Johann Gottfried Herder

Lessing e Herder sono due scomodi e scandalosi protagonisti della cultura tedesca del XVIII secolo. Il primo, laico drammaturgo, educatore della nascente borghesia e dell'umanità, il secondo, sacerdote e filosofo, unificatore della cultura germanica che vuole salvare l'umanità. Salaci fustigatori dei costumi dell'epoca, propongono una visione di suprema idealità umana e massonica. Come massoni intervengono nelle ingarbugliate, rissose ed esoteriche logge tedesche scagliando strali beffardi, ironici, graffianti contro la nascente confusa Massoneria, che vogliono purificare ed elevare a specchio delle virtù e dei valori universali umani. Inizia Lessing con cinque dialoghi ove un massone e un profano si confrontano con sottile ironia e talora pungente sarcasmo, in un duetto conciso e concitato, analizzando il vero segreto del pensiero massonico. I suoi Dialoghi sono critici nei confronti della società civile e delle sue istituzioni, Stato, Costituzioni e leggi, aprendo le porte ad una visione universalistica e metastorica della Massoneria come unica possibilità di realizzazione dei valori universali umani. L'opera diventa lo stendardo di una massoneria d'essenza, ascetica e idealistica, che abbandona ogni orpello esoterico e misterico e che è ancora oggi alla base dell'idealità massonica. È un'operazione d'afflato illuministico che vuole scuotere le sonnolente classi borghese e nobiliare percorrendo i grandi temi del dibattito culturale dell'epoca: il potere assolutistico, l'ipocrisia sociale, la critica allo Stato e alle istituzioni, l'etica illuministica, la visione metastorica dei destini umani, il confronto tra la massoneria di forma e quella di sostanza. Il secondo, Herder, parte da Lessing ampliandone la visione profetica. Nei dialoghi traspare la sua visione "sturmundiana" e, di più, religiosa, da convinto pastore protestante. La visione massonica herderiana è trattata con accenti poetici ma anche critici verso la pratica massonica. Herder inserisce gli scopi della massoneria nella sua concezione di Humanität e questa giustifica i primi. Herder nega ogni valenza misterica ed esoterica, ma anche i fondamenti della massoneria: il segreto e l'iniziaticità. Non è un pessimista come Lessing e crede nella società civile capace di perfezionarsi. La massoneria da società invisibile si deve fare visibile, Società di eletti nella società civile, contribuendo a realizzare il senso di Humanität. Quello che sembra un inno alla massoneria svanisce davanti alla critica dirompente, che nega ogni suo carattere tradizionale. Herder smantella ogni tradizione massonica ma paradossalmente pone i topos ideali di una concezione che sarà vincente nel pensiero massonico del XIX e XX secolo: una massoneria inserita nella società che si batte per il miglioramento di questa. Herder anticipa i tempi, supera l'utopismo lessinghiano e si fa aedo di una massoneria civilmente impegnata, senza le universalità illuministiche, che invece riversa in quel senso di Humanität che impregna le sue opere filosofiche e storiche. Supera l'utopismo lessinghiano e si fa aedo di una massoneria civilmente impegnata, senza le universalità illuministiche, che invece riversa in quel senso di Humanität che impregna le sue opere filosofiche e storiche. Il testo proposto è di interesse per cultori, studiosi e ricercatori riguardo agli aspetti socio-culturali del XVIII secolo tedesco, a Lessing e Herder, alla storia dell'organizzazione e del pensiero della massoneria. L'interesse del libro è dato dal fatto che l'analisi critica italiana dei dialoghi massonici di Lessing si è fermata agli anni '30. Quella dei dialoghi massonici di Herder si limita a un unico testo di 28 anni or sono. Esistono solo sporadici articoli su riviste specializzate o richiami, senza particolare approfondimento, in libri di argomenti più generali. Il punto di forza del testo qui proposto è l'analisi dei dialoghi nell'ambito della cultura tedesca del '700, della storia della massoneria dell'epoca e in raffronto al pensiero massonico moderno.

In recent debates on empathy in various disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, psychopathology, cognitive sciences, neurophysiology, the discussion has focused on empathic experiences within the intersubjective context, either between two individuals or among groups. But this is only one side of the coin. Since ancient times, subject-object and even object-object relationships were described in a way that cultural anthropology has defined as “animation”, that rhetorics has named “personification”, and that we would today call “empathic”. The chapter aims at exploring these objectual implications of empathy. Pinotti particularly criticizes the projective “hydraulic” model of communicating vessels–from subject to object–which builds the hermeneutical mainstream paradigm of any theorization of such relationships. With recourse to alternative theoretical perspectives, such as Gestalt theory of expression, “realistic” phenomenology, and theory of symbolic forms, the author proposes a newfound characterological approach that engages with acknowledging the originary expressive and pathemic character of things in themselves, and therefore in defending the fundamentum in re of objectual empathy.

In the Anthropology, Kant wonders whether the genius or the individual possessing perfected judgment has contributed more to the advance of culture. In the KU, Kant answers this question defi nitively on the side of those with perfected judgment. Nevertheless, occurring as it does in §50 of the KU, immediately after Kant's celebration of the genius in §49, this only raises more questions. Kant rejects the genius in favour of the individual of taste as an advancer of culture, yet under what conditions could the genius contribute? And, what threat does the genius really pose to this advance, other than that of penning simple nonsense? My essay attempts to answer these questions, using key texts and overlooked Refl exionen, all of which nest Kant's concern for the genius in the associated risks of fanaticism. I conclude that, given certain conditions, the genius can contribute in a unique manner to the advance of culture.

