Including Kant: Chomsky's linguistics and genealogy of linguistic creativity

Arguments are presented for the inclusion of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) in Noam Chomsky’s (1928–present) genealogy of linguistic creativity, most strongly put forward by him in his seminal Cartesian Linguistics first published in 1966. At the heart of the thesis is the claim that humans have a creative capacity most obviously expressed in linguistic behaviour, as first noted by René Descartes (1596–1650). To examine this claim, the terms ‘creative’ and ‘creativity’ are studied from an etymological and scientific perspective and are found to denote an innate, uncaused and original capacity of mind. Chomsky’s own formal linguistics are also studied and found to present only the mechanics of how a formal faculty of Language (FL) might engender the creative aspect of language use (the CALU). The CALU is displayed not only in acts belonging to the arts and sciences but in everyday linguistic behaviour, and none more so than in the language acquisition (LA) of young children. These three topics: the CALU, FL, and LA are claimed to direct Chomsky’s discussions of Enlightenment thinkers and especially in his study of Kantian philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt’s entire linguistic study, it is claimed, is based on the Kantian problem of how the understanding and sensibility are united in experience. He places Language as the generative and imaginative faculty of mind that interfaces between the understanding and sensibility and which allows for conceptualised thinking in ways that Kant first recognised. Furthermore, it is claimed that Kant himself proffered that they are united in experience through the interfacing role of the imagination. The imagination generates the affinity of all concepts in a binary fashion much like Humboldt describes an affinity of all words that construct the syntactic propositions upon which the affinity of all concepts is generated. Chomsky will later articulate a somewhat similar binary process called Merge, the primary function of which is the construction of syntax for the conceptual system. In the final assessment, the claim is made that underlying Kant’s account of mind is not a dualism between Language and thought, as is traditionally argued, but that thinking is possible because of Language. Creative acts are engendered through thinking and thinking is really speaking to oneself from Kant’s perspective. In Kant, therefore, there is much that qualifies him as a Cartesian linguist under the topics described above.