Speech Is the Body of the Spirit: The Oral Hermeneutic in the Writings of Eugen Rosenstock--Huessy (1888--1973)

Abstract

The Christian social philosopher, Eugen Friedrich Moritz Rosenstock-Huessy, lived most of his life under the "spell of language," more specifically under the influence of the Incarnate Word as it manifests itself in and through human speech. Hence his description of Man as "reverberating the Word": Man is reverberating the Word. How can he do this if he runs away from the first periods of life, in which he should acquire forever the resounding qualities of obedience, of listening, of singing and of playing? These first periods have made me. From them, the power has sprung of giving the slip to any one outdated later period of style or articulation and to grow up to one more comprehensive. . . . The pages of my Sociology may be those in which I have vindicated these four chapters of my life of the spirit as creating our true time, our full membership in society (1959:24).