Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Humboldt , more known under the name Wilhelm von Humboldt (in French, Guillaume de Humboldt ), (June 22nd 1767 with Potsdam - April 8th 1835 with Tegel) is a linguist, civil servant, diplomat, and German philosopher .

Biography

Humboldt was an astonishing inventor of concepts in the field of what we would call today the social sciences. It is what paradoxically resulted in neglecting the movement of its own thought, its writing. One reduced it to the role of simple precursor of the thought of our time, of Martin Heidegger with Jürgen Habermas, while passing by Ernst Cassirer or Noam Chomsky. It is what also did, more recently (2006), the French Alexis Philonenko, according to whom Humboldt would have remained prisoner, contrary to Bergson, of the Scolastique and Aristote. Still let us quote the " récupération" liberal of its political thought and its philosophy of the history. Wilhelm von Humboldt is the older brother of not less famous the Alexander von Humboldt.

After scientific studies, as well as Greek and from French, it receives an introduction to the Philosophie and in administration. He studies during three six-month periods the Philologie and sciences with Göttingen with Lichtenberg and reads Kant, whose first criticism will inspire its grammatical thought, the second and third its anthropology and its esthetics. Humboldt was the friend of Goethe and especially of Friedrich von Schiller. These two poets inspired to him by the often innovative esthetic reflections.

From 1797 to 1799 Humboldt lived in Paris, where it could measure the gap between Kantian philosophy and the French philosophy of the Ideologists. The Ideologists thought well the difference of the languages, but in a mental context good too empirist or sensualist.

At the end of its Parisian stay, he travels to Spain and especially to the Basque Country. He thus discovers the language and the culture Basque. It is for him the occasion to set up, with a hundred and fifty years in advance, the principles of description modern Linguistique: the study of the languages in synchrony, the study descriptive and nonprescriptive, importance of the corpus and the advisers as well as the importance of grammatical categories precisely describing the phenomena suitable for the studied language, which leads it to reject the relevance of the categories of grammar Latin E for a language like the Basque. Later (1827-1829), it will try to reconsider in all its general information universal grammar.

As a civil servant, it will be until in 1819 with the service of the Prussian State, in particular as diplomat in France. As a Prussian Minister for Education (1809-1810), it reformed the school system deeply, while being based on the ideas of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi - it sent the Prussian professors to study its methods in Suisse. It founded the Université Humboldt of Berlin. Representative of the Prussia with Hardenberg with the Congress of Vienna, it defends against overcome France a rather hard line. One of the large liberal reformers with Stein, it had a determining action within the government until in 1819 when it ends up taking its retirement because of its opposition to the ideas reactionaries which prevailed. He devoted himself then primarily to the study of the language. That will be worth the mockeries of another diplomatic writer to him, Chateaubriand.

In spite of this career of servant of the State, contrary to the other philosophers of the history of his time, Humboldt will consider all its life that the culture of oneself, the Bildung , is more essential than the service of the State. The individual is not reducible with his role on the scene of the history. It is this singular liberalism, nothing less than economic, which leads Humboldt to be interested in political philosophy, with the Esthétique, the philosophy of the history, but as with the religion, from the point of view Christian as Plato ician, even hindouist (comment of the Bhagavad Gita ). The creative power which constitutes the bottom of the cultural and anthropological universe expresses as well in individual realities as collective. If Humboldt rejects any systematic philosophy, if it is interested in fields varied, sexuality with the history while passing by the religion, its thought is not less deeply coherent. In any case, coherent in-depth.

Multiplicity of the languages and universals of the language

One mainly retained his work his philosophy of the language, which is in particular proposed by Ernst Cassirer in its philosophy of the forms symbolic systems, but also more generally and more vaguely, which one called the assumption humboldtienne, which met with the Hypothèse Sapir-Whorf, which wants that the categories of the spoken language predetermine our categories of thought. Each language would contain an irreducible vision of the world. It is there to neglect the interest of Humboldt for the universal dimension of the language.

