Language and Enlightenment: The Berlin Debates of the Eighteenth Century

Language and Enlightenment: Berlin Debates of Eighteenth Century, by Avi Lifschitz. Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012. xii, 231 pp. $110.00 US (Cloth). Joseph de Maistre and Legacy of Enlightenment, edited by Carolina Armenteros and Richard A. Lebrun. Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, University of Oxford Press, 2011. ix, 254 pp. $105.00 US (Paper). Isaiah Berlin is perhaps most recognized to general readers for Hedgehog and Fox, in which be divided great thinkers into Hedgehogs, who know world though one grand idea and Foxes, who use many ideas. Canadian readers note him as one of intellectual influences Michael Ignatieff, former leader of Liberal Party. For scholars attempting to define eighteenth century, Berlin is known for his 1973 essay The Counter While he neither created concept nor coined term, Berlin did a great deal to advance idea. For Berlin, Counter Enlightenment rejected universalism of Enlightenment, substituted pluralism, and originated among German intelligentsia. Berlin's characterization of movement met with considerable criticism and, thanks to work of Robert Darnton, Darrin McMahon, and others, consensus now places birth of Counter Enlightenment attitudes in France's pre-Revolutionary Grub Street. Nonetheless, Berlin's learned shadow hangs heavy over depictions of Aufklarung in Germany and surrounds those thinkers whom he identified as members of Counter Enlightenment. (See, for example, debate in Journal of History of Ideas, 68, 2007, pp. 635-81.) Both books under review attempt to cast away such shadows. In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, (Book 3, Chapter 11, [section]1), John Locke proposes speech as the great bond that holds society together, common conduit, whereby improvements of knowledge are conveyed from one man, and one generation to another.... With speech, and linguistic signs that compose it, able to do so much to advance humanity, it is not surprising that many eighteenth-century scholars devoted considerable to nature and origins of language. Avi Lifschitz begins Language and Enlightenment nearly a century after Locke's claim and focuses his study within Berlin Academy of Sciences and further narrows his gaze to Academy's Prize of 1759 which asked respondents to consider What is reciprocal influence of Opinions of a People language, and of Language Opinions? As Lifschitz notes, interesting aspect of query focuses on epistemological and cognitive aspects of (p. 93). Enlightenment linguists argued that human could not form independently of linguistic signs that encoded it. People composed their opinions in language, even in their own minds. This countered traditional views espoused by thinkers such as Descartes who posited that language communicates ready-made thoughts or, in other words, that ideas precede language. Lifschitz makes case that philosophers in Berlin believed language plays a major constitutive role in human thought (p. 2). From this position, he claims that eighteenth-century intellectuals understood signs to be both arbitrary and artificial as seen in variety of human languages. There was nothing obvious linking an over-garment to English word coat or to German word mantel. But where humans could use signs to refer to concepts, animals expressed only sounds. serious investigations began when scholars sought origins of language, upon which rested all human institutions. Rejecting easy answers in providential gifts of speech, they adopted what Lifschitz calls a more naturalistic outlook, which sought intellectual abilities of humans within explanations residing outside of supernatural. He goes so far as to propose this insistence naturalism in relation to emergence of human skills and institutions (p. …

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