The Foundation of Human Language: The Primazy of The Hearing on the Vision by Herder

Abstract

The experience of thinking necessarily passes through a certain set of words. It is in this game that the game of Johann Gottfried Herder is brought into play. Each time Herder’s play on words is put into play, his thinking is put into play as an original experience of thinking. Language is nothing but man himself. It reveals man’s and man’s own way of being. Language is what it is since and how man understands himself in his world, from and as he experiences the limit of his sphere as the dynamic of his own constitution. Language is man’s way of being as a man. In the essay on the origin of language, Herder seeks to understand and philosophically substantiate the mode of the essentialization of language, that is, proper to man and to man himself. The main opponent with whom Herder confronts is Johann Peter Süssmilch. We are here to follow and understand the thinking of this thinker.