Worldview (Weltanschauung or Weltansicht)
Worldview (Weltanschauung or Weltansicht)
This short chapter introduces Wilhelm von Humboldt's concept of worldview. It considers the way the terms Weltbegriff and Weltanschauung were used by Humboldt's predecessor, Kant, and the way those concepts were harnessed and promoted by Hegel. It considers political worldviews such as the Nazi worldview studied by Klemperer. But the author shows the relevance of Jürgen Trabant's crucial distinction, between political, ideological or religious worldviews, on the one hand, and the concept of a language as a human conceptual construction of the world as a place in which each speaker takes his or her place. Ideologies can be discussed and argued over, but only language gives us the concepts, of man, history, destiny, nation, and morality, and so on, which allow us to debate the foundations and validity of ideologies and systems of thought.
Keywords: Christian worldview, Kant, Hegel, Ideology, The Sense of Language, Trabant, Weltanschauung, Weltansicht, Weltbegriff
Edinburgh Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.