On Some Historical Roots and Present-day Doubts: A Reply to Nicolopoulou and Weintraub (1996)

Abstract

Nicolopoulou and Weintraub (1996) raised doubts about the extent of the relevance of the Humboldtian tradition for Vygotsky's concept of culture, and his semiotic approach in general. However, these doubts are unfounded—Vygotsky was in direct contact with the 19th-century German traditions of philosophical analyses of language, as well as with their Russian elaborations. Furthermore, Vygotsky borrowed theoretical notions from two distinct traditions of thought—often contrasted (by Soviet sources) as 'idealist' and 'materialist.' Defying the demand to make such contrasts mutually exclusive, Vygotsky tried to blend productive moments from each of them into his approach. He was not a 'cultural relativist' in the sense of present-day North American social discourse. It is suggested that the concepts of development and relativism are in need of further elaboration, in ways that allow recognition of local progress while avoiding global claims where the bases of comparison are not made explicit.

Keywords

cultural relativism development language progress

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