Abstract

Presented in this paper are reasons to believe that Wilhelm von Humboldt’s philosophy of language and linguistics are grounded in Kant’s philosophy and in particular his problem of how the passive sensibility and the generative understanding are united in experience. Here, through a presentation of Kant’s position, along with an analysis of Humboldt’s climate of opinion and a study of his philosophy of language and linguistics, the paper shows that his answer to Kant’s quandary is to place language as the creative and imaginative core at the heart of human experience.