Eugenio Coseriu: El problema del arte – Presentation and edition of a text

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.55245/energeia.2025.12

Keywords:

Eugenio Coseriu, Aesthetics, Theory of Art, Coseriu in Montevideo, Philosophy of Art

Abstract

Among the manuscripts and notes in the Coseriu Archive at the University of Tübingen, there are several ones dating probably from the first years of Coseriu’s activity in Montevideo in the 1950s that treat the “Problem of Art”, the philosophical issue of what art really is in its essence. Coseriu gave several talks on that subject, and in the archive we can find a series of notes that seem to have been the base for public presentations. We will present one of the most coherent ones in a transcription and with some comments. It can be said that El problema del arte is not only a coherent text on the essence of art but that it is also related to Coseriu’s thought in general: the problem of art is presented as a philosophical problem (what is art really?), it is discussed rejecting existing explanations and taking individual intuition as a starting point for explicit analysis and it is related to basic human universals we can also find in Coseriu’s theory of language such as the principle of creativity. This makes the text relevant not only for the history of aesthetics but also for the general conception Coseriu offers of different human activities.

Author Biographies

  • Marija Nikolić, Universität Zürich

    Marija Nikolić completed her Master's degree in Spanish Linguistics and Literature at the University of Zurich in 2023, with a thesis on autoreferentiality in the poetry of Joan Margarit. During her Master's studies, she undertook an exchange semester at the Complutense University of Madrid focusing on Spanish and Latin American literature. She holds a Bachelor's degree with a double major in Spanish and German Linguistics and Literature. Currently, she is teaching German and Spanish at Kantonsschule Enge and pursuing the Lehrdiplom für Maturitätsschulen at the University of Zurich.

    During her studies, she worked as a tutor and assistant in Spanish and Latin American literature at the Romanisches Seminar, coordinating the international conference on Jorge Luis Borges (2019) and collaborating in conferences on Coseriu's linguistics (2021) and the poetry of Miguel Hernández (2022). She contributed to research projects and co-authored the article «Estrategias autorreferenciales en tres relatos de Medardo Fraile» published in 2021 in the journal Versants. Revista suiza de literaturas románicas.

  • Johannes Kabatek, Universität Zürich

    Born in 1965 in Stuttgart/Germany. Studies of Romance Philology, Political Science and Musicology in Tübingen and Málaga. 1991 MPhil; 1995 PhD University of Tübingen. 1993-1999, Assistant Prof. Univ. Paderborn and Tübingen; 2000-2013 professorships in Erfurt, Freiburg, Tübingen (Germany); since September 2013 full professor (chair) for Ibero-Romance linguistics at the University of Zurich. Visiting professorships in the US, in Brazil, Chile, Italy and Spain; Corresponding member of the Royal Galician, the Royal Spanish and the Chilean Language Academy. Dr. h.c. University of Suceava (2016). President of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (2020-21). Research areas: Romance linguistics (French, Ibero-Romance Languages); Language contact, minority languages, Medieval Spanish; Galician, Catalan; Brazilian Portuguese; Historical Linguistics; Historical syntax, spoken and written language. Editor-in-chief Revista Internacional de Lingüística IberoamericanaEnergeia. Numerous publications on Eugenio Coseriu; director of the Coseriu Archives from 2005 onwards, host of www.coseriu.com.

References

Coseriu, Eugenio (1952): Sistema, norma y habla, Montevideo.

Coseriu, Eugenio (1956): «La creación metafórica en el lenguaje», en: Publicaciones del Departamento de Lingüística 9, Montevideo, 5-31. [No. 18]

Coseriu, Eugenio (1979): «Tesis sobre el tema ‘lenguaje y poesía’», en: Lingüística española actual 1, 1, 181-186. [No. 156]

Coseriu, Eugenio (1990): «Acerca del sentido de la enseñanza de la lengua y literatura», en: Subdirección general de formación de profesorado, Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (eds.): Innovación en la enseñanza de la lengua y la literatura, Madrid, 13-32. [No. 225]

Coseriu, Eugenio (1991): «Información y literatura», en: Comunicación y sociedad 1990, 3, [publ. 1991], 1-2. Pamplona, 185-200. [No. 257]

Coseriu, Eugenio (1998): «Textos, valores, enseñanza», en: Manuel Casado Velarde (ed.): Lengua, literatura y valores, Pamplona: Newbook ediciones, 61-78. [No. 328]

Coseriu, Eugenio (2006): «La lingüística del texto como hermenéutica del sentido», en: Eugenio Coseriu / Óscar Loureda Lamas (eds.): Lenguaje y discurso, Pamplona: EUNSA, 57-59. [No. 372]

Coseriu, Eugenio (2010): “Estetica lui Blaga în perspectivă europeană”, Limba română (Chișinău) XXXI, 4, ed. especial, 95–106, ed. por Cristinel Munteanu.

Coseriu, Eugenio (2012): «Diez tesis a propósito de la esencia del lenguaje y del significado», trad. de Mónica Castillo Lluch y Johannes Kabatek, en: Energeia 4 (2010), 49-52. [No. 386]

Croce, Benedetto (1913): Breviario de estética, Bari: Laterza.

Heidegger, Martin (2010): Gesamtausgabe. III. Abteilung: Unveröffentlichte Abhandlungen, Vorträge, Gedachtes, Bd. 74: Zum Wesen der Sprache und zur Frage nach der Kunst, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.

López Serena, Araceli (2019): La lingüística como ciencia humana. Una incursión desde la filosofía de la ciencia, Madrid: Arco.

Kabatek, Johannes / Murguía, Adolfo (1997): «Die Sachen sagen, wie sie sind…» Eugenio Coseriu im Gespräch, Tübingen: Narr.

Kabatek, Johannes (2011): «Eugenio Coseriu, las tesis de Estrasburgo y el postulado de una lingüística lingüística», en: XIV Jornadas de Lingüística, Cádiz, 29 March 2011 – 31 March 2011, 35-56.

Kabatek, Johannes (2017): «Eugenio Coseriu en Montevideo: reconstrucción de una época», en: Revista de la Academia Nacional de Letras, 7-23.

Kabatek, Johannes (2023): Eugenio Coseriu. Beyond Structuralism, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2023 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110716573

Kabatek, Johannes (2024): Reseña de Heidegger, Martin (2022): On the Essence of Language and the Question of Art, translated by Adam Knowles, Cambridge/UK: Polity, Energeia 9, 317-319.

Published

2025-10-30

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Documents

How to Cite

Nikolić, M., & Kabatek, J. Eugenio Coseriu: El problema del arte – Presentation and edition of a text. ENERGEIA. ONLINE JOURNAL FOR LINGUISTICS, LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS, 330-372. https://doi.org/10.55245/energeia.2025.12

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