vygotsky enlightenment precursors

Educational ReviewVol. 61, No. 2, May 2009, 181195

ISSN 0013-1911 print/ISSN 1465-3397 online 2009 Educational ReviewDOI: 10.1080/00131910902846890http://www.informaworld.com

Vygotskys Enlightenment precursors

John Hardcastle*

Faculty of Culture and Pedagogy, Institute of Education, University of London, London, UKTaylor and FrancisCEDR_A_384861.sgm10.1080/00131910902846890Educational Review0013-1911 (print)/1465-3397 (online)Original Article2009Taylor & [email protected]

This article seeks to recover a history of ideas about the role of signs in thedevelopment of mind that connects Vygotsky to major traditions in Enlightenmentlanguage studies. It offers historical perspectives on ideas about thinking andspeaking that shed light on the scope and trajectory of Vygotskys conception ofsigns as psychological tools. The Soviet thinker was schooled in Germanhumanities, philology and philosophy. He was also indebted to thinkers of theEuropean Enlightenment, especially Bacon, Locke and Condillac, for ideas aboutthe role of signs in the formation of mind. I explain how ideas about therelationship between words and ideas set down by Locke were taken up andextended by Condillac in a seminal theory of knowledge. According to Condillac,signs play a key role in the development of mind. Later, Herder and von Humboldtbuilt on Condillacs ideas. Herder suggested that individual psychologies areshaped in concrete, historical circumstances, and pictured an organizing, creativeforce driving linguistic activity. I give a brief account of the way that the conceptof genesis migrated from biology into German philosophy of language, historyand cultural theory. According to von Humboldt, language is an activity throughwhich worlds are disclosed. His work on thinking and speaking, the inner senseof language and the constitutive role of signs in development is discussed. In someways, however, it stands against the instrumental-communicative picture of wordshanded down from Locke. By bringing Locke and Condillac into conjunction withHerder and von Humboldt I aim to offer a picture of the Soviet psychologistsindebtedness to Enlightenment linguistic thought.

Keywords: Vygotsky; Enlightenment; language studies

Introduction

In a letter to Alexander Luria in 1926 (Van der Veer and Valsiner 1991, 153) Vygotskyasked ruefully, Who reads us here? He feared that Soviet psychology was deeplyprovincial, isolated from the research community in the West. Yet Walter Benjaminread Vygotsky. Problems in the sociology of language: An overview, reviews scien-tific research in language studies extending across several fields philosophy, animalpsychology, child psychology, anthropology, linguistics, philology and sociology(Benjamin 2002, 6893). Benjamin discovered Vygotskys article, The genetic rootsof thinking and language, in a journal, Under the Banner of Marxism (1929). It isessentially the same as the fourth chapter of Vygotskys posthumously publishedbook, Thought and language (1986 [1934]), which concentrates on the role of signsin the formation of concepts.

*Email: [email protected]

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The question behind all of the writings Benjamin reviewed concerns theSisyphean problem of eighteenth century semiotic thinking (Mueller-Vollmer 1990a,18): where does language come from? Paradoxically, the standard work that Benjamincites at the beginning of his piece, Le langage et la pense [Language and thought],by Henri Delacroix (1936) expresses serious doubts about whether the question isanswerable at all. In point of fact, Le langage et la pense reflects a history of reactionamong French linguists against German philology that began at a time when Germanscholarship dominated Europe. In the German tradition, hugely influential in Russia,the question of the origin of language was invariably linked to the story of Mankind.However, by the early decades of the twentieth century, new work in structurallinguistics had weakened the hold of German comparative-historical philology onEuropean language studies. Moreover, in a post-Darwinian world, it was apparent thatcomparative-historical inquiries were unlikely to reveal the empirical origins oflanguage. Indeed, it was generally recognized that the so-called primitive andancient languages were in reality well developed and relatively recent when placedon an evolutionary time-scale. Yet for ethno-psychologists the question of the originsof mind remained closely linked to questions about language and cultural-historicaldevelopment.

In connection with Wolfgang Khlers pioneering study of chimpanzees,Benjamin (2002, 81) writes, the special achievement of Vygotsky is that he pointedout how this research on chimpanzees impinged on the foundations of linguistics.Khlers work threw new light on the interface between practical consciousness inprimates and conceptual thinking in humans. His findings indicated a transition fromtool-making activity in primates to human symbolizing. Indeed, his book, Thementality of apes (Khler 1926) was received in Europe as a major contribution tounderstanding the emergence of specifically human culture. Benjamin saw Khlersstudy in a tradition of inquiry going back to the eighteenth century. His own long-standing interest in the philosophy of language had been awakened by lectures onWilhelm von Humboldts writings (Benjamin 2004, 381) and he grasped the signifi-cance of Vygotskys theory about the changing function of egocentric speech and therole of inner speech within traditions of philosophical inquiry inherited from theEnlightenment.

