Herder

Herder
Philosophy and Anthropology

EDITED BY

Anik Waldow
and Nigel DeSouza

1
3
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Preface

The immediate occasion for this volume was provided by a conference on “The
Enlightenment and the Development of Philosophical Anthropology” held at the
University of Sydney in November 2013 and organized by Anik Waldow, Dalia
Nassar, and Stephen Gaukroger. Many of the contributors to this volume first
presented drafts of their chapters at this conference. The conference was made
possible by the financial support of The Sydney Intellectual History Network, the
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry at the University of Sydney, and
the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emo-
tions. We would like to thank Jennifer Milam, who encouraged us to turn a
selection of the conference papers into a volume on Herder. We are also grateful
to the participants of the Herder reading group, Daniela Helbig, Gabriel Watts,
Annette Pierdziwol, and Andrew Cooper for inspiring discussions. A special
thanks to all of our contributors and to Peter Momtchiloff from Oxford University
Press for having made this volume possible. Thanks to Christopher Gibson for
help in preparing the indices. Finally, we are also grateful to Joshua Penney and
David Jalbert for help with editorial matters and for their support throughout.
Anik Waldow and Nigel DeSouza
Sydney and Ottawa
February 2016
Contents

List of Abbreviations ix
List of Contributors xi

Introduction 1
Anik Waldow and Nigel DeSouza

Part I. Towards a New Philosophy: Philosophy as

Anthropology
1. Philosophy as Philosophical Anthropology 13
An Interview with Charles Taylor
2. Anthropology and the Critique of Metaphysics in the Early Herder 30
Marion Heinz
3. The Metaphysical and Epistemological Foundations of Herder’s
Philosophical Anthropology 52
Nigel DeSouza
4. Herder: Physiology and Philosophical Anthropology 72
Stefanie Buchenau
5. The Role of Aesthetics in Herder’s Anthropology 94
Stephen Gaukroger
6. Understanding as Explanation: The Significance of Herder’s and
Goethe’s Science of Describing 106
Dalia Nassar

Part II. The Human Animal: Nature, Language,

History, Culture
7. Herder between Reimarus and Tetens: The Problem of an
Animal-Human Boundary 127
John H. Zammito
8. Between History and Nature: Herder’s Human Being and the
Naturalization of Reason 147
Anik Waldow
viii CONTENTS

9. Human Nature and Human Science: Herder and the Anthropological

Turn in Hermeneutics 166
Kristin Gjesdal
10. Herder’s Religious Anthropology in His Later Writings 185
Johannes Schmidt
11. Individualism and Universalism in Herder’s Conception of the
Philosophy of History 203
Martin Bollacher
12. Herder and Human Rights 224
Michael N. Forster
13. Herder and the Jewish Question 240
Frederick C. Beiser

Name Index 257

General Index 260
List of Abbreviations

AA Immanuel Kant. 1900–. Kants gesammelte Schriften. Edited by Königlich

Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften. 29 vols. Berlin.
DA Johann Gottfried Herder. 1984–2016. Briefe: Gesamtausgabe 1763–1803.
Edited by Wilhelm Dobbek and Günter Arnold. 18 vols. Weimar:
Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger.
FHA Johann Gottfried Herder, 1985–2000. Werke. Edited by Martin
Bollacher et al. 10 vols. Frankfurt a. M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag.
HA Johann Wolfgang Goethe. 1948. Werke. Edited by Erich Trunz. 14 vols.
Hamburg: Wegner.
HAB Johann Wolfgang Goethe. 1988. Goethes Briefe und Briefe an Goethe.
Edited by Karl Robert Mandelkow. 6 vols. Munich: Beck.
HWP Johann Gottfried Herder. 1984–2002. Werke. Edited by Wolfgang Pross.
3 vols. Munich: Hanser.
S Johann Gottfried Herder. 2008. Shakespeare. Ed. and trans. Gregory
Moore. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
SEW Johann Gottfried Herder. 1992. Selected Early Works, 1764–1767. Ed.
Ernest A. Menze and Karl Menges, trans. Ernest A. Menze with Michael
Palma. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
SHP Johann Gottfried Herder. 1883. The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry. Trans.
James Marsh. 2 vols. Burlington: Edward Smith.
SPC Johann Gottfried Herder. 1969. J. G. Herder on Social and Political
Culture. Ed. and trans. F. M. Barnard. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
SWA Johann Gottfried Herder. 2006. Selected Writings on Aesthetics. Ed. and
trans. Gregory Moore. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
SWS Johann Gottfried Herder. 1877–1913. Sämmtliche Werke. 33 vols. Edited
by Bernhard Suphan et al. Berlin: Weidmann.
List of Contributors

F REDERICK C. B EISER is one of the leading scholars of German Idealism writing in

English, and Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University. Beiser has also
widely published on the German Romantics and seventeenth-century British
philosophy. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship for his research in 1993.
His work on Herder’s philosophy of mind and the Kant-Herder controversy
appeared in The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (1987);
further monographs include Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism: The
Genesis of Modern German Political Thought, 1790–1800 (1992), The Sovereignty
of Reason (1996), and The Romantic Imperative: The Concept of Early German
Romanticism (2004).
MARTIN BOLLACHER is Emeritus Professor of German Studies at Ruhr-Universität
Bochum and a co-editor of Herder: Werke in zehn Bänden, which is the standard
resource in Herder scholarship with its extensive notes and commentary. He
specializes in Herder’s philosophy of history and has most recently turned to the
examination of Herder’s relationship to China. He has published widely on
Herder, Lessing, Goethe, Spinoza, Heine, and Canetti and is a founding member
of the International Herder Society. His books include Der Junge Goethe und
Spinoza (1969), Lessing: Vernunft und Geschichte (1978), and Johann Gottfried
Herder: Geschichte und Kultur (1994).
S TEFANIE B UCHENAU is maître de conferences in the German Studies Department
of Université Paris 8 Saint-Denis, and was a Humboldt Fellow at Humboldt
University in Berlin in 2014. Her research interests include the history of
philosophy in the Enlightenment (Wolff, Baumgarten, Herder, Kant), the phil-
osophy of medicine, anthropology, and aesthetics. She has published a number of
articles on these topics and is the author of The Founding of Aesthetics: The Art of
Invention and the Invention of Art (2013). She co-edited an anthology Médecine
et philosophie de la nature humaine, de l’âge classique aux Lumières (2014) and
has most recently been working on a monograph on human dignity in the
anthropological theories of the German Enlightenment.
N IGEL D E S OUZA is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Univer-
sity of Ottawa. He works on the philosophy of Herder, early modern philosophy,
and on contemporary ethics. He has published articles on Herder’s metaphysics,
xii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

epistemology, philosophy of language, and moral philosophy, as well as on the

foundations of ethical agency. His articles have appeared in The British Journal
for the History of Philosophy, Intellectual History Review, Herder Yearbook, the
recently published Herder Handbuch (2016) and Ethical Theory and Moral
Practice. He is currently working on a monograph on the philosophy of the
young Herder.
M ICHAEL N. F ORSTER is Alexander von Humboldt Professor at Bonn University
and teaches at the University of Chicago. Previous to this appointment, he was
the Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor in Philosophy and the College
at the University of Chicago. His work combines historical-exegetical and sys-
tematic goals in equal measures. Some examples of this are the book Hegel and
Skepticism, the pair of articles on Herder’s philosophy of language “Herder’s
Philosophy of Language, Interpretation, and Translation: Three Fundamental
Principles” and “God, Animals, and Artists: Some Problem Cases in Herder’s
Philosophy of Language,” and the book Wittgenstein on the Arbitrariness of
Grammar. He is the author of German Philosophy of Language from Schlegel to
Hegel and Beyond (2011), After Herder (2010), and Kant and Skepticism (2008).
His translation of Herder’s key writings, Herder: Philosophical Writings (ed.,
2002), is a standard resource in international Herder scholarship.
S TEPHEN G AUKROGER is Emeritus Professor of History of Philosophy and History
of Science at the University of Sydney, and Director of the Sydney Centre for the
Foundations of Science. His current research is centered on a long-term project
on the emergence and consolidation of a scientific culture in the West in the
modern era. Three volumes have already appeared: The Emergence of a Scientific
Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210–1685 (2006), The Collapse of
Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity,
1680–1760 (2010), and The Naturalization of the Human and the Humanization
of Nature: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1750–1825 (2016). Work on the
fourth volume, on the association of science and civilization, is underway.
KRISTIN GJESDAL is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. Her
published work includes Gadamer and the Legacy of German Idealism (2009)
and a number of articles on Herder, post-Kantian philosophy, and aesthetics.
She is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook to German Philosophy in the Nine-
teenth Century and the editor of Key Debates in Nineteenth-Century Philosophy
(2015).
M ARION H EINZ is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Siegen.
She works in several areas of philosophy with main emphases on phenomenology
 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xiii

and the philosophy of Heidegger, philosophical gender theories, as well as the

philosophy of Enlightenment and German idealism, especially Kant and Herder.
She has published numerous articles on the philosophy of Herder and a mono-
graph, Sensualistischer Idealismus: Untersuchungen zur Erkenntnistheorie und
Metaphysik des jungen Herder (1763–1778). She is also the editor of several
important collections of essays on Herder’s philosophy, including Herder und
die Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus (1997) and Herders ‘Metakritik’: Analy-
sen und Interpretationen (2013). Recently she co-edited the Herder-Handbuch
(2016) and a volume on Heidegger’s Black Notebooks.
D ALIA N ASSAR is Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at the Univer-
sity of Sydney. She is the author of The Romantic Absolute: Being and Knowing
in German Romantic Philosophy, 1795–1804 (2013), and editor of The Rele-
vance of Romanticism: Essays on German Romantic Philosophy (2014). With
Luke Fischer, she co-edited a special section of the Goethe Yearbook on Goethe
and environmentalism (2015) and, with Stephen Gaukroger, she co-edited a
section of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science on Kant and the
empirical sciences. She has received grants from the Australian Research Coun-
cil, the Thyssen Stiftung, and the DAAD, and her article “From a Philosophy of
Self to a Philosophy of Nature: Goethe and the Development of Schelling’s
Naturphilosophie” won best article published in 2010, awarded by the Goethe
Society of North America.
J OHANNES S CHMIDT is Associate Professor of German Studies at Clemson Uni-
versity. His research interests range from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
German literature to German drama and music. He has published articles on
Herder, and a monograph on Herder’s religious writings, “Die klare, helle
Wahrheit”: Johann Gottfried Herders Christliche Schriften als Auseinandersetzung
mit Gotthold Ephraim Lessings religionsphilosophischen Spätschriften (2000). He
has also published an annotated translation, with Jeff Love, of F. W. J. Schelling’s
Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom (2006). He is also
a co-editor of the Herder Yearbook.
C HARLES T AYLOR is Emeritus Professor at McGill University. His many publica-
tions include Hegel (1985), Sources of the Self (1989), Philosophical Arguments
(1995), and A Secular Age (2007). He has written influential articles on Herder’s
philosophy of language and his account of Herder’s “expressivism” in these
articles and in his monograph on Hegel has resonated widely.
A NIK W ALDOW is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at the
University of Sydney. She mainly works in early modern philosophy and has
xiv LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

published widely on the moral and cognitive function of sympathy, early modern
theories of personal identity, skepticism, and associationist theories of thought
and language, and the influence of artifice and nature in the Enlightenment
debate. Her articles have appeared in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,
The British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Hume Studies, History of
Philosophy Quarterly, and Philosophy. She is the author of the book David
Hume and the Problem of Other Minds (2009), and editor of a special edition
of Intellectual History Review on “Sensibility in Early Modern Philosophy: From
Living Machines to Affective Morality.” She also co-edited Contemporary Per-
spectives on Early Modern Philosophy: Nature and Norms in Thought (2013).
J OHN H. Z AMMITO is John Antony Weir Professor of History at Rice University.
His research focuses on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and of his student and
rival, Johann Gottfried Herder, as well as on the history and philosophy of science
and the philosophy of history. His key publications are: The Genesis of Kant’s
Critique of Judgment (1992); Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology (2002);
and A Nice Derangement of Epistemes: Post-Positivism in the Study of Science
from Quine to Latour (2004). His current research involves the genesis of biology
as a special science in Germany in the eighteenth century.
 Introduction
Anik Waldow and Nigel DeSouza

