Eugenio Coseriu y Esa Itkonen: Lecciones de filosofía de la lingüística

This paper aims to provide a methodical image of the scientific-philosophical positions held by Eugenio Coseriu and Esa Itkonen, two scholars who share the same view about the ontology of language and its consequences for the methodology and epistemology of linguistics, but whose contributions are rarely put side by side. It is not easy to gain access to Coseriu’s epistemological stance since his opinions are scattered across many different works. For this reason my main purpose will be to introduce his position through a systematic comparison to the very similar scientific-philosophical assumptions which Itkonen has exhibited and defended in a more comprehensive and exhaustive way. In order to achieve a proper understanding of Coseriu’s and Itkonen’s epistemological convictions, it will be previously necessary to define the domains of philosophy of science and philosophy of linguistics and to characterize the two divergent streams we find inside this metatheoretical domain of research. Subsequently, from the hermeneutic or phenomenological point of view shared by Coseriu and Itkonen, I will discuss what kind of (scientific) explanation is to be expected from human sciences, and I will consider the relationship between the subject and the object of research that exists in this kind of sciences. Conclusively, I will also examine to what extent for both Coseriu and Itkonen this relationship determines the specific epistemic act we make use of in disciplines such as linguistics (namely, intuition), and also the necessity to differentiate them from natural sciences, where observation prevails.