B e essay ussesses the currently fashionable notion that nationalism is cultural phenomenon through examination of the 'Godfather' of cultural nationalism, Johan Herder. It jinds that nations only really arise with political nationalist movements and the building of nation-states in the 19th centuv.

In Chapter 1 of his Comparing the Literatures, David Damrosch quotes at length from Herder's famous 1773 essay on Shakespeare. In this passage, which forms the essay's coda, Herder is reflecting on the fate of obsolescence that awaits every writer, even Shakespeare: Sadder and more important is the thought that even this great creator of history and the world soul grows older every day, that the words and customs and categories of the age wither and fall like autumnal leaves, that we are already so removed from these great ruins of the age of chivalry…. And soon, perhaps, as everything is obliterated and tends in different directions, even his drama will become quite incapable of living performance, will become the dilapidated remains of a colossus, of a pyramid, which all gaze upon with wonder and none understand. This passage is ostensibly about Shakespeare and really about the mutability of culture. It appears to be about the temporality of literary reception but its real topic, to quote Damrosch, is "the uncertainties of cultural belonging in a radically relativistic world." Of course, Herder's world was not yet radically relativistic. Ours is. The intellectual culture in which Herder came of age was characterized by a robust belief in the authority, impartiality and, above all, universality of reason. Herder's mid-eighteenth-century contemporaries, writes

Herder’s This Too a Philosophy of History for the Formation of Humanity
(1774) is known for its pioneering use of the word ‘nationalism’, and for its scathing
critique of various Enlightened narratives of European history and their corresponding
ethical views (cosmopolitanism). This article seeks to reconstruct this critique and
Herder’s account of the process of civilization, so as to uncover the possible moral and
political message of this work. Tracing the evolution of Herder’s early philosophy of
history, and positioning it in his contemporary debates on the development of the
human mind and sociability, the article argues that Herder posited a distinctive natural
dynamic of mental and moral development in human history. For Herder, human languages
and thinking gradually became ever more abstract and refined, which, however,
led to the weakening of the intensity of feeling and undermined the efficacy of
moral motivation. In This Too a Philosophy, Herder specified the spiralling pattern of
European history, identifying two crucial cycles in it: in the first stage, nations followed
only the natural dynamic of mental and moral development, while the second
and ‘higher’ one was initiated through the adoption of the universalistic Christian
religion by the barbarous Germanic tribes conquering the Roman territories. Herder’s
famous defence of national prejudices and antagonism concerned the first (pre-
Christian) period specifically, while he identified the rise of a Christian ideal of the
‘brotherhood of nations’ in the second. With the continuing progress of abstract thinking
and social differentiation in modern Europe, however, various modern moral and
political pathologies emerged, including the development of an entirely abstract ‘love
of mankind’. While remaining pessimistic about the chances for Europe’s moral and
political regeneration, Herder advocated the pursuit of a distinctively modern ‘pure’
and sociable virtue, which would seek to avoid the various pitfalls of abstract cosmopolitanism.

Im Zeichen aktueller Diskurse ist vom „Tod des Intellektuellen“ die Rede – des Intellektuellen als einer Figur, die ihre gesellschaftliche Identität über den Anspruch bestimmt, im Namen des „Volkes“ zu sprechen. Gestützt wird dieser Anspruch auf eine privilegierte Beherrschung der Kulturtechniken des Lesens und Schreibens. Vorliegende Studie nimmt die aktuelle Toderklärung zum Anlaß, um den Blick auf die Gründungsphase des Intellektuellenparadigmas in der deutschen Literatur zurückzuwenden. In exemplarischen Lektüren der Schriften Johann Gottfried Herders, Friedrich Schlegels, Heinrich Heines und Georg Büchners analysiert der Verfasser die literarischen Strategien, mit denen Schriftsteller vom ausgehenden 18. bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts versucht haben, sich ihre soziale Identität auf dem Schauplatz des „Volkes“ zu erschreiben. Kurze Kapitel zu Hugo von Hofmannsthal und Bertolt Brecht geben abschließend einen Ausblick auf das 20. Jahrhundert.

BIOGRAPHIE 14-4 Johann Gottfried Herder : Leben und Werk / Michael Maurer. -Köln [u.a.] : Böhlau, 2014. -195 S. : Ill. ; 21 cm. -ISBN 978-3-412-22344-1 : EUR 19.90 [#3823] Der Kulturhistoriker Michael Maurer, Professor in Jena mit dem Schwerpunkt Kulturgeschichte, 1 möchte mit dieser handlichen Biographie eine Lanze für den seiner Meinung nach zu unbekannten Klassiker Johann Gottfried Herder brechen. 2 Da Herder im Gegensatz zu seinen Zeitgenossen nicht durch heute noch gelesene Romane oder Dramen in Erscheinung getreten war, ist sein Klassiker-Status prekär. Damit ist Maurer nicht zufrieden, ist doch Herder für ihn "einer der größten Denker und bedeutendsten Menschen, die je in Deutschland gelebt haben" (S. 7). Trifft dies zu, so ist es in der Tat bedauernswert, daß ihm im kulturellen Gedächtnis der Deutschen heute kein angemessener Platz eingeräumt wird. Immerhin gibt es jedoch ein kontinuierliches akademisches Interesse an Herder, von dem jüngere Sammelbände 3 und Monographien 4 ebenso Zeugnis ablegen wie ein bereits

