SOURCE: De Boer, Karin. “The Infinite Movement of Self-Conception and Its Inconceivable Finitude: Hegel on Logos and Language.” Dialogue 40, no. 1 (winter 2001): 75-97.

In the following essay, De Boer explores the relation between thought and language in the Science of Logic.

Introduction

Language intrudes into everything that we make our own by representing it, Hegel remarks in the Science of Logic.¹ Language is also the element which allows human beings to come into their own themselves: Hegel calls language the existence of the pure self as self. For whereas the self which manifests itself in deeds and physiognomic expressions never coincides with these one-sided manifestations and, withdrawing from them, deprives them of their soul, language is such that it allows human beings to express what they are, to be present at their expressions and share themselves with others.² Since, according to Hegel, language constitutes the most spiritual externalization of...