A Philosophical Encounter with Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

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Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888-1973) is an author that deserves a much wider readership in the twenty-first century. Not only historians and social scientists need his insights today, but even more those who love philosophy and yearn for ways of making it more relevant to all areas of human knowledge and culture. The grammar often used so thoughtlessly in day-to-day exchanges turns out to possess profundities and powers philosophers have not always appreciated. The present book was written by someone who found in this man’s writing an altogether surprising and revolutionary recasting of his philosophical vision. The past and the future, the inner and the outer, all come together in a new understanding of the very purpose of the gift of speech—of what is said, of what is talked about, and of the stunning fact that humans, alone of all the creatures, are able to speak at all. Few have addressed this as well as did Rosenstock-Huessy, and this book proposes to invite his powerful pages into the greater conversation of the Western love of wisdom.

Praise for this book

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy remains one of the most singular and creative thinkers of the twentieth century, in large part because his thought cuts across disciplinary boundaries. This book reads his ‘impurity’ not as a methodological eccentricity but as a constitutive principle of an anthropology grounded in language, history, embodiment, and the tensions of the ‘Cross of Reality.’ Lucid, erudite, and philosophically ambitious, Scott Paine’s text offers an original reading of a polymath whose heterodoxy remains intellectually fertile.

Fabrício Tavares de Moraes, Associate Professor of Literary Theory, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil

When I first heard of Rosenstock-Huessy–from Fr. Paine–my first question was, ‘Who?’ The second question, ‘Why?’ Both questions are well answered in this brief but insightful book. At the core of his thinking, as exposited by Fr. Paine, we find an essential challenge to our conceptions of language–necessary in this age where the most human of abilities has been taken for granted and abused.

Brian Kemple, Executive Director, Lyceum Institute

The ‘impure thinker’ Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy is not infallible, but he has ideas–some good, some bad–and in any case, ideas that are open to discussion. And this is where his main significance lies: namely, that he sparks conversation among people and is thus sociologically effective. Scott Randall Paine’s book highlights this point: it is precisely as part of the Grand Conversation that Rosenstock has something to say; it is precisely here that he is able to point out new constellations of already familiar stars in the firmament and thus inspire new perspectives.

Knut Martin Stünkel, Research Associate, Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany