie ist Sprachkri-tik; Sprachkritik aber ist die Arbeit an dem befreienden Gedanken, daß die Menschen mit den W¨ortern ihrer Sprachen und mit den Worten ihrer Philosophien niemals ¨uber eine bildliche Darstellung der Welt hinaus gelangen k¨onnen.108

101_{One notable exception is chapter 5 in Allan Janik and Stephen Edelston Toulmin,} Wittgen-stein’s Vienna (Ivan R. Dee, 1996) p.120-167.

102_{Janik and Toulmin p.121.}

103_{Karl Kraus (section 3.2), and Hugo von Hofmannsthal (section 4), who will appear later,} both published many essays, the former was even a publisher of his own journal. Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, and Joseph Roth, the important Austro-Hungarian writer, were chief correspondents for the Viennese Freie Presse in Paris. The list could be extended considerably.

104_{My emphasis. Linda Ben-Zvi, “Samuel Beckett, Fritz Mauthner, and the Limits of Language”,} Modern Language Association 86.2 (1980): p.183.

105_{Henceforth Beitr¨age.}

106_{See chapter 5, p.120-167 in Wittgenstein’s Vienna or Yuchen Xin, “Wittgenstein’s} Tracta-tus Logico-Philosophicus and Kafka’s Oktavhefte: A Comparative Stylistic and Philosophical Analysis”, Diss., Univsersity of Colorado Boulder, 2014, p.8.

107_{James Joyce would even ask Samuel Beckett to read to him from it when he was going blind.} Ben-Zvi Ibid.

108_{Fritz Mauthner, W¨orterbuch der Philosophie: Neue Beitr¨age zu einer Kritik der Sprache,} 1st ed. (M¨unchen und Leipzig: Georg M¨uller, 1910) p. XI.

Bound to language, as we are, knowledge can only be conveyed through it, therefore any epistemology will eventually also be a philosophy of language.

Yet, as alluded to in section (2.3), Mauthner echoes Nietzsche in asserting that meaning within language is simply a matter of convention:

Die Sprache ist nur ein Scheinwert wie eine Spielregel, die auch umso zwingender wird, je mehr Mitspieler sich ihr unterwerfen, die aber die Wirklichkeitswelt weder ¨andern noch begreifen will.109

While this talk of rules and games reminds one of the late Wittgenstein, Mauth-ner also had another commonality in thought with the late years of the greatest Austrian language philosopher: he asserted that language was ultimately just a subjective system which could dissolve:

Wo immer nun wir den Versuch machen werden, das Wesen der Erkenntnis zu entdecken, da wird es sich so genau wie die Sprache als eine soziale Erscheinung, vielleicht sogar als eine soziale Illusion enth¨ullen. [...]

Der weitere Verlauf aller Untersuchung dieser Sprachkritik wird uns lehren, [...] zu dem gleichen Zweifel an der Festigkeit unseres Wissens-geb¨audes [zu] kommen.110

As the social construct which it is, language could never convey real truths, only the truths we mutually agreed upon.

When it comes to the objects and concepts that words reference to, Mauthner

Concepts and

Reference seems to clearly echo what Nietzsche asserted in Jenseits von Gut und B¨ose, that

the signifi´e and signifiant do not always coincide, yet Mauthner takes it out of the philosophical sphere and states it more generally about language:

Sowie aber die Wirklichkeitswelt verglichen wird, d¨urfte es ohne Beweis einleuchten, daß es eigentlich Allgemeinvorstellungen gar nicht gibt, daß es in unserem Ged¨achtnis nur ¨ahnliche, ineinander fließende, verwaschene Vorstellungen gibt, die in Vorrat hinter dem Begri↵ ste-hen, und aus denen die Phantasie immer diejenigen hervorlangt, die sie gerade braucht oder die ihr die unbewußte Assoziation zuf¨uhrt.

Wobei nicht zu vergessen ist, daß nur wenige Menschen beim Wort-gebrauch es auch f¨ur n¨otig halten, den einzelnen Begri↵ oder das Wort jedesmal aus dem Vorrat der Vorstellungen zu speisen und sie so lebendig zu machen oder zu erhalten.111

Nietzsche still asserted that di↵erent vocabularies may or may not coincide with di↵erent philosophies; Mauthner seems to fully negate that possibility. If we read

109_{Mauthner, Beitr¨age zu einer Kritik der Sprache [1902] p.25.} 110_{Mauthner, Beitr¨age zu einer Kritik der Sprache [1902] p.34.} 111_{Mauthner, Beitr¨age zu einer Kritik der Sprache [1902] p.112.}

his word “Allgemeinvorstellungen” as something like general Saussurian signifiants, then Mauthner denies them. To him, language is more of a sea of subjective signifiants that we all name in mutually agreed upon signifi´es, despite not actually knowing whether we can convey our information - the only help is to use our non-linguistic sensory input.