Vygotsky returned to the problem of the relationship between thought and word atthe end of his life, after Alexander Luria and A. N. Leontev had left Moscow forKharkov (Van der Veer and Valsiner 1991, 290). He had become interested in theproblem before he started his career in psychology through his reading in AlexanderPotebnja and Gustav Shpet (Van der Veer 1996, 458). Potebnja and Shpet were inher-itors of von Humboldts ideas about the relationship between thinking and speakingand, whereas Leontev and his associates in Kharkov increasingly emphasized the roleof object-oriented activity (labour) and the mechanisms of externalization in line withofficial Soviet ideology, Vygotsky concentrated on the relations between thought,word and meaning.

Von Humboldt claimed that language is the formative organ of thought (vonHumboldt 1988 [1836], 54). Language, he said, is an activity (Energeia) and not aproduct (Ergon). He also claimed that thought and language are one and insepa-rable from each other. It is hardly surprising then that Ren van der Veer (1996) tookissue with Nicolopoulou and Weintraub (1996) when they doubted the extent of therelevance of the Humboldtian tradition for Vygotskys work. In support of his originalclaim that the Humboldt tradition is centrally important, Van der Veer cites Kozulin

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(1990), Wertsch (1985) and Yaroshevsky (1989, 1993). He also recalls JamesWertschs remark (Van der Veer 1996, 459) that no other aspect of Vygotskys workhas been as consistently ignored or misinterpreted by psychologists as his semioticanalysis and the intellectual forces that gave rise to it. My aim here is to augmentexisting work on these intellectual forces by giving a history of relevant develop-ments in the history of language studies. By bringing Locke and Condillac intoconjunction with Herder and von Humboldt I aim to offer a fuller picture ofVygotksys indebtedness to the Enlightenment than is currently available. Essentially,I agree with Van der Veer (1996, 459) that Vygotsky attempted to integrate differentstrands of thought, the one consisting of ideas originally developed by von Humboldt,the other developed by Marxist thinkers. My focus is the first strand. A further articlewould be needed to tease out connections between the two strands.

One recent discussion of the influence of the Humboldt tradition on Vygotskysthought confirms its continuing relevance. Vladimir Zinchenko (2007, 223) notices acurious lack of consistency in Vygotskys writings about pure meanings by whichhe means thoughts with no words attached. Sometimes Vygotsky speaks as if aseparation is possible between thoughts and words. At other times, he talks aboutembodying and expressing thoughts in words. Further, he notes that Vygotsky largelyignored von Humboldts concept of the inner form of the word. And he goes on tosay that Potebnja and Shpet, who discussed the inner form of the word intensively,interpreted the original formulation in different ways. There was no single authorita-tive interpretation of von Humboldts concept of inner linguistic sense available toVygotsky at the time. My point is that specific knowledge about von Humboldtsformulation and its complicated roots in Enlightenment linguistic thought could throwmuch needed light on Vygotskys intentions as well as illuminate a fundamentalproblem for the human sciences.

Benjamin remarks that inner-speech is the precursor, indeed the teacher, ofthought. He appreciated the significance of Vygotskys contribution within a tradi-tion of inquiry. He knew von Humboldts work well and, indeed, wrote perceptivelyabout it (Benjamin 2004, 4245). My contention is that we need to restore neglectedhistorical perspectives on the mediating role of signs in the formation of mind toappreciate the scope and trajectory of Vygotskys project. My strategy is to give ahistory of the role of language in thinking in four seminal thinkers, Locke, Condillac,Herder and von Humboldt, and to describe the evolution of their ideas as a whole. Mystory differs from existing accounts of Vygotskys precursors that have concentratedon the influence of individual thinkers. V. V. Davydov and L. A. Radzinkhovskii(Wertsch 1985, 54) writing about Vygotsky and activity-oriented psychology claimthat the historical linguistics of von Humboldt, Steinthal, and Potebnja had a stronginfluence on the Soviet psychologist. Historical linguistics was a chief source ofthe idea of the sign as a psychological tool and therefore I shall turn to linguistichistoriography.

Linguistic historiography

Hans Aarsleff (1983, 1984) offers a breathtaking overview of the problem of signs inhuman development from the perspectives of a rich historiography of Europeanlinguistic thought. Roy Harris and Talbot Taylor (1997) match his scholarship. Mydiscussion of Locke, Condillac, Herder and von Humboldt draws extensively on theirwork. Crucially, Aarsleff takes an unusually inclusive view of the field (1983, 6). By

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language study, he says, I refer not only to philology in the conventional sense butto any reasonably coherent and clearly formulated discussion that is specificallydirected toward problems that arise in relation to language. Aarsleff has minedneglected work in linguistic inquiry that modern linguistics largely ignores. Essen-tially, linguists have ignored this work primarily because, in order to establish linguis-tics as an independent science on a par with the natural sciences, they have wantedto discount metaphysical and merely speculative questions about the nature ofsigns. Yet such methods of inquiry once constituted a way of doing philosophy.Thinkers laboured to reconstruct the originary moment when language firstappeared. Where there was no historical evidence, they imagined what must havehappened.