One also often stresses his typology of the languages. For as much, Humboldt forever lost of sight research of the universals of language. It makes use of categorization in inflected languages (Russian, German, Latin), agglutinant languages (Turkish, Hungarian), incorporating languages (Nahuatl) and insulating languages (Chinese). Concerning Chinese, after having defended the thesis which it was about a language without clean formality, it was brought by the French sinologist Abel-Rémusat to revise his position.

The concept of form of the language does not correspond about it less to one effort to think the language like an autonomous reality, beyond the multiplicity of the lexical and grammatical forms. The language is thus not that the reflection of national psychology, even less one arsenal of forms of which the speakers would be useful themselves. It is necessary to recognize a style and a clean creativity to him, from where concepts, often badly included/understood, of character, or of internal format of the language. In 1834, it baptizes the family of the Langues austronésiennes, extended to the Easter Island, Austronesian in Über die Kawi-Sprache auf der Insel Java (1836 -39, posthumous publication). The Kavi is a spoken old literary language with Java. This work from now on is regarded as linguistic matter specimen.

It is his/her brother, Alexander von Humboldt, which published in particular its posthumous work, On the diversity of construction of the languages and their influence on the development of the human thought , known still under the title of Introduction to work on the Kavi . Pierre Caussat translated it into French.

The contemporary rédécouverte of Humboldt

As of the nineteenth century, the French philosopher Antoine Augustin Cournot had appreciated the work of the Humboldt brothers, whom it quotes. One can in particular bring his theory closer to the chance as meets several independent causal series, of a fragment of the Humboldt young person written in 1791, " On the laws of the development of the forces humaines" , where Humboldt compared the future social sciences with the physical model of causality. It is true that Cournot could not be informed of this draft, new at the time. In the same way, the idea that the historical order exists, but is not deterministic, that it holds the medium between the random series and the physical laws, that it expresses effects of structure, function of a vitalism which exceeds the individual reason, can be close to the philosophy of the Humboldt young person, his many work on the history and historiography.

In the Germanic world, they are especially Cassirer and Heidegger which, before Jürgen Habermas, insisted on the fundamental character of the reflection humboldtienne, less that of the Humboldt young person that of the linguist. But they clarified aspects quite different from its designs. Cassirer retained the Kantianism of it, the idea that the culture expresses functions and structures which are not the product of abstracted intellect, but of imagination symbolic system. Heidegger brings closer to its design To be it and of Time the design humboldtienne of an activity which overhangs time and is expressed there in an inopportune way. Finally Habermas appreciates in the linguistics of Humboldt minus its pre-structuralism that its dialogical hermeneutics, inseparable from the ethics of Bildung.

On his side, the American linguist Noam Chomsky privileged the rationalism of Humboldt, and retained that any language expresses in seemingly different structures grammatical the same universal understanding, which would make of Humboldt a Cartesian linguist…! He has on the other hand, like Cassirer, rejected the romantic dimension of his thought.

Humboldt is the subject today of a redécouverte and a revaluation of its prolific and innovative work of linguistics. One will be able in particular to read publications in German on Humboldt with the following address: as well as work of Jürgen Trabant, in particular its edition of the introduction to work on Kavi .

In France, Humboldt however remains ignored, in spite of two monumental theses, that of the Germanist Robert Leroux ( Guillaume de Humboldt, formation of its thought until in 1794 , 1932) and of the philosopher Jean Quillien ( the philosophical anthropology of G. of Humboldt , 1991). (More recently Henri Dilberman also devoted a thesis of philosophy to him, namely metaphysical and anthropological interpretation of the language in the work of W. von Humboldt , Septentrion, 1997/ANRT 2002, two volumes. ISBN 228400542X)

Let us quote also important work of the linguist and poet Henri Meschonnic, who wants to be with more close to the authentic thought of Humboldt, of his own, foreign movement with university philosophy.

