In this book I aim to do two things: first, to provide a modern introduction to the linguistic and cultural thought of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), a key figure of the German enlightenment and one of the founders of modern linguistics; and second, to show the relevance of Humboldt’s thought to dialogue between cultures and especially between faiths. I want to show that Humboldt’s philosophy of language, especially his idea of “translation,” is relevant to much more than “language.” It can offer us a way beyond one of the most intractable problems and sterile conflicts of our contemporary world: the perceived incompatibility between the affirmation of cultural and religious identities and the equally insistent demand for a renewal of the universal project of enlightenment.

Whether or not it is ultimately coherent, this intellectual conflict has been brought to a head by the continuing perception in the West that what Samuel Huntington (1996) called The Clash of Civilizations is the key issue in global politics.3 For Huntington, the real global divide is no longer between competing political ideologies but between “civilizations,” usually larger than nation states, with religious and cultural traditions that differ radically from each other. Huntington argued that such formations—which he might equally well have called “cultures”4— have become more and not less important with the increasing diffusion of technological civilization across the globe.