In Another Philosophy of History, J.G. Herder claims that his aim is not to compare and judge different cultures, but merely to describe and explain how each came into being and thus to adopt the standpoint of an impartial observer. I argue, however, that there is a tension between Herder's understanding of his own project—his stated doctrine of historicism and cultural relativism—and the way in which it is actually put into practice. That is, despite Herder's stated aims, he is nevertheless unable to avoid justifying premodern forms of life and making context-transcending evaluative judgments in the process of trying to understand cultures on their own terms and holding them up as exemplars vis à vis the Enlightenment. This tension presents the challenge of accounting for it in the most charitable and illuminating way. I argue that this goal can be achieved by appealing to the resources of the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, which enables us to disclose two enabling conditions for Herder's project of which he was not explicitly aware, viz., the internal connection between understanding and justification and the enabling character of prejudice as the condition for the possibility of understanding as such. In Another Philosophy of History, J.G. Herder develops a distinctive methodology for historical inquiry that poses a challenge to his Enlightenment contemporaries on the grounds that their methods radically distort and, as a result, fail to genuinely understand and learn from premodern cultures and civilizations. Against the assumptions of cultural superiority of Enlightenment historians, based on a historical narrative of linear progress which posits the Enlightenment as history's terminal point, Herder argues that no such comparative, context-transcending evaluative judgments can be made since every culture has to be understood on its own terms and evaluated on the basis of the criteria internal to each. By situating cultures within their own historical context, therefore, we can come to understand and appreciate the particular virtues distinctive of each. As such, according to Herder's historicism, the aim is not to compare and judge different cultures, but rather to describe and explain how each came into being; that is, to adopt the standpoint of an impartial observer in order to avoid the hubris of Enlightenment historians on the one hand, and the tendency to overly romanticize and 'pick favorites' among premodern cultures, on the other.

Area teorica 2 Cfr. H. PLESSNER, Die Einheit der Sinne. Grundlinien einer Aesthesiologie des Geistes, in ID., Gesammelte Schriften, a cura di G. Dux, O. Marquard e E. Ströker, vol. III, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 1980, p. 32. siologie des Geistes" 2 , questa continuità tra l'antropologia filosofica moderna e le sue radici estetiche nel Settecento tedesco. In verità -ed Irmscher lo dimostra con sicura padronanza dei testi e delle fonti -il termine "estesiologia" ben determina la contiguità tra le due discipline in questione, l'estetica e l'antropologia, salvando la prima da ogni ingenuo storicismo o formalismo ed emancipando la seconda da ogni mero psicologismo. Tuttavia non va dimenticato che l'"estesiologia", così come la intende Herder è una forma di antropologia filosofica, di riflessione cioè, a partire dai "sensi" e dalla "percezione", sull'uomo e sulla sua cultura, e non una teoria estetica, e men che meno una teoria delle arti.

Klima war nicht immer das, was es heute gerade aufhört zu sein: ein stabiles Muster aus wiederkehrenden meteorologischen Ereignissen, ein Durchschnitt von Temperaturen, Niederschlägen, Winden und Bewölkung -kurzum ein Naturphänomen, das bestenfalls den Hintergrund, die »Kulisse« menschlicher Geschichte stellte (Chakrabarty 2010: 279). Wenn wir heute geradezu obsessiv vom Klima sprechen, beziehen wir uns auf ein Element der Natur, das sich auf unheimliche -kaum wahrnehmbare, jedoch latent katastrophische -Weise ändert, verschiebt und zunehmend aus einer Stabilität gerät, die ihm zumindest lange unterstellt wurde. Es ist klar geworden, dass Klima sehr viel mehr ist als ein Durchschnitt der Witterungen: Wir bezeichnen damit neuerdings ein hyperkomplexes, in planetarischem Maßstab zu betrachtendes System von Atmosphärenzuständen, Wasserzyklen, der Chemie und Physik der Meere, dem Zustand der Kryosphäre und des Bodens. Klima, so hat es Timothy Morton formuliert, ist ein hyperobject, »massively distributed in time and space relative to humans« (Morton 2013: 1), dessen Ausdehnung in räumlicher und zeitlicher Hinsicht die Grenzen der Erfahrung und Vorstellung ebenso überschreitet wie die Möglichkeiten seiner Berechen-oder Simulierbarkeit. Als dasjenige Element des Lebenssystems der Erde, das alle einzelnen Biosphären miteinander verbindet, ist das Klima der Inbegriff des »Systemischen« im »Earth System«.

https://brill.com/view/title/57200
This chapter proposes a new reading of Herder’s Treatise on the Origin of Language that concentrates on human sympathy for animals. The ostensible aim of the Treatise is to shed light on the unique human traits which lead to the creation of human language. According to Herder, sympathy denotes the uniqueness of humans’ orientation in the world; it manifests their non-instrumental relationship to their surroundings. However, at the same time as he presents sympathy as a sentiment that marks the singularity of humans, Herder portrays sympathy as an illustration for the proximity between humans and animals. This proximity is elucidated in uses of sounds that precede developed human language, such as the expression of pain. Herder’s explanation of the rudimentary use of sounds through the prism of anthropological relativism reveals his refusal to describe humans as superior to animals. This chapter argues that Herder’s cultural pluralism accommodates the positioning of human language in a system of other creaturely languages. Sympathy makes palpable a secondary thread in the Treatise, a line of argumentation that parallels animals with humans and that demonstrates performatively the possibility that humans could engage with animal communities.