Lastly, in 2006, commentator of Kant, Alexis Philonenko celebrates it devoted a test to him, Humboldt at the dawn of linguistics (Beautiful Letters, ISBN 2251443118). He shows there all the importance of Humboldt like precursor in linguistics and in some other social sciences. Philonenko, a little in the form of a Jean Quillien before him, is presented in this work like the first French contemporary philosopher who knew to redécouvrir Humboldt and to locate it at its exact place in the history of the ideas. Like Dilberman before him, it is sensitive to the analogies between the thought of Humboldt and that of Henri Bergson. But is to underline the philosophical superiority of the French philosopher. One can in any case think that the celebrity of Philonenko will allow the French public finally to consider Humboldt as an author worthy of interest (even if one can consider it regrettable that Philonenko tends a little too to underline, as before him Hegel or Heidegger, philosophical limits of Humboldt, instead of showing which were its conceptual contributions and its principal intuitions).

All occurs in fact like if, periodically, the philosophers, like the linguists, believed to redécouvrir Humboldt, and to read in its work the first steps obscure of their own designs or their own philosophical or linguistic options. It is that the thought of Humboldt, seldom seized in its originality, constitutes a reserve of direction for the philosophy of the future. " Humboldt, more future than of passé" , could say Henri Meschonnic.

One thus brought the concept humboldtien of form to the language closer to structuralism, his dynamic vision of the language of the linguistics of the word, the role which it allots to the dialog between the individuals and the cultures of the contemporary Herméneutique (Habermas). These evaluations are often contradictory, which translates less the darkness of the thought of Humboldt than its richness. As showed it the philosopher Jean Quillien, it is necessary to today replace the discoveries of von Humboldt inside its own philosophical anthropology, of its refusal to oppose the individual and the collective, but also to dissolve the individual, or the word, in the totality of a Nation or a language.

As regards linguist, the university Presses of Nancy published a number of the review Verbum (volume XXVI, n°1-2, 2005) entirely devoted to Humboldt. The authors propose a very exact vision there, closest to the sources, the contribution of Humboldt. (Wilhelm von Humboldt, the languages and its theory of the language, works coordinated by Anne-Marie Chabrolle-Cerretini).

Humboldt and the university

Humboldt founded in 1810 the Université Humboldt with Berlin - what makes of it a visionary research pedagogy, able to include/understand why it is necessary to confront the disciplines to advance the knowledge without prejudices. The University does not reflect a philosophical system, but is founded on the free research and collaboration of the students and the professors. (See on this point the report of W. von Humboldt: “On the internal organization and external of the educational establishments in Berlin”.)

Works

  • Sokrates und Plato über die Gottheit (1787-1790)

  • "Über die Gesetze der Entwicklung DER menschlichen Kräfte" (fragment)

  • Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit of Staates zu bestimmen (1791) This text, perhaps most famous of Humboldt, became traditional political Libéralisme.

  • Über den Geschlechtsunterschied (1794)

  • Über männliche und weibliche Form (1795)

  • Plan einer vergleichenden Anthropology (1797)

  • Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert (1797)

  • Ästhetische Versuche I. - Über Goethe' S Hermann und Dorothea (1799)

  • Latium und Alas (1806)

  • Geschichte of Verfalls und Untergangs DER griechischen Freistaaten (1807-1808)

  • Pindars "Olympische Oden" (translated from the old Greek) (1816)

  • Aischylos' "Agamemnon" (translated from the Greek) (1816)

  • Über das vergleichende Sprachstudium in Beziehung auf die verschiedenen Epochen der Sprachentwicklung (1820)

  • Über die Aufgabe of Geschichtsschreibers (1821)

  • Über die Entstehung DER grammatischen Formen und ihren Einfluss auf die Ideenentwicklung (1822)

  • Über die Buchstabenschrift und ihren Zusammenhang put dem Sprachbau (1824)

  • Bhagavad-Gita (1826), first translation in German

  • Über den Dualis (1827)

  • Über die Sprache der Südseeinseln (1828)

  • Über Schiller und den Gang seiner Geistesentwicklung (1830)

  • Rezension von Goethes Zweitem römischem Aufenthalt (1830)

