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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Language as an “Indispensable Tool and Organ” of Reason: Intuition, Concept and Word in Schopenhauer

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On the first sight, Schopenhauer’s theory of language seems to be a rather simple instrumental one: Language is a means to convey information to others by sensual, vocal or written signs. However, Schopenhauer also argues that the real empirical object is the basis of a concept, which is abstracted from the former leaving out most of its properties and keeping the “essential” ones. In this paper, it is shown that Schopenhauer’s view on language cannot be reduced to an instrumental theory of language. Such a reduction would be really surprising in view of Schopenhauer’s style of writing and his critique of language.