The Immanent Word establishes that the philosophical study of language inaugurated in the 1759 works of Hamann and Lessing marks a paradigm shift in modern philosophy; it analyzes the transformation of that shift in works of Herder, Kant, Fichte, Novalis and Schlegel. It contends that recent studies of early linguistic philosophy obscure the most relevant commission of its thinkers, arguing against the theological appropriation of Hamann by John Milbank; against the "expressive" appropriation of Hamann and Herder by Christina Lafont and Charles Taylor; and against Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy’s uncritical championing of Schlegel’s ideological position.

Den Brennpunkt der vorliegenden Studie bildet das Afrika-Bild des Universalgelehrten J.G. Herder (1744-1803). Erstmals wird es vor dem Hintergrund seines Geschichtsverständnisses analysiert. Zugleich stellt ein in die Tiefe gehender Vergleich mit den Afrika-Bildern und Geschichtsphilosophien Kants und Hegels die Besonderheit – und Zukunftsträchtigkeit – von Herders Ansatz plastisch dar. Die Frage nach Wahrnehmung und Beurteilung des Fremden, des Anderen strukturiert die Behandlung. Wird er im einen Fall in eine rassistische Nomenklatur eingefügt und dadurch aus dem Bereich der eigenen Wirklichkeit ausgeschlossen, weist die andere Sicht die Unangemessenheit rassischer Taxonomien nach. Sie integriert den Anderen in die bekannte und anerkannte Wirklichkeit. So wird eine falsche Differenz aufgehoben, ohne der Vielfalt Abbruch zu tun. Die Aktualität dieser Philosophie ist immens. Nicht zuletzt ist sie Herders Werk.

Aus dem Inhalt:
Zur Genese der Moderne und des wissenschaftlichen Rassismus – Herders Evolutionstheorie – Das Klima und die genetische Kraft – Die Kette der Wesen und ihre Historisierung – Afrika innerhalb der Menschheitsgeschichte Herders – Möglichkeitstheorie und Geschichtstheologie: zwei Seiten der Humanitätskonzeption – Vom kulturellen Zentrismus zum Rassismus – Kant und seine Herder-Rezension – Hegels Philosophie der Geschichtslosigkeit – Zum Nationalismus – Zum Identitätsdiskurs – Das absolutistische Gespenst.

Cet ouvrage oriente la réflexion philosophique sur le romantisme allemand dans une voie nouvelle ayant pour point de départ la singularité des paysages peints par Caspar David Friedrich, et pour concept opératoire majeur la romantisation du monde, dont Novalis a fait le programme d’une philosophie spécifique. Analyser la critique par Hegel du style de Friedrich ; étudier l’invention par Novalis, dans le prolongement de Herder, de quelque chose comme un paysage-corps ; suivre au-delà de Kant le destin du concept de sublime : tels sont les moments principaux d’un parcours qui permet de mettre au jour les liens existant entre la peinture de Friedrich et la problématique de la « révélation » énoncée par Novalis dans ses fragments sur la philosophie romantique.


Laure Cahen-Maurel. L'art de romantiser le monde. La peinture de Caspar David Friedrich et la philosophie romantique de Novalis (Münster/Berlin, LIT-Verlag, 339 pages, 2017), coll. "Ideal & Real. Aspekte und Perspektiven des Deutschen Idealismus", dirigée par Mildred Galland-Szymkowiak et Augustin Dumont.

Diese Arbeit liest die frühromantische Poetik und Sprachtheorie erstmals unter bildtheoretischer Perspektive. Dabei kann nachgewiesen werden, dass die sprachtheoretischen und poetologischen Debatten der Frühromantik von einer subkutanen Bildtheorie geprägt sind. Die frühromantischen Autoren rekurrieren in ihren Schriften auf die vielfältigen Verständnis-und Verwendungsweisen des Bildbegriffs, wie sie sie in den unterschiedlichsten philosophischen, ästhetischen und mystischen Diskursen des 18. Jahrhunderts finden konnten und amalgamieren diese zu ihrem Konzept poetischer Sprache.

1 Per un completo esame delle possibilità di incontro tra i due ambiti si rimanda a M. Cometa, Letteratura e arti figurative: un catalogo, in «Contemporanea», 3 (2005), pp. 15-29. 2 Le tre modalità cui si fa riferimento vanno ricondotte alle opere di G. Didi-Huberman e della scuola warburghiana, agli studi di P. Hamon sulle imageries letterarie, quelli di J.A.W. Heffernan e di M. Krieger sulll'ékphrasis, e a quelle di J.-J. Wunenburger sull'immaginario.

