Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Birthday
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt is a leading representative of German classical humanism who lived at the time of Johann Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. He saw the role of history in fulfilling the humanist ideals that focus on the spiritual formation and fulfillment of the unique abilities of each person, which could then combine into a harmonic whole akin a work of literature. The free self-development of the individual, which Humboldt understood as spiritual creative individuality, determines the limits of the State’s activity. Humboldt believed that the State’s role was only to defend the external borders of the country and its internal legal order. For the ideal of humanism Humboldt looked to Antiquity and Goethe whose works represented for him the highest artistic ideal. Humboldt founded the philosophy of language as a distinct discipline. He understood language as a continuous process of spiritual creativity through which a nation’s worldview was expressed and which determined a person’s spiritual attitude to the world. These ideas made a great impact on the development of linguistics.