Liam Tiernaċ Ó Beagáin

Little has been written on the similarities between Immanuel Kant and Noam Chomsky. The latter’s heritage is placed within the Cartesian tradition following his examination of Enlightenment ideas on linguistic creativity in his somewhat arbitrarily titled Cartesian Linguistics (1966a). Despite the book’s name, Chomsky believed Kant’s absence was a serious gap (Chomsky 1966a; Parret 1972). In attempting to address his absence, I examine their thoughts on what I term creative outputs of mind (COM) and which I relate to imaginative, logical and linguistic capacities. In essence, I argue that something like Kant’s analytic-synthetic distinction is found in Chomsky’s analysis of semantic constraints in COM states. Furthermore, the productive imagination’s synthesising power resonates with the linguist’s Language Faculty (Language), and its relationship with the understanding comparable to Language’s directedness toward the conceptual-intensional system in the generation of determinate concepts in COM states. Moreover, Kant’s free play in the third Critique gives us a way to include an analysis of conceptual indeterminacy that articulates an internally generated yet non-determinate meaningfulness, what I term ‘COM+’ states. Such insights might well foreshadow ideas in contemporary internalist semantics, although I bracket detailed analysis of this question for future consideration.

Research has been extensive in the relation to what Goethe’s Faust can teach us about modernity and particularly the act of striving in a world obsessed with the self and progress for its own sake. In The Decline of the West, Spengler uses Faust as a means to express the unsustainable burden that industrialisation places on societies once grounded in collective well-being but now mangled into the slaves of their creations in the name of progress. However, on this point of well-being, few sources have considered Faust as a means to analyse modern cinema and its value in interpreting moral tales that are infused with debates on the self and meaning. Studies tend to focus on adaptations of Faust for the big screen and not on films with Faustian-like themes. This paper aims to explore the latter approach further by performing a comparative linguistic analysis between Goethe’s Faust and one of the finest films of American cinema in the 20th century, The Apartment. In doing so, the main conclusion runs that the self constructs a meaningful life when concerned for the welfare of others and through which their striving can be valuably applied.

This book questions the absence of Immanuel Kant in Noam Chomsky's Enlightenment study of creativity in language that he presents most comprehensively in Cartesian Linguistics (1966). Chomsky has observed that Kant's omission was a serious error since a study of his work would be of considerable value to contemporary studies. In following Chomsky's methodology in his Enlightenment study, this gap is closed by the research Ó Beagáin presents in Kant's Place. In this book, Kant's ideas on mind and language are placed within Chomsky's Enlightenment study for the first time. Ó Beagáin argues persuasively that Chomsky's own account of language and mind–which receives rigorous analysis–bears striking resemblance to Kant's, which is most readily found in their accounts of formal, generative, and creative aspects of mind. The analysis reveals how both Kant and Chomsky argue that formal capacities combine with imaginative and creative characteristics that engender conceptualising abilities of mind. Furthermore, their models are not rigid but fluid since both posit epigenetic theses that place the capacity for conceptual development within the mind. By introducing Kant to generative linguistics, Ó Beagáin achieves a much-needed expansion of Chomsky's study and in doing so includes a reevaluation of the central figure within Cartesian Linguistics, Wilhelm von Humboldt. In reconsidering Humboldt, Ó Beagáin shows how Chomsky unknowingly included Kantian ideas in his seminal work, thereby making the similarities between Chomsky and Kant all the more convincing.

Presented in this paper are added reasons for the position that Wilhelm von Humboldt’s (1757–1835) philosophy of language and linguistics are grounded in Kant’s philosophy and in particular his problem of how the passive nature of sensibility and the generative capacities of understanding are united in experience (Trabant; Cassirer). By examining Kant’s use of the chemical concept of affinity, along with an analysis of Humboldt’s adoption of this idea in his philosophy of language and linguistics, I show that his answer to Kant’s quandary is to place Language (‘L’ representing a faculty of mind) as the imaginative core between sensibility and understanding. Language synthesises speech and thought which creates an affinity of all words that mirrors Kant’s affinity of all concepts, the two being respectively embedded in the linguistic and logical aspects of Humboldt’s underlying form.

