Overview

What is the role of language in human cognition? Could we attain self-consciousness and construct our civilisation without language? Such were the questions at the basis of eighteenth-century debates on the joint evolution of language, mind, and culture. Language and Enlightenment highlights the importance of language in the social theory, epistemology, and aesthetics of the Enlightenment. While focusing on the Berlin Academy under Frederick the Great, Avi Lifschitz situates the Berlin debates within a larger temporal and geographical framework. He argues that awareness of the historicity and linguistic rootedness of all forms of life was a mainstream Enlightenment notion rather than a feature of the so-called 'Counter-Enlightenment'. Enlightenment authors of different persuasions investigated whether speechless human beings could have developed their language and society on their own. Such inquiries usually pondered the difficult shift from natural signs like cries and gestures to the artificial, articulate words of human language. This transition from nature to artifice was mirrored in other domains of inquiry, such as the origins of social relations, inequality, the arts and the sciences. By examining a wide variety of authors - Leibniz, Wolff, Condillac, Rousseau, Michaelis, and Herder, among others - Language and Enlightenment emphasises the open and malleable character of the eighteenth-century Republic of Letters. The language debates demonstrate that German theories of culture and language were not merely a rejection of French ideas. New notions of the genius of language and its role in cognition were constructed through a complex interaction with cross-European currents, especially via the prize contests at the Berlin Academy.

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this impressive monograph provides a powerful and original contribution to the cultural history of Prussia and sustains its author's claim that 'The Academy became a major centre of intellectual regeneration in Germany'. Tim Blanning, English Historical Review

Lifschitz offers an eye-opening account of an episode in their history of German thought, which, though largely overlooked, clearly holds significant philosophical promise. While a philosophical audience will likely find it longer on historical detail and shorter on argumentative reconstruction than they are perhaps used to, it nonetheless serves to mark out some very promising territory for further investigation, and it is to be hoped that scholars interested in the philosophy of language and its history will take an interest in following up on this lively and provocative discussion. --Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

this impressive monograph provides a powerful and original contribution to the cultural history of Prussia and sustains its author's claim that 'The Academy became a major centre of intellectual regeneration in Germany'. Tim Blanning, English Historical Review Lifschitz has made an important contribution to our understanding of the Aufklarung. His book will be required reading for anyone who now wishes to study the subject. At the same time his work will have much to say to scholars of the European Enlightenment and to anyone interested in the history of linguistic thought in the eighteenth century. Joachim Whaley, History Successfully combining the larger picture with thick description of local contexts, Language and Enlightenment is a rich book that will be read with profit by those interested in the philosophy of langugae, the history of ideas, and cultural history alike. Iwan-Michelangelo D'Aprile, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, London

This impressive monograph provides a powerful and original contribution to the cultural history of Prussia and sustains its author's claim that 'The Academy became a major centre of intellectual regeneration in Germany'. Tim Blanning, English Historical Review Lifschitz has made an important contribution to our understanding of the Aufklarung. His book will be required reading for anyone who now wishes to study the subject. At the same time his work will have much to say to scholars of the European Enlightenment and to anyone interested in the history of linguistic thought in the eighteenth century. Joachim Whaley, History Successfully combining the larger picture with thick description of local contexts, Language and Enlightenment is a rich book that will be read with profit by those interested in the philosophy of langugae, the history of ideas, and cultural history alike. Iwan-Michelangelo D'Aprile, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, London Lifschitz's extensive and patient historical analysis ... enriches in many ways our knowledge of the Berlin debates and helps us think in new ways about the authors and works that characterize the age of Enlightenment. Stefano Gensini, Historiographia Linguistica This excellent, lucid and stimulating volume compellingly demonstrates the multifaceted complexity and fascination of eighteenth-century grapplings with language in Berlin and beyond ... Language & Enlightenment is a masterly work of intellectual history, taking ideas seriously and summarising them with great lucidity, while always relating them to cultural, social and political aspects. Adam Sutcliffe, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

Author Information

Avi Lifschitz is Lecturer in Early Modern European History at University College London (UCL), and Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin. He is co-editor of Epicurus in the Enlightenment (2009).

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