Date of Award

Spring 2024

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Major

LACS: German Studies

First Advisor

Julia G. Assaiante

Abstract

The Lineage of Language: The Minds of Hamann, Benjamin, and Heidegger

Language, an essential part of human existence, is in its ubiquity almost impossible to define. This aspect of life, nearly absurd to confine into a simple definition, is crucial to the human understanding of being itself. The question of the origin of language began in the late 18th century with the German-language philosopher, Johann Georg Hamann, who criticized the Enlightenment for its reliance on reason alone. The notion that human existence, and therefore language can be grasped into a mere rational approach was similarly rejected by language philosopher Walter Benjamin. The philosophical lineage of the understanding of language continues with philosopher Martin Heidegger who, in his work, recognized the ambiguities and role of language within human existence. In my thesis, I will look to the work of three important German language philosophers, whose work on language attempts to understand it not as a simple “tool,” but as the possibility of being itself.

Within the writing of J.G. Hamann, Aesthetica in Nuce: A Rhapsody in Cabbalistic Prose, and Julia G. Assaiante’s work, Body Language: Corporeality, Subjectivity, and Language in Johann Georg Hamann, I will review Hamann’s understanding of language as a translation from a divine language of creation to human language. The view of language as a divine translation paves the path for Walter Benjamin. In his work, The Task of the Translator, On Language as Such and on the Language of Man, and Lament and Pure Language: Scholem, Benjamin and Kant, Benjamin’s understanding of a divine, or rather ‘pure’ language is delineated. Martin Heidegger throughout his work, Language, Poetry, Thought, depicts language as a mode through which beings are revealed to the world. Language, therefore, similarly to the insights of Hamann and Benjamin, cannot be restricted to a rational understanding.

Through the complex lineage of language which was traced by the three German language philosophers, Hamann, Benjamin, and Heidegger, one will understand language, in its true essence, as ambiguously entangled within being itself.

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