Aarsleff (1983, 4) has recovered a depth of perspectives on why language studiesmattered to those who were engaged in them. A striking feature of his account of thegrowth of language studies during the Enlightenment is his reappraisal of the work ofEtienne Bonnot, Abb de Condillac. Condillacs picture of language influenced thephilosophes, as well as the ideologues, who were chiefly responsible for designingEuropes first national state education system. The encyclopdie was built on thefoundations of Condillacs epistemology. Von Humboldt, who was the chief architectof the Prussian education system, was in direct contact with these developments.Crucially in our context, Condillac evolved a psychological theory about the role ofsigns in developing mastery over mental operations.

It is widely known that Vygotsky linked semiotic mediation to human develop-ment. But it is rarely appreciated that theories about the mediating role of linguisticsigns in the genesis of human consciousness were advanced first during the Enlight-enment. Indeed, the intellectual history of cultural-historical psychologys antecedentsin the Enlightenment is rarely discussed. [A notable exception is to be found in anexcellent article by Chris Sinha (1989).] As far as I am aware, Vygotsky nevermentions Condillac. Did he know the French writers work? I had assumed that he wasschooled in German philology, which for ideological reasons played down theinfluence of French thinkers. But it emerges that Vygotsky probably met Condillacsideas during his time at the Shanyavsky Peoples University in Moscow. Accordingto V. P. Zinchenko, who claimed recently [at the International Society for Cultural andActivity Research (ISCAR) conference, San Diego, California, September 2008] thatVygotskys ideas about semiotic mediation go back to Condillac, Shpet, who wasVygotskys teacher in Moscow, made available his private library containing keyFrench texts.

Vygotsky knew German traditions of thought well and, like Benjamin, he wouldhave appreciated how themes in, say, Herders work were assimilated and extended inthe writings of Hegel and Marx, especially the notion that we are agentive in produc-ing ourselves in history and culture. This is an important consideration in connectionwith shifts in the meaning of the term activity. For Herder and von Humboldtactivity (Energeia) speaks of a Promethean, dynamic, constitutive sense of self-creative processes. Von Humboldt talks about an interactive dynamic between manand his world. Indeed, the German thinker moved beyond the Cartesian separation ofmind and body towards a social view of individuation through acts of conjoining(Verbindung) with others. Marx inherited these ideas, but he was critical of the philo-sophical idealism they represented. Subsequently, especially in Marxist-Leninisttheory, the meaning of activity was inflected towards a notion of labour and thematerial conditions of human productivity.


Origin of language

Seventeenth century discussions about the origin of language were linked to thedebates about the new science. These debates turned on the claims of scientific asopposed to revealed knowledge, where such claims involved challenging the statusof orthodox scriptural interpretation in accounts of the natural world. It was in thecontext of discussions about new ways of producing reliable knowledge that FrancisBacon first called attention to the mediated nature of mental operations and the roleof what he called, instruments of the mind as psychological tools. Bacon (1965[1620], 44) claimed that such instruments and helps augment our naturalunderstanding.

For Ren Descartes, Man was composed of two substances, mind and matter.Whereas the human body is substantially the same as in animals, mind is composeddifferently. According to Descartes, knowledge resides in innate ideas given to mindby God. However, La Mettrie, the author of Lhomme machine (1994 [1751]), afounding figure of modern materialism argued the case that humans, like otherspecies, are the products of nature and that their actions are traceable to physicalcauses. For La Mettrie there was no separation between mind and matter. Thetransition from animals to man is not abrupt (1994 [1751], 41), he wrote. He went onto say that the transformation that made us fully human turns on the use of arbitrarysigns. With the aid of signs, he says, men acquired what our German philosophersstill call symbolic knowledge (1994 [1751], 41). La Mettries materialist, pre-Darwinian story of human development hinged on his account of the mediating roleof words in the transmission of ideas, where everything [all knowledge] is reducedto sounds or words which fly from the mouth of one through the ear of another intothe brain (1994 [1751], 41). But he could not explain how language came about inthe first place. He was not alone in this. The question of where language comes fromwas debated in France and then in Germany throughout the eighteenth century.

