Verbal Disputes in Mendelssohn’s Morgenstunden

Abstract

Throughout Morgenstunden Mendelssohn reveals a tremendous respect for language, both its power and its limitations. When Mendelssohn rejects Helvetius’ cognitivist hypothesis (as we might dub it today) that language is a collection of empty, algebraic signs transposed and combined according to rules, he does so because such a hypothesis supposedly cannot explain the emotional and intuitive power of human language.