GRP 2010

Forster and the language

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

In view of the theories of the origins of language at the end of the 18th century or the considerations on the "diversity of human language structure and its influence on the intellectual development of the human race", Georg Forster's linguistic research may take a back seat to 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 his later years, Georg Forster focused on the relationship between language and experience. He was less interested in the extent to which language as an 'art' made thinking possible in the first place. With some proximity to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and German Idealism, Forster rather asked whether language also (pre-)structures our contingent experiences and thus occupies the aesthetic view as well as man's freedom from things. This autonomy would, of course, be deceptive if the individual nevertheless had to develop language and thus submit to its rules. Or do his 'speechless' experiences help him to properly distrust rational speech and its abstract truths?

From this perspective critical of understanding, which Forster also referred to as the "philosophy of life", he noted in the autumn of 1789 that the "paltry four and twenty signs" of the alphabet were not enough to understand "the world and its essence". A little later, he used the Indian play Sakontola as proof of a 'peculiar' or 'naive' view of nature. In the context of the translation of the 'fairy tale play', Forster deals with Sanskrit and thus works ahead of the still young Indology around Franz Bopp. Forster owes this insight to the numerous languages and dialects that he acquired from a young age - that language can also be acquired as an "instrument", the mastery of which opens up a world-historical position for the speaker. After 1789, this knowledge, increasingly reflected in terms of language policy, is reflected in Forster's hitherto little-researched 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 ultimately also reflected by Forster as a (colonial) instrument of power that commits the individual to a politically poor specialization and at the same time to a Eurocentric model of civilization.

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

As the deliberately 'open' focus of the 2010 conference suggests, this range of theoretical and practical linguistic topics and aspects can undoubtedly be expanded linguistically, not least with regard to Forster's position in the European language discourse of his time or his influence on renowned linguists close to him.