Knowledge and ideas

In his treatise, An essay concerning human understanding, John Locke (Locke 1993[1690]) claimed that knowledge comes to us in two ways: first, through the senses;and second, through reflection. The combined processes of sensing and reflectinggives rise to ideas. Further, simple ideas are re-combined into complex ones throughthe actions of mind. According to Locke, sense-derived, simple ideas are combinedinto what he calls ideas of mixed modes and he (1993 [1690], 250) drew attentionto the workmanship of mind in the combining the essences of ideas. Mind, hesays, ties them together by a name (1993 [1690], 224). Thus words were assigned arole in tying ideas together bundling is Lockes word.

Lockes discussion of language in Book Three of An essay concerning humanunderstanding (1993 [1690]) is part of a larger argument against the doctrine of innateideas. He developed a psychological theory to explain how ideas are derivedfrom experience. His focus was on human rather than divine knowledge and hisinterest was driven by his epistemological concern with the origin and nature ofknowledge. Locke was not a linguist. The question of language was always subordi-nate to the problem of knowledge. Above all he wanted to identify imperfections inlanguage design to establish what we might know and communicate and that is whyhe insisted that commonly defined terms are needed. Definitions carried huge political

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significance where concepts such as liberty, equality and justice were publiclycontested.

For Locke, signs were neither natural nor God-given. Rather, they were man-made and conventional. People invented artificial signs (indifferent is the word heuses) to communicate. The concept of the arbitrariness of the sign was a linguisticcommonplace in Lockes day. Locke (1993 [1690], 45) claimed that all ideas aretraceable either to sense impressions or to reflections. According to Locke, althoughsimple ideas derive from sense impressions, our capacity to transform these intocomplex ideas, our capacity to think, depends on the faculty of reflection. For Lockereflection was a providential gift. Thus he struck a compromise with the doctrine ofinnate ideas.

On Lockes view, sense derived, pre-formed ideas exist separately from words.Existing ideas in the minds of speakers are conveyed to the minds of listeners byattaching them to words. Words refer to ideas rather than to things, and we can neverbe completely sure that what one person means is the same as another since they formtheir ideas independently. Locke (1993 [1690], 132) says this about the freedom toattach ideas to words of our own choosing:

[A]nd every Man has so inviolable a Liberty, to make Words stand for what Ideas hepleases, that no one hath the Power to make others have the same Ideas in their Minds,that he has, when they use the same Words, that he does.

We use the same words, but sometimes we mean different things by them. There is noexact match. Different words can designate the same things. We choose our ownwords by virtue of there being indifferent (arbitrary) signs available to communicateideas because the same meaning can be conveyed by various means. There is anelement of creativity in the way we attach our thoughts to signs just as there is acorresponding creativity in attaching our own ideas to other peoples words. Theprice we pay is a degree of indeterminacy.

Later, interest shifted towards the role of words in expressing ideas. The emphasisfell on the internal processes of producing thoughts rather than communicating pre-existing ones. For certain German thinkers, expression involved giving shape andsubstance to the fluid inner meanings of words what Vygotsky, following in theGerman tradition, called their inner sense. The problem of the pre-history of expres-sion, the question of what goes before the articulation of ideas, figures centrally inVygotskys thought. The creative process involved in producing signs was given a newvaluation during the eighteenth-century, particularly in theories of art. But for Locke,the chief concern remained with the limitations of language and the endemic problemof misunderstandings. One mans complex idea he says, seldom agrees with another.

To summarize, Locke assumed that the chief purpose of language was communi-cation and that man-made, indifferent (arbitrary) signs were both artificial andconventional in character. The main function of words was the transference of ideasfrom one individual to another and language was regarded instrumentally as the greatconduit, or the vehicle of thought. On this view, language is the chief tool bywhich we make our thoughts known to others. Words do not play a significant role ingenerating concepts since language enters the process post facto, after our ideas havebeen formed. Ideas come first: words follow.

But this is not the whole story. According to Locke, language has another psycho-logical function. Words, he notes, provide the means by which we fix and record ourthoughts for the help of our own memories (1993 [1690], 269).


As to the first of these, for the recording of our own thoughts for the help of our ownmemories, whereby, as it were, we talk to ourselves, any word will serve the turn. Forsince sounds are voluntary and indifferent signs of any ideas a man may use what wordshe pleases to signify his own ideas.

We represent ideas of things to our selves using arbitrary signs. Signs enable us tostore our ideas of things and to refer to them later when they (things) are no longerthere. Implicit is the assumption that signification plays an instrumental role in gain-ing mastery over memory. Crucially, this notion was taken up by Condillac and devel-oped into a theory about the role of semiotic mediation in the development of mind.

