本雅明的语言观

On Walter Benjamin's View of Language

本雅明语言观关注的核心不是现代语言学,包括语形、语义和语用等在内所探讨的问题,而是语言哲学研究的形而上学之维,即关注的是语言的起源和本质问题。本雅明对纯语言的设定,其背后隐藏的纷争是“亚当理论”和“洛克传统”或曰历史比较语文学和结构主义语言学两种范式的对立。本雅明从浪漫主义出发,批判了工具主义语言观。在此基础上,本雅明批判了康德/新康德主体哲学关于经验的认识,认为最高的经验是语言,并将其引入海德格尔本体论意义上通往原初的语言之路。本雅明早晚期语言观的思想来源不同,使得早晚期语言观有着从本体论转向认识论的倾向。语言由命名语言变为符号语言或曰从唯实论转为唯名论,也即语言的内在性变化为外在性,这正是现代性的起源。本雅明语言观是其思想的元理论,为其思考翻译、历史哲学、现代性问题撒播下了寓言性的种子。

Benjamin's view of language is not preoccupied with the issues of modern linguistics embracing syntax, semantics and pragmatics, but the metaphysical nature of language. Behind Benjamin's presupposion of the pure language lies the hidden debate between 'Adamic Theory' and 'Locke Tradition', namely the opposition between historical comparative philology and structural linguistics. Taking Romanticism as his point of departure, Benjamin has critiqued instrumentalist/bourgeois view of language, on the basis of which he has also critiqued Kantian/Neo-Kantian subjective philosophy on experience. He thinks that the highest experience is language, which has been led to the way to primordial language in Heidegger's ontological sense. Owing to the different sources of his view in the earlier and later years, there is a tendency of transformation from ontology to epistemology in his view of language. The change from naming language to sign language or from realism to nominalism can be formulated in terms of change from internalities to externalities, which is the origin of modernity. Benjamin's view of language is no less than critique of language, which is his meta-theory. In turn, his critique of language has disseminated allegorical seeds for his reflections on translation, the philosophy of history and the problems of modernity.