This interview explores Charles Taylor’s understanding of philosophical anthropology and its relationship to Herder. Taylor argues that human culture can be properly understood only in a genetic fashion, through hermeneutics and phenomenology, and names Herder as an important precursor here. Taylor illustrates this through the difference between a purely normative political theory and a contextual political philosophy. He identifies what he calls a “good naturalism”, associated with Herder, that explains what kind of animal human beings are, and a “bad naturalism” that explains human beings in reductive, natural scientific terms. Finally, Taylor outlines his current work on language, in which a similar opposition arises, between language as a rich set of language games/practices and language as pure description.

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Durante las últimas dos décadas del siglo XVIII, los intelectuales alemanes se enfrentaron a la tarea de reflexionar acerca del concepto de ilustración (Aufklärung), que, si bien era utilizado con frecuencia desde hacía años, conservaba una vaguedad que generaba inquietud y sospechas. El libro reúne los principales documentos donde los protagonistas del movimiento ilustrado reflexionan acerca de su sentido, alcance, causas y consecuencias, configurando un debate complejo en el que la pregunta “¿qué es ilustración?” se entrelaza con una multitud de otras cuestiones, incluyendo problemas estéticos, morales y, fundamentalmente, políticos. Las respuestas, sin embargo, son muy distintas entre sí. No existe una caracterización de ilustración a la que todos, o siquiera la mayoría, adhiera. Al contrario, los documentos reunidos en el libro –varios de los cuales aparecen por primera vez en español– muestran que la ilustración, como proyecto colectivo, abarca voces dispares, incluyendo puntos de vista que la cuestionan.

Con lo sviluppo dell'antropologia moderna, alcuni problemi filosofici si ripropongono in forma inedita. Riflettere sull'uomo non significa più conoscere se stessi, né parlare di Dio o dell'anima, ma confrontarsi con un essere problematicamente proteso tra determinatezza e libertà, tra "natura" e "mondo". Il volume mostra come lo svolgersi di questa vicenda sia assai meno frammentario e discontinuo di quanto talora si presuma. Il problema antropologico è al centro di un vivace ed aspro dibattito che, dal fiorire dell'antropologia all'epoca di Herder e Kant, giunge, attraversando l'intero sviluppo del pensiero ottocentesco e in particolare le opere di Hegel, Marx, Darwin e Nietzsche, fino all'«antropologia filosofica» e alla critica dell’«antropologismo» da parte di Husserl e Heidegger. E’ su questo sfondo tematico che si comprendono molti degli sviluppi novecenteschi e contemporanei.

The investigation that I am going to pursue here is part of a larger effort on my part to understand the relationship between Kant’s so-called “philosophical anthropology” and the development of early German anthropology since it is my sense that Kant had a determinate, if indirect, effect on the history of that separate field. For now this larger project has three main foci: an account of Kant’s philosophical anthropology in all its parts, an inquiry into Kant’s relationship to the theories engaged by German anthropologists between roughly the 1750s-1790s, and finally, an effort to track the subsequent routes taken by German anthropology in the first half of the 19th-c. In this discussion I am going look at one particular trajectory in anthropological research where we can see Kant’s effect.

By focusing on the Enlightenment philosopher Christian Wolff, the article intends to shed light upon an author who both played an important role in the process of substitution of Latin with German as a means of scientific communication and in the development of discipline-specific language varieties in 18th century Germany. Against this background,the coexistence of explicit rules proposed by Wolff to render German more scientific and an implicit undercurrent of his translation theory inherited from rhetorical tradition will be identified as the common origin of two increasingly bifurcating strains of thought destined to govern linguistic practice in future science and poetics respectively. To this end, it will first be shown that Wolff’s precepts for Bible translation on the one hand tend to construe translation as a process of conceptual specification and clarification, and therefore as an instance of scientification, while on the other hand unintentionally promoting a positive outlook on polysemy due to the reception of the rhetorical concept of emphasis. In a second step, these results will be interpreted from the point of view of the history of disciplinary differentiation, yielding the hypothesis that the further development of the concept of emphasis will allow for the justification of the autonomy of poetic language up to Herder, whereas the concept of translation as conceptual specification and clarification may be traced forth via Condillac to Lavoisier, where in the guise of chemical nomenclature it will finally help to build up a specific language for a newly evolving scientific discipline.

Intervención ampliada y corregida en el simposio "Estéticas del siglo XVIII"
(Buenos Aires, 11 y 12 de agosto de 2016), organizado por el Centro de Investigaciones Filosófica, la Asociación Argentina de Estudios sobre el Siglo XVIII y la Escuela de Humanidades de la UNSAM (Doctorado en Filosofía). La exposición  gira en torno al "Shakespeare" (1773) de Johann G. Herder, uno de los ensayos liminares del Sturm und Drang,  que propone reexaminar desde la doble perspectiva de una reinterpretación de la tragedia antigua y una crítica de la tragedia francesa, señalando las divergencias del filósofo alemán con Lessing y Voltaire.  El texto de persenta acompañado de debate entre los asistentes: Nicolás Kwiatkowski, OScar Esquisabel, Ricardo Ibarlucía, Adrián Ratto, Silvia Manzo y Esteban Ponce.