Semiotic mediation

Condillac took up Lockes picture of language and turned it in a striking way. Essaisur lorigine des connaissances humaines [Essay on the origin of human knowledge](Condillac 2001 [1756]), what I shall call here the Essay, was written forty years afterLockes Essay on human understanding. In it Condillac argued that it is chiefly bymeans of man-made signs that we gain conscious control over our psychological func-tions. He ceased to think about language as the vehicle of thought, as Locke haddone, once he grasped the role of signs in gaining mastery over mind.

Condillac was uncompromisingly anti-Cartesian. He derived the faculty of reflec-tion itself from sense experience, claiming that the faculties reflection, attention,imagination and memory and so on have their origins in sensations. The Frenchthinker (Condillac 2001, 30) drew a fine distinction among three psychologicalfunctions: imagination, which revives perceptions; reminiscence, reporting on percep-tions we have already had; and memory, recalling the signs we have attached toperceptions. It is signs and not the traces of perceptions we bring to consciousness inmemory. Thus signs play an instrumental role in gaining mastery over mind. Withoutthe use of man-made signs, Condillac argues, we could never achieve voluntarycontrol over our psychological functions. Language is not just an instrumental tool forcommunicating ideas, but rather a means of producing psychological selves. He saysthis about reminiscence:

When objects attract our attention, the perceptions they occasion in us become linkedwith our sentiment of our being and to everything that can bear some relation to it. Itfollows that consciousness not only gives us knowledge of our perceptions, but further-more, if those perceptions are repeated, it often makes us aware that we have had thembefore and makes us recognise them as belonging to us or as affecting being that isconstantly the same self despite their variety and succession. Seen in relation to thesenew effects, consciousness is a new operation which is at our service every instant andwhich is the foundation of our experience. Without it every moment of life would seemthe first in our existence, and our knowledge would never advance beyond an initialperception. I shall call it reminiscence. (Condillac 2001 [1756], 25)

At an early stage, imagination and reminiscence operate beyond our consciouscontrol. Mind simply reacts to external stimuli. At a later stage, mind gains masteryover its reactions by attaching signs to them that can be consciously manipulated.Consciousness, he says, is a new operation which is at our service every instant andwhich is the foundation of our experience. In the use of signs, consciousness opensup a space for reflection unconstrained by immediate circumstances. He condensedthis insight into a striking formulation: To gain a full understanding of what activates

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imagination, contemplation and memory, we must study what assistance theseoperations draw from the use of signs (2001 [1756], 36).

Condillac distinguished among three kinds of sign: accidental, natural andinstituted (arbitrary) signs. Crucially, he claimed that the invention and use of insti-tuted or arbitrary signs is necessary for mastering recall. The development ofvoluntary control over signs of our own choosing he says, enables us to recoverideas at will. He continues,

So long as imagination, contemplation, and memory have no exercise, or so long as thefirst two have none that we control, we cannot by ourselves govern our attention. In fact,how could we govern it when mind does not as yet have the operation in its power? Thusit does not go along from one object to another except as it is carried along by the impres-sion that things make. But as soon as someone begins to attach ideas to signs he hashimself chosen, memory is formed in him. Once memory has been acquired, he beginsto gain mastery of his own imagination and to give it new exercise. For by the assistanceof signs he can recall at will, he revives, or at least is able to revive, the ideas that areattached to them. In due course he will gain greater command of his imagination as heinvents more signs, because he will increase the means of exercising it. (Condillac 2001[1756], 40)

In summary, Condillac makes three inter-linked claims that informed the theory of therole of signs in development that Vygotsky inherited, although it would be a mistaketo suppose that their ideas were exactly the same. First, Condillac claims that signifi-cation creates the necessary preconditions for the emergence of specifically humanconsciousness. Second, he suggests the constitutive role of man-made signs in thegenesis of the faculties. Third, he indicates the direction that the developmental pathmust follow in its passage from the lower to the higher mental functions. Accordingto Aarsleff, Condillac regretted that his picture of the origins of language gave toomuch to signs and that it was insufficiently social in its orientation. Subsequently,Vygotsky (1986 [1934], 255), following Marx, would stress languages origins insocial activity and practical consciousness for others.

Inner language

Herder reconfigured Condillacs ideas about the mediating role of signs. The Germanthinker pictured an organizing, creative force driving linguistic activity, what he calledder Kraft der Seele (the souls power). This force animates the whole person andworks continuously to sort and combine incoming sensory perceptions. According toHerder, we engage with the world as active agents, producing ourselves as psycholog-ical beings by transforming the incoming flood of sensations into experience. ForHerder (2002, 210), the faculties reflection, imagination, prescience, memory andso on were not so much separate domains of mind as they were products of adynamic, unified process:

One will never get deeply to the bottom of these forces [faculties] if one merely treatsthem superficially as ideas that dwell in the soul, or worse still, separates them from oneanother as walled compartments and considers them individually in independence. Inimagination and memory, recollection and foresight, too the single divine force of oursoul, inner activity that looks within itself, consciousness, apperception, must revealitself. In proportion to the latter does a human being have understanding, conscience,will, freedom: the rest are inflowing waves of the great world-sea.


