KARL KRAUS'S CONCEPTION OF LANGUAGE

Karl Kraus's conception of language plays perhaps the most central role in his understanding of literature and in his world view generally. A new, more valid interpretation, which has proven itself necessary in Kraus scholarship, is to be obtained through a literary analysis of several of his key terms. There exists an underlying continuity in his general humanistic outlook as well as a certain rationality and consistency in his extremely idealistic conception of language. Language is for him a highly autonomous multilevel system of mental laws and relationships. Meaning is achieved when "Geist," the human power of association, works according to linguistic laws to link form with the concept of the "essential," "original" traits of a phenomenon. The concept is effected by the individual "Phantasie" or power of conceptualization. "Wesen" for Kraus does not refer to the material quintessence of an object but rather to its strictly and vividly "re-created" concept whenever its "word" or linguistic form is encountered. Kraus requires that speaker and listener always mentally re-experience this conceptualized "essence" with the word.