Herder is very much a thinker for our time. Instead of approaching facets of
human existence in an isolated fashion, he brings the entire human being into
focus by tracing its connections with the natural, cultural, and historical world.
Through this integrated approach, Herder’s anthropology develops a holistic
understanding of the human sphere in relation to our existence as natural
creatures who are crucially marked by the fact that we have language and
thought, and understand and express meaning in our actions. By illuminating
these contextual dimensions of human existence, Herder’s anthropology reso-
nates with many demands and needs arising today, when national and cultural
interests—and conflicts—take on new, and old, forms in the wake of unprece-
dented global challenges.
This volume of essays is a reflection of a recent renewal of interest in the
thought of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803).1 The most obvious signs of this
renewal are the excellent new critical editions of Herder’s works in the original
German,2 and the burgeoning of German-language scholarship on Herder.3 But
this new interest has not been limited to German-speaking countries: several
collections of Herder’s writings in English translation have appeared in recent
years,4 and while there has been recognition of Herder’s foundational importance
for several disciplines—from classics and history to anthropology and cultural

1
For an excellent overview of the most recent stage of this Herder renaissance, see Zammito et al.
2010. For a summary of its beginnings, see Nisbet 1973.
2
See FHA, vols. 1–10, published between 1985 and 2000, and HWP, vols. 1–3, published between
1984 and 2002.
3
The latest bibliographies of primary and secondary literature can be found in the Herder
Yearbook, published biennially. For a helpful survey of all previous bibliographies see http://web.
stanford.edu/~tino/HerderBibl.htm.
4
Most important among these for this volume is the excellent set of translations by Michael
Forster entitled Johann Gottfried von Herder: Philosophical Writings, see Forster 2002. See also: Menze
 INTRODUCTION

studies5—Herder’s fortunes as a philosopher and as a figure in the history of

philosophy have also been changing, for the better. In the English-speaking
world, the writings of Isaiah Berlin and Charles Taylor, as well as H. B. Nisbet
and Hans Aarsleff, certainly helped to put Herder on the philosophical map,6 but
more recently there have been several studies of Herder’s most celebrated ideas
on aesthetics, language, culture, politics, and the philosophy of history, as well as
a Companion to the Works of Johann Gottfried Herder.7 In German, there have
been important examinations of Herder’s philosophy of language and his meta-
physics and epistemology and a recently published Herder Handbuch, a third of
which is devoted to his philosophical writings.8 Gradually, Herder is assuming
his rightful place in the history of philosophy and as a major Enlightenment
figure.
Unifying all of these investigations of Herder’s philosophical thought is the
overarching theme of anthropology. In one of his earliest writings, entitled How
philosophy can become more universal and useful for the benefit of the people
(1765), Herder declared: “All philosophy which is supposed to belong to the
people must make the people its central focus, and if philosophy’s viewpoint gets
changed in the manner in which out of the Ptolemaic system the Copernican
system developed, what new fruitful developments must not occur here, if our
whole philosophy becomes anthropology” (FHA 1, 134; Forster 2002, 29). This
passage is in part striking for its anticipation of Kant’s own later invocation of the
Copernican revolution, but it also relates to Kant in a deeper way, for it encap-
sulates a fundamental orientation in Herder’s approach to philosophy to which
he would remain committed for his whole life and which, while initially inspired
in large part by the pre-critical Kant of the 1760s, defines itself in opposition to
the narrow conception of reason he found in many Enlightenment thinkers and,
eventually, to Kant’s critical philosophy too.9 Underlying all of Herder’s philo-
sophical thought, and arguably his entire oeuvre, is a philosophical understand-
ing of the human being, a philosophical anthropology that is unique in the
Enlightenment and that would come to exercise a powerful influence on

et al. 1992, Adler and Menze 1996, Gaiger 2002, Evrigenis and Pellerin 2004, Moore 2006, Alder and
Koepke 2009.
5
See, e.g., Kramer 1985, Güthenke 2008, During 2005.
6
See, e.g., Taylor 1975, 3–51; Taylor 1995; Berlin 1976; Nisbet 1970; Aarsleff 1974.
7
See, e.g., Norton 1991, Adler and Koepke 2009, Forster 2010, Sikka 2011, Spencer 2013, Noyes
2015.
8
See, e.g., Gaier 1988, Adler 1990, Heinz 1994, Greif et al. 2016.
9
For a detailed study of the relationship of Kant and Herder to each other and to (philosophical)
anthropology, see Zammito 2002. One of Herder’s last works was a Metacritique of Kant’s Critique
of Pure Reason. See FHA 8 and, for discussion, Heinz 2013.
 ANIK WALDOW AND NIGEL DESOUZA 

philosophy and other disciplines in the decades to come.10 At the heart of this
anthropology is a conception of human beings as primarily sensible animals
whose unique linguistic and rational capacities are constitutively shaped by their
historico-cultural circumstances, which they reproduce and shape in turn.
Herder grounds this conception in both a naturalistic account of human devel-
opment and a metaphysics and epistemology of which soul-body interaction is a
central feature. This conception forms the basis of Herder’s challenge to, and
reinterpretation of, well-established conceptual distinctions, such as those
between nature and culture, animal and human, reason and sensibility.11
All of the essays in this volume explore different aspects of Herder’s wide-ranging
attempts to reform the Enlightenment understanding of philosophy, and of its
relationship to the nascent discipline of anthropology, which, in Herder’s period,
as John Zammito points out, was more like a new “paradigm,” “research pro-
gramme,” or “new rubric in the space of knowledge.”12 The first part of the volume
examines the various dimensions of Herder’s philosophical understanding of
human nature through which he sought methodologically to delineate a genuinely
anthropological philosophy. This includes his critique of traditional metaphysics
and its revision along anthropological lines; the metaphysical, epistemological, and
physiological dimensions of his theory of the soul-body relationship; his conception
of aesthetics as the study of the sensuous basis of knowledge; and the relationship
between the human and natural sciences. The second part then examines further
aspects of this understanding of human nature and what emerges from it: the
human-animal distinction; how human life evolves over space and time on the
basis of a natural order; the fundamentally hermeneutic dimension to human
existence; and the interrelatedness of language, history, religion, and culture.

Part I: Towards a New Philosophy: Philosophy as

Anthropology
The volume begins with an interview with Charles Taylor, whose writings have
been seminal in establishing Herder as an important figure in philosophy and its
history. For Taylor, Herder is one of the first thinkers to recognize that human
beings and human culture must be understood hermeneutically and not in simple
natural scientific terms, and that philosophy must reflect this. Herder’s anthropology

10
See, e.g., Beiser 1987, Heinz 1997.
11
See, e.g., Lifschitz 2012, DeSouza 2012, Waldow 2015.
12
See Zammito 2002, 3–4. Zammito takes the terms in quotations from Thomas Kuhn, Imre
Lakatos, and Francisco Vidal, respectively (Zammito 2002, 4).
 INTRODUCTION

demonstrates in an exemplary way that a rigorous focus on the situated realities

of different cultural and historical contexts is needed in order to be able to do
social and political philosophy. Thus he argues, for example, that knowing what
justice means cannot be decided through normative considerations alone, but
requires an understanding of how language is used and what the meaning of key
concepts like honour and fairness are when approached from within a specific
cultural context. Taylor’s reflections also illuminate the fine line between, on the
one hand, a naturalism that starts from the question of what kind of animal the
human being is and then proceeds to a comparative study of how the related
specific differences unfold in different socio-cultural settings and, on the other, a
naturalism that is reductive and leaves no room for cultural variation in its
attempt to discover natural mechanisms that can be used to exhaustively explain
human thinking and acting.
Contrary to the prevailing opinion in Herder scholarship, Marion Heinz
argues in Chapter 2 that the aim of Herder’s anthropology is not to replace
philosophy, but to turn traditional metaphysics into a form of empirical psych-
ology that still preserves metaphysics. Central to Heinz’s argument is the claim
that, for Herder, philosophy remains a theoretical enterprise that, although
inspired by the analytical methods of physics, remains metaphysical insofar as
it begins from a philosophical concept of the human being. Anthropology and
metaphysics thus emerge as standing in a dual relationship: metaphysics has
priority over anthropology if considered from a theoretical-foundational point of
view and yet counts as anthropologically grounded when seen in its critical
function to challenge established metaphysics.
In Chapter 3, Nigel DeSouza explores this new anthropologically focused
metaphysics of Herder. The aim of this essay is to show that Herder’s justly
celebrated ideas on history and culture are underpinned by an original and unique
metaphysics and epistemology. The central element here is the soul-body rela-
tionship, according to DeSouza. Just as God realizes himself through the world,
so too does the human being realize herself through her body. By means of this
analogy, Herder provides a metaphysical foundation and framework for his
theory of human nature and of soul-body interaction. The human soul unfolds
itself through the body it constructs, through whose senses it then interacts with
the external world. Human individuality is a product of both the individual
differences of the soul itself and of the differences it acquires through its engage-
ment with the world outside it. This metaphysical picture forms the basis of
Herder’s anthropology and of his studies of human beings as linguistic, historical,
and cultural beings explored by several of the other essays in this volume.
The soul-body relationship also figures centrally in Chapter 4, where Stefanie
Buchenau approaches Herder’s anthropology from the perspective of the
 ANIK WALDOW AND NIGEL DESOUZA 

emerging life sciences and eighteenth-century discoveries in medicine and physi-

ology. The major impulse, Buchenau argues, came from Albrecht von Haller’s
discovery of the irritability of muscle and the sensibility of nerves. Haller’s
proposal to understand sensation and thought in relation to particular bodily
structures, however, exerted pressure on established philosophical and theo-
logical dogmas of the time. It thus became difficult to conceive of physicians as
dealing with the human body alone, while entrusting to philosophy and theology
the study of the soul. Herder’s own response was to see the soul as pervading the
body, the irritability and sensibility of different fibres being the most basic
manifestation of this relationship.
Stephen Gaukroger’s essay (Chapter 5) continues along naturalist lines to
develop the claim that Herder’s naturalism incorporates elements of the artistic
and literary domain. Thus, he argues that for Herder aesthetics played a crucial
role in his attempt to develop a philosophical anthropology because essential to
his conception of the human being is its sensibility and sensuous knowledge, the
study of which, following Baumgarten, he termed aesthetics. This sensibility
expresses itself in language, art, and the manufacturing of cultural artefacts.
A discipline that seeks to comprehend human motivation and behaviour in
their historical expressions, as Herder’s anthropology does, must take this aes-
thetic dimension seriously, which requires it to develop a set of cognitive values
different in kind from those that define the physical sciences.
Herder’s metaphysics might be understood as analytic in its movement from
the analysis of the empirically given to the formulation of a conceptual and
logical order. However, when approaching an understanding of nature, his
method becomes a form of analogical reasoning. This method, as Dalia Nassar
demonstrates in Chapter 6, is comparative and descriptive, and it was inspired by
Herder’s and Goethe’s understanding of literature. It brings into focus the forms
of individuals in their relation to nature, and through this facilitates a complex
understanding of nature that is not reducible to causal explanations. Nassar
argues that, by widening his natural-philosophical methodological repertoire in
this way, Herder offers resources for challenging the rigid division between the
human and natural sciences that is based on Dilthey’s distinction between
descriptive understanding and causal explanation.