What Herder (2002, 2045) calls the souls robe or raiment is spoken about interms of an activity of the spirit that depends for its effectiveness on the mediatingpotentials of inner language:

The human being gapes at images and colours until he speaks, until he, internally in hissoul, names. Those human beings who, if I may put it this way, have much of this innerword, of this intuiting, divine gift of designation, also have much understanding Themore one strengthens, guides, enriches, forms this inner language of a human being, thenthe more one guides his reason and makes alive the divine in him. (Herder 2002, 211)

Inner language replaces Condillacs static picture of signs and foreshadowsVygotskys conception of inner sense. Herder speaks of inner activity and the intu-iting, divine gift of designation. This quasi-metaphysical picture of inner languagemakes reflection possible in that it frees us from the confines of our immediate surround-ings. Thus, the use of mediating signs opens up a space for a specifically human wayof orienting oneself towards the world. Herder took up an idea that was already presentin Condillacs writings when he claimed that mind gains mastery over its reactionsby attaching signs that can be consciously manipulated. But he went further than theFrench thinker when he claimed that speech human expressivity is a fundamentallyself-constitutive activity.

On this view, expression is the process by which people make themselves. AsCharles Taylor argues, for Herder signs had meaning not because they designatecertain things or ideas, but rather because they express or embody a certainconsciousness of selves and things (Taylor 1979, 17). [For Herder] Language, saysTaylor, is not seen as a set of signs, but as a medium of expression of a certain wayof seeing and experiencing through which we constitute ourselves as selves.

Human language structure

Von Humboldts story of human development concentrated on language. His majorwork, On language: The diversity of human language structure and its influence onthe mental development of mankind, also known as The Kawi introduction (vonHumboldt 1988 [1836]) reveals how questions about the nature and origins oflanguage shaped the philosophy of history. The Kawi introduction was intended toprepare readers for the main work, an investigation, in three volumes, describing therelations between people and languages across the Malayan Archipelago. It wasdriven by von Humboldts quest for an organizing principle of world history, a univer-sal principle of human development. In essence, he aimed to tell the story of thegrowth of mans mental powers from lower into higher forms:

My aim is a study that treats the faculty of speech in its inward aspect, as a humanfaculty and which uses its effects, languages, only as sources of knowledge and examplesin developing the argument. I wish to show that what makes a particular language whatit is, is its grammatical structure Thus, I connect the study of language with the philo-sophical survey of humanitys capacity for formation [Bildung] and with history. (1988[1836], xvi)

Language was no longer, as it had been for Locke, merely a conduit, a vehicle ora tool for transporting ideas from one mind to another. Rather, it was an active, self-constitutive process, through which worlds are disclosed. Von Humboldt (1988[1836], 110) speaks about the inner sense of words connected to a specifically

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human need for developing thought. Language, he says, stems from a deep creativedrive:

The bringing forth of language is an inner need of man, not merely an external necessityfor maintaining communal intercourse, but a thing lying in his own nature, indispensablefor the development of his mental powers and the attainment of a world view . (vonHumboldt 1988 [1836] 27)

Von Humboldts conception of inner need corresponds broadly to Herders notionof expression. But in contrast with Herder, he insisted on the inter-subjectivenature of the production of linguistic meaning. Indeed, he foregrounds the socialdimension of language production. Additionally, for von Humboldt (1988 [1836], 27),intellectual development was not an individual but rather a dialogical process: [Man]can only bring his thinking to clarity and precision, he says, through communalthinking with others.

Von Humboldts picture of language as the formative organ of thought wasindebted to Herder, but it was more than just a reworking of Herders ideas. He insistedon the heroic, self-constitutive, Promethean aspects of linguistic activity, but alsowrote knowledgeably about languages forms and structures. The significant point forvon Humboldt was the shaping and ordering influence of languages on the developmentof the mentalities (Weltanshauung) of the peoples that speak them their whole orien-tation towards the world. This, he said, held the key to understanding the hidden natureof cultural formation and what he calls the secret evolution of mankind.

Further, von Humboldt reconfigured Herders basic insight that signification andcognition are two sides of the same coin by attending closely to speech itself. VonHumboldt was the founding figure of German philology. He was a capable linguistwho set himself the task of comparing the forms and structures of world languages inorder to grasp peoples mentalities. In due course, he came to question the verynature of the sign, paving the way for the Saussurean breakthrough and for thosephilosophies that went beyond it.

For Locke and Condillac, signs refer to ideas rather than things themselves. Words(signs) were given entities to which meanings are attached. The German thinkerschallenged this view, reconsidering the very nature of the sign.

