CSF 2010

Forster and the Language

University of Kassel, International House, June 18 - 19, 2010

With regard to the language origin theories of the late 18th century or the reflections on the "Diversity of the human language structure and its influence on the intellectual development of the human race", Georg Forster's linguistic research may lag behind that of Johann Gottfried Herder or Wilhelm von Humboldt. Nevertheless, Forster and his father were among the first naturalists to engage in comparative linguistic research in the South Seas. In later years, Georg Forster was concerned with the relationship between language and experience. He is less interested in the extent to which language as an 'art' makes thinking possible in the first place. With some proximity to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and German Idealism, Forster rather asks whether language also (pre-)structures our contingent experiences and thus occupies the aisthetic view as well as man's freedom from things. This autonomy would, of course, be a deceptive one, if the individual nevertheless has to form language and insofar has to submit to its set of rules. Or do his 'speechless' experiences help him to distrust rational speech and its abstract truths?

From this perspective critical of understanding, also called "philosophy of life" by Forster, he notes in the fall of 1789 that the "paltry four and twenty signs" of the alphabet are not sufficient to comprehend "the world and its beings". As proof of a 'peculiar' or 'naive' view of nature, he uses the Indian play Sakontola a little later. In the environment of the translation of the 'fairy tale play' Forster deals with the Sanskrit and thus works ahead of the still young Indology around Franz Bopp. Forster owed this insight to the numerous languages and dialects he acquired from his youth: language can also be acquired as an "instrument", the mastery of which opens up a world-historical position for the speaker. This knowledge, which after 1789 was increasingly reflected in linguistic politics, is reflected in Forster's hitherto hardly explored reflections on language didactics and language acquisition, but also on translation theory. In this context, language - for example in the form of technical language - is finally also reflected by Forster as a (colonial) instrument of domination, which commits the individual to a politically poor specialism and at the same time to a Eurocentric model of civilization.

Language, it is said in the famous essay Über Leckereyen, can furthermore be regarded as a 'luxury'. For, on the one hand, an exquisite culture and a rich nature favored reflection "on a pleasure had" and in this respect refined the possibilities of expression. However, the "union of these two natural endowments, taste and speech," does not necessarily contribute to human progress. For the pleasure-seeking human being, speech and thought either become ends in themselves, or, according to Forster, he pleases himself "ever more finely and quickly" in the gruesome "counter-images" of the "useful, good, and beautiful.

This range of linguistic-theoretical and practical topics and aspects can undoubtedly be expanded linguistically, as the deliberately 'open' formulation of the main topic of the 2010 conference suggests, not least with regard to Forster's position in the European linguistic discourse of his time or his influences on renowned linguists close to him.