Part II: The Human Animal: Nature, Language,

History, Culture
Chapter 7 examines the extent to which Hermann Samuel Reimarus and his
theory of animal instinct influenced the development of Herder’s arguments in
his Treatise on the Origin of Language. John Zammito claims that, far from being
 INTRODUCTION

a mere footnote to the Treatise’s central discussion on the human origin of

language, Herder’s reflections on animal and human instincts offer an important
contribution to the reassessment of the animal-human boundary—an issue that
became pressing with the rejection of the Cartesian doctrine of the animal
machine. Avoiding the recourse to the supernatural adopted by Reimarus in
addressing the question of the origin of human language, Herder developed a
naturalistic account. By investigating the commentaries of Friedrich Heinrich
Jacobi and Johann Nicolaus Tetens, Zammito argues that this naturalistic aspect
of Herder’s theory was well recognized by his contemporaries, a point that, seen
in the wider context of the eighteenth-century debate, helps us to better assess the
impact and significance of Herder’s work.
The place of the human being in nature is also the subject of Anik Waldow’s
discussion in Chapter 8. By engaging with Herder’s conception of history as a
form of natural growth, she argues that an important aspect of integrating
human history into a general history of nature is that it becomes possible to
explain how specifically human attributes develop out of nature itself. Key to
Herder’s developmental account of language and reason is to conceive of humans
as affectively responsive and malleable by the constraints found in the human
sphere of life, just like the way an animal responds and adapts to the demands
of its environmental milieu. With this developmental account of rationality,
Waldow argues, Herder guards against an overly universalistic conception of
reason and stresses the importance of situational contexts in the shaping of
cognitive structures.
In Chapter 9, Kristin Gjesdal investigates the conception of Herder’s science of
human nature as bringing into focus the usefulness of methods employed in
poetry, drama, literary translation, and literary documentation. She argues that
for Herder it is clear that the human sciences must regard interpretation as their
chief method given that our having language and being expressive beings defines
a crucial part of human existence. What matters in particular is that an approach
be developed that is amenable to taking into consideration the universal and the
particular alike. An aestheticizing approach towards the human being that makes
use of the human capacity to sympathize with others addresses this concern.
Gjesdal points out that, for Herder, Thomas Abbt’s writings elucidate how the
human being itself, in its expressive and affective sensibility, can become an
instrument that opens up an understanding of others, and thereby helps us
to understand what human nature is. This method, instead of simply projecting
the individual’s own sensibilities onto the other, relies on observation and the
analysis of concrete performances of human language and action, so that
sympathy-based explanatory principles become verifiable.
 ANIK WALDOW AND NIGEL DESOUZA 

The resurgence of interest in Herder’s naturalism and anthropology entails that

we run the risk of ignoring the inextricable religious dimensions to Herder’s
thought. Johannes Schmidt’s essay helps us avoid this pitfall through an explor-
ation in Chapter 10 of Herder’s religious anthropology, in which he argues that an
understanding of this anthropology does not require a Lutheran or even a
Christian point of view. Herder’s religious anthropology, Schmidt suggests, is
instead premised on the human capacity for religious experience and is thus
sensitive to the history, culture, and language of religions, with the individual
human being constituting the focus of interest. Religious writings here emerge as
the literary expressions of human agents molded by their time and place, and thus
cannot be seen as standing independently of the cultural and historical context
within which they were written or as literal expressions of the word of God.
In order to draw out the contrast between plurality and universality in Herder’s
historical thought, Martin Bollacher offers a detailed analysis of Herder’s “globe
ontology” in Chapter 11, according to which a sphere has infinite points on its
surface but all of which relate to the same middle point. This ontology allows
Herder, on the one hand, to recognize the diversity of different human cultures
and, on the other, to see them as nonetheless unified by their belonging to one
human species. It grounds a method of historical investigation that enables an
understanding of the individual in its unique historico-cultural situation through
a hermeneutics of “Einfühlung” or sympathy. Defending Herder against the
charge of inconsistency for objecting to a teleological conception of history
while at the same time regarding the realization of humanity as a universal
ideal, Bollacher claims that it is precisely by thinking in opposites that Herder
is able to advance a nuanced and innovative position. This position goes beyond
many historiographical and cultural-theoretical conceptions of the eighteenth
century, and continues to exert a noticeable influence within today’s criticism of
the hegemony of western culture, as Bollacher demonstrates in his engagement
with Peter Sloterdijk’s pluralistic spherology.
Focusing on Herder’s relevance to contemporary political theory, Michael
Forster investigates the tools that Herder’s concept of humanity offers for
bringing into focus some of the well-founded concerns about the concept of
human rights (Chapter 12). These concerns revolve around the concept’s legal-
istic implications, and its close association with property rights that seem to
challenge the conception of human rights as inalienable. A second group of
worries touches on the concept’s focus on the protection of individuals against
threats from within a polity—missing here are the threats coming from without,
which is a concern that becomes particularly pressing in the contexts of coloni-
alism, imperialism, and globalization. Herder’s concept of humanity, Forster
 INTRODUCTION

argues, can help us to overcome these difficulties; it offers a perspective that

allows us to understand humans as moral agents rather than as possessors of
rights, a perspective that also allows us to address the question of the exclusion of
animals from human rights discourse.
In the final contribution to this volume (Chapter 13), Frederick Beiser submits
Herder’s professed humanitarian pluralism to a test. The occasion for such
scrutiny is afforded by a trend in recent scholarship that sees Herder’s ideal of
the nation with its emphasis on cultural preservation as undermining or ignoring
the protection of cultural and religious diversity within the state. The issue
surfaces in relation to the Jewish question, which Herder addressed in several
of his writings. Beiser responds to recent criticisms of Herder on this front,
arguing that, far from requiring the assimilation of Jews in order to homogenize
the nation from within, Herder’s aim is to win concessions for the Jews that
would open up new professional and educational possibilities to them, which
would allow emancipation without assimilation. Beiser’s discussion shows that
the liberal, pluralistic image of Herder still deserves to be preserved.

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Gaier, U. 1988. Herders Sprachphilosophie und Erkenntniskritik. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt:

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71(4): 661–84.
PART I

Towards a New Philosophy

Philosophy as Anthropology
 1
Philosophy as Philosophical
Anthropology
An Interview with Charles Taylor

The following interview was conducted in Harrington, Quebec, on September

20, 2015 and January 24, 2016.

DESOUZA : Let’s begin at the beginning, and with Herder, a thinker who has
been important to your own work on philosophical anthropology. How did
you first discover him?
TAYLOR : Herder has indeed been a thinker who resonated with me, but how
I got into him was in a way by pure accident. There was a series that
Penguin put out on the philosophers in those days, and I was asked by
Freddie [A. J.] Ayer to do the book on Hegel. So I took up the task and
began by looking into the whole background. What I found myself getting
into was the German cultural thinking, philosophical thinking, of the
1790s. I naturally came across a series of other figures, including Herder,
because the obsession of this particular generation was an anti-dualist
thrust, but of a very interesting kind. In other words, they were deeply
resistant to the way that European rationalism had developed, in which
reason and emotion are in entirely different baskets, in which reason has
to somehow control, take over. And they had this passion for reuniting the
human being, for recovering the integrity of the human person in which
reason and emotion were somehow both working together. A very good
expression of this is of course Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education
of Man, the idea that there is always this distinction and potential tension
between the form drive and the content drive (Stofftrieb) and yet you
could somehow bring them together. And along with that goes this
strange, spiral theory of history in which we started off with the Greeks,
 PHILOSOPHY AS PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

for whom there was great admiration, who had that kind of unity between
reason and feeling, and then it was broken apart, and we gained a great
deal from that split through the development of reason. But this was
developing in a self-alienating way, and now the moment had come in
which they could come together. And this was partly inspired by the
French Revolution, and partly by the whole development of philosophy,
but in any case reuniting reason and feeling was the passion of that
generation. So they thought that we had gained something very important
in this period of alienation, particularly, we had gained an understanding
of freedom, of radical freedom, but now this had to be complemented with
a return to and a reabsorption or reunification of the human person, body
and spirit, reason and emotion, nature outside as well as nature inside
ourselves. Now the way I tried to define it for the Hegelian oeuvre, the task
was to reunite Spinoza and Kant, or Goethe and Fichte, in other words the
most radical views of human freedom with the most profound views of the
unity of the human being, and the human being with the whole of nature.
Spinoza was read as the great philosopher of the Whole, although not
entirely correctly, by that generation.

So, right away, one of the figures that strikes me in that whole background is
Herder, and clearly there is this strong anti-dualist understanding in Herder,
which I try to articulate with the term expressivism. The idea was this—and
this is central to Hegel—that we know what we are about, what our
important goals are, what we are striving for, because we start striving, we
start acting and our action is an expression of this, and then we come to a
more refined understanding of this, being able to put it into words, and
being able ultimately to put it into philosophical language. You know
Hegel’s idea that all these great expressions of the goals of humanity come
out first of all in art, and then in religion, which is still concerned with
narrative and picture-thinking, and then finally, in philosophy, which is
purely conceptual. So the idea is that the relationship of pure thinking to
impulse is not that one separates itself and controls the other, but that rather
impulses are clarified in a slow development and this development leads to a
fulfillment in which they are harmonious with each other or that theories of
ourselves and our impulses are perfectly harmonious. Now I think that
Herder was one of the great, maybe the best, articulator of that particular
facet of this general ambition of unifying the human person, and it was clear
to me that without Herder, Hegel wouldn’t have taken off in exactly this
direction. So in that way, Herder stands between Kant and Hegel. Herder
 AN INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES TAYLOR 

was very critical of Kant’s rationalism; Kant was very dismissive of what he
thought was Herder’s muddled philosophy; and Hegel, there was some part
of him that would agree with both of them, but it is clear that he wanted to
go beyond Kant but only in this very rigorous medium which is philosophy.
Now this resonated with me because I had already had my own sort of
philosophical rebellion against the background philosophy of the Anglo-
Saxon world of that day, which was really sparked by Merleau-Ponty.
I recognized right away that Merleau-Ponty was a sort of distant descendant
from Herder via Hegel via Marx and so on, and so that created a kind of
bond. But my whole view of Herder was developed in the process of trying
to explain what the cultural surroundings were in which Hegel operated and
why he took up these goals.

DESOUZA : How do you conceive of Herder’s philosophical anthropology and

what it has to say to us today?
TAYLOR : The first point is that he’s not a dualist at all, he sees soul and body as
interpenetrating, not separable. But there’s something that is very import-
ant that is an entailment of that in a way which not everyone who is against
soul-body dualism recognizes. It’s what Isaiah Berlin calls his expression-
ism, and I changed the word to expressivism because I didn’t want to get
mixed up with the German word [for the aesthetic movement] and that is
that it’s not just that we have thoughts, that we have feelings, and that we
somehow articulate them and tell them to others, but something much
more non-dualistic and inseparable: that a lot of what we think, we feel—
the ideas, the attitudes, the sense of morality that we experience—only get
properly defined through expression. So it’s not only meaning: that we
don’t exactly know what we want to say in many departments before we
actually say it, but something even more fundamental than this, because it’s
not just a matter of linguistic expression, it’s a matter also of bodily
expression. Now the way this comes out in the twentieth century, in the
twenty-first century, is that there are a certain number of areas of life where
we have stances that we want to take, e.g., “This is really ideal for me, this
moral ideal” or “This is really moving” and so on, as against “The metre
reads 5.3” or “That’s a red house” etc., where it’s a perfectly adequate
expression—there is no gap between the linguistic expression and the
idea. But here, it not only begins to get clearer—what we really have as an
ideal about, for instance, morality, when we start to make it clearer in our
verbal expressions, e.g., our sense of the universality of the respect owed to
humans comes out in a doctrine of human rights—not only that, but we
 PHILOSOPHY AS PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