  • Über die Verschiedenheit of the menschlichen Sprachbaus und seinen Einfluss auf die geistige Entwicklung of Menschengeschlechts (1836)

Translations of French Humboldt, like texts written directly by him of French

  • Beyer (Elisabeth), Wilhelm von Humboldt. Parisian newspaper (1797-1799). Plaster filling/Actes Sud. 2001
  • Caussat (Pierre), Introduction to work on Kavi and other tests. Threshold. 1974.
  • Caussat (Pierre), the source language of the nation. Mardaga. 1996.
  • Caussat (Pierre) European Literary Inheritance. Anthology in French language under the direction of Jean-Claude Polet 11a Volume. National rebirths and universal conscience. De Boeck University 1999.
  • Laks (Andre), Disselkamp (Annette), G. of Humboldt. The task of the historian. University presses of Lille. 1985. esthetic
  • Losfeld (Christophe), Tests on Hermann and Dorothée de Goethe followed by a French article addressed to Madam de Staël. University presses of North. 1999.
  • Losfeld (Christophe), Quillien (Jean) (introduction), the eighteenth century. Plan of a compared anthropology. University presses of Lille. 1995.
  • Mannoni (Olivier) (transl.), Wattenberg (Yves) (editor), Of the spirit of humanity and other tests on the deployment of oneself , Editions First Stones, Mayenne, 2004.
  • Nerlich (Brigitte), Anthology of German linguistics at the XIXe century. Nodus Publikationer. Münster. 1988.
  • Rousseau (Jean), Thouard (Denis) (editors), edifying and curious Letters on the Chinese language. Humboldt-Abel Remusat. Editions of North. 1999. (texts written directly in French)
  • Thouard (Denis), On the national character of the languages. Threshold. Tests. 2000. (bilingual edition).
  • Arbor (Alfred) (editor), Of the origin of the grammatical forms and their influence on the development of the ideas followed by Letter to Mr. Abel Rémusat. Ducros editions. 1969. First edition 1859. (Text written in French by Humboldt)

