Abstract » Hegedűs
Budapest 2010
Encyclopaedism, Pansophia, and Universal Communication, 1560–1670
Béla HEGEDUS
The Ideas of György Kalmár: Theory Behind his Universal Language Plan
The Hungarian György (George) Kalmár (1726-?), whose biography is full of uncertainties and strange features, is not a well-known figure in the European history of ideas. Or rather, he is known a little bit. His plan for a universal language (1772, 1773, 1774), which gained Continental recognition for him in the 18th century, still makes him a household name for the researchers of this particular subject, and Umberto Eco praised Kalmár’s plan in his book The Search for the Perfect Language.
It is quite striking that even though Kalmár was deeply familiar with both earlier and contemporary universal languages (including Bishop John Wilkins’s famous work), he did not agree with their theoretical basis. His aim was not to create a general language, but to show what he found common in various languages and endow it with characters and symbols. What makes his plan unique is that he did not attach one specific meaning to his signs as, according to his theory based on the extreme heterogeneity of language, any meaning can exist only in a context. Consequently, he did not consider figurality as a mistake of language, but as a necessary basis for all languages and speech acts.
The origins of Kalmár’s language theory can be traced to the epistomology of the 17th and 18th centuries and also to the ideology of continental pietism. Using Leibniz’s theory of cognitio symbolica as a guiding principle I aim to integrate his theory with the relevant philosophical tradition and to outline a parallel theological (pietist-like) tradition.
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