(English below) Este estudo trata, sob a ótica da Teoria da História e com o auxílio de métodos da História Social e dos Conceitos, da relação entre a crítica do jovem Herder ao Esclarecimento e seu conceito de nação em formação entre 1765 e 1774. Partindo das implicações historiográficas do tema, seu objetivo é pôr à luz e compreender os significados políticos da obra de Herder no período estudado. Trata-se, em primeiro lugar, do projeto reformista herderiano em favor das identidades nacionais, pesando suas divergências em relação ao projeto civilizatório e cosmopolita do Esclarecimento. Em seguida, aborda-se a crítica de Herder ao Esclarecimento e à modernidade.  O grande problema apresentado por Herder em 1774, no contexto dessa crítica, é a incompreensão e depreciação do “outro” pelo europeu esclarecido que, em nome da universalidade, justifica e instrumentaliza o projeto colonizador do Estado. Desse modo, Herder vê uma convergência entre o Esclarecimento e os interesses dos grandes Estados monárquicos europeus. À medida que ele gradualmente passa a pensar a história como história do presente, essa crítica se acirra e toma a forma da oposição conflituosa entre o Estado esclarecido e cosmopolita e os “povos” e “nações” sob seu domínio. Trata-se, então, para Herder, de defender estes “povos” e “nações” contra o poder “uniformizador” e “mecanizador” do Estado moderno, crítica que ele dirige especialmente para a Prússia de Frederico II. Conforme Herder, a modernidade realiza uma dissolução dos vínculos humanos, dos afetos e laços identitários, e seu projeto nacional surge como antídoto para essa dissolução que, segundo ele, é o grande mal da época moderna. Partindo daí, ele procura contribuir não só para a construção da identidade nacional alemã, mas dos “povos” e “nações” que são, no seu entender, oprimidos pela vocação colonizadora do Estado monárquico aliado ao ethos esclarecido da modernidade. Por conseguinte, a crítica de Herder ao Esclarecimento e sua formulação de um novo conceito de nação são importantes contribuições à formação da ideologia nacional alemã (e não só) entre os séculos XVIII e XIX. / Starting from the perspective of the Theory of History, Social History and History of Concepts methods, this thesis deals with the relationship between the young Herder critique of Enlightenment and the making of his concept of nation that takes place between 1765 and 1774. Stressing the historiographic implications of this theme, this study aims to bring to light the political meaning of Herder's work in the period. In the first place, it focusses Herder's reformist project in favor of national identities, weighing its distintive character before the civilizing and cosmopolitan project of Enlightenment. Departing from that point, the study approaches Herder's critique of Enlightenment and his critique of modernity. The great problem presented by Herder in 1774 in the context of his critique is the incomprehension and depreciation of the "other" by the enlightened European who, in the name of universality, justifies and instrumentalizes the Modern State colonizing project. In this sense, Herder´s critique denounces a convergence between the Enlightenment and the great European monarchical States. As Herder gradually begins to think of history as a history of the present, this critique gets stronger and takes the form of the conflicting opposition between the enlightened and cosmopolitan State and the “nations” under its control. Therefore, Herder´s main concern is defending the "peoples" and the "nations" against the "unifying" and "mechanizing" power of the modern State, a criticism that he addresses especially to Frederick II and the Prussian State. So the Herderian national project emerges as an antidote to what he considers the great evil of the Modern Age: the dissolution of human bonds, affections and ties of identity. In this respect, he seeks to contribute not only to the construction of the German national identity, but also to the identity of “peoples” and “nations” who are, in his view, oppressed by the colonizing trend of the monarchical State allied to the enlightened ethos of modernity. Thus, Herder's critique of Enlightenment, and his formulation of a new concept of nation are important contributions to the formation of the German (and other peoples) national ideology between the 18th and 19th centuries.

Avant-dernière version d'une contribution à l'ouvrage collectif "Einbildungskraft und Reflexion. Philosophische Untersuchungen zu Novalis / Imagination et réflexion. Recherches philosophiques sur Novalis", A. Dumont & A. Schnell (dirs.), Münster/Berlin, LIT-Verlag, 2016, p. 19-39.

ABSTRACT: This article focuses on the apparently paradoxical remarks of Novalis on landscape, which followed the famous “Romantikertreffen” of August 1798: that decisive meeting of the “early German romantics” on the occasion of a communal visit to the painting and sculpture galleries in Dresden. We analyze how Novalis surpasses the phenomenological conception of landscape painting proposed by August Wilhelm Schlegel by resorting to the "incorrect" categories of sculpture and haptic sense to talk about the feeling for nature that governs landscape painting. This is the aesthetics of Herder – his reflections in the treatise “Sculpture” (1778) on the actual concrete and tangible force of the beautiful and the central importance it accords to the experience of one’s own body (a highly modern conception) – which is diverted here in a typical Novalisian gesture that we will show is consistent with his philosophy. The reception of Herder has contributed to the development in Novalis of a Pygmalionic aesthetics of contact with things that casts a different light on early romanticism: it is not only the exclusive exercise of a critical reflexivity that assumes distance, but also of a sensibility that seeks a tactile meeting point as it were between what is separated.

