La teoria dell’origine del linguaggio in Arnold Gehlen

Abstract

For Arnold Gehlen, language is an extremely powerful instrument of adaptation possessed exclusively by human beings, a sort of “compensation” for their biological deficiencies. It plays an important role of “exoneration,” inasmuch as it permits one to relate to the external world through the use of symbols. The five anthropological roots at the origin of its development (the life of sound, the phonetic-motor communication with visual impressions, the recognition, the recall, the auditory gestures) are “pre-intellective” sensorimotor functions, in the sense that they move from the most elementary biological aspects and are at the basis of the future linguistic performances. In this way, by means of a series of successive exonerations and consequent realizations, one reaches the formation of representative thought and of all the higher functions that are indispensable in order to conduct a truly human existence.