Caint i Búcairist | Talk in Bucharest

Comhdháil | Event: ‘Goethe and the philosophy of his time’

Áit | Place: Acadamh na Rómáine, Búcairist, an Rómáin. | The Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania.

Caint | Talk: ‘Goethe’s influence on Wilhelm von Humboldt’s philosophy of language’

Cathain | When: 12ú Samhain 2024 | 12th November 2024

Dr Liam Tiernaċ Ó Beagáin
School of Philosophy
University College Dublin
Ireland

Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s (1749–1832) influence is clearly present in homologies of thought found in Wilhelm von Hubmoldt’s (1767–1835) philosophy of language revealed through several observations that establishes the climate of opinion they created through their lifelong friendship. First, one of the closest friendships in Goethe’s life was the one he had with Humboldt. Their first meeting was in Jena in 1784 through their mutual friend, the poet, writer and Kantian philosopher Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805). Goethe’s final letter was to Humboldt with Wilhelm’s last letter to him read aloud at his funeral. Second, their shared education from Schiller both shaped and confirmed much of their thought which was partially influenced by Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Third, in what both Humboldt and Goethe would later recall as the happiest period of their lives, they formed the ‘Jena Circle,’ or what Goethe called ‘unsere kleine Akademie’ (our little academy). Fourth, as Goethe’s comparative biology began to take shape, Humbodlt along with his brother, the polymath Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), worked on a comparative anatomy with Goethe. Fifth and finally, encapsulated in his concept, Urform, the influence of the ideas that Goethe presented in his new biology are seen in Humboldt’s most important insights on ‘Language’ (referring to both mental capacity and creative use). The
parallels between Humboldt’s form of Language and Goethe’s Urform are striking and most certainly homological. In his concept of the ideal plant Urpflanze Goethe describes how all plants have underlying universal features. The urform describes the underlying productive principles that determine the kinds of organisms that are possible (cf. Magnus, 1906: 59). Humboldt’s study of the diversity of languages argues in much the same fashion that all languages are only possible due to their being a universal ‘faculté de langage’ (GS, Vol. 3:
300–41). Unique languages develop in specific environments but all conform to the inner-form which is concerned with the Kantian investigation of how sensibility and understanding are united in experience. Humboldt’s answer replies in Goethian tones that form of Language is both a productive (formally generative) and creative organ of thought (multiplicity of languages and language use). And therefore, like all plants conform to an ideal so too do all languages conform to the ideal form of language.