According to von Humboldt, the act of signification requires the combination oftwo indivisible, structured elements, two sides of the same coin: the acoustic image(speech/sound) and the ideational content (the thought referred to). To recast hisinsight in structuralist terms, the signifier and the signified combine to make up thesign. But in contrast to Saussures abstract system of differentiated signs, vonHumboldt insisted that language was a living, dynamic process. He assiduouslyavoided semiotic reductionism. What is more, he refused to see language as oneamong many systems of signs when it came to concept formation. He writes, theconcept receives its completion through the word, neither of them is separable fromthe other (cited in Lafont 1999, 17). According to Christina Lafont (1999, 24), herefuses to reduce language to some other term from which it could have developed.In von Humboldts words (cited in Lafont 1999, 24): No matter how natural it seemsto suppose a progressive development of language, its invention could only take placeall at once. Man is only human through language; but in order to invent language, manwould have to be already human. Of course, von Humboldts paradox does notsquare with Marxs confident assertion that the origin of language lies in practicalconsciousness-for-others.


Sixteen theses on language was a tightly compressed essay (von Humboldt1989) that was probably written during the winter of 17951796. The essay title,Thinking and speaking, will recall Thought and language (Myslenie i rech). A linkconnecting von Humboldt and the Soviet thinker exists, but actually, von Humboldtsoriginal piece bore no such title. The editor of the collected works supplied theGerman, Denken und Sprechen in 1907. Von Humboldt visited Paris after the GreatTerror (November 1797) where he read Condillac intensively. However, he addressedthe Sisyphean problem of eighteenth century semiotic thinking, (the question ofwhere language comes from) from the standpoint provided by Kants critical philoso-phy (Mueller-Vollmer 1990b). For von Humboldt, the ordering and shaping processesof language what he calls, the general forms our sensibility are very much likethe Kantian synthetic a priori categories. But as Lafont (1999) argues, vonHumboldts theory of language also contains a critique of Kantian transcendentalreason. According to von Humboldt, who was also the founding figure of modernhermeneutics, the general forms and structures are not given to mind a priori in thesame way as the categories in Kants critical philosophy. Rather, they have beenproduced in history and culture through the sensory medium of living speech.

We reanimate signs to generate new meaning within the web-work of languageviewed as a historical totality. As Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (1990b, 16) shows, vonHumboldt raised Herders picture of the Promethean, creative dimension of linguis-tic activity to a higher philosophical level:

[von] Humboldt maintained against this [Condillacs] position that signs do in fact orderour thinking, but not because certain objects have naturally [by habit] come to representcertain ideas of things, but because signs, together with their corresponding thoughtsare shaped and fashioned by the human mind at one and the same time and in the verysame act.

The notion of words and thoughts coming together in the very same act, the simulta-neity of thinking and speaking, takes us to the core of the problem that Vygotsky(1986 [1934], 257) addresses in the final pages of Thought and language, which is theproblem of the relation between word and consciousness. He says this about thesimultaneity of thought:

A speaker often takes several minutes to disclose thought. In his mind the whole thoughtis present at once, but in speech it has to be developed successively. A thought may becompared to a cloud shedding a shower of words. (Vygotsky 1986 [1934], 251)

Actually, it was Condillac who remarked the fact that what is grasped in an instanttakes time to recount due to the linearity of speech (Aarsleff 1984, 30). After Condil-lac, the notion of the linearity of speech became a staple of Enlightenment linguisticthought.

I spoke at the outset about certain inconsistencies that Zinchenko noticed inVygotskys writings about pure meanings and thoughts with no wordsattached. At times, Vygotsky writes as though a separation is possible betweenthoughts and words, as if there is a stage of pre-linguistic thought; and at othertimes he speaks about embodying thoughts in words and words bringing thoughtsto completion. According to Mueller-Vollmer (1990b, 8): For [von] Humboldt theact of Artikulation in his terminology, is at one and the same time the constitutiveact for the consciousness of self of the speaking individual. Speaking subjects

192 J. Hardcastle

differentiate themselves from the objects that are their own voiced thoughts. Onthis view, to be conscious of the object is also to become conscious of ones self.For von Humboldt there is no separation between thoughts and words wherelanguage is constitutive of our understanding of the world and mediates our wholeintuition of it.

