Article: Syntax and passions. Bouhours, Vico, and the genius of the nation.

Contemporary scholars of nationalism agree that language does not constitute a necessary and sufficient criterion of nationality any more than religion or territory. (1) They usually ascribe the belief that a national language expresses the unique character of a people and therefore is the nation made manifest to Johannes Gottfried Herder and to German Romantic thought, which inspired nationalist movements in Germany and in Eastern Europe. (2) Herder, actually, linked the "spirit of language" (Sprachgeist) with the soul of the people (Volksseele) and did not refer to the nation. (3) It was Johann Gottlieb Fichte, in his Reden an die deutsche Nation (1807-1808), who ...

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