RESUME : L’article s’intéresse aux remarques à première vue paradoxales de Novalis sur le paysage, qui font suite au fameux « Romantikertreffen » d’août 1798 : la rencontre décisive des « premiers romantiques allemands » à la faveur d’une visite commune des Galeries de peinture et de sculpture de Dresde. Nous analysons la manière dont Novalis dépasse la conception phénoménologique de la peinture de paysage proposée par August Wilhelm Schlegel en recourant aux “mauvaises” catégories de la « plastique », donc de la sculpture, et du sens haptique pour parler du sentiment pour la nature qui préside à la peinture paysagère. C’est l’esthétique de Herder — la réflexion du traité « La Plastique » (1778) sur la force proprement concrète et tangible du beau et l’importance centrale (très moderne) qu’elle accorde à l’expérience du corps propre — qui se trouve ici détournée selon un geste typiquement novalissien dont nous montrons la cohérence avec sa philosophie. La réception de Herder a contribué, ce faisant, à la formation, chez Novalis, d’une esthétique pygmalionesque du contact avec les choses qui projette un éclairage différent sur le premier romantisme allemand : il n’est pas l’exercice exclusif d’une réflexivité critique supposant l’écart, mais tout autant celui d’une sensibilité qui cherche la réunion pour ainsi dire tactile de ce qui est séparé.

In Das Kapital lesen schreibt Althusser, dass "die Philosophie Spinozas eine theoretische Revolution anstößt, die in der Geschichte der Philosophie keine Vorläufer hat und wahrscheinlich die größte philosophische Revolution aller Zeiten ist, weil wir Spinoza aus philosophischer Sicht als den einzigen direk-ten Vorfahren von Marx betrachten können."Jedoch, so fügt er hinzu, "ist diese Revolution unter Schichten der Nacht begraben worden", insofern als es Marx selbst nicht gelang-außer in oberflächlicher Weise-, das Denken Spinozas zu verstehen. Das Ziel dieses Buches ist es, das diesen "Schichten der Nacht" zugrundelie-gende Muster zu rekonstruieren, indem die komplexe Entstehungsgeschichte jenes Vorurteils dargelegt wird, das in der deutschen Philosophie und Kultur den Namen "Spinoza" angenommen hat. Die vier Sektionen der Arbeit sind Leibniz und Spinoza, der Spinoza-Renaissance, dem Idealismus und Spinoza sowie dem Marxismus und Spinoza gewidmet und untersuchen die Haupt-probleme dieser Geschichte.

In Leggere Il Capitale Althusser scrive che «la filosofia di Spinoza introduce una rivoluzione teorica senza precedenti nella storia della filosofia e, proba-bilmente, la più grande rivoluzione filosofica di ogni tempo, al punto che pos-siamo considerare Spinoza, dal punto di vista filosofico, l'unico antenato diretto di Marx». Tuttavia, aggiunge, questa rivoluzione «è stata seppellita sotto strati di notte», tanto che Marx stesso non riuscì a comprendere, se non in modo superficiale, il pensiero di Spinoza. Lo scopo di questo libro è rico-struire la trama determinata di questi «strati di notte», offrendo la complessa genealogia di quel pregiudizio che nella filosofia e nella cultura tedesca ha preso il nome di "Spinoza". Le quattro sezioni, dedicate rispettivamente a Leibniz e Spinoza, alla Spinoza-Renaissance, all'idealismo e Spinoza, infine al marxismo e Spinoza, indagano i nodi principali di questa storia.

This paper demonstrates how Herder's unique position (in the 18th century) on moral philosophy is rooted in his understanding of the soul-body relationship. He rejects both Mendelssohn's conception of the soul as separate from the body and striving for an eternal perfection and his associated belief in a moral philosophy that consists of universal, rational principles. Herder construes the soul as deeply bound up with the body, and knowledge, including of morality, as rooted in the lower, sensuous regions of the soul. In the case of morality, moral norms and mores emerge from culturally and historically shaped quasi-physiological "moral feelings" (moralische Gefühle). The paper seeks to unpack the young Herder's reflections on moral philosophy, and show how they emerge from his conception of the soul-body relationship, which is, in part, critically worked out in dialogue with Mendelssohn.

Born August 25, 1744 in Mohrungen, East Prussia, Johann Gottfried Herder was a German poet, translator, theologian. He also wrote important works on the philosophy of history and culture. He became one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the German language during the Age of Enlightenment. Born into a religious pietist family, Herder received a good theological education. Born into a religious pietist family, Herder received a good theological education. Herder has a very important place in the development of German orientalism and in gaining its a unique form. He was also greatly influenced by the writings of Immanuel Kant, especially Johann Georg Hamann, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. While the interest in the Orient increased in Herder's time and ground, demonization of Islam was still very common in the texts produced and the Orient was generally considered just a part of natural history in the world history. However, it was also a time in which Orientalism in Europe was gradually moving away from theology. Throughout his life, Herder was interested in the Orient and Islam and worked a social image of humanity, tolerance and individual spiritual faith. Herder worked in various fields, from discussions of the origin of language, to the history of humanity, from the philosophy of history to theology and literature. In chapters 4 and 5 of Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Reflections on the Philosophy of Human History), he discussed in detail what he said about the Arabs, Turks and Persians. Herder summarized his knowledge of the world and humanity in this work. He made research about the oriental language, the history and Islam and built methodological a unique orientalism. This study discusses how Herder examines Oriental societies such as Turks, Arabs and Persians that were outside of history in European historiography in the Age of Enlightenment. In addition, this paper examines the cultural patterns in which Herder deals with these ethnic communities.