don’t really get a hold on what an ethic is really about until we see it, very often,
enacted, to borrow a term from Evan Thompson. So take something like
Socrates, the Buddha, Christ, to take very famous cases. Let’s take Socrates. If
you just said, “The unexamined life isn’t worth living,” you wonder, “What do
you mean?” What is meant is what happens in those dialogues.
So we wouldn’t have a very good idea of what the examined life is without
this recounting of the enactment. So these thoughts, ideas, stances, moral
commitments, or whatever, a lot of these aren’t really fully clarified outside
of not just verbal expression but very often enactment, which means some-
thing else immediately: that they’re never totally clarified, that is, whenever
we try to get grip on what it is to hold these ideas, aspirations, and so on,
we’re always tacking back and forth between exemplars and attempts to
capture the ideal in verbal expressions. We’re always tacking back and forth
and this never reaches a final point where somebody can say, “Well that’s it!
There’s no further refinement of action, of the characterization in words,
which can give us a better grip on this.”
Here we are at the very heart of what people talk about when they talk about
hermeneutics, the necessity of hermeneutics. You can see Ricoeur, Gadamer,
and so on, they’re operating out of this insight of Herder through several
interposed stages and with the idea that there are certain subjects that can only
be hermeneutically treated, and one important feature of this is, you never
really arrive at the final, definitive, description. Now you can do that in certain
departments of life, e.g., “The house is painted exactly this shade of red,” there’s
nothing further to be said here, nothing further to make it better, clearer, and so
on. But in these other cases, particularly as you progress morally, for instance,
your way of acting it out is going to be different and the attempts to charac-
terize this can also be corrected, objected to, and so on in various ways. So we
get these different areas of human thought, feeling, and so on, where expressi-
vism comes out in the sort of foundation charter justifying the fact that in
certain areas of human life there’s something irremediably hermeneutic.
Now these turn out to be very important areas of human life and here we get
to anthropology in the current sense of ethnography—and that’s another
thing that comes from Herder—it’s plain that we’re never dealing here with
just human beings as such universally or with human morality as such
universally or with human culture as such universally. The extraordinary
thing about human beings is that they begin to develop along somewhat
different lines, so that we don’t immediately know, just from knowing about
human beings, what the Germans are going to be like, what the Slavs are
 AN INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES TAYLOR 

going to be like, and so on, and that is where the theory of language comes
in, that to be able to speak French properly, to be able to speak German
properly, to be able to speak Latvian, and Slavic languages properly, you
have to get on to a whole sense of what the meaning of the world, the
meaning of human life, is for these people and, remarkably, there’s a totally
unhierarchical stance to this that Herder takes.
DESOUZA : To play devil’s advocate here, what about the response to this that
would say, “That’s all very well, but that is not philosophy, that’s anthropol-
ogy, that’s sociology, that’s literature—those are all things that Kant would
have dealt with in his anthropology lectures, but that’s not philosophy.”
TAYLOR : Well then, the question becomes, “What is philosophy?” And I think
that philosophy in a certain sense doesn’t exist; I know that’s a very polemical
way of putting it. But there isn’t really a clearly cordoned-off area where you
can say, “That is what philosophy is all about,” as you can say, “Physics is this,
chemistry is that, sociology is that, political science is that”—even though that
is also not totally clear. But to the extent that you can make segregations in
these other departments, you can’t do that with philosophy. We have phil-
osophy of law, philosophy of logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of
history. And we’re dealing with the philosophical issues that arise, in the
departmental sense, within anthropology, sociology, political science, etc.
I learnt this because for years I was in a political science department and we
had these massive fights about what political science was all about. One month
a very big issue came down to the place of hermeneutics; some people
thought, “Well, we can do comparative politics,” where you get law-like
propositions about the reasons people vote, e.g., in America, in Nigeria, and
we put them together cross-culturally, so it wasn’t in a sense comparative
politics, it was universal laws and I always argued, very Herderianly, “That’s
nonsense, different cultures are so different that you can’t say ‘How democ-
racy works in India is the same as how democracy works in America.’” On the
contrary, there are these profoundly different cultures; democracy is rule by
the people, yes, but, what is this? The Sanskrit distinction between lokniti and
rajniti—the realm of the people vs. the realm of power—is totally different
from our notion of governors and governed. So you have to get deeply into
this. So here is the question, “Is that philosophy or is that political science?”
Well, philosophy, really, is the ensemble of these really fundamental questions
which, if you want to do political science, or sociology, or whatever, you have
to face at some point—and that’s why we often have difficulty uniting
philosophy departments. Philosophy itself is the ensemble of these issues.
 PHILOSOPHY AS PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

DESOUZA : So even this could be responded to by saying, “That’s all fine and
well, these different departments and areas of knowledge and experience,
but there is a more basic way of understanding philosophy, and that is on
the level of the metaphysical and epistemological claims we implicitly make
when we make knowledge claims and so philosophy is in a way the study of
our conceptual framework that we, as human beings, possess.” This is along
the lines of Kant’s response to Locke that the extraordinary tracing he
makes in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding is nothing but a
“physiology of the human understanding.” So philosophy is really about
exploring this conceptual framework, and this is truly philosophical, and it’s
not anthropology.
TAYLOR : Well, here you can see how Herder and Hamann, in their relation
to Kant, already blew that up. Because you’ve got to assume, if you’re
Kant, as your starting point, that there’s this input, intuition, and there’s
a framework of concepts, so intuitions without concepts are empty—
that’s how it divides up! Well is that really how it divides up? How do
we get these terms? Well we get them through changing philosophical
traditions where we had interacting “faculties”: sensibility, understand-
ing, and there are all these different definitions of these differences. But
what tells us that that’s how things divide up just naturally for every-
body, as though we just need to introspect and see that there is intuition,
concepts, etc.? Hamann and Herder make great play with this, they both
wrote meta-critiques of Kant’s Critique arguing that Kant had simply
taken a whole language off a shelf, as it were. Hamann, like Herder, says
it’s all very much rooted in the body, so we’re getting something there
that will come with Merleau-Ponty and others in the last century, which
really puts in question fundamental concepts which are supposed to be
universally applicable in epistemology, and which introduces new con-
cepts, like motor intentionality.

So the supposed universality, the supposed rock-bottom clarity of this

conceptual carve-up, is challenged as historically changing, that it’s very
much related to language, in this case to philosophical language that evolves
over time and that is challengeable. You can’t ignore the different issues
raised about different modes of explanation, different modes of thinking;
they’re imbricated in each other. So when somebody says “That’s a philo-
sophical question, and that’s a factual question, that’s an empirical question,
and so on,” I immediately think, “Well, something is being elided here, some
very important set of issues is being quietly sidestepped here.”
 AN INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES TAYLOR 

DESOUZA : So is the question then the relationship between philosophy as a

study of concepts, on the one hand, and the genesis of our conceptual
capacities, on the other, and that the genesis is crucial to it and affects what
concepts are worked out?
TAYLOR : Let’s take the point of expressivism I made earlier, that when you get
this fine-grained phenomenological understanding of what it is to have a
world opened for you and to be able to grasp things and so on, it breaks the
simple scheme: form/conceptual filling, it breaks open that kind of clear
distinction. And then theories that try to have clarity by linguistic formu-
lations, so this is clearly a linguistic formulation of a factual statement, or a
values statement, or a linguistic statement—all these get very challenged.
For instance, you can’t just take for granted that the statement—unless it’s
in a certain area that allows for this—that the statement cannot be further
elucidated by knowing how it’s embodied, how it’s acted out, e.g., in the
case of a moral view, you can’t just take it for granted that that’s an
absolutely clear statement as you can in certain departments. All these
errors of thinking that you don’t need phenomenology, that you don’t
need hermeneutics, arise from focusing on certain areas of human inquiry,
natural scientific areas in particular, which have been deliberately devised to
allow us to get to agreed conclusions and very clear conclusions because
that’s been very useful in these areas.

But can you apply this to understanding why there’s a certain view about
honour in Japan and another conception of honour in Arab countries, and
the question you always ask as an anthropologist in the ethnographic sense
is “Is translating ‘honour’ into Arabic really just the same as translating
‘horse’?” Or, do you have to do what a lot of ethnographers do, which is keep
the word in the original—taboo, manna, and so on—and then try a lot of
interpretive glossing to give a feel for how that fits? All these are issues that
arise between this phenomenological, hermeneutical tradition, which owes
so much to Herder, on the one hand, and the tradition coming from Locke,
going through hard-nosed analytic philosophy, on the other, which thinks
you can bypass all these issues, such that there is such a thing as a simple,
philosophical question. Now when you get something like logic or philoso-
phy of logic—how does modus ponens work?—you can answer that question
very clearly, but with languages of “thick description” you can’t do that.
A typical example is [John] Rawls’s Theory of Justice. It’s wonderful in its
own kind, but it’s purely normative; it’s not political philosophy in the way
Tocqueville gives you political philosophy. Tocqueville not only has a
 PHILOSOPHY AS PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

normative dimension—he’s really in favour of the development of what he

calls “democracy,” this equal society, and so on—but he’s also trying to tell
how that works out in this particular, peculiar form that he finds on the
west of the Atlantic in this crazy new republic. And what you need to do
theory of democracy is not simply the normativity, but how that norma-
tivity works out in this very peculiar kind of institutional structure, which
is a modern, democratic society with the inevitable kind of nationalism
gluing it together. Also important are the very great dangers and deviations
that it can produce by the very fact that it is glued together by some kind of
national identity that can easily turn toxic and say, “You guys aren’t really
like us” etc. The tyranny of the majority looms here.
And you have to understand how all that works if you’re going to realize this
in history, but if you don’t do that, you end up saying empty things like,
“Nationalism is so bad and dangerous, let’s all be cosmopolitans.” Immedi-
ately, without some kind of patriotic solidarity, democratic societies crumble,
that’s the problem. “Why should I share taxes with people living in Nanaimo
[British Columbia]?” “Well, we’re Canadians, that’s why!” And we wouldn’t
even get off the ground as a modern democracy without this. So Rawls,
[Ronald] Dworkin, and [Bruce] Ackerman, they all get in on this act, and
what they are doing is very interesting: “Let’s be purely normative and let’s see
where we get,” that’s fine, but it’s a very incomplete kind of political theory.

DESOUZA : But on this particular topic, are there different levels of discourse
here? One is the philosophical anthropological discourse that says,
“Let’s have a rich understanding of where our languages come from,
what these terms mean for us in our particular historical framework,”
and that’s a certain type of philosophy that’s important. And then there’s
the theoretical-practical one, which could be what Rawls’s response would
be, which says, “These are the terms that we have for our particular
culture and now we’re talking about these particular concepts at a certain
level of abstraction to get clear on them for ourselves.” That’s important.
We don’t always have to be mired in the thick language all the time, we
also have to theoretically act, as it were, and operate on this level.
TAYLOR : But then it’s kind of hanging in the air, because you’ve got some-
thing like a very attractive principle such as, “any differences of income
have to be justified as being better for the worst off ” (a very simple
statement of Rawls’s “difference principle”). Now, how do you actually
apply this? So what is the original ground of justice as fairness? The
 AN INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES TAYLOR 

original, first book [A Theory of Justice], argued on completely a priori

grounds; the second book [Political Liberalism] says, yes, this actually is
what Westerners have come to believe, that’s very good, and there’s
something attractive about these principles. But you can see that in
relation to political theory done à la Tocqueville, done out of modern
democratic theory, that it’s truncated because you don’t really see what
the issues are of realizing them.
DESOUZA : Whereas you see somehow that a Tocquevillian political philoso-
phy as presented in Democracy in America is somehow more practically
realizable? I mean it’s giving us the connections, but does it somehow
facilitate discursive reflection on these issues?
TAYLOR : I think a better way of putting it is that he’s describing democracy,
which of course means two things to him, not just this rule by the people,
but it means very often “equal society,” what he called a “democratic social
condition,” by which he means where people have a way of relating to each
other that is founded on this idea of “I’m a man like you,” that is, I’m
working for you, but everyone calls each other Mister, it’s very different
from Europe. What he sees is not just a set of principles, but a set of
principles embodied in a certain way. And then he asks the question,
“Well, it’s going to be hard to do this in France, but let’s think how you
could maybe transpose it into France. And let’s think of what maybe we’ve
done wrong in France, how we’ve built this monster, through the top-down,
unified monarchy, and then the republic taking over and doing the same
thing more.” We think of the things we’ve been doing that are obstacles to
the attempt to do something analogous to America in Europe, and with that
reflection, we know what to do: we know, in this case, to join the 1848
Revolution in spite of the fact that he was not all that far left as a deputy
under Louis-Philippe, we know that we have to abandon our original
legitimist perspective, which we know he had and we have to go over to
the Orléanists after 1830, and then we have to go beyond that, etc. See it’s a
very different thing. It’s not that you have this thing up here and you’re
looking around for where to apply it; you actually get the idea of this
democracy from a particular embodiment of it and you have to understand
it on both levels—its principles and its embodiment—and then the practical
issue that faces you if you’re attracted to this is, “How can we do this in
France?”
DESOUZA : How is that different from something like a distinction between
Moralität and Sittlichkeit or, to jump forward, the justification of values at a
 PHILOSOPHY AS PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

