L’atmosphère acoustique: Johann Gottfried Herder et Immanuel Kant

ENIn 18th century Europe, the transition from an acoustic to a visual relation to the environment gained impetus, primarily due to the alphabet and the printing press. Language came to belong more and more exclusively to the world of writing. Nevertheless, sound remained important. The article discusses J. G. Herder’s and I. Kant’s attitudes to spoken languages and, concomitantly, their relations to Prussian Lithuanians. Immanuel Kant wrote a preface to Ch. G. Mielcke’s Littauisch-deutsches und Deutsch-littauisches Wörter-Buch (1800). J. G. Herder published a collection of Volkslieder (1778-79) which contained several Lithuanian songs. These initiatives can be interpreted in two ways : on the one hand, as an attempt to reestablish the word as a sound (and not as a visual image); on the other hand, it could be understood as “man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity”. Orality – the word as a sound – constitutes an absolutely different being-in-the-world, a different (auditory) synthesis compared to writing.