What does von Humboldt mean by language? He writes:

I take the practice of language here in its widest extent, not merely in its relation tospeech and the stock of its verbal elements, which are its direct product, but also in itsconnection with the capacity for thought and feeling. We are to consider the whole routewhereby, proceeding from mind, it reacts back upon the mind. (von Humboldt 1988[1836], 54)

He read Condillac from the Kantian perspective of subjectobject relations.Speakers, he says, not only use signs to apprehend their subjective innerthoughts, but they also make them objectively available for further reflection asexternally expressed ideas. By the same sensible process by which speakers heartheir own articulations they shape the objectifications of their subjective ideasmoment by moment as they speak (von Humboldt 1988 [1836], 56). For vonHumboldt, there were no pre-linguistic, pure meanings; no thoughts without wordsattached. No thinking, he says (1989, 212), not even the purest, can occur with-out the aid from the general forms of our [linguistic] sensibility: Only through themcan it [thought] be apprehended and as it were, arrested. Words and thoughts canbe separated for analysis by an act of reductive abstraction, but in reality they cometogether in the same instant. The very condition of possibility for objective,communicable experience is attained in and through the symbolizing potentials oflanguage. He writes:

Only language can do this [transform the presentation into real objectivity]; and with-out this transformation, occurring constantly with the help of language even in silence,into an objectivity that returns to the subject, the act of concept-formation, and with ittrue thinking, is impossible. So quite regardless of communication between man andman, speech is a necessary condition for the thinking of the individual in solitaryseclusion. (von Humboldt 1988 [1836], 56)

As Lafont (1999, 24) puts it, the attempt to find some foundation prior to languageimplies that its function of world-disclosure, its constitutive character is denied.

Von Humboldts picture of language might best be described as a primary humandisposition towards a meaningful (linguistically mediated) world, what Goethe callsthe basis phenomenon. It cannot be reduced to anything else, such as activity-labour. Vygotskys picture of language shares von Humboldts view of a worldreplete with meaning, but he looks for languages empirical origins in human social-ity. For the Soviet thinker, following Marx, language is practical consciousness-for-others and the word is the direct expression of the historical nature of humanconsciousness (Vygotsky 1986, 256). Von Humboldt wrote in a pre-Darwinianworld. After the Great War, Khler (1926) showed how rudimentary consciousness ispresent in the practical activities chimpanzees, enabling them to make and use tools.His findings threw fresh light on the interface between practical consciousness inprimates and human thought within the time-scale suggested by evolution. In essence,Khler sign-posted the transition from tool-making activity in primates to symboliz-ing in humans.


Concluding remarks

In their article, Vygotsky and activity-oriented psychology, V. V. Davydov andL. A. Radzinkhovskii (Wertsch 1985, 54) note, For Vygotsky, a sign is a symbol witha definite meaning it has evolved in the history of a culture. They make the point thatthis interpretation of the symbol came from Vygotskys early work on the psychol-ogy of art and from his training in humanities and philology. They go on to say thatthe Soviet psychologist combined this view of the symbol with a notion of thepsychological tool:

In the analysis of the determination of mind through practical activity, Vygotskyrelied on a Marxist idea. He singled out the presence of tool mediation as the structur-ally and genetically central feature of labour activity. He proposed the possibility ofan analogue to this in the structure and genesis of mental functions. Vygotskyconsciously searched for psychological tools and gave them major significance.(Wertsch 1985, 54)

Yet, having mentioned the early influences on Vygotskys semiotic thought, theauthors decline to offer further analysis, seeking instead to answer the question of theextent to which this type of semiotic interpretation of psychological tools conformswith the concept of activity as an explanatory principle in psychological theory(Wertsch 1985, 567). They also note that it was in this respect that criticism ofVygotsky arose among his students and associates. It is chiefly in humanities andphilology that the legacy in the four thinkers I have been discussing can be traced. Myaim here has been to shed further light on these early influences and to suggest boththe scale and complexity of the ideas about language, signs and symbolization thatVygotsky inherited.

I have tried to show that there were (at least) two ways in which words and signscould be seen by analogy as tools in the pictures of language coming down fromseventeenth and eighteenth-century language studies. I linked the first to Lockesinstrumental-communicative notion of the word as a conduit or as vehicle ofthought and went on to explained how Condillac took up Lockes picture oflanguage and developed it into a theory about the role of signs in mastering mentaloperations. The quasi-metaphysical, constitutive picture of language that I attributedto Herder and von Humboldt asserted the priority of the meaning-disclosing functionof speech over the instrumental-communicative picture they inherited from Lockeand Condillac. In some ways, the second way of seeing words as psychologicaltools stands against the first. Modern structural linguistics has striven to purgelanguage studies of its metaphysical residue in order to delimit it as an object ofscientific inquiry. However, this has involved just the kind of abstractive reductionand separation from history that von Humboldt so assiduously resisted. Perhaps,the complicated and sometimes contradictory pictures of language, meaning anddevelopment that Vygotsky inherited from his Enlightenment precursors were notreducible to a unitary theory of labour activity. However, they were capable ofbeing reconfigured within an incomparably rich psychological theory of culturalmediation.

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