Human language expresses spirit only through dialectical work, not direct emanation

Evidence

There is one immediate and obvious response to that last question: it is language that could act as the cutting edge between the death of the animal and the birth of man. For what else but the power of speech could enable man to ‘present perfectly the genus’? There are passages in Hegel’s Anthropology that would support such a conclusion, pre-empting the inquiry already underway: ‘Seen from the animal world, the human figure is the supreme phase in which spirit makes an appearance. But, for spirit, it is only its first appearance, while language is straightaway its perfect expression (sein vollkommener Ausdruck).’ … However, if this were the case, and human subjectivity were for Hegel something immediate like a transparently reflecting crystal, how could it have a place for delirium, madness, the primordial night? Why would the anthropological development take so long, concluding with language rather than beginning with it? And on this account, what would be the role of habit? … If we avoid a hasty reading of the human relation to its habitus, then a patient reflection on the material will reveal that human expression does not reduce to a pre-constituted expressed. The economy of signification that appears at the end of the Anthropology has been dialectically liberated from the initial and natural economy of the sign which originally governs man. In the transition from one economy to the other, in a passage which involves the formation of our ‘plastic individuality’, it becomes possible to encounter the real role of language. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 543

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the anti-Cartesian reading of Hegelian expression: signification is not immediate translation of spirit but a plastic passage from a natural sign-economy to a liberated one.
• XREF: Connects to Malabou’s core thesis that plasticity governs the anthropological transition, and to Heidegger’s critique that language is not expression of a subject. — connects to: Language is spirit’s perfect expression while the human figure is only its first appearance — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 543; Expression cannot mean spirit speaking directly through man; Language is socially constructed and speaks through individuals

Broader Connections

• Expression cannot mean spirit speaking directly through man #corroborates (0.88)
• Language is spirit’s perfect expression while the human figure is only its first appearance #complicates (0.82) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 543
• Language is socially constructed and speaks through individuals #expands (0.75)