Wäre Alexander Potebnja ein Kantianer in der Sprachphilosophie gewesen?
Would Alexander Potebnja have been a Kantian in the philosophy of language?

Summary/Abstract: A number of authors have claimed that Potebnja’s linguistic theory contains evident traces of Kantian influences. In the field of epistemology, indeed, both Potebnja and Kant were convinced relativists, and a number of philosophical notions commonly associated with Kant’s doctrine are easily found in Potebnja’s works. On the other hand, direct references to Kant are extremely rare in Potebnja’s writings. In fact, according to Potebnia, the central problem of linguistics and philosophy was that of interrelation between language and thought, which had been practically ignored by Kant. A possible approach to the question of Potebnja’s supposed Kantianism implies the existence of intermediary sources instrumental in conveying some Kantian elements into Potebnja’s own theory (Humboldt, Herbart, Steinthal, etc.). Indeed, some scholars tend to regard the whole philosophy of language of German Romanticism and its psychologically-tinged positivist continuation as a sort of response to the problems left unresolved by Kant. Potebnja did receive some important stimuli this way, although they rather concerned the formulation of the problems than their solution. The main points of Potebnja’s discord with Kant concern the existence of a priori mental contents, the role of language in the transformation of sensorial data into concepts, the (non-)arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, the nature of linguistic communication, etc. Potebnja’s treatment of the distinction between synthetic and analytic judgments, as well as of their function in the formation of concepts, where Kantian echoes are particularly evident, offers a particularly good example of the wide theoretical distance separating both authors.

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