La posture hégélienne vis-à-vis du langage philosophique ne doit pas être assimilée d’emblée à la métacritique herderienne ni être comprise en termes d’opposition entre langage «absolu» et langage «fini». La métacritique hégélienne doit plutôt être comprise en termes d’une différence entre langage abstrait et langage concret. Le mode opératoire du langage concret de la philosophie se saisit en ayant recours à une fonction organique de la mémoire et en acceptant, au niveau pratique, une différence entre le langage quotidien et le (...) langage philosophique. Je vais montrer que Hegel peut justifier cette posture en adoptant une perspective humboldtienne. (shrink)

There are two dominant contradictory approaches towards understanding the nature of language: one, the epistemological approach; two, the ontological approach. The epistemological approach understands language as a mere tool and denies the close relationship between a word and the actual thing for which that word stands. The ontological approach, on the other hand, understands language as the disclosure of world experience and professes a close relationship between a word and the thing it signifies. However, this approach opposes the epistemological approach (...) towards the understanding of language. In this article, we propose that Hegel, in his Phenomenology of Spirit, depicts an interesting relationship between language and spirit which points towards the consistency between the two contradictory approaches towards the nature of language. For Hegel, language not only plays a role in spirit’s pursuit of self-knowledge which signifies the epistemological approach, but also in spirit’s existence which signifies the ontological approach. Thus, in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the epistemological approach and the ontological approach towards the nature of language coexist. In this article, by turning to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and through an analysis of the relationship between language and spirit, we not only attempt to seek some resolution to the epistemology-ontology contradiction, but we also reveal the homogeneity of language and spirit, which we take as the true nature of language in Hegel’s philosophy. (shrink)