Art and Language in the Vision of Eugeniu Coseriu’s Integral Linguistics

Abstract

In the present study, we address the conception of the philosopher and linguist Eugeniu Coseriu regarding culture and the common features between art and language, as constituents of culture, as well as the distinctive feature between them. With respect to culture, therefore - to art and language, the scholar claims that any human activity has its internal norm, a norm that implies a certain morality and a certain ethics of this activity. In art, the norm is not to make any concession to the empirical subject, which means that the universal subject in the person of the artist, who is also an ethical and moral person, should create in the way he/she considers, but not according to the taste of the public or of any party. These norms imply for culture and, respectively, for art and language, constancies such as: universality, non-dogmatics, tradition, national specificity, universal culture, culture in history, the relevance of culture, the duty of man of culture, of art, to the cultural situation of his community in history. In the matter of the differentiated characteristic between art and language, with the exclusion of poetic language, which is considered to be art in the conception of the great linguist, it is about the characteristic of the universal subject that excludes alterity in art, but which is specific to language. However, in the end, as far as art and poetic language are concerned, the existence of alterity is admitted on the condition that „the absolute self” addresses „the internalized self” of the creator in art.