Pub: Michael N. Forster, AFTER HERDER.

Forster, Michael N.  After Herder: Philosophy of Language in the German Tradition.  Oxford: OUP, 2010.

Philosophy of language has for some time now been the very core of the discipline of philosophy. But where did it begin? Frege has sometimes been identified as its father, but in fact its origins lie much further back, in a tradition that arose in eighteenth-century Germany. Michael Forster explores that tradition. He also makes a case that the most important thinker within that tradition was J. G. Herder. It was Herder who established such fundamental principles in the philosophy of language as that thought essentially depends on language and that meaning consists in the usage of words. It was he who on that basis revolutionized the theory of interpretation ("hermeneutics") and the theory of translation. And it was he who played the pivotal role in founding such whole new disciplines concerned with language as anthropology and linguistics. In the course of developing these historical points, this book also shows that Herder and his tradition are in many ways superior to dominant trends in more recent philosophy of language: deeper in their principles and broader in their focus.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

PART I: HERDER

1: Johann Gottfried Herder
2: Herder’s Philosophy of Language, Interpretation, and Translation: Three Fundamental Principles
3: Gods, Animals, and Artists: Some Problem Cases in Herder’s Philosophy of Language
4: Herder’s Importance as a Philosopher
5: Herder on Genre
6: Herder and the Birth of Modern Anthropology
7: The Liberal Temper in Classical German Philosophy: Freedom of Thought and Expression

PART II: HAMANN

8: Johann Georg Hamann
9: Hamann’s Seminal Importance for the Philosophy of Language?

PART III: SCHLEIERMACHER

10: Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher
11: Schleiermacher’s Hermeneutics: Some Problems and Solutions
12: Herder, Schleiermacher, and the Birth of Foreignizing Translation

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CFP: "Hamann and the Tradition," CUNY, Hunter College, March 20-21, 2009.

Update 2: Notes on the conference by Jonathan Gray are available here: http://jonathangray.org/2009/06/10/the-magus-in-new-york/. Update: The conference homepage, including the programme, is here: http://sapientia.hunter.cuny.edu/~german/Conf%20Home.html. Original Post (August 27, 2008): Recent years have witnessed a resurgence of scholarly interest in the work of Johann Georg Hamann, an interest which is spreading among scholars of world literature, European history, philosophy, theology, and religious studies. New translations of work by and about Hamann are appearing, as are a number of books and articles on Hamann’s aesthetics, theories of language and sexuality, and unique place in Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment thought. As such, the time has come to reexamine, in light of recent work, the legacy of Hamann’s writings, which have influenced such diverse thinkers as J. G. von Herder, F. H. Jacobi, J. W. von Goethe, G. W. F. Hegel, Søren Kierkegaard, and Walter Benjamin, to name only an obvious few. We invite papers which investigate or problematize in new ways any underappreciated aspect of Hamann’s impact across the centuries, be it upon a thinker or work, a historical tradition, or even an entire branch of knowledge. Especially welcome are papers which promote dialogue among the diverse disciplines to which Hamann’s work speaks. All conference papers should be delivered in English. Please send a one-page abstract by October 1, 2008 to the conference organizer: Lisa Marie Anderson, Assistant Professor Department of German, Hunter College lisa.anderson@hunter.cuny.edu Keynote Speaker: Oswald Bayer, Systematic Theology, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen Author of Vernunft ist Sprache: Hamanns Metakritik Kants; Johann Georg Hamann: Der hellste Kopf seiner Zeit; Zeitgenosse im Widerspruch: Johann Georg Hamann als Radikaler Aufklärer Confirmed Speakers: John Betz, After Enlightenment: The Post-Secular Vision of J. G. Hamann Gwen Griffith-Dickson, Johann Georg Hamann’s Relational Metacriticism Kenneth Haynes, Hamann: Writings on Philosophy and Language Manfred Kuehn, Immanuel Kant: A Biography; Scottish Common Sense in Germany 1768-1800 Johannes von Lüpke, Director, Internationales Hamann-Kolloquium Katie Terezakis, The Immanent Word: The Turn to Language in German Philosophy 1759-1801

Kinnaman, Ted. "Review of J. G. Hamann's WRITINGS ON PHILOSOPHY AND LANGUAGE." NDPR (August 2008).

Hamann, Johann Georg. Writings on Philosophy and Language. Ed. Kenneth Haynes. Cambridge: CUP, 2007. Although little known among English-speaking philosophers, the 18th-century German Johann Georg Hamann can be credited with originating a number of the most important ideas in the Continental tradition of philosophy of the last two centuries. His early criticism of Kant (for example, in the "Metacritique on the Purism of Reason") introduces the idea that reason is indistinguishable from the particular language in which one reasons, and thus shot through with the same thoroughgoing contingency. His use of pseudonyms and an opaque writing style to unsettle the relation of the author to his texts, and thus to the rational commitments of authorship, foreshadows the use of irony among the early German Romantics, as well as Søren Kierkegaard's own pseudonymous writing. And his charge that pure reason can never truly be pure, and thus universal and necessary, anticipates a long line of antirationalist argument. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=13848.