CFP: Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio: Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem and Language

Call for papers - Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio

www.rifl.unical.it

Vol. 8, N. 2

Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem and Language

guest editor Tamara Tagliacozzo

Benjamin’s interest in language and translation is well attested. In his first essays Benjamin focuses on language, particularly on two correlated notions: “word” and “name”. Language is at the basis of Benjamin’s critique of knowledge in On Language as Such and on the Language of Man (1916) and the related fragments, in On the Program of the coming Philosophy (1917-1918), in Goethe’s Elective Affinities (1922), and in the Epistemo-Critical Preface to the Baroque German Drama (1925). According to Benjamin, communication is not the ground of language; the essence of language is the pure “form”, language is «a communicability per se (eine Mitteilbarkeit schlechthin)» (GS, II, 1, 145-146). Concepts and ideas are grounded in words and names, and language as a whole shapes a nest where truth (as a finite set of ideas and reason tasks) appears as the virtual dimension of the totality of concepts. In the Epistemo-Critical Preface ideas reveal themselves in language through names and are exposed (dargestellt) in the phenomena of origin (Ursprungsphänomene).

Benjamin's theory of language is developed with his friend Gerhard (later Gershom) Scholem, at that time a student of mathematics and philosophy and a scholar of Judaism. Scholem and Benjamin based their theory of language on jewish theology and took into account Molitor's Philosophy of History or on Tradition, Hamann, Herder, Humbold. They were especially influenced by a peculiar interpretation of the Genesis and of Kabbalah. At the same time they were both interested in epistemic and mathematical questions in kantian, neo-kantian, husserlian and phenomenological literature; to such a common background, Scholem adds mathematical notions (differential and integral calculus), geometry, mathematical logic (Peano, Frege, Russell). When Benjamin met Scholem in 1915 he was already interested in Poincaré, mathematics and geometry; he was attracted by Scholem's knowledge of mathematics and judaism, as well as by his anarchist and messianic ideas about politics and history.

The comparison between Benjamin’s essays on language and Scholem’s On lament and dirge, together with the research on his reflections in his Journals (Tagebücher 1913-1917 and Tagebücher 1917-1923) outlines a possible way of interpretation of their intellectual exchange. Scholem and Benjamin were interested in a “mathematical theory of truth” which could explain the world process, in a messianic perspective: the Messia is a mathematician and the “last, first philosopher of language” (G. Scholem, Tagebücher 1913-1917, Jüdischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 1995, p. 406, 12-X-1916).

Possible topics:

1) Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy of Language

2) Gershom Scholem’s Philosophy of Language

3) Language and Lament in Gershom Scholem

4) Walter Benjamin, Language and Music

5) Language and Judaism

6) Language and Mathematical Logic in Scholem

7) Language and Kabbalistic Tradition

8) Messianism and Language in Benjamin and Scholem

9) Language and Mathematics in Benjamin and Scholem

10) Benjamin and Wittgenstein

11) Kant, Neo-kantianism and Phenomenology in Benjamin

12) Benjamin, Scholem and Translation

Manuscripts should have a theoretical focus. Papers from the following areas are accepted: philosophy of language, linguistics, rhetoric, semiotics, history of philosophy, jewish studies, philosophy of law, moral philosophy, anthropology, sociology, psychology and neuroscience.

Submissions may be in Italian, English, French, German, Spanish and Russian. All submissions must be prepared for blind review. The author's name, the institutional affiliation and the title’s paper must be placed in a separate file.  Papers must be sent as Microsoft Word file (.doc or .rtf) to:[email protected]

Instructions for authors:

Max length:
40000 characters (including spaces) for articles (including the references) and reviews;
20000 characters (including spaces) for interviews;
10000 characters (including spaces) for specific paper review.

Submission deadline: 01.09.2014
Notification of acceptance: October 2014

Issue publication: December 2014