Herder

On Pain and the Origin of Language

Bibliographic Data

ID9856034
AuthorsIlit Ferber (0000-0002-2893-6236, Tel Aviv University, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume85
Issue3
Pages205-223
Publication date2010-09-24
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Germanic Review Literature Culture Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-8890 • E-ISSN: 1930-6962
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00168890.2010.507569
OpenAlexW1988807516
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited16

This article reexamines J. G. Herder's Treatise on the Origin of Language (1772) and, specifically, the relationship it proffers between pain and the origin of language. Through a close reading of the first part of the treatise, it asks in what sense does Herder's conception of emotion and feeling, particularly pain, as the unremitting source of thought and language—rather than in the instance of their alleged separation from its natural origin—represent the precise moment of the origin of human language. The article argues that for Herder, the birth of human language does not coincide with logos or rationality overcoming subjectivity or physicality, but, rather, a moment of their intimate connectivity. It thus shows that through his use of the term Besonnenheit, Herder preserves this interdependence also at the stage in which language parts from its natural source and becomes distinctly human

Epistemology · Feeling · Linguistics · Logos Bible Software · Natural (archaeology · Rationality · Reading (process · Subjectivity · Theology · Giambattista Vico and Joyce · Historical Philosophy and Science · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

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