certain level of discourse as in Habermas and then their mere application to

the lifeworld, so that what Tocqueville is doing is that he’s seeing how these
norms, which are the true object of philosophy, are realized in their
historical manifestations, but he is still, at some level, extracting out, at
the level of Moralität maybe, the norms or values that are important here
and just reinserting them into a lifeworld and yet being aware that we are
not just creatures of pure spirit, that we are embodied, that we have culture,
and all that.
TAYLOR : Well, here we get the whole importance of hermeneutically describ-
able differences as against those that are not. So the principle, I want to lift
this house up for some reason, how are we going to do that? Well there’s
one way: you can bring hundreds of levers in, as people did in Chicago in
the nineteenth century. We’re thinking at this level where you get a very
clear description of what has to happen: the house has to go up, you have to
put something underneath it, etc. The description of what you want is
unambiguously clear. But then you say, “I want an equal society,” but what
is an equal society? What is part of an equal society? What Trump would
call an equal society, what Lenin would call an equal society, what I as a
social democrat would call an equal society? So when you’re talking there
about implementing a principle, it’s something very different from imple-
menting an instrumentally realizable goal. And that’s where all these
different languages come in. So you actually find that—back in the situation
of a Frenchman going to America—what it would mean to realize democ-
racy in India is going to be something really quite different, so that just
saying “equality” does not entirely capture it.
DESOUZA : But there is always some capacity on our part to work out the
concepts you’re talking about, even though you know, in your way of
putting it, that those concepts never exist in abstraction entirely, their
very meaning is different in different cultures, etc. But like with Socrates
and the concept of justice, we can see an action as being just because we
have this understanding of what justice means even if we can’t perfectly
define it. That capacity is still there as human beings—when people want to
claim that trying to get clear on those concepts, that’s when you’re doing
true political philosophy, is that an illusion?
TAYLOR : No, it’s not an illusion, but it’s very much a different kind of thing
from, e.g., if you want to lift the house. And it’s very much, therefore, less
immediately applicable or immediately valuable than knowing we want to
lift the house. And further, because our imagination is always deeply shaped
by the society that we’re familiar with, we might get this formula of words
 AN INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES TAYLOR 

and rush out to Japan and propose it, and a lot of cross-purposes would be
involved here, whereas lifting the house, there would be no problem. So if
a thing can only be realized in a certain cultural setting, it may involve
changing my cultural setting in order to realize how to do that. It can only
actually be imagined in a different cultural setting, However, there’s this
wonderful possibility using words through which we really can grasp the
formula abstractly, before we start thinking again about what it actually
means in a concrete situation. Which means before we start thinking
again about how our imagination of it is perhaps really very different
from theirs, before we start thinking about how we can realize it, before we
start thinking about the changes we would have to make in our present
society to realize it, you try to clarify your mind about the general
principle. No doubt that is useful. But you can’t act on this principle
without understanding the particular society. And in the political domain
when you say “It just needs to be applied,” the “just” has no place here. As
it does in the case of lifting the house. Tocqueville is very interesting
because he was very impressed with this, he saw some very important
principle he could formulate, this democratic social condition—the fact
that they’re treating each other as “I’m as good a guy as you,” “a man’s a
man for all that” to quote Robbie Burns—so he’s describing that, he’s
abstracting something more general, and it’s very interesting and we can
argue about that and that’s part of what a political science department
ought to be, to have discussions about that even on its own: e.g., let’s see if
Rawls’s theory will work in its own terms. But, if you want to do the study
of politics, then you need both, you need the way the two interpenetrate. If
you want to ask the other question: should I buy Rawls, and Dworkin, and so
on, well, just a minute, let’s see what it means, let’s be clear on what it actually
means, and then you have to go down this path. So an ethic where you don’t
quite know what its formulation really means, there’s something lacking in it,
not that as a partial portrait it can’t be very useful, but something important
is missing because it’s claiming to guide conduct, and you don’t quite know
what it means.
DESOUZA : Now a related topic, I want to talk about the question of naturalism
and its relationship to philosophical anthropology. Is there another way in
which we can look at philosophy in a naturalistic way?—and this, I think, is
in your work, and in Herder’s also. It starts with the acknowledgement
that when we’re doing philosophical anthropology we need to look at
how the languages of thick description, its concepts, are part of a certain
way of being, a certain cultural framework, and see how the values that
 PHILOSOPHY AS PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

are coming out of this particular cultural framework only have their full
meaning in a particular context, whereas lifting a house is the same
anywhere, of course. But that then one can go on from this and say,
“There is a naturalistic conception of the human being implicit here
which is that of a creature that has these particular kinds of structures.”
In your case, in one area of your work on philosophical anthropology,
morality, you claim that human beings are all, universally, capable of
strong evaluation, goods, hypergoods, moral sources, and that they exist
and are oriented in moral space. And in Herder too, there are these struc-
tures there that are universal to human beings, to the human soul. Is that
something that philosophical anthropology can in part be about? That there
is something universal, so we can say something here?
TAYLOR : Yes, exactly, we can get something that is universal of the following
kind—not the universal of, for instance, in political science the supposedly
generally applicable laws of voting and so on. But the way you see Mon-
tesquieu doing it, Montesquieu has this concept of mainspring, of ressort,
and the ressort of the republic is virtue, the ressort of the monarchy is
honour, and so on. So there’s an interesting contrast, which clarifies what
the differences are between the two by saying: something is playing a
similar role here to what is played by that there, now let’s see what those
two different things are. Now that kind of universal, where you even get a
word like ressort, which you could say applies to any kind of regime, what
makes it go, what makes it work, is fine. But it’s not like saying “people will
always vote for the most monetarily advantageous program,” which would
apply as another kind of generalization, a law applying everywhere. So there
is a necessity of building up this language of contrastively applied categor-
ies. It’s the same thing we were seeing with the example of equality because
I want to have an equal society, what does this actually mean, and you
get some very great differences. These are different ways of realizing, of
striving for, parallel or similar or related goals, which we can use the word
equality for. So there is the possibility of a general language, but it’s very
important to see that it’s like Montesquieu rather than standard compara-
tive politics.
DESOUZA : But what about in the understanding of the human being, if we
restrict it to that? Are there structures of human agency that are universal
there, like your analysis of morality, or Herder’s own analysis of morality?
He responds to Mendelssohn in a letter and says that we have treated
moral terms in an ahistorical fashion. He uses the term Realitäten to
 AN INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES TAYLOR 

represent our reifying of terms like Vollkommenheit (perfection), Tugend

(virtue), for example, which become like pieces of money that we can
collect, in his words. Whereas in fact, all these terms of our language of
morality rest in, or have their origin in, moralische Gefühle (moral feel-
ings), which we all have as human beings, which then get refined upwards
in specific times and cultures into things like moral norms, values, etc.
So he has a kind of physiological account here, that all our moral lan-
guages rest in, or are anchored in, moralische Gefühle that we feel, physio-
logically even, in empathy, that we’re not made to be “isolated monads,”
as he says in the Treatise on Language, that when we hear someone cry, we
are pulled towards them. But these things do need the language of
abstraction or culture to refine them upwards into norms that we act on
or live by. So it’s a naturalistic account of us as human beings that says
that there are certain structures there—is that part of philosophical
anthropology?
TAYLOR : Yes, it’s important to understand human beings as a particular kind
of species among others. Now, you immediately get differentia that they
have that the others don’t, like language. But you immediately also see that
these differential features of universal human beings are always realized, the
moralische Gefühle, for example, in ways that aren’t the same. So the
moralische Gefühle about honour, for example, you insulted me and my
response, probably exist everywhere and in some cases there’s a moral
struggle against it. But what it actually gets triggered by is something very
different, the language exists everywhere and a certain outlook coming
from the language, but, for example, the Germans and the French are not
really the same. So we have these Montesquieu-contrastive concepts that
have an intrinsically contrastive application, but, you can see the similarity,
the Ähnlichkeit, the relatedness between these different things, and you get
a word for it like, honour system, or moralische Gefühle, as the most general
one. But the whole thing is founded on what I would call a good naturalism:
we take this human species and we try to see what it’s like, how it’s different.
In language you have to start thinking how it is different from chimps, to
get clear on the differences, on the universal differences (but actually
chimps are interesting because there are different tribes of chimps that
have different ways of operating that are really on the road towards us, in a
sense). But there is this tremendous importance that we articulate it and
that changes the whole nature of it. That’s the good naturalism. The bad
naturalism is where the word nature comes in through another routing, that
 PHILOSOPHY AS PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

is the routing of looking at what natural science is like, post-Galilean

natural science, where there’s no room for hermeneutical distinctions,
there’s no room for issues of culture, in the extreme case with Pinker and
Dennett it’s all mechanical and so on, it’s all done by the brain in ways that
we don’t understand but will one day, as with Patricia Churchland. So
naturalism, which takes post-Galilean natural science as the measure of all
things, and takes everything else that we don’t understand yet in these
terms as “future agenda”—when I use the word naturalism in a negative
way, I mean that. But it’s totally different from the perfectly justified project
of how does this animal, this speaking animal, work?
DESOUZA : Last question, on philosophical anthropology in your current
work. I know you are working on language again. Can you give a sense
of what your starting point is in this work and what you are trying to
show?
TAYLOR : I’ve always been deeply interested in this other front of what is
language? and what is art? And there were some beginnings of that in the
Philosophical Papers (1985), and recently I’ve been working on that, and
I’m publishing a book on it currently and I want to go on and talk about
post-Romantic poetics. As for my starting point, I think Aristotle is right,
the human is a zoon echon logon, which is translated too quickly, as
Heidegger pointed out, as “rational animal,” animal rationale, and really
if you bring it back to the original, it’s much more “animal possessing
language.” And clearly that’s something so central to us, that’s something
that really makes us different from all other species, so what is it? And
that’s what needs to be looked at. Now that’s also very Herderian, this
focus on language, this focus on the cultural development. So, just as in
looking at the history, I’m really a Herderian, that’s why I’m against
explaining the rise of secularity by “We’re exactly the same kind of people
as we were in the sixteenth century, only we just got rid of one of our
illusions.” No, on the contrary, we have a completely different idea of what
it is to be an agent, how it is to relate in society, what kind of place we have
in the cosmos—I want to trace these massive changes in self-
understanding and culture. And then, we get back, and still the core of
this is language, and there again I’m very Herderian. The book starts off
with Herder, Hamann, and Humboldt, the heroes as it were, the thing
we’ve got to take off from—not Hobbes, Locke, and Condillac—and then
there is the Romantic period that I’ve been fascinated with—the history
I did for the Hegel book is one of my first attempts to understand that
 AN INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES TAYLOR 

background, and I’m fascinated by how a different kind of poetics arises

out of that, Hölderlin, for example, which is what I’m trying to do now
and I may not succeed as it’s a very big project and I may not live long
enough to complete it.
DESOUZA : Are there any particular contemporary takes on us as language
beings that get it wrong and that are motivating your work?
TAYLOR : Well certainly, in the first book, the idea that we could simply explain
this in [Steven] Pinker-type terms of language of thought operating through
our brain like a kind of program. These seem to me to very inadequate ways
of understanding ourselves as language beings, and that’s the book I’m
publishing now. And its response is that this could only be an account of
language if language were confined to very exact, rigorous, descriptive
language of the world we live in. But you also have the way in which
some of our most important meanings are enacted, again borrowing the
word from Evan Thompson, and also another dimension, the way in which
our social relations are constituted and changed by enactments. Quick
example, the way in which we have these differences of modes of address,
which in certain cases are profoundly hierarchical—like in French tu and
vous—and which are interestingly deeply challenged in modern practice, so
that in Quebec the pattern of tu and vous is so different. We said vous to our
parents, and when I tell my grandchildren, they stare in astonishment
“Where do you come from!? What a strange world!” So here the discourse
has a very formative force; you can’t understand language as just wanting to
describe a lot of stuff out there accurately, such that we’re going to find the
right words and put them together, which is of course the Hobbes, Locke,
and Condillac approach that has been made immensely more sophisticated
by the Fregean revolution, by the Saussure revolution. Chomsky falls into
this too, but the theory can’t have the all-embracing explanatory force that
Chomsky gives it.

