Hans Aarsleff (1925–2026)

Craig Christy

During my doctoral studies at Princeton (1977-1980), Hans (English Department) was one of my mentors, along with William G. Moulton (German Department) within the interdepartmental Program in Linguistics. His expansive interest in the history of ideas encouraged me to ask difficult questions and explore aspects of linguistic history that seemed to have escaped widespread attention. I can’t say I recall the exact ‘aha’ moment, but in the end it was the almost unspoken of concept of uniformitarianism that became the focus of my dissertation. Hans was always exceptionally generous with his time, and patience, even when otherwise busy packing for his annual getaway to Cape Cod. We stayed in touch over the past 50 years or so, and saw each other at ICHoLS venues (including the one he hosted at Princeton in 1984), and at his retirement party in 1997. Otherwise, we kept in touch by phone and by mail: as Hans later regretted, he never made the switch from typewriter to computer.

In 2016 Hans published “An Essay on the Context and Formation of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Linguistic Thought” online, with assistance from his colleague at Princeton’s Firestone Library, John L. Logan (https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2016.1152726). From its publication to his death, Hans remained preoccupied with knowing how this essay had been received by the scholarly community. Though no official review was ever forthcoming, I kept him up to date on several mentions that I detected through online searches. Those familiar with Hans’s work will know he was heavily invested in ‘honest’ narratives involving both acknowledged and unacknowledged intellectual debts.  The far-ranging influence of Condillac was a recurrent theme in Hans’s writings. I still remember his joy upon finding a beautiful antiquarian edition of Condillac in Paris during the ICHoLS conference hosted at Fontenay-St. Cloud in 1999. I believe the last ICHoLS he attended was in 2002 (São Paulo/Campinas, Brazil).

After a stroke in 2021 Hans had in-home assistance, and remained sound of mind right up to the end. He had been doing very well in physical therapy following a recent bout of pneumonia, which, coupled with COPD, had been a bit of a challenge. On July 1 he passed away early in the morning, and we all incurred the loss of a towering member of our linguistic historiography community.