K O D I K A S / C O D E Volume 43 (2020) · No. 3 - 4 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Prologue Bertrand Russell ’ s On Denoting and History Bertrand Russell ’ s ideas are seen as the beginning of an analytic philosophy. In his famous essay on identity, Russell discussed the following phrase: “ George IV wished to know whether Scott was the author of Waverley. ” (Russell 1905: 485) With a king and a famous author, Russell has chosen two distinctive proper names. Each of them clearly denotes a person, and the author of the novel seems to be one of them. But that is not the end of the story that goes with these names. Waverley, as the first historical novel, is still present behind the concern of Analytic Philosophy to break away from history. An author ’ s name could just as well refer to a company, as was common in opera production. However, the distinctive, undivided author of a work was a guiding ideology of the 19th century. The Scottish author Walter Scott (we assume that he did not rather consist of a workshop of employees) wrote the novel Waverley to reconcile the Scots with the English. The hero Waverley is a fictional British soldier from England who is mesmerized by Scotland. The novel is written in the first person as if told by the author, but was published anonymously. By lending his distinctive voice to the author while reading, King George IV seemed to make him doubly distinctive: a king thus embodied a bourgeois author as the new leading figure of the 19th century. This seemed just as attractive to the king as the conciliatory content of the novel. Naturally, the king wondered who this ‘ I ’ was that he was embodying as he read. When the king later visited Scotland with Walter Scott, he wore a traditional kilt there, similar to the fictional, but distinctive Waverley. This was not seen as a ridiculous disguise, although this king ’ s vanity was notorious, but rather as an appreciation of the Scottish identity he displayed. The king adopted the bourgeois principle of embodiment, which was no longer seen as a preposterous and reprehensible imitation. Bertrand Russell replaced the proper names with mathematical variables and yet claimed that their distinctiveness remains. He called this identity. But the historical burdens of this idea did not disappear that way. Even if Walter Scott and King George IV are replaced by letters, the fact that they are all supposed to embody their identity does not disappear. Russell ’ s denotation of a sign is rather a precondition of that which is meant: the reader, the letter and that which is named must realize it like a shared theater role. A concept of identity, realized by an unmistakable hero of a novel, realized by an unmistakable author, realized by an unmistakable king, realized by the unmistakable contemporary reader, is the firm and circular basis of his thought. Denotation conversely turns out to be a realization of the denoted models. Reference Russell, Bertrand 1905: “ On Denoting ” , in: Mind, 14.56 (October 1905): 479 - 493