Let’s drop into Wittgenstein here: there are all sorts of language games, one
language game is describing the world accurately in science, another set of
language games is my putting one up on you by saying, “That’s a rather silly
question you’re asking,” and you fighting against this, and another thing
that’s going on in language is my trying to make sense of this ideal I’m acting
out, etc. etc. So you can’t have a general theory of language which only
explains one set of language games—that is, this purely descriptive one—it’s
very important in our world to be sure, but this didn’t exist in say 10,000 BC,
whereas some of the other ones probably did, but while it’s very important
 PHILOSOPHY AS PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

in our world, it’s not the whole of language. So if you have a description, if
you have a characterization of what makes them work, if you take Davidson,
one of my targets, I understand you if I can make T-statements where what
you say is on this side, and what I say is on that side, and they match. Well
that implies that for any foreign language I must have the terms in my own
language that can translate it. Now this could work as an ideal for what
Austin calls “medium-sized dry goods,” but then when you get these kinds
of things that are created in discourse, like regimes of equality, inequality,
and so on, it’s very different. My example is that of a Persian dropped into
Athens in the age of Pericles: you see these Athenians saying “isonomia” and
“isêgoria”—there’s a kind of equality here, and you think, “Well, I can
understand equality in relation to height, muscles, but I don’t understand
this crazy Athenian idea about treating each other as equals.” Now what
would happen, if there was going to be success here, is that this guy would
immerse himself in Athenian society and learn the language and then he’d
go back to Sousa or Ekbatan and he’d write a monograph about crazy
Athenians and he would not translate “isêgoria” into Persian; rather, he
would say, let me try to explain to you what it means. You see, it’s just
absurd to think that the theory of meaning, that getting your meaning,
would be being able to make that kind of simple translation. Getting your
meaning is either to get myself inside your culture and then I’ll find some
kind of way of getting this across, or maybe if that culture spreads, then
they’ll have a word.

DESOUZA : So the realization of our linguistic capabilities involves more, obvi-

ously, than just this descriptive, Hobbes-Condillac approach, and, what is
more, language doesn’t even start out like that either.
TAYLOR : Exactly, that’s the point. I took a phrase from Robert Brandom: the
idea of an “autonomous discursive practice” would be one that we could
have without any other, it doesn’t need to be complemented, it could exist
on its own. Now an issue arises about this whole set of proto-scientific or
scientific descriptions as a family of discursive practices—getting the right,
accurate description of what is out there. The issue is: Could you could
consider this complex as such an autonomous practice? It seems clear that
you couldn’t have that without the other ones I’m talking about because you
have to be brought up, inducted into a language, live in human relation-
ships, in order to be initiated into the practice of objective description that
abstracts from all that. So this practice just couldn’t be autonomous. It’s not
the case that you could have it without all these other uses of language. So
 AN INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES TAYLOR 

these theories, like Davidson’s, which is based on the Hobbes-Locke-

Condillac view, make this very big mistake. If I were talking about some-
thing that you could just lop off, then it would be a theory of meaning for
some wise, developed people, but no, even this wise, developed people has
to have all these other practices or they don’t ever get to the point where
they can do this, that is, have this language of pure description.
 2
Anthropology and the Critique of
Metaphysics in the Early Herder
Marion Heinz

The “anthropological turn” is one of the well-known paradigms of research on

the philosophical Aufklärung, ever since Max Wundt’s book on the philosophy
of the Aufklärung from the middle of the 1940s.1 In the final decades of the
twentieth century, it was mainly literary scholars and historians, such as Hans-
Jürgen Schings, Wolfgang Riedel, Jörn Garber, and Wolfgang Proß, who further
cultivated this field. Chronologically, they dated this turn above all to the period
of the late Aufklärung and what was considered to be revolutionary was the fact
that empirical knowledge in biology and physiology became the standard of a
new examination of the human being that renounced metaphysical and theo-
logical premises. It thus appeared only logical to see the protagonists of this turn
in the so-called “philosophical doctors”: Ernst Platner’s treatise Anthropology for
Doctors and Philosophers from 1772 was considered to be the representative work
of this new epoch (see Pollok 2010, 7–30). However, recent research has led to a
revision of both the chronology and the principle of explanation: the anthropo-
logical turn is now dated to about two decades before the middle of the eighteenth
century, a period, therefore, in which German philosophy as characterized by the
rationalism of Leibniz and Wolff is—through Baumgarten in particular, but also
through Sulzer, Mendelssohn, and others—still very lively. And it is also a period
in which the influences exerted by Hume and Rousseau begin to produce their
profound effects. The intellectual model of a simple opposition between meta-
physics and anthropology already becomes questionable just in light of the fact
that this is a period of fermentation. Mendelssohn counts as one counterexample
to this idea of a simple opposition because his thought shows how metaphysics

1
This article was translated from the original German by Nigel DeSouza.
 MARION HEINZ 

and anthropology form a specific connection that the concept of rationalist

anthropology is meant to express (see Pollok 2010).
For a discussion of the relationship between metaphysics and anthropology in
the early Herder, it is not enough just to point to the metaphysical assumptions of
his view of the human being—unlike how merely pointing to Leibniz’s theory of
the best of all possible worlds is sufficient for understanding this same relation-
ship in Mendelssohn. The situation is complicated—broadly speaking—by the
fact that Herder’s philosophy teacher, the pre-critical Kant, was at the same
time both a determined critic of rationalistic metaphysics and a lover of this
science who wanted to consolidate and secure it through the marshalling of new
foundations (see Naragon 2015). It is thus definitive of the starting point created
through Kant, and that was crucial for Herder, that Kant makes the critique of
metaphysics based on Hume and Rousseau the basis of its new foundations. And
it is through Kant’s lectures on metaphysics that Herder becomes familiar both
with the most important representatives of German metaphysics—Wolff, Baum-
garten, and Crusius—and with Hume’s and Rousseau’s critiques of metaphysics,
as well as with the young Kant’s own metaphysical reflections. This is confirmed
by Herder’s letter to Scheffner from October 4, 1766: “I, who have been initiated,
as it were, into Rousseauiana and Humiana by Kant, who read both of them
daily, know nothing about them except the falsities that are to be found in the
newspapers” (DA I, 64).
And this constellation of destruction of the old and construction of a new
metaphysics becomes decisive for Herder’s working out of the relationship
between metaphysics and anthropology in the middle of the 1760s. The central
thesis of this chapter, therefore, is as follows: from the ashes of Kant’s critique of
metaphysics rises the phoenix of a new, pre-critically purified form of metaphysics
and it is this form of metaphysics that Herder, explicitly and systematically, first
connects with anthropology. But Herder is nevertheless more than merely a
“Kantian of the year 1765”:2 the nature of his connection of metaphysics and
anthropology produces new forms of systematic meta-reflections on philosophy
that will be taken further, albeit on a completely different basis, only with the next
generation.3
In the first part of this chapter, I discuss Herder’s Versuch über das Sein (Essay
on Being) composed in 1763. My concern is to present Herder’s “metaphysical

2
See Haym 1880, 55. For a revision of this view, see Heinz 1994, 41.
3
For a sketch of Herder’s concept of philosophy as systematically connected to such metareflec-
tions right up until his last writings, see Heinz 2016a.
 ANTHROPOLOGY AND CRITIQUE OF METAPHYSICS IN HERDER

exercise” (FHA 1, 9),4 if I may use a biological metaphor, as a pluripotent version

of a pre-critically restricted metaphysics that is based on Kant and yet is Herder’s
own and that allows itself to be developed into both a Spinozistic philosophy of
life as well as a conception of a metaphysics-completing anthropology.
In the second, and longer, part of the chapter, I consider the text Wie die
Philosophie zum Besten des Volks allgemeiner und nützlicher werden kann (How
philosophy can become more universal and useful for the benefit of the people),
Herder’s answer to the Bern Academy’s prize question from 1765, which contains
the famous formulation of the “restriction [Einziehung] of philosophy to anthro-
pology” (132; 27). That Herder’s program foresees no simple replacement of
metaphysics by anthropology is the negative result of the engagement with this
text. Positively, Herder conceptualizes psychology as the fundamental discipline
of metaphysics in such a way that it requires completion by anthropology.
The Essay on Being is Herder’s first philosophical treatise, written during his
studies at the University of Königsberg and dedicated to his revered teacher Kant.
“The premises” of the “exercises” making up the short treatise are said to lie in
Kant’s words, which placed Herder in the position of being able critically to
engage not only with contemporary metaphysics as conveyed through Kant’s
lectures—above all the metaphysics of Baumgarten and Crusius—but also with
the latest form of the discipline, the rational theology of Kant’s Only possible
proof-ground for the existence of God (1763). Finally, this also made it possible for
Herder to conceive his own attempt at a “subjective philosophy” (20). Here, only
the problem and results that are relevant for the topic of this chapter shall be
presented.5
In the first place, it is important to show that Herder converts epistemological
problems into psychological ones and makes use of logical conceptual means in
order to answer them: “It is perhaps another question, whether our concepts
could not be other than sensuous, whether there might be no other path to our
inner sense than through the medium of the outer” (10). In order to be able to
answer this question about the knowledge of the necessity of a particular genesis
of our representations, it is not enough to appeal to anthropological facts. In
connection with Hume, Herder explains that the idealist counter position to
empiricism is not to be refuted through experience—this counter position claims
that the spontaneity of an intellectual principle, and not the affections of the

4
Both the pieces by Herder discussed in this chapter (Versuch über das Sein and Wie die
Philosophie) are published in FHA 1. For simplicity’s sake, all parenthetical references in the
above text that include only a page number are to FHA 1. Page numbers following a semicolon
refer to the translation of Wie die Philosophie in Forster 2002.
5
For a more detailed study of this text see Baum 1990 and, more recently, Heinz 2016b.
 MARION HEINZ 

outer sense through objects outside us, is the cause of representations of things
outside us. For one cannot judge what the causes of representations consist in on
the basis of “principles of experience” (10). The empiricist position takes the
metaphysical assumption of objects of the outer world for granted without being
able to prove it from premises, such that the idealist can contest it with equal
justification (10). Thus the solution to the posed problem cannot be obtained, or
not exclusively, through an investigation of the relationship of representations as
effects to their possible causes. Herder therefore charts another path and argues
in terms of faculty psychology.
If one were to lay out the logical conceptual skeleton of Herder’s argument, it
would yield the following: in the first step, the Wolffian concept of the faculty of
representation is taken, qua genus concept, as the basis and is divided with
respect to the capacities for distinctness and indistinctness of representations.
From this results the differentiation between subjects possessing the faculty of
representation that either have or do not have inner sense (11). Drawing on
Kant’s psychology of knowledge from the early 1760s, Herder explains that those
beings that are not capable of distinct representations are endowed with only an
outer, and not an inner, sense—this is the specific of animals. In a second step,
Herder further divides the concept of a being endowed with inner sense—formed
through the addition of the characteristic feature of distinctness to the genus
concept—according to whether or not the capacity spontaneously to produce
representations from the I as the principle of inner sense can be attributed to it.
If a being possesses this characteristic feature, then one obtains the concept of a
being that “alone can say I to itself ” (11) to the extent, namely, that it thinks as the
absolutely independent subject in which all that exists is in fact thought produced
by it. “Free from all sensuous impressions, without all given concepts, without the
remotest a posteriori premises, perhaps [it can] alone say I to itself—divinely to
itself say: I think through myself; and everything else through myself ” (11).
Now such a being is not just a contrastive idea for Herder; it is rather assumed
that there is such an “egoistic thoughtworld” (11), that is, an I that is the origin
of the being of all that exists in him as his thought. If the productivity of the
inner sense is, however, denied, it must be possible for a being endowed with
distinct representation to arrive at such representations by another path, namely,
“through the medium of the outer sense.” The obscure or confused representations
given in outer sense, however, then require processing through the “human way of
attention: abstraction and reflection” (10) in order to bring them to distinctness.
It is in these operations of the making distinct of given representations that
the genuine contribution of the inner sense as a non-productive faculty of know-
ledge is to be seen.
 ANTHROPOLOGY AND CRITIQUE OF METAPHYSICS IN HERDER

