Linguaggio, imitazione ed empatia: la proposta di J.G. Herder

International audience ; The following paper will deal with some pages of the second volume of Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menscheit (1785). He suggested that the ability to imitate depends upon some anatomical and psychological prerequisites which humans and animals have in common. Humans, however, employ that ability to make more efficient linguistic communication. In detail, the ability to imitate is one of the many skills that Herder connected to the psychological attitude of compassion (Mitgefühl). In this way, he insisted that human-specific Mitgefühl entails the emotional understanding of the intentions of the others, language-learning, sociability, and para-linguistic communication. Interestingly, Herder regarded hearing as the dominant sense of both, language and Mitgefühl. This paper will analyse the way Mitgefühl is a sufficient (but not necessary) condition for having human language.