From Humboldt to Wittgenstein – linguistic Picture of the World

Abstract

In this paper is being considered the linguistic approach to the problem of the relationship between a human being and reality. If in the Christian tradition language was given by God and God endowed human beings with the ability to name objects, then in the 17th century German speaking philosophers, following Descartes’ turn to the ego, had changed this thought. Since Herder and Humboldt language has been considered not as a representation of reality, but as a representation of a human mind. These thinkers were the first who revealed the inseparable interdependence of human thinking and language, the influence of language on socio-cultural lifeworld of human beings, the role of language in the development of the world-view. The second crucial phase in the linguistic turn to the attempt of description of reality was made in the first half of the 20th century by Wittgenstein. In his works he came up to the idea of language games, where language becomes an inseverable part of all human activities. Now language permeates the whole human lifeworld (or a form of life in Wittgenstein), and language helps humans to create a picture of the world. However, depending on different languages, language games and arrangements on the rules of these games, we come to the plurality both of the forms of life and of the picture(s) of the world. The surrounding reality is not only being constituted with and by language, but it plays an irreplaceable role in interpretations, explications, explanations, demystifications and understanding the physical structure, laws and patterns of the world around. Language is the primary and paramount way and instrument of communication between humans, it helps not only to describe and explain the reality, but to create new. This approach to language is not new, it has been developed since Leibniz’s, Hamann’s, Herder’s, Wilhelm von Humboldt’s works.

Keywords

language, Reality., Sprachdenken, Weltanschauung, world-view

  • License

    Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)

  • Language & Pages

    English, 37-48

  • Classification

    DDC Code: 110 LCC Code: B1649.R93