Pascale Roure

Cet article interroge les liens entre la « politique orientale » (Orientpolitik) mise en œuvre par le Kaiserreich et l’émergence des études islamiques comme un ensemble institutionalisé de savoirs sur l’Islam, envisagé non pas uniquement comme religion, mais comme aire culturelle et facteur identitaire. À partir d’une analyse des écrits de Carl Heinrich Becker sur la Turquie ottomane et la modernisation de l’Islam, l’article montre comment cette reconfiguration des savoirs a donné naissance à un orientalisme de type nouveau, mis au service d’une « politique musulmane » (Islampolitik) et d’une stratégie globale de l’Allemagne pour concurrencer les puissances coloniales européennes dans l’Empire ottoman finissant. Cette stratégie, qui culmina pendant la Première Guerre mondiale, mobilisa une rhétorique anticoloniale, visant à renforcer un nationalisme turc et saper l’hégémonie culturelle et linguistique française entretenue par les élites ottomanes.

In this article, I aim to shed light on the context of elaboration and reception of Hans Reichenbach’s epistemology in the mid-1930s by examining his dialogue with American philosophy and psychology during his stay in Istanbul, which coincides with the preparation of Experience and Prediction (1938). Reichenbach’s interactions with American philosophers predate 1933, but his transatlantic orientation intensified considerably during his stay in Turkey, which was also marked by extensive exchanges with scholars based in France and other European countries. This reorientation can be explained, but only in part, by his efforts to organize transatlantic emigration for his students, colleagues, and himself. Retracing the academic exchanges in the field of philosophy and psychology between the Republic of Turkey and American institutions during the 1920s, I argue that Reichenbach found in Turkey a fertile ground for the development of his philosophical views in a transatlantic perspective, including the discussion of currents positively received in Turkey such as positivism and pragmatism but also behaviorism and Gestalt psychology.

Bu yazının asıl amacı, bir öğreti olarak değil, refleksif bir yaklaşım olarak dil eleştirisinin nasıl sadece felsefenin değil, daha geniş anlamda tüm eleştirel düşüncenin temel ve belirleyici bir boyutu olduğunu göstermektir.Wittgenstein’ın felsefeyi “Sprachkritik” olarak tanımlamasından (1) ve kavramsal bir açıklamadan (2) yola çıkan bu bölüm, Fritz Mauthner (1849-1923) gibi felsefe tarihyazımında marjinalleştirilmiş yazarların yazılarına dayanarak, dilsel pürizme kurucu bir karşıtlık içinde (3), içkin bir kullanım eleştirisi olarak bir dil eleştirisi anlayışı (4) sunmaktadır.

Dans un essai intitulé « Langue maternelle et patrie » (1920), Fritz Mauthner propose une réflexion sur la métaphore de langue maternelle et ses usages politiques, dans le contexte de la montée des nationalismes et d’une recomposition des identités en Europe. Mauthner y affirme que les guerres de religion ont été remplacées par des guerres nationales qui sont en réalité des guerres linguistiques. Définie pourtant comme objet d’amour, comment la langue maternelle peut-elle devenir l’enjeu de politiques linguistiques pouvant conduire au fanatisme et à la guerre ? Il s’agit dans cet article d’éclairer la déconstruction par Mauthner des concepts fondamentaux du nationalisme à partir de sa conception philosophique de la langue, qu’il élabore contre celle que présuppose l’affirmation d’une appartenance identitaire. Cette hypothèse de lecture permet d’envisager les conséquences philosophiques et politiques de la critique du langage de Mauthner, qui récusent l’alternative entre nationalisme et universalisme linguistiques.

Der Beitrag untersucht die Entstehung der Idee einer Sprachsoziologie, im Zusammenhang einerseits mit wissenschaftspolitischen Diskussionen in den 1920er Jahren über die Verhältnisse zwischen Sprachwissenschaft und Soziologie als neuer Disziplin, die mit der Völkerpsychologie und der Kulturgeschichte konkurriert, andererseits mit der Ausarbeitung einer politischen Sprachsoziologie in den 1930er Jahren, die organische Verbindungen zwischen „Muttersprache“ und Gemeinschaft behauptete. Ausgehend von Leo Weisgerbers Auffassung der Sprachsoziologie wurde gezeigt, wie seine eigene Rekonstruktion des neuen Ansatzes durch einen kontrastiven Vergleich mit der französischen Wissenstradition dazu beigetragen hat, die sprachkritische Ausarbeitung einer Sprachsoziologie im deutschsprachigen Raum auszublenden. Gegenüber der Wiederaneignung der Sprachsoziologie im Rahmen konservativer, pangermanischer oder nationalsozialistischer Ideologien, die auf einem kulturnationalen (Karl Vossler) oder biologischen (Georg Schmidt-Rohr) Sprachgemeinschafts-Begriff beruhen, geht es darum, eine kritische Tradition der Sprachforschung (Rudolf Meringer, Hugo Schuchardt, Leo Jordan, Leo Spitzer) und, am Rand dieser Strömung, die Sprachkritik im Sinne Fritz Mauthners zu berücksichtigen.

The aim of this article is to analyze the reception of German philosophy at Istanbul University in the context of the academic relations between Germany and Turkey. These complex relations should not just be restricted to the presence of exiled German scholars in 1930s Istanbul. They must be reassessed in light of a broader political transfer of knowledge. The 1920s German philosophy paradigms that stood against the neo-Kantian tradition were used in Turkey in order to lay the foundations of a national and secularized academic philosophy. With the nomination of several associate professors trained in Germany in the 1930s, Nicolai Hartmann’s “new ontology” as well as philosophical anthropology became the most discussed philosophical paradigms at Istanbul University. They were perceived as a substitute for certain conceptions of philosophy which were deemed traditional, as well as an alternative to the paradigms endorsed in 1930s Istanbul by exiled philosophers, such as logical empiricism. This influence of Hartmann’s ontology and anthropologic theories continued to grow after the Second World War until the 1960s, with the arrival of German professors who contributed to the training of the next generation of Turkish associate professors. What role did that largely institutionalized reception of German philosophy play in the linguistic and theoretical reorganization of Turkish academic philosophy? How were those different paradigms used in the discourse on modernity and how did they come to replace the devaluated traditional conceptions of philosophy?

In this article, I seek to shed new light on a lesser-known stage of the development of Hans Reichenbach’s thought, namely his research, output and teaching activities at Istanbul University. I argue that the experience of Turkish exile was decisive in the elaboration of Reichenbach’s probability theory of meaning and knowledge. His work Experience and Prediction, produced while in Istanbul, should therefore be put in its Turkish context of elaboration and reception. To this end, I will take into consideration not only Reichenbach’s efforts to popularize and extend the Berlin Group’s program of scientific philosophy in Turkey and throughout Europe in the 1930s, but also the forgotten work of Reichenbach’s students—most of them women—at Istanbul University.