James Underhill
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638420
- eISBN:
- 9780748671809
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638420.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Theoretical Linguistics
This book investigates the vigorous and inspiring linguistic philosophy of Wilhelm von Humboldt. Many English-speaking authors speak of a ‘Humboldtian tradition’ and associate Humboldt's name with ...
More
This book investigates the vigorous and inspiring linguistic philosophy of Wilhelm von Humboldt. Many English-speaking authors speak of a ‘Humboldtian tradition’ and associate Humboldt's name with research into linguistic relativism and the work of Whorf. But few scholars quote Humboldt's writings, and those who do, often prove only that they fail to perceive the great scope of his work and that they are incapable of seizing the essential principles of Humboldt's ethnolinguistic project. Hegel, Chomsky, Crystal and Habermas all try understand Humboldt through the prism of their own approach to language and ideas. The present work, tries to set the record straight, and to demonstrate why Humboldt's linguistic philosophy will take us much farther than the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Humboldt's work lays down a challenge to philosophy, which has difficulty in taking into account language as it is created and maintained in the world. At the same time, it represents no less of a challenge to approaches to language which seek to step over individual writing and speech, and speak of ‘language’ in abstraction, or seek the deeper structures of cognition. Humboldt takes us back to the origin of language, speech. His concept of language is supra-subjective. Individuals become individuals through language, through conversation in linguistic communities. At the same time Humboldt takes us back to languages in all their diversity. Finding something universal in that diversity, and something essentially specific in each facet of the universal faculty of language is the twin force of Humboldt's vast synthesis of empirical findings.Less
This book investigates the vigorous and inspiring linguistic philosophy of Wilhelm von Humboldt. Many English-speaking authors speak of a ‘Humboldtian tradition’ and associate Humboldt's name with research into linguistic relativism and the work of Whorf. But few scholars quote Humboldt's writings, and those who do, often prove only that they fail to perceive the great scope of his work and that they are incapable of seizing the essential principles of Humboldt's ethnolinguistic project. Hegel, Chomsky, Crystal and Habermas all try understand Humboldt through the prism of their own approach to language and ideas. The present work, tries to set the record straight, and to demonstrate why Humboldt's linguistic philosophy will take us much farther than the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Humboldt's work lays down a challenge to philosophy, which has difficulty in taking into account language as it is created and maintained in the world. At the same time, it represents no less of a challenge to approaches to language which seek to step over individual writing and speech, and speak of ‘language’ in abstraction, or seek the deeper structures of cognition. Humboldt takes us back to the origin of language, speech. His concept of language is supra-subjective. Individuals become individuals through language, through conversation in linguistic communities. At the same time Humboldt takes us back to languages in all their diversity. Finding something universal in that diversity, and something essentially specific in each facet of the universal faculty of language is the twin force of Humboldt's vast synthesis of empirical findings.
W. Underhill James
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638420
- eISBN:
- 9780748671809
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638420.003.0007
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Theoretical Linguistics
This short chapter introduces Wilhelm von Humboldt's concept of worldview. It considers the way the terms Weltbegriff and Weltanschauung were used by Humboldt's predecessor, Kant, and the way those ...
More
This short chapter introduces Wilhelm von Humboldt's concept of worldview. It considers the way the terms Weltbegriff and Weltanschauung were used by Humboldt's predecessor, Kant, and the way those concepts were harnessed and promoted by Hegel. It considers political worldviews such as the Nazi worldview studied by Klemperer. But the author shows the relevance of Jürgen Trabant's crucial distinction, between political, ideological or religious worldviews, on the one hand, and the concept of a language as a human conceptual construction of the world as a place in which each speaker takes his or her place. Ideologies can be discussed and argued over, but only language gives us the concepts, of man, history, destiny, nation, and morality, and so on, which allow us to debate the foundations and validity of ideologies and systems of thought.Less
This short chapter introduces Wilhelm von Humboldt's concept of worldview. It considers the way the terms Weltbegriff and Weltanschauung were used by Humboldt's predecessor, Kant, and the way those concepts were harnessed and promoted by Hegel. It considers political worldviews such as the Nazi worldview studied by Klemperer. But the author shows the relevance of Jürgen Trabant's crucial distinction, between political, ideological or religious worldviews, on the one hand, and the concept of a language as a human conceptual construction of the world as a place in which each speaker takes his or her place. Ideologies can be discussed and argued over, but only language gives us the concepts, of man, history, destiny, nation, and morality, and so on, which allow us to debate the foundations and validity of ideologies and systems of thought.
