Language and Thought Before and After Kant: Hamann & Tetens

We are pleased to announce that our online fortnightly reading group, “Language and Thought Before and After Kant”, is starting again on 04/11/2026.   

The reading group is organized by the Linguistic Kant Consortium, a research initiative within the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences at Ghent University, Belgium. It brings together a PhD and a Postdoctoral project, both funded by the Flemish Research Foundation (FWO), obtained by Alice Cambi and Levi Haeck Gormez, respectively (promotor: Professor Gertrudis Van de Vijver). The central aim of the consortium is to explore the intersection of Kant’s transcendental philosophy and philosophy of language and/or linguistics. This area of study has seen a growing wave of interest in recent years, though there remains a scarcity of resources for scholars and students working on Kant’s philosophy. The Linguistic Kant Consortium seeks to address this gap by (a) organizing the aforementioned fortnightly reading group dedicated to Kant's reflections on language, as well as his intellectual sources (e.g., Locke, de Condillac, Rousseau), key interlocutors (e.g., Herder, Hamann), and the developments in post-Kantian philosophy (e.g., von Humboldt, Hegel). To enrich the discussions, the reading group also (b) features regular lectures by leading experts.

This semester, the group will be reading the Metacritique on the Purism of Reason by Hamann and the Origin of Languages and Writing by Tetens.   

SCHEDULE

4/11, 3-5 PM CET: J. G. Hamann's Metacritique on the Purism of Reason

18/11, 3-5 PM CET: J. N. Tetens' On the Origin of Languages and Writing (Part I-V)

2/12, 3-5 PM CET: J. N. Tetens' On the Origin of Languages and Writing (Part VI-VII)  

We warmly invite all interested students and colleagues to join us for the discussions.   To be included in the mailing list, receive the Teams link, and the schedule of the reading group, send an email to [[email protected]]