The proposed task is thus fulfilled: it is proven that for the human being no
other origin of his representations is conceivable than through the outer sense.
This follows from the insight into the non-productivity of his I in connection
with the theory, taken from Lockean psychology of knowledge, of the inner and
outer sense as the only sources of representations. Herder thereby derives the
concept of the human being as a mixed being endowed with inner and outer
sense (11), which he was already familiar with from Kant’s lectures, as the result
of psychological considerations. The epistemological alternatives of empiricism
and idealism, including their explanations of the causes of representations, are
translated by Herder into the categories of faculty psychology, such that the
justifiability of these positions becomes connected to the assumption of certain
characteristics—productivity or non-productivity—of the inner sense. This
subject-dependent reformulation of both positions makes it possible to think of
them as compatible. Thus the strict validity of the empiricist doctrine for human
beings can be demonstrated without having to maintain a realist position with
respect to the outer world to the exclusion of the idealist counterposition.
Now on the basis of this psychology, which renders possible insight into the
constitution of the genuinely human cognitive subject, Herder derives, in a
second step, a fundamental critique of rationalist philosophy. A philosophy in
the sense of Wolff and Baumgarten, which claims to be a demonstrative
science and which strives for the ideal of fully rational knowledge, fails to
appreciate the limits, and thus the specific form, of human knowledge. If the
“extreme philosophers” (11) were not falsely oriented toward the ideal of divine
knowledge—that is, of complete insight into the inner, logical connections of
representations—they would be able to grasp the certainty of human thinking
through sensuousness as a positive form of thinking in itself.6 The sensuous
marks not only the beginning of thinking, as the empiricists teach, but also its
end, as Herder is able to show by means of the Wolffian-Baumgartenian phil-
osophy and not least Crusius’ philosophy—so highly prized by Kant. “I abstract
them [the representations], refine them from the sensuous, until they can be
refined no further, the rough clump remains left over—look, that was unanalyz-
able. Sensuous and unanalyzable are thus synonyms” (11). The analysis of the
at first obscure and thus sensuous complex of representations renders their
elements that are not further analyzable accessible precisely only in their sheer
givenness, as that, namely, which is due to no activity of the understanding and is
thus merely received.

6
See DeSouza 2016b for an analysis of Herder’s critique of Wolff in his early text Ueber
Wolfs Schriften.
 MARION HEINZ 

This critique of rationality and metaphysics forms the basis for the conception
of a new, restricted metaphysics that Herder calls subjective philosophy, as the
counterpart to the metaphysics of the divine soul: the main idea of this meta-
physics of the human soul consists in developing an order of basic philosophical
concepts constitutive for all operations of the human cognitive subject. This
sensuous and subjective order is the counterpart to the logical and objective
order of concepts that are produced and recognized through a non-sensuous,
purely rational, cognitive subject. Herder characterizes them as follows: “If
one were to search for the most sensuous concept, it would be, for us, fully
unanalyzable—sensuously most certain, and almost a theoretical instinct, the
foundation of all other concepts of experience and fully indemonstrable; under it
the other unanalyzable concepts could be collected, and an order would be found
in their confused chaos, if not objectively, then certainly subjectively in connec-
tion to us—one would see in particular the basis of unanalyzability that lies not in
the things but rather in us” (12). The cognitive subject is the reason for a certain
characteristic of representations, i.e., their unanalyzability, and Herder depicts
the degree of this characteristic as the “principle” of the order of sensuous basic
concepts. In connection with Hume, Herder sees the loss of demonstrative
certainty that comes with such a system as compensated for through the subject-
ive certainty of sensuous concepts bestowed by Mother Nature and comparable
to an instinct (11, 19).
At the summit of the unanalyzable concepts stands the concept of being
(Sein), which, as the most unanalyzable concept, is at the same time the most
sensuous and most general concept that lies at the foundation not only of the
nearest lower concepts of space, time, and force, but rather of all concepts in
general (12). Herder, like his teacher Kant, follows the view of Crusius that the
finite human cognitive subject, whose concepts are given, is not capable of a
purely rational knowledge that rests only on the logical principles of contradic-
tion and sufficient ground. According to Crusius, besides these formal, highest
principles, material principles are needed as the basis of the possibility of finite
human knowledge. The unanalyzable concepts function for Herder, too, as the
components of material principles (20). In the concept of being as the most
unanalyzable and most sensuous concept, the objective side of this constitution
of the subject is depicted as the necessity of connecting given representational
content to something existent, a Seiendes, if it is not to be merely a question of
relations between representations. The conception of the human cognitive
subject worked out in psychology thus forms the basis of a system of concepts
which have ontological significance, even if their validity is limited to this class
of subjects.
 ANTHROPOLOGY AND CRITIQUE OF METAPHYSICS IN HERDER

The foundation of philosophy in psychology opens up for Herder the

far-reaching holistic perspective of a “sensualistic idealism” (cf. Heinz 1994,
Baum 1990a) as a philosophical program encompassing both God and human
being: the “subjective philosophy” (20) that Herder opposes to rational philoso-
phy’s project to know the logical order of concepts (12) must nevertheless be
connected with the irrefutable idea of a divine thoughtworld—which indeed is
claimed as “given” (11): divine reason is the principle of being of each existing
thing that is immanent to God as his thought. And the thoughts of the human
being, which rest on what is given in outer sense, are, just as much as the outer
existing things represented in them, immanent in divine reason—a “Spinozism
avant la lettre” (Baum 1990a, 129) that Herder later works out as a philosophy of
life and brings to bear against both Kant’s critical philosophy and Jacobi’s
philosophy of feeling.7 Herder’s revaluation of sensuousness, therefore, unlike
French materialism, is not positioned in opposition to theology and metaphysics;
on the contrary, it is based on them. Only in this way is it possible to define the
human being as a sensuous being who, as such, participates in the glow of the
eternal and whose finite reason, which is realized through the processing of
the given, can count on the ontological conformity between subject and object,
which guarantees the possibility of reconstructing parts of the one divine
thoughtworld on the basis of the experienceable or sensuously given.
A continuation of this critique of philosophy in a different context and with
different goals is to be found in Herder’s answer to the Bern Academy prize
question from 1765, “How can philosophy become more general and useful for
the benefit of the people?” (101–34). Simply put, it is no longer a question here of
confronting a systematically presented, inner-philosophical critique of rational-
istic metaphysics as formulated by Hume or Crusius, in which the difference and
unity of the divine and human cognitive subject is newly determined. The
question, posed to philosophy from the outside, about its use for the people—
who above all appear as a pedagogical-political subject—is transformed by
Herder into a question about the relationship between the two expressions of
human understanding corresponding to the classes of bourgeois society, i.e., the
scholarly and the healthy understanding. In this way a critique of philosophy is
introduced, in analogy with Rousseau’s critique of morals, in which philosophy as
the highest product of culture is made to answer before the natural, healthy
understanding as external forum.

7
For Herder’s concept of a philosophy of life in his treatise on Spinoza, Gott, Einige Gespräche,
see Heinz 2016d.
 MARION HEINZ 

Prior to this investigation, Herder draws up a systematic ordering of different

types of critique of philosophy8 in which either philosophy’s own objective of
being a science, or its use for other objectives outside it, is contested (104ff.). The
first type of critique is raised by the sciences of mathematics and physics, which
call into question philosophy’s claim to truth. Theology and politics, i.e., the
so-called “friends of God” and the “friends of humanity,” however, make up the
class of external critics who dispute the usefulness of philosophy for objectives
lying outside it. For Herder, the two strands of the internal and external critique
of philosophy do not advance together in tandem; rather, one conditions the
other and they must thus be worked out by proceeding in steps. Philosophy’s
reflection on the legitimacy of the critique by other sciences (Wissenschaften) and
the self-correction that emerges from this create the conditions for being able
adequately to address the critique of the friends of humanity (the so-called
Menschenfreunde, by which is meant here the Bern Patriots); the objections of
the friends of God (Gottesfreunde), however, are deemed irrelevant and remain
unheeded. Already Herder’s modification and reformulation of the Bern prize
question reveal the broad lines of his argumentational goals and strategies: “How
can philosophy be reconciled with humanity and politics, so that it actually also
really serves the latter?” (FH 1, 108; 6; my emphasis). Following the correction set
in motion by philosophy itself, a twofold feat of reconciliation is envisioned: it is a
philosophy revised on the model of the physicists that should render possible a
reconciliation of philosophy qua science with humanity. And this new, revised
form of philosophy explains its reconciled relationship to the people (Volk),
which is represented in terms of the history of philosophy as the overcoming of
the divisions determining contemporary culture to which the division between
scholarly and healthy understanding belongs.
With his discussion of the objections to philosophy on the part of mathematics
and physics, Herder takes a position on the dispute about the mathematical
method that occurred around the middle of the eighteenth century.9 Mathemat-
ics challenges not only the truth and certainty of philosophy’s theorems, but even
its condition: the distinctness of its representations (106). Philosophy identifies
itself with its attacker, to whom it sees itself as inferior, and thereby risks losing
“its actual spirit” (106). This critique, directed above all at Wolff, makes use of the
pre-critical Kant’s reflections on the essential difference between philosophy and

8
Comparable is Meier’s engagement with the enemies of metaphysics, who are likewise divided
into classes. Cf. Meier 1755, Introduction, §§10ff.
9
See Tonelli 1959.
 ANTHROPOLOGY AND CRITIQUE OF METAPHYSICS IN HERDER

mathematics10 and accuses philosophers, on the basis of their bias in favour of a

mathematics based on constructed/made concepts, of accepting the abstractions
or concepts of philosophy without examining their material suitability and thus
of unwittingly making themselves into poets (106).
Kant had taken Newton and the analytical method he had employed in physics
as the model for his argument about the difference between philosophy and
mathematics (AA 2, 286); Herder adopts this new definition of philosophy in
such a way, however, that he at the same time crucially modifies Kant’s reflec-
tions, as will be seen in what follows. The reservations of the “physicists,” who are
occupied with the real objects of nature, with respect to a philosophy that
operates with abstractions arbitrarily—like mathematics—are justified, and
philosophy should reconceive itself on the model of physics. It should follow
the method of physics, “to judge . . . from experiences, not from hypotheses” (106;
5), and, like physics, it should make nature its object, and indeed, complementing
this science of external, material nature, it should examine inner, immaterial
nature. What is important is “to investigate the phenomena of abstraction like the
noteworthy features of nature” (106; 5). Herder thereby introduces a change of
paradigm whose objective is a fundamental reform of philosophy through which
it will be newly based on psychology, which is, for Herder, in the wake of Wolff,
not only as a rational but also as an empirical discipline, part of metaphysics.11
It is a matter of “transfer[ring] the spirit of physical analysis into philosophy
instead of mathematical synthesis, in short, to attempt a dissection of the products
of our spirit, be they errors or truths . . . . In philosophy, may the mathematical
aeons be followed by the physical ones” (106f.; 5). Herder’s recommended
transferring of the method of physical analysis into a philosophy conceived of
as psychology is distinct from Kant’s understanding of the proper method of
metaphysics obtained by orientation to the natural sciences. Kant had defined the
parallels between the Newtonian method and the method of philosophy such that
in both sciences it is a matter, even without knowledge of the reason for a thing,
of searching above all, through outer or inner experience, for the rules of acting of
bodies in the case of physics or for certain characteristic marks (notae) of the
concept of a general quality (Beschaffenheit) in the case of metaphysics, from
which “much” can then be derived (AA 2, 286). For Herder, however, it is a
question of conceiving of philosophy as the science of immaterial nature, parallel