John W. Griffith
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198183006
- eISBN:
- 9780191673931
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198183006.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, European Literature
This chapter contextualizes Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in relation to both Victorian and contemporary anthropology and travel writing. Critics have argued that Conrad understood little of the Congo ...
More
This chapter contextualizes Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in relation to both Victorian and contemporary anthropology and travel writing. Critics have argued that Conrad understood little of the Congo to which he travelled; however, we must question to what extent a clear understanding would have been possible. If an objective understanding of a foreign culture is virtually impossible, by what standards of transcultural identification or cultural relativism are we judging Conrad’s Heart of Darkness? We must be careful neither to overemphasize nor underrate the problem of bridging cultural divides. This problem is even more crucial to the argument in that Conrad’s work is often seen to be at the centre of this dilemma in the modernist Weltanschauung.Less
This chapter contextualizes Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in relation to both Victorian and contemporary anthropology and travel writing. Critics have argued that Conrad understood little of the Congo to which he travelled; however, we must question to what extent a clear understanding would have been possible. If an objective understanding of a foreign culture is virtually impossible, by what standards of transcultural identification or cultural relativism are we judging Conrad’s Heart of Darkness? We must be careful neither to overemphasize nor underrate the problem of bridging cultural divides. This problem is even more crucial to the argument in that Conrad’s work is often seen to be at the centre of this dilemma in the modernist Weltanschauung.
Steven J. Osterlind
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198831600
- eISBN:
- 9780191869532
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198831600.001.0001
- Subject:
- Mathematics, Logic / Computer Science / Mathematical Philosophy
The Error of Truth recounts the astonishing and unexpected tale of how quantitative thinking was invented and rose to primacy in our lives in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bringing us ...
More
The Error of Truth recounts the astonishing and unexpected tale of how quantitative thinking was invented and rose to primacy in our lives in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bringing us to an entirely new perspective on what we know about the world and how we know it—even on what we each think about ourselves. Quantitative thinking is our inclination to view natural and everyday phenomena through a lens of measurable events, with forecasts, odds, predictions, and likelihood playing a dominant part. This worldview, or Weltanschauung, is unlike anything humankind had before, and it came about because of a momentous human achievement: namely, we had learned how to measure uncertainty. Probability as a science had been invented. Through probability theory, we now had correlations, reliable predictions, regressions, the bell-shaped curve for studying social phenomena, and the psychometrics of educational testing. Significantly, these developments in mathematics happened during a relatively short period in world history: roughly, the 130-year period from 1790 to 1920, from about the close of the Napoleonic era, through the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolutions, to the end of World War I. Quantification is now everywhere in our daily lives, such as in the ubiquitous microchip in smartphones, cars, and appliances, in the Bayesian logic of artificial intelligence, and in applications in business, engineering, medicine, economics, and elsewhere. Probability is the foundation of our quantitative thinking. Here we see its story: when, why, and how it came to be and changed us forever.Less
The Error of Truth recounts the astonishing and unexpected tale of how quantitative thinking was invented and rose to primacy in our lives in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bringing us to an entirely new perspective on what we know about the world and how we know it—even on what we each think about ourselves. Quantitative thinking is our inclination to view natural and everyday phenomena through a lens of measurable events, with forecasts, odds, predictions, and likelihood playing a dominant part. This worldview, or Weltanschauung, is unlike anything humankind had before, and it came about because of a momentous human achievement: namely, we had learned how to measure uncertainty. Probability as a science had been invented. Through probability theory, we now had correlations, reliable predictions, regressions, the bell-shaped curve for studying social phenomena, and the psychometrics of educational testing. Significantly, these developments in mathematics happened during a relatively short period in world history: roughly, the 130-year period from 1790 to 1920, from about the close of the Napoleonic era, through the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolutions, to the end of World War I. Quantification is now everywhere in our daily lives, such as in the ubiquitous microchip in smartphones, cars, and appliances, in the Bayesian logic of artificial intelligence, and in applications in business, engineering, medicine, economics, and elsewhere. Probability is the foundation of our quantitative thinking. Here we see its story: when, why, and how it came to be and changed us forever.
