Beyond the Babylonian Trauma: Theories of Language and Modern Culture in the German-Jewish Context

Description

Hartung works out both the linguistic and philosophy of language setting as well as socio-political and cultural implications of the radical critique of language developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by philosophers as diverse as Steinthal, Cohen, Simmel or Cassirer. He argues that the theories pleaded for a plurality of linguistic and cultural forms as well as for a new logic beyond the traditional nature/culture partition. Contents 0. Introduction – The Event of Language 1. Of Language as an ‘Event’ – Heymann Steinthal 2. The Origin of Language from ‘Almost Nothing’ – Lazarus Geiger 3. The ‘Spirit of Language’ – Moritz Lazarus 4. ‘The Peace of Humour’ – Hermann Cohen 5. On Tact as Form of Sociability 6. At the Limits of the ‘Critique of Language’ – Fritz Mauthner 7. From the Critique of Language to a ‘Critique of Culture’ – Ernst Cassirer 8. Conclusion – Language, Culture and Individuality Bibliography Index