If language is such a subjective unstable entity, what then is it useful for? Art and Philosophy

Mauthner sees one prime importance in language in the transmission of emotions through (linguistically driven) art:

Hier will ich aber nur darauf hinweisen, daß auch diese wahrhaft grauenhafte Entdeckung nur erkl¨aren hilft, warum die Sprache wohl ein herrliches Kunstmittel, aber ein elendes Erkenntniswerkzeug ist. Denn der Dichter will immer nur eine Stimmung mitteilen. Seine Seelensitu-ation. Was der Stimmung zu Grunde liegt, das Wirklichkeitsbild, h¨alt die Poesie nur zusammen, wie der Strick einen Rosenkranz. [...]

Anders in der wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung. Hier soll nichts Stimmung sein, hier ist nicht ein sinnf¨alliger Vorgang. Die Mehrdeutigkeit jedes einzelnen Wortes wird durch kein Ganzes vorher gemildert oder gedeutet, und so kann am Ende kein Ganzes entstehen.112

The reason for the failing of language in a scientific context is its triumph in an artistic context: there is never an absolute truth, but always ambiguity.

We have seen above that Mauthner asserts that we are bound to language for all of our expression and epistemology; however, what is his position on conjunction of thought and language? Mauthner saw, as mentioned before, language ultimately just as a system of social convention, yet he did follow Hamann in saying that thought and language coincide:

[E]s gibt kein Denken ohne Sprechen, das heißt ohne Worte. Oder richtiger: Es gibt gar kein Denken, es gibt nur ein Sprechen.113

Even more so, he continued speaking of thought without language, and separated instinctive thoughts from reason114 _{- yet for anything transcending instinct we do}

need language.

While Mauthner held views analogous to Hamann in his construction of reason and language, he also endorsed similar views as the Romantics when it comes to the connection of language and culture. Where Herder and Humboldt constructed language already as the memory of a nation,115 _{Mauthner does exactly the same}

thing.116 _{However, while memory had a positive (or at least neutral) connotation}

with his ancestors in thought, Mauthner clearly also sees some disadvantages: 112_{Mauthner, Beitr¨age zu einer Kritik der Sprache [1902] p.93f.}

113_{My emphasis. Mauthner, Beitr¨age zu einer Kritik der Sprache [1902] p.176.} 114_p.180↵

115_{See sections (2.1) and (2.2).} 116_p.179

Es steckt also in dem Gebrauch der Muttersprache eine unverh¨alt-nism¨aßig große Masse von ererbtem, nicht erworbenem, nicht nachkon-trolliertem Gute, das auf Treu und Glauben benutzt wird.117

Mauthner criticizes the unreflected usage of words, claiming that a word which is used without thought is not more than the instinctive thought as found in animals. Due to everything discussed so far, Mauthner not only doubts the possibilities

Metaphysics and Science

of science within language, he outright called its endeavors metaphysical : Was die Wissenschaft dazutut, ist also wieder mythologisches Beiwerk. Sie m¨ußthe ehrlich sagen: Hier, an der untersten wie an der obersten Grenze des Wahrnehmbaren, versagt uns mit der Sprache das Denken. Wir k¨onnen nichts mehr beobachten, nichts mehr vorstellen, nichts mehr wissen. Und selbst die Widerspr¨uche, auf die wir stoßen, sind nicht klar gewußthe Widerspr¨uche, sie sind in Wahrheit metaphysisch, spielerisch, witzig, also dumm.118

If all the scientific cases that cannot be perceived by the naked eye are metaphysical because or language fails us, our entire world view will be based on metaphysics, but not on truths.

While Mauthner doubted the possibility of truth because of the limits of language,

Ernst Mach

Ernst Mach went a di↵erent way. Influential physicist by trade,119 _{Mach was a}

stark opponent of metaphysics and supported an extreme nominalism. Only what we perceive with our senses can be considered true:

Meine s¨amtlichen physischen Befunde kann ich in derzeit nicht weiter zerlegbare Elemente aufl¨osen: Farben, T¨one, Dr¨ucke, W¨armen, D¨ufte, R¨aume, Zeiten u.s.w.120

Which, as Egon Friedell121_{points out in his revealing Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit,}

leads even to the rejection of the Kantian categories as the makeup of our minds122

- according to Mach, everything is an impression.

Since we perceive everything through our senses, Mach has a vastly di↵erent

Hyper-Empiricist

Truth approach to truth than other many others; for instance, when we put a pencil into

a tank of water, and we see it as buckled due to the modulation of light waves in the water, how are we to decide which one is real: the buckeld pencil we perceive

117_p.180 118_p.262

119_{A young Albert Einstein was indebted to his theories. Janik and Toulmin p.133.}

120_{Ernst Mach, Erkenntnis und Irrtum: Skizzen zur Psychologie der Forschung (Leipzig: Johann} Ambrosius Barth, 1906) p.8.

121_{Egon Friedell was a journalist, actor, writer and cultural philosopher. His principal work is} the Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit, a 1500 page “personal” history of Western civilization from the medieval times up until the First World War.