Language and Enlightenment : the Berlin debates of the eighteenth century / Avi Lifschitz.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [196]-224) and index.

Introduction -- 1. The mutual emergence of language, mind, and society: an enlightenment debate -- 2. Symbolic cognition from Leibniz to the 1760s: theology, aesthetics, and history -- 3. The evolution and genius of language: debates in the Berlin Academy -- 4. J. D. Michaelis on language and vowel points: from confessional controversy to naturalism -- 5. A point of convergence and new departures: the 1759 contest on language and opinions -- 6. Language and cultural identity: the controversy over Prémontval's Préservatif -- 7. Tackling the naturalistic conundrum: instincts and conjectural history to 1771 -- 8. Conclusion and a glimpse into the future.

What is the role of language in human cognition? Could we attain self-consciousness and construct our civilisation without language? Such were the questions at the basis of eighteenth-century debates on the joint evolution of language, mind, and culture. 'Language and Enlightenment' highlights the importance of language in the social theory, epistemology, and aesthetics of the Enlightenment. While focusing on the Berlin Academy under Frederick the Great, Avi Lifschitz situates the Berlin debates within a larger temporal and geographical framework. He argues that awareness of the historicity and linguistic rootedness of all forms of life was a mainstream Enlightenment notion rather than a feature of the so-called 'Counter-Enlightenment'. Enlightenment authors of different persuasions investigated whether speechless human beings could have developed their language and society on their own. Such inquiries usually pondered the difficult shift from natural signs like cries and gestures to the artificial, articulate words of human language.