Language as a passage bridge to “The Superior Experience”

Abstract

Georg von Hamann's philosophy of language is known to be extremely important in the forming of young Walter Benjamin's thought. The refusal of instrumentalism of language and his concepts of pure and messianic language, in the 1916 text, «On Language as Such and the Language of Man», when he points his critique of the bourgeois concept and refusal of language as a medium, is created in a particular concept that constitutes one of the main vectors of his thought. Not only does Haman appear as a privileged author, as quoted in the text, but he also borrows from other authors such as Herman Cohen, a Neo-Kantian, and still searches the genesis of a messianic conception of language in the Kabbalah. In this text appears not only the authors that influenced Benjamin so greatly in the concept of language but also how Benjamin integrated that influence and created new configurations in his thought. It's in language, experience and also history, that young Benjamin sets, since early on, the bases of his thought and of his work, while establishing a dialog with his influencing authors. What matters the most, however, is not so much the marking of his thought, but especially the way the markings are inscribed in the singularity of his work.