4 - Hermeneutics and German Idealism

Summary

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, hermeneutic thought in Germany developed in close proximity to the emerging “idealist” and “romantic” philosophical movements inspired by the “critical philosophy” of Immanuel Kant. Crucially this was a time that witnessed the growth of interest in the structure of national languages and literatures, and the question was soon posed as to the relation between what Kant had postulated as the a priori structure governing an individual’s experience and thought and the structure of the actual language that that individual had assimilated from their cultural tradition. This chapter examines the emergence of the strong language-dependence thesis in the approach of the early hermeneutic thinkers Hamann and Herder, and their use of this idea to criticise the “purism” of Kantian thought. It then follows the ensuing response by Kant and his followers, especially Fichte and Hegel, as the latter attempted to bring a linguistic dimension to a Kantian inspired idealism. The issue of the relation of thought to language that was at the heart of this complexly developing debate has continued to be of philosophical concern up to the present.