For centuries, philosophy has debated the nature of language. For the rationalist-empiricist tradition following Hobbes, Locke, and Condillac, it is a tool invented by humans to exchange information. In his new book, Charles Taylor aligns himself with the opposing camp of Romanticism represented by Hamann, Herder, and Humboldt, demonstrating that the rationalist-empiricist approach overlooks something crucial: language does not merely describe; it creates meaning, shapes all human experience, and is an integral part of our individual selves. However, Taylor goes a step beyond the thinking of German Romanticism and develops a comprehensive theory of language in the sense of linguistic holism: language is a mental phenomenon, but it also manifests in artistic representations, gestures, voices, and postures.