W. Underhill James
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638420
- eISBN:
- 9780748671809
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638420.003.0003
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Theoretical Linguistics
Various authors contend that the term ‘worldview’ comes to us from Humboldt. Few authors seem to understand, however, the full scope of Humboldt's concept of a language which opens up the world to ...
More
Various authors contend that the term ‘worldview’ comes to us from Humboldt. Few authors seem to understand, however, the full scope of Humboldt's concept of a language which opens up the world to its linguistic community and which is itself forged by the thinking and speaking of the members of any linguistic community. This chapter explains confusion which results from borrowing the German term Weltanschauung, which is understood in Hegel's terms as a ‘system of thought’, or Marxist terms as an ‘ideology’. Humboldt's term, Weltansicht, is both broader and more specific. It refers to the way individuals enter into an understanding of the world which their language provides them with. At the same time, Humboldt uses the term to stress the importance of speech and creative writing as subjective expressions of the shared worldview.Less
Various authors contend that the term ‘worldview’ comes to us from Humboldt. Few authors seem to understand, however, the full scope of Humboldt's concept of a language which opens up the world to its linguistic community and which is itself forged by the thinking and speaking of the members of any linguistic community. This chapter explains confusion which results from borrowing the German term Weltanschauung, which is understood in Hegel's terms as a ‘system of thought’, or Marxist terms as an ‘ideology’. Humboldt's term, Weltansicht, is both broader and more specific. It refers to the way individuals enter into an understanding of the world which their language provides them with. At the same time, Humboldt uses the term to stress the importance of speech and creative writing as subjective expressions of the shared worldview.
Lutz Raphael
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- June 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199689590
- eISBN:
- 9780191768316
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199689590.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter suggests a new model for analysing National Socialist ideology or Weltanschauung, which is key to understanding the impact of the Volksgemeinschaft concept. Inspired by Pierre Bourdieu, ...
More
This chapter suggests a new model for analysing National Socialist ideology or Weltanschauung, which is key to understanding the impact of the Volksgemeinschaft concept. Inspired by Pierre Bourdieu, it understands National Socialist ideology as a loosely defined set of concepts and ideas, coexistent and competing with each other in a field of cultural production. The limits of what could still legitimately be regarded as National Socialist were not just defined by those active in the field but were also controlled by official institutions and political leaders. The chapter then scrutinizes the relationship between National Socialist ideology and other political languages circulating in the Germany of the 1930s and early 1940s. Finally, with the example of party political training, it discusses how, typically, National Socialist ideas were generated and widely diffused.Less
This chapter suggests a new model for analysing National Socialist ideology or Weltanschauung, which is key to understanding the impact of the Volksgemeinschaft concept. Inspired by Pierre Bourdieu, it understands National Socialist ideology as a loosely defined set of concepts and ideas, coexistent and competing with each other in a field of cultural production. The limits of what could still legitimately be regarded as National Socialist were not just defined by those active in the field but were also controlled by official institutions and political leaders. The chapter then scrutinizes the relationship between National Socialist ideology and other political languages circulating in the Germany of the 1930s and early 1940s. Finally, with the example of party political training, it discusses how, typically, National Socialist ideas were generated and widely diffused.
