Il mito del duale nell'età goethiana: la prospettiva di Wilhelm von Humboldt

The dual is a grammatical number used in some languages to denote pairs of entities that belong together and form a unity. Traditionally dismissed in ancient treatises as a category of peculiar marginality, the dual became a central issue in Wilhelm von Humboldt’s (1767-1835) philosophy of language in the first decades of the 19th century. Especially in his essay Ueber den Dualis (1827), Humboldt set out to chart - for the first time ever - the empirical occurences of this grammatical form in the languages of the world and to bring into sharper focus the concept of duality and the traditional imagery linked to it. Rejecting the belief that the dual is simply a pleasant and yet redundant form of embellishment, Humboldt claimed that the study of the dual could grant access to the “ultimate foundations” of language and human community. According to Humboldt, the dual proves therefore crucial not only to understand the grammar system of a language, but also to investigate the mindset and the cultural negotiations thereby informed. To be sure, Humboldt’s text has been examined in a number of studies stating the seminal influence of its insights on the future development of modern linguistics. Yet much less attention has been paid to the historical contingency and the specific context in which Humboldt conceived the vision of a myth of duality in the Age of Goethe. The present research sets out to outline the cultural history of Humboldt’s ideas and tries to catch sight of the manifold connections in which Humboldt’s enquiry on the dual crosses the boundaries of linguistic antiquarianism and goes along with literary practices, anthropological reflexions and politial speculations of his own time.