WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT’S LINGUO-PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM: HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL ASPECT
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11603/me.2414-5998.2019.4.10871Keywords:
Wilhelm von Humboldt, linguo-philosophical system, human spirit, language, peopleAbstract
Based on the analysis of biographical data and spheres of scientific and social activity of the German linguist and representative of the German philological neo-humanism, statesman and politician, reformer of European University education Wilhelm von Humboldt, the article considers the formation of the linguo-philosophical system, which determined the main directions of development of European and world linguistics of the XX–XXI century.
It was found out that the report “on the comparative study of languages of different epochs of their development”, read at the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1820, became a milestone fact of Humboldt’s scientific biography, the result of personal existential experience, conscious purposeful accumulation of facts of manifestations of the national spirit of different European peoples, including full-fledged languages and dialects, mythological national layer, traditions, cultural artifacts, folklore and fiction texts of different epochs.
It is proved that the fundamental ideas of Humboldt’s linguo-philosophical system are represented and published in the work “on the difference of articles and its influence on organic nature” (1794). The formula of “beautiful unity” of things and phenomena uttered by Humboldt was interpreted as the result of energy activity of corporal world, therefore, all its manifestations, including the human, their actions and language (the book “Hermann and Dorothea”, Goethe,1798), must be considered, understood and systematized, as the results of the operation of the human spirit. Travelling by France, Spain and Italy not only provided Humboldt by new aesthetic experiences, but finally determined the vector of his linguistic research that ended in original linguo-philosophical concept, where an ideal component does not contradict the material one, but complements it: the language is a spirit, and the spirit of people is their language (“the difference of the structure of human languages and its influence on the spiritual development of mankind”).
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