Critical studies

  • Books of Ferdinand de Saussure. Number 53/2000. Droz bookstore. Geneva.
  • Amacker (Rene), " Snows of antan: Humboldt heir to Old the " in Books of Ferdinand de Saussure. Number 53/2000. Droz bookstore. Geneva.
  • Auroux (Sylvain) (under the direction of), History of the linguistic ideas. Volume 3. Mardaga 2000.
  • Caussat (Pierre), Adamski (Dariusz), Marc Seersucker, the source language of the nation, Mardaga. 1996.
  • Caussat (Pierre). " Humboldt in conjunction with Schleiermacher in the light of Nicolas de Cuse" in Books Ferdinand de Saussure n°53/2000. Droz. Geneva.
  • Chabrolle-Cerretini (Anne-Marie), " W. von Humboldt" in European literary Inheritance. 11a volume. National rebirths and universal conscience. 1999. De Boeck University.
  • Chabrolle-Cerretini (Anne-Marie), " The study of the Basque of Wilhelm von Humboldt" in the voyage in the Iberian world and ibéro-American. Acts of XXIXe Congress of the Company of French Hispanistes. Saint-Etienne. March 1999. Publications of the University of Saint-Etienne, 1999.
  • Chabrolle-Cerretini (Anne-Marie), " Language, literature and vision of the world: anthropological approach of the literature of W. von Humboldt." in Acts of the literary conference Inheritance européen.1998. Namur.De Boeck University. 2000.
  • Chabrolle-Cerretini (Anne-Marie), " W. von Humboldt: genesis of the project of a systematic encyclopedia of the languages and the study of the language basque." in Books Ferdinand de Saussure n°53/2000. Droz. Geneva.
  • Chabrolle-Cerretini (Anne-Marie) (coordinator), Caussat (Pierre), Trabant (Jürgen), and alii, " Wilhelm von Humboldt, languages and its theory of the langage" , Verbum , volume XXVII, n°1-2, University Presses of Nancy, 2005.
  • Comtet (Roger), " The Germanic contribution with the reflection on the language in Russia: origins with the slavophiles." in Slavica Occitania. Number 4. Toulouse. 1997.
  • De Mauro (Tullio), Formigiari (Bound), Leibniz, Humboldt and the origins off comparativism. Amsterdam, Philadelphia, John Youngest children, 1990.
  • Dilberman (Henri), the metaphysical and anthropological interpretation of the language in the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt, North, 1997.
  • Dilberman (Henri), " W. von Humboldt: Humanity, individuality and religion" in philosophical Teaching, vol. 52, No 1,2001.
  • Dilberman (Henri), " Language and intersubjectivity at W. von Humboldt" , in philosophical Teaching, vol. 54, n° 5,2004.
  • Dilberman (Henri), " W. von Humboldt and the invention of the form of the langue" , in philosophical Review of France and from Abroad, n° April 2nd, th and th 2006 (PUF).
  • Dumont (Louis), the German ideology. France-Germany and return. Homo aequalis, II. NRF. Gallimard editions. 1991.
  • Friedrich (Janette), " The recourse of Humboldt to the concept of " aspect " " in Books of Ferdinand de Saussure. Numéro53/2000. Droz bookstore. Geneva.
  • Fryba-Reber (AsMarguerite), " To see Humboldt today: a chronicle of a reading plurielle" in Books of Ferdinand de Saussure. Numéro53/2000. Droz bookstore. Geneva.
  • Habermas (Jürgen), Truth and Justification. Translation To groove Rochlitz. NRF. Tests. Gallimard. 2001 for the French edition.
  • Kodiakas/code; Ars semeiotica: Sprachdenken zwischen Berlin und Paris. Wilhelm von Humboldt/the linguistic thought between Berlin and Paris. Wilhelm von Humboldt (2004) number directed by Sarh Bösch & Markus Meßling, vol. 27, n° 1/2.
  • Kokochkina (Elena), " De Humboldt with Potebnja: evolution of the concept of " innere Sprachform " in Russian linguistics. " in Books of Ferdinand de Saussure. Numéro53/2000. Droz bookstore. Geneva.
  • Leroux, (Robert), 1929-30: Outline humanistic theory of the State in Guillaume de Humboldt, in: Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts of Strasbourg 8: pp. 235-240.
  • Leroux (Robert), Guillaume de Humboldt, formation of its thought until 1794. 1932. Faculty of Arts of the University of Strasbourg, fasc. 59. Beautiful Letters (in deposit). Paris.
  • Leroux (Robert) 1932: The theory of the despotism lit at Karl Theodor Dalberg (Dalberg and Humboldt), Paris, Publ. Faculty of Arts of Univ. from Strasbourg. 60.
  • Leroux (Robert), 1934: The Philosophy of the history in Herder and Guillaume de Humboldt. in: Mixtures H. Lichtenberger. Paris, pp. 145-166.
  • Leroux (Robert), 1946: The sexuée metaphysics of Guillaume de Humboldt. in: Mixtures of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Strasbourg, volume IV, study philosophical, Paris.
