Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy 1888 – 1973
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy was a German-American Christian philosopher of speech, history, and the social sciences. After a youthful conversion from Judaism to Christianity that issued in his celebrated correspondence with Franz Rosenzweig, he taught at Breslau and Heidelberg before emigrating to the United States in 1933, where he held a long professorship at Dartmouth. His Out of Revolution, The Christian Future, and Speech and Reality articulated a speech-thinking in which the imperative is the fundamental form of human existence, the great revolutions of Western history are the working out of one long Christian-political drama, and the renewal of the times depends on the renewal of language.
Key facts
- Nationality
- German-American
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Continental, Christian
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy:
“I am addressed, therefore I am.”
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Attributed to Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy:
“Names precede nouns; speech precedes thought.”
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Attributed to Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy:
“The grammar of social life is the imperative, not the indicative.”
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Attributed to Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy:
“History is the listening to and answering of the calls of those before us.”
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Attributed to Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy:
“Our task is to renew the times by renewing the language.”