Pádraig Pearse, the Irish revolutionary leader of 1916 declared “Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam,” which translates “A country without its language is a country without a soul”. Certainly, by 1916 Ireland was a country that had lost its sense of self. Although acts of rebellion ultimately resulted in an independent state for roughly three-quarters of the island, much of what was hoped would be restored fell by the wayside. The reasons for Ireland’s predicaments are, of course, historical. The sins of colonialism reach into contemporary Ireland still. What Ireland has become is an imitator of trends, as opposed to a nation certain of itself and its defining characteristics, and what Pearse described as the country’s soul remains lost. This sense of loss predominates in us as a people since residing in Ireland’s language Gaeilge (Irish) lies much of our heritage and yet it’s a language most of us don’t know. Meaning the language is at the periphery of a nation dislocated from itself. Here, we discuss how the Irish language can help move us toward a psychologically healthier, culturally richer and more caring society, and in the process end the alienation of a nation.

Following the research developed in Kant's Place, Ó Beagáin presents a comprehensive examination of the influence of Immanuel Kant on language studies from the 18th to 20th centuries. The author argues convincingly that Kant’s mark can be seen in the comparative study of languages most eloquently put forward by Wilhelm von Humboldt and in later developments by Franz Boas and Edward Sapir. It is also felt in the turn to inborn capacities by Noam Chomsky following the work of his mentor Zellig Harris, and that of Leonard Bloomfield's on transformations. Chomsky's work is developed further by thinkers like Jerry Fodor and Paul Pietroski and ideas such as theirs presented under the generative programme are strongly influenced by the Kantian interests of thinkers like Gottlob Frege and Kurt Gödel et al. Ó Beagáin’s historical reconstruction builds a comprehensive genealogy that searches for homologies in thought. It culminates in a thorough analysis of linguistics from the mid 20th to early 21st centuries, examining climates of opinion, its innate-turn, and the ever-evolving developments in the generative programme. A final analysis traces the connections running from Kant onward and reveals the homologies that lay bare the influence of the great Enlightenment thinker. In his analysis, Ó Beagáin uses methods that are standard approaches in linguistic historiography, such as explanatory-descriptive analysis, textual analysis, philological methods, and the construction of relevant biographical and conceptual histories. Kant and the Foundations of Contemporary Linguistics will appeal to researchers and graduate students working in philosophy of language, history of philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science.

This paper discusses homologies in thought from Johann Wolfgang Goethe to Wilhelm von Humboldt. My aim is to show how similarities in thought between them are not mere coincidences but arise from Goethe’s immediate influence on Humboldt. The paper discusses Goethe’s methodological concept of Urform, and in particular examines his idea of Urpflanze in his botanical studies, as well as the nature of the relationship between Goethe and Humboldt. It examines Humboldt’s form of language and presents homologies in thought from Goethe to Humboldt by performing an analysis of Humboldt’s methodological approaches to his objects of study. It shows how his analysis relates, in part, to the Goethean method of examining how individual organisms follow fundamental principles found in their universal forms.