  • Leroux (Robert), 1948: The sexuée esthetics of Guillaume de Humboldt, in: Germanic studies.
  • Leroux, Robert 1958: The compared Anthropology of Guillaume de Humboldt. in: Strasbourg, Faculty of Arts of the University of Strasbourg (Beautiful Letters), fasc. 135.
  • Leroux, Robert 1959: Philosophical speculations of Schiller judged by Guillaume de Humboldt in: Germanic studies 14,1959, pp.352-362
  • Henri Meschonnic, (Under the direction of) And genius of the languages? Collection Tests and knowledge. University presses of Vincennes. 2000.
  • Meschonnic (Henri), the sign and the poem. Gallimard 1975.
  • Meschonnic (Henri), For the poetic one. Gallimard 1978.
  • Meschonnic (Henri), Towers of Babel. Mauvezin. 1985.
  • Meschonnic (Henri), " To think Humboldt aujourd'hui" in the thought in the language. Humboldt and afterwards. P.U.V. 1995.
  • Meschonnic (Henri), Poetic of translating. Verdier. 1999.
  • Meschonnic (Henri), " Humboldt, more future than of passé" , in Kodikas/Code, " The linguistic thought between Berlin and Paris, W. von Humboldt" , volume 27, n°1-2, Tübingen, Gunter Narr Verlag, 2004.
  • Niemeier (Susanne), Dirven (Rene), Obviousness for Linguistic Relativity. Series IV-Current exits in linguistic theory. John Youngest children Publishing Company. Amsterdam/Philadelphia. 2000.
  • Philonenko (Alexis), Wilhelm von Humboldt or dawn of linguistics, Editions Beautiful letters (238 p.) 2006
  • Pütz (Martin), Verspoor (Marjoijn H.), Explorations in Linguistic Relativity. Series IV-Current exits in linguistic theory. John Youngest children Publishing Company. Amsterdam/Philadelphia. 2000.
  • Quillien (Jean), Humboldt and Greece, Villeneuve d' Ascq, University Presses of Lille, 1991.
  • Quillien (Jean), the philosophical Anthropology of G. of Humboldt, Villeneuve d' Ascq, University Presses of Lille, 1991.
  • Saffer (Stephan), Sprachindividualität: Untersuchungen zum Weltansichtstheorem EIB Wilhelm von Humboldt und Martin Heidegger. Aachen.Mainz.1996
  • Steinberg (Heinz), Wilhelm von Humboldt. Berlin, Preussische Köpfe, Wissenschaft, 2001
  • Stubbs (Elsina), Wilhelm von Humboldt' S philosophy off language, its sources and influence. Lewiston, NY. Edwin Mellen Press.2000
  • Thouard (Denis), " Verstehen im Nicht-Verstehen". Zum Problem DER hermeneutik EIB Humboldt." in Kodikas/code. Volume 21. N°3-4.1998
  • Thouard (Denis), Rousseau (Jean), edifying and curious Letters on the Chinese language. Humboldt-Abel Remusat. Editions of North. 1999.
  • Thouard (Denis), " Goethe, Humboldt: poetic and hermeneutics of the traduction" in the force of the language. Rate/rhythm, Speech, Translation. Around the work of Henri Meschonnic. Under the direction of J-L Chiss and G. Dessons. Champion. 2000.
  • Thouard (Denis), On the national character of the languages. and other writings on the language Presented, translated and commented on by Denis Thouard. Threshold. Tests. 2000 (bilingual edition).
  • Trabant (Jürgen), Humboldt or the direction of the language. Mardaga. 1995.
  • Trabant (Jürgen), " Sprachsinn: the direction of the language, the linguistics and the philosophy of the langage." in the thought in the language. Humboldt and afterwards. P.U.V. 1995.
  • Trabant (Jürgen), " Genius with genes of the langues" in And genius of the languages? Tests and knowledge. P.U.V. 2000
  • Trabant (Jürgen), Traditions of Humboldt. Editions of the House of the Social sciences. Paris.1999
  • Trabant, (Jürgen), " When Europe forgets Herder: Humboldt and langues" , International Germanic Review, 2003,20,153-165. (update April 2005)
  • Velmezova (Ekaterina), " Side of von Humboldt? (A page of history of ethnolinguistic research in Russia) " in Books of Ferdinand de Saussure. Numéro53/2000. Droz bookstore. Geneva.

Castle of Tegel

In possession of the family Humboldt since the end of the 18th century, the castle of Tegel, where he died, Humboldt Schlösschen is also called, more especially as he is always inhabited by the descendants.

Old hunting lodge of the Great Electors, the castle is altered by Schinkel for the needs for Wilhelm von Humboldt. Of traditional inspiration, the manor presents four turns of angle decorated with reliefs of Rauch inspired of the eight divinities of the Tour of the Winds of Athens.

Schinkel also designed the apartments of the castle by preserving the traditional harmony of the unit: the major part of the furniture of the time was collector's items that Wilhelm von Humbolt brought back of its stay to Rome.

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