Lifschitz, AS; (2016) An Epicurean Democracy in Language: The volte face in Johann David Michaelis’s Early Career. In: Baker, KM and Gibbs, JM, (eds.) Life Forms in the Thinking of the Long Eighteenth Century. (pp. 45-69). University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Canada.

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Abstract

The essay outlines a major change in the views of the eminent Enlightenment orientalist, Johann David Michaelis, on naturalism and divine providence in relation to human culture. In his first works, Michaelis adhered to the traditional Protestant stance on the antiquity and special status of the Hebrew vowel points: according to this view, the diacritical signs marking Hebrew vowels were extremely ancient (already in use in Moses's time), and have since undergone remarkably little change. By the late 1750s, however, Michaelis had revised this view and regarded all languages, Hebrew included, as naturally evolving along the lines of the naturalistic thesis. This change was particularly manifest in Michaelis's prize essay for the 1759 contest at the Berlin Academy, where he elaborated a panoramic view of language as an ongoing project of a living community. In this essay Michaelis repeatedly compared language to political democracy and discussed several Epicurean themes in a delicate manner. Michaelis's confrontation with his own familial and and intellectual background demonstrates that a naturalistic view of language did not necessarily entail a radical or materialist outlook.

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