ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Natural Object or Cultural Artifact?: Comparative Methods and Alternative Approaches to Language in Nineteenth-Century Germany

• In Event: Dividing Nature: Classification and its Discontents

English Abstract

This paper examines how German scholars used comparative methods to study languages during the nineteenth century, so as to draw out an emerging distinction between scholars who studied language as if it were a natural object and those who viewed it as a cultural artifact. To this end, it begins by examining the work of Franz Bopp (1791–1867), Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829), and August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767–1845), so as to determine how they deployed comparative methods in their work on Sanskrit. In particular, the paper pays close attention to where their uses of comparativism differed and why, while asking what motivated their research and what ends it was designed to serve. Additionally, this investigation aims to determine the extent to which their uses of comparative methods differed (or not) when used to study language as a cultural artifact versus language as a natural object. This will shed new light on both the emerging distinction between textual philology and comparative philology as well as on the genesis of a productive tension engendered by language’s amphibious (natural and cultural) status. The paper then traces how this tension evolved over time by turning to the publications of Bopp and A. W. Schlegel’s students, especially Christian Lassen (1800–1867), August Friedrich Pott (1802–1887), and August Schleicher (1821–1868). In so doing this paper will also elucidate how the study of language featured in broader discussions about the origin of humanity, the evolution of human diversity, the development of societies, and the relationships between cultures.

Author

• Kristine Palmieri, Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Munich