Today, one may paradoxically sit both bright-eyed and grim-faced while looking towards the horizon of a future that promises utopia and threatens dystopia with equal solemnity. These promises and threats appeal to creative mechanisms. But the idea of creative mechanisms has been long thought an oxymoron. Rather, mechanisms are developed and used by creative minds (e.g., Chomsky, 1966; Descartes, 1637; W. von Humboldt, 1836; Kant, 1781/87). On reflection, one may well reach the preliminary conclusion that a reliance on mechanistic solutions might not be such a good idea. And an informed person with a predilection for placing a bet would back a dystopian outcome over a utopian one, since it seems likely that under the continuing AI revolution the creative mind will become imprisoned by its own tools (e.g., Wach et al, 2023). Such dire conclusions encourage one to think of Kant’s words which serve as a timely reminder of the importance of human autonomy and act as a call to remember that most readily found in the species is an unrelenting desire to create. The imagination, Kant says, is very mighty when it creates... another nature out of the material that actual nature gives it... [in such instances] we feel our freedom... [and] turn that material into something quite different... something that surpasses nature. (Critique of the Power of Judgement, V: 314) Yet, the climate of opinion dismisses Kant. Cognitive scientist Arthur Miller enthusiastically suggests machines are the way forward since humans are not ‘imaginative’ but only reproductive (The Guardian, 4th March, 2019). Such a pitiful assessment of humanity, says Miller, should not stop us celebrating AI and the bright new future it promises. In reaction to what seems like an extraordinary leap of faith this paper suggests we pause for thought. We should define ‘creativity,’ by establishing the principles of creativity and how creative acts happen (e.g., Chomsky, 1986; Gatys, 2019, cf. B.F. Skinner, 1957, 1973). These questions related to humans alone are challenging. The gap between theories of formal mechanisms and what the mind can create, what the great Kantian linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt described as “infinite use of finite means” (1999, p. 91) persists (Chomsky, 1986; Goodman, 2015; Quilty-Dunn et al, 2023) and is bridged by vague terms like ‘engendering’ (e.g., Chomsky, 1966). Yet, AI discussions bundle the terms ‘productivity’ ‘generativity’ and ‘creativity’ together (cf. Buckner, 2024) even though it has been long explained that these terms are not synonymous (e.g., Chomsky, 1968) and much of what was written in the vein of ‘classical liberalism’ understood this insight (e.g., Kant, 1781/87; W. von Humboldt, 1836). In sum, if eye-catching headlines like Miller’s are believed, then much will be lost. Our understanding of imagination, creativity, autonomy and freedom will narrow since they will become synonymous with productivity, threatening human autonomy to the point of extinction.

For Wilhelm von Humboldt, the pinnacle of linguistic creativity sits in the ‘character of a language’ that creates ‘worldviews’. Yet, debate surrounds Humboldt’s understanding of their formation. Answers appeal to relativism (Roger Langham Brown), to universalism (Kurt Mueller-Vollmer and Markus Messling) and sometimes to a blend of these together (Jürgen Trabant). I propose that language as a ‘mental power’ is an ‘activity’ that plays a fundamental role in the formation of character, but which resides necessarily in the individual. Character of language is not guaranteed and depends on the universal ‘form of language’ and its development among a people in order to flourish. This position reflects Humboldt’s Kantian worldview. Therefore, the core of my argument proposes that creativity in a language’s character follows Humboldtian linguistic principles of mind that are imaginative, conceptual and logical.

Arguments are presented for the inclusion of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) in Noam Chomsky’s (b. 1928) genealogy of linguistic creativity, most strongly put forward by him in his seminal Cartesian Linguistics first published in 1966. At the heart of the thesis is the claim that humans have a creative capacity most obviously expressed in linguistic behaviour, as first noted by René Descartes (1596–1650). To examine this claim, the terms ‘creative’ and ‘creativity’ are studied from an etymological and scientific perspective and are found to denote an innate, uncaused and original capacity of mind. Chomsky’s own formal linguistics are also studied and found to present only the mechanics of how a formal faculty of Language (FL) might engender the creative aspect of language use (the CALU). The CALU is displayed not only in acts belonging to the arts and sciences but in everyday linguistic behaviour, and none more so than in the language acquisition (LA) of young children. These three topics: the CALU, FL, and LA are claimed to direct Chomsky’s discussions of Enlightenment thinkers and especially in his study of Kantian philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt’s entire linguistic study, it is claimed, is based on the Kantian problem of how the understanding and sensibility are united in experience. He places Language as the generative and imaginative faculty of mind that interfaces between the understanding and sensibility and which allows for conceptualised thinking in ways that Kant first recognised. Furthermore, it is claimed that Kant himself proffered that they are united in experience through the interfacing role of the imagination. The imagination generates the affinity of all concepts in a binary fashion much like Humboldt describes an affinity of all words that constructs the syntactic propositions upon which the affinity of all concepts is generated. Chomsky will later articulate a somewhat similar binary process called Merge, the primary function of which is the construction of syntax for the conceptual system. In the final assessment, the claim is made that underlying Kant’s account of mind is not a dualism between Language and thought, as is traditionally argued, but that thinking is possible because of Language. Creative acts are engendered through thinking and thinking is really speaking to oneself from Kant’s perspective. In Kant, therefore, there is much that qualifies him as a Cartesian linguist under the topics described above.