Over the last few decades, the meaning of the scientific theory of epigenesis and its significance for Kant's critical philosophy have become increasingly central questions. Scholars have argued that epigenesis is a key factor in the development of Kant's understanding of reason as self-grounding and self-generating. Building on this work, our claim is that Kant appealed to not just any epigenetic theory, but specifically Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's account of generation, and that this appeal must be understood not only in terms of self-organization, but also in terms of the demarcation of a specific domain of inquiry: for Blumenbach, the study of life; for Kant, the study of reason. We argue that Kant adopted this specific epigenetic model as a result of his dispute with Herder regarding the independence of reason from nature. Blumenbach's conception of epigenesis and his separation of a domain of the living from the non-living lent Kant the tools to demarcate metaphysics, and to guard reason against Herder's attempts to naturalize it.

This article investigates the intellectual history of the argument for the antiquity of Exodus 34,11–26. In the contemporary debate about pentateuchal theory, a question that remains insufficiently addressed is how and why the idea originally developed that the unit represents an ancient, independent, pre-Deuteronomic legal source. Wellhausen credited the idea to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “Zwo bisher unerörterte biblische Fragen . . .” (1773). Like Goethe, Wellhausen regarded the unit as a “ritual Decalogue,” in contrast to the “ethical Decalogue” of Exodus 20. The distinction helped Wellhausen consolidate the classical model of the documentary hypothesis: he attributed the cultic Decalogue to the Yahwist and the ethical to the Elohist. Despite the importance of Goethe’s essay to the history of pentateuchal criticism, it is not clear that its arguments have previously been investigated.

Keywords: Julius Wellhausen, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Baruch Spinoza, Zwo bisher unerörterte biblische Fragen, Dekalog, Decalogue, Pentateuch, Exodus, German Jewish history, Christian Jewish relations, Ten Commandments, history of biblical scholarship, German Romanticism, Pentateuchal theory, documentary hypothesis, German intellectual history, Old Testament, cultic Decalogue, ethical Decalogue, ritual Decalogue, Covenant Code, Elohistic source, Yahwistic source, Exod. 34:11-26, Romans 11

[Published in French - May 2017 - Presses du réel: http://www.lespressesdureel.com/ouvrage.php?id=5513&menu=]

This book is an essay conceived as an intellectual portrait of the German writer, psychologist and art theorist Karl Philipp Moritz (1756-1793), whose purpose is to investigate the relationships between aesthetics, psychology and anthropology in the second half of the 18th century, and the importance of their simultaneous development for the debates about art after 1800.

Summary
Moritz remains rather unknown outside of Germany, where he is considered as an essential author for understanding the formation of aesthetics as a philosophical discipline, but also as experimental research, literary field and art critic in the 18th century. By foreshadowing an educational vision of the art experience, Moritz anchored the aesthetic debate in a psychological and anthropological dimension, which went beyond the narrow field of art.

Moritz was first known in his lifetime as a psychologist and a writer. He funded the first journal of experimental psychology where the writings of specialists – doctors or philosophers – were collected together with police reports, real or imaginary autobiographies, anonymous accounts of dreams, literary extracts or texts of mystics. Moritz also won recognition for his writings on art; the most famous was written in Rome in 1786 alongside Goethe who would, some years later, use many of his ideas. After his stay in Italy, Moritz taught art theory at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin. His eclecticism influenced a generation of artists and theorists such as Jean Paul, Friedrich Schlegel and Schiller.

The merit of Moritz is that of having been able to combine, thanks to a dynamic definition of the work of art, a theory of creation with a theory of reception. In the artist, he saw a spectator in front of nature, while the spectator became the architect of the relationship he built with the artwork. Indeed, with Moritz, the artwork acquired for the first time in the history of art theory the status of a radically autonomous object whose body nevertheless remains fragmentary, because its assimilation to the remaining traces of a creative movement can be completed only in the present act. Moritz thus laid the foundations for a debate on the part of history and the part of direct experience in art that continues today.

The famous ancient statuary group now in Vatican  Museum was the object of countless descriptions in the XVIII century. By taking into account those by six eminent German authors (Winckelmann, Lessing, Herder, Heinse, Goethe, Schiller) the paper outlines their different approaches, with particular regard to the concept of sublime, so relevant in the aesthetics of that
epoch.

Esta investigación surge con el objetivo indagar y profundizar en la temática del inicio y desarrollo del pensamiento nacionalista en la cultura occidental y su influencia en la creación musical de la época (siglo XIX); tomando como análisis de caso al compositor italiano Giuseppe Verdi y su ópera Nabucco, dentro del escenario de la unificación de la península itálica. La investigación profundiza en la temática del nacionalismo y uno de sus autores destacados, Johann Gottfried von Herder y resalta los eventos históricos significativos que dieron paso a la creación de los idearios nacionales en la Europa del siglo XIX y en especial el italiano. En la época del Romanticismo, debido a las invasiones napoleónicas, Europa sufrió una consolidación del sentimiento nacionalista. Filósofos como Herder abandonan la idea ilustrada del hombre universal por la idea del hombre local, poniéndose un énfasis en la investigación de cada aspecto cultural de cada nación. En Italia el movimiento nacionalista tendría a dos filósofos como figura central: Giuseppe Mazzini y Vincenzo Gioberti. Estos crearían el marco ideológico para fundamentar la causa unionista, y crear un esquema de Estado que sirviera a los intereses nacionales. Asimismo, la investigación toma como caso de análisis a Giuseppe Verdi, y su ópera Nabucco, debido a su cercanía temporal con el proceso de unificación italiana, como por el carácter nacionalista que se encuentra dentro de la obra.