Philosophy of Being and Knowledge

Philosophy of Language

Humboldtianism

The most significant contributions to the development of linguistics and the philosophy of language came from German scholars. At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835), a German scholar and diplomat, played a leading role in linguistics and is justly regarded as one of the greatest linguists in the history of science. For his outstanding contributions to science, Wilhelm von Humboldt and his brother Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) had their names honored by being given to the University of Berlin, which was founded through their initiative. Wilhelm von Humboldt laid the foundations of the philosophy of language, known as Humboldtianism. Humboldt focused on the connection between language, thought, and consciousness. He viewed language not merely as a means of communication but as an expression of the collective spirit. According to him, language and people are inseparable concepts because a people is a community that speaks a single language and thus thinks in the same categories and values. As a diplomat, he advocated the idea of unifying the German lands on the basis that all these lands were inhabited by one people. There is a German people because there is a German language, but there are no Bavarian or Saxon peoples because there are no Bavarian or Saxon languages. The 20th and 21st centuries have confirmed Humboldt's ideas: many countries where people speak different languages experience a crisis of coexistence (e.g., Canada, Belgium, Ukraine).

Humboldt believed that language is a means of understanding the world. The world for human cognition is as it is described by language. For example, there are as many colors as there are words to describe them; different languages use different numbers of words for colors, which means that people speaking and thinking in these languages perceive different numbers of colors. A word reflects not the thing or phenomenon itself but the human mind's interpretation of that thing or phenomenon. Thus, a word is connected not with things but with concepts. It is not concepts that define words, but words that define concepts. People comprehend the world around them through the means provided by language; no other options are possible.

Language is not the creation of an individual person. It is created by the people over the course of their history. Therefore, it is the spirit of the people. Each individual, by mastering their native language, transforms into a personality, that is, a social being. Learning a language is necessary not only to obtain means of communication and information transfer but also to enable thinking. Without language, there is no thinking. Since language is created by the people, thinking, which is based on language, is also determined by the people. Each person thinks as they speak; and each speaks as others speak. This means that members of the same people think in the same categories because they speak the same language. Humboldt regarded language as a living organism endowed with an inherent energy for renewal and change. Thus, language is in constant development.

From this teaching follows Humboldt’s distinction between two components of language: its internal and external forms. The external form of language, according to Humboldt, includes all that manifests language outwardly: lexicon, phonetics, orthography, punctuation, stylistics, etc. The internal form of language is thought, worldview, categories of cognition—elements upon which language is based.

Humboldt’s ideas had a profound influence on subsequent philosophy and linguistics. His followers, who reinterpreted his ideas, are known as Neo-Humboldtians. This movement developed in various parts of the world, with followers focusing on different aspects of Humboldt’s teachings.

• A prominent representative of Neo-Humboldtianism was the Ukrainian philologist Alexander Potebnya (1835-1891), founder of the Kharkiv School of Linguistic Philosophy. The main theme Potebnya adopted and developed from Humboldt is the connection between language and thought. Potebnya emphasized this connection even more than Humboldt. He wrote: "Language is not a means to express an already formed thought but to create it. It is not a reflection of an already formed worldview, but an activity that shapes it." Potebnya reinterpreted Humboldt’s category of the internal form of language and adapted it into the internal form of the word. While Humboldt was interested in language as a comprehensive means of shaping worldview, Potebnya was intrigued by how this principle functions for each specific word. Thus, Potebnya narrowed Humboldt’s basic concept to enable a detailed analysis. He believed that within a word, one can distinguish its external form (sound, spelling) and internal form, understood as concepts. The internal form of a word is what a person thinks when they pronounce or hear the word. To the question of how a word relates to thought, Potebnya used the example of the eye: a word relates to thought as the eye relates to what it sees. Without the eye, there is no seeing; similarly, without the word, there is no thought. It is not thought that is expressed through a word, but a word is expressed in two ways: through external and internal forms. Changes in language (lexicon, grammar) lead to changes in cognition and worldview.
• In the first half of the 20th century, Humboldt’s ideas were revived with new force by Johann Leo Weisgerber (1899-1985), who initiated German Neo-Humboldtianism. Weisgerber emphasized Humboldt’s idea of the connection between language and national culture. In his 1929 work "The Native Language and the Formation of Spirit," he demonstrated that the foundation of national culture formation is language. It is language that determines the forms of perception and cognition. A people’s culture is what its language is, and language is the fundamental means of demarcating any national culture, set of traditions, and values.
• The third environment for reinterpreting Humboldtianism was America, where Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) engaged with this linguistic-philosophical school. In America, they encountered a vast linguistic material not found in Europe: the languages of American Indians. Their research showed that people who speak different languages also think differently. They noted that the same English phrase is understood differently by an American and an Indian, as the American understands what the author intended, while the Indian translates it into their native language and understands it through the lens of their native tongue. Sapir and Whorf developed a concept known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis or the theory of linguistic relativity, which asserts that thinking and perception are conditioned by one’s native language. Experience is a constant flow of diverse and chaotic information that requires organization. Language is the tool that organizes chaotic experience. Therefore, knowledge is not created when someone experiences something, but when they describe it using linguistic means. For example, to have knowledge about something, it is not enough to simply see it; one must be able to describe it with language. When someone looks through a microscope and sees bacteria but does not know what they are called, they do not have knowledge about them, no matter how much they observe. If knowledge is created by language, then knowledge is as the language is. If a language lacks a word to describe a phenomenon, then that phenomenon does not exist for the speakers of that language. Where there is a word, there is a concept.