10
Kant, Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der
Moral, AA 2, 273–302.
11
For Wolff, empirical psychology is the only empirical discipline that is assigned to metaphysics.
Cf. Wolff 1983, Chapter 3, §§191ff. On the relationship between empirical and rational psychology,
cf. §727. See van Zantwijk 2001, 51.
 MARION HEINZ 

to physics as the science of corporeal nature, and of following the method of

physical analysis in both sciences, which entails the tracing of observable features
and functions back to the thing or substance as their ground or to analyse a given
thing into its constituent parts. Whether Herder wants to have this psychology
understood exclusively as empirical psychology, based on sense perception, or
also as rational psychology is not easy to determine.12 Without a doubt, Herder’s
plea for a psychology that proceeds according to the analytical method in this
sense is directed against Wolff ’s mathematical procedure of starting from defin-
itions and obtaining on their basis knowledge a priori by means of syllogisms. For
Herder it is also necessary to connect empirical and rational knowledge. But he
only insinuates this: the characteristic marks (Merkmale, notae) of a thing,
known through perception, are to be brought via abstraction “up to the highest
first concept of morality, of a law, to the sharpness of a metaphysical demon-
stration” (117f.; 15, translation modified). Here another understanding of the
analytical method is suggested, the analysis notionum: the task of philosophy
consists in analyzing the characteristic marks known in inner sense in order to
arrive at the most abstract concepts. In a second step, the logical-conceptual
order of these partial concepts is to be grasped by means of demonstrations. The
abstract concept can be derived from the more determinate one, in which it is
contained as a partial concept, by means of syllogisms. Herder’s positioning of
psychology as the first discipline of philosophy and the necessarily concomitant
demoting of ontology conceives of philosophy as the science of principles of
theory and praxis, which have their origin in the human soul and, as such, are the
object of psychology (112). Herder preliminarily applies this same foundational
context to the corresponding disciplines of logic qua doctrine of the principles of
right thinking and moral philosophy qua doctrine of the principles of right
action. What is crucial is to ground both disciplines in metaphysics, understood
as psychology of the human soul (112, 117), and indeed, first of all, for inner-
philosophical reasons. This reform of philosophy thus primarily serves the goals
of scholars, but nevertheless forms the condition of being able to become useful
to the goals of the people (112, 115, 116).
Herder sketches a conception of logic that is essentially based on the model of
the analytical method introduced by physicists—confusing logical-conceptual
and physical analysis—as follows: one must “dissect the subjective concept of

12
A plausible criterion for whether psychology in the modern sense can be considered to be
empirical psychology is seen in the conviction that the determination of the substratum of psycho-
logical functions as an object lying outside empirical knowledge is to be dispensed with. Cf. Eckardt
et al. 2001, Einleitung, 1ff.; see also Kant’s Vorlesungsankündigung vom Wintersemester, 1765/1766,
AA 2, 304ff. esp. 309. For an overview of Herder’s main contribution to psychology, see Heinz 2016c.
 ANTHROPOLOGY AND CRITIQUE OF METAPHYSICS IN HERDER

thought and the objective concept of truth, not explain and name them in an
arbitrary fashion, but unfold them, and by means of an extensive analysis of the
concept so to speak seek the origin of all truth and science in my soul” (112; 10).
Herder’s thought, which forms the basis of this astonishing connection of
conceptual and factual analysis, appears to be that only that discovery of the
characteristic marks of a concept through inner experience (which even Kant had
recommended as the method of metaphysics) can be factually adequate that is
also connected to the scientific examination of the thing which is the logical
object of the concept. For as the doctrine of the right use of the understanding
and of reason, logic presupposes knowledge of the functions of these capacities
and, further, of their underlying substance, the soul—in short, of psychology.
However much Herder opposes Wolff ’s method, at the same time he still follows
Wolff ’s grounding of logic in psychology, but abandons the idea that the
principles of logical proof are to be derived from ontology.13 Differently from
Wolff, Herder appears to consider it possible to ground the objectivity of
thoughts and their truth through a tracing back of the concept of truth to its
origin in the soul. Anything more precise on this matter cannot be gleaned from
this piece, which discusses epistemological questions only marginally. In the
foreground are reflections on the disciplines of philosophy, which, in turn, are
presented in the interest of determining the role of philosophy in a correctly
understood theoretical and political enlightenment.
The idea of the grounding of logic in psychology is worked out in light of this
point of view if it means uniting logic with the “marrow of the science of the soul”
(111; 9). The rules of right thinking are to be derived, Herder thus wants to say,
from the soul qua force of nature as the laws of its natural efficacy (cf. AA 2, 291).
Only a logic grounded in this way can instruct human beings in the right use of
their soul’s forces. In the ideal case, a psychologically based logic will “awaken”
and make active and lively the soul that, in the present condition, is dead. The
logic of his age appears to Herder to be a “field full of corpses” (111; 9),
a collection of “comfortless, far-too-universal rules,” a register of definitions
and an arsenal of methods for the dead art of disputation of past ages (111; 9).
If logic is reinserted into psychology, i.e., “treated as metaphysics” (112), force
and effects, the substance and its modifications, will be thought of as a living
connected whole. Thoughts will no longer appear—as in the present logic—as
something fixed that is to be merely taken up and preserved, but rather, as the
self-thought, they become just as tangible as the soul qua thinking subject.

13
On Wolff ’s grounding of logic in ontology and psychology, cf. Wolff, Discursus Praeliminaris,
§§89, 90.
 MARION HEINZ 

With almost Promethean self-confidence, Herder explains the human being who
awakens the “motive within him” and “makes himself in his own soul into God
and philosopher”—like a causa sui, he brings himself forth through himself as a
thinking subject. Insofar as logic is grasped as a product of the soul, it can, as an
effect of the soul, itself become a cause that in turn has an effect on the soul. And
logic that is grounded in psychology (111, 112) becomes an “art that teaches him
[the philosopher] to use his soul” (110).
The grounding of logic, and moral philosophy, in metaphysics—and that
means in empirical psychology—is understood by Herder to be an inner-
philosophical corrective to a malformation of philosophy that shows itself to be
necessary from the perspectives of the history of philosophy and later also of
humanity. According to Herder, contemporary philosophy as a science, as well as
culture as a whole, is determined by abstractions and divisions. Not only are
concepts, i.e., abstractions, the object of philosophy; the more basic abstraction
consists in treating these as products of the understanding detached from their
source, the soul. Herder counters this with the idea of the living whole as a unity
of force and effects, which also determines his understanding of the concept of
usefulness. To be useful can first mean, as was clear with the example of logic,
that something operates according to its own end, optimally fulfills its function.
Second, usefulness for another can also be meant. Obviously, this is to be
understood in such a way that it is a question of a mutual means-end relationship
between the parts of a living whole, in such a way that one part, by serving
another, itself lives. Herder’s intention to conceive such a teleology modelled on
the concept of life is clear from his introduction of a theologically inspired
concept of spirit.14 This philosophy of life orientation allows Herder to develop
here the preliminary explanation of philosophy as psychology—differently from
the Essay on Being—into an emphatically presented program of reconciliation. By
securing its own foundation, i.e., the soul, philosophy qua science is able not only
to see thinking and desiring as effects of this living force, but also to free the soul
as the subject of the thought of itself for itself. In logic and moral philosophy, the
lost spirit of philosophy, the capacity for self-thinking (106) returns, and through
this restitution of itself achieved by philosophy qua science, the potential is
created for it to be useful to humanity or the people and to overcome the
separation between scholarly and healthy understanding.
Herder had placed these reflections on the renewal of philosophy as science in
a temporal-historical framework by lending credence to the objections of physics

14
On Wolff ’s concept of spirit cf. Deutsche Metaphysik, §896: spirit we call “a being that has
understanding and free will.” For the Christian concept of spirit, see Schrott 1974.
 ANTHROPOLOGY AND CRITIQUE OF METAPHYSICS IN HERDER

as the most successful science of his age. If this was a question of an historical
observation that sought to obtain from the competing forms of science an approach
to the critique of philosophy, Herder formulates an incomparably more severe
critique of philosophy from a critical distance from science as such, as prefigured
in Rousseau’s radical critique of culture. And it is thoroughly Herder’s intention,
with this observation, to self-consciously set himself in relation to Rousseau, who, he
attests, had provided the correct diagnosis of the disastrous state of philosophy in his
age. Herder assigns himself the role of therapist who knows how to make
philosophy—which had not only contributed to the malformations of culture but
also underlay them—into an “antidote” (122) and thus at the same time knows how
to preserve it in its intrinsic value as a science and make it useful to human beings.
According to the shared opinion of interpreters, in Herder’s eyes, philosophy is only
to be used as an antidote when the program of the “restriction [Einziehung] of
philosophy to anthropology” (132) is followed.15 What, however, is meant by this
formula, what “restriction to philosophy” means, and what conception of anthro-
pology is in question—the following reflections attempt to answer these questions
with the intention of thereby being able to outline more precisely Herder’s position
in the philosophy of the Aufklärung.
Herder, who passes a devastating judgment on philosophy—both with respect to
its state as a science taken up with itself like a busybody and with the securing of its
own pseudo-authority (134) as well as with respect to its disastrous consequences
for humanity—defends philosophy against the unfair demand alleged of the Bern
Patriots that, for just these reasons, it be destroyed and replaced by the political
deliberations of healthy reason on human affairs (121ff.). Even if its present sorry
state must be frankly admitted, philosophy as a product of culture is to be valued
and its potential for the advancement of humanity is to be opened up. After all,
philosophy represents the highest stage of development of the human mind (123),
which could only be attained through immense sacrifice, as Herder observes,
anticipating Freud’s theory of culture. The “abstract part” of philosophy—that is,
the revised metaphysics—must thus “remain in itself intact and unmutilated” (122).
Philosophy can only become an “antidote” (122) to evil if its efforts are advanced,
unimpaired by every form of external end-setting.
As an Aufklärer, Herder respects philosophy—and indeed despite its failings—
as the highest level of reason that has no judge above it but which rather can alone
itself serve as its own “highest tribunal” (125). Criticism, above all self-criticism,
is thus necessary to philosophy. And doubtless Herder’s plan for the improve-
ment of philosophy on the model of physics is meant to serve as an example of

15
Gaier is exemplary here. See FHA 1, 990.
 MARION HEINZ 

a philosophy advancing through criticism. It is only from such a philosophy that

is capable of self-criticism and following its own laws that “better principles”
(122) may be expected, which, in turn, are to form the basis for the education
(Bildung)16 of the people. Herder defines the meaning of philosophy for the
people in anticipatory fashion—and in a provocative, shortened form—by means
of the distinction between theory and praxis: it is incumbent on philosophy,
understood as the highest level of the development of the human understanding,
to think “for millions of others so that these act” (122). People (Volk), for Herder,
is not to be understood in the sense of ethnicity, but rather in the sense of a
citizenry or a people belonging to a state, as in Cicero (108).17 Essential to
Herder’s concept of the people is the idea that it involves the uneducated part
of humanity for whom it is not about forming the refined curiosity as a drive to
acquire knowledge for its own sake (119), but rather whose objective consists qua
human being in the preservation of life and qua citizen in political action
(cf. 112f.). Serving this goal of developing a philosophy that equally promotes
the people in this double aspect of human being and patriot (125) is Herder’s
“favourite plan[s]” (122) of placing a “philosophy of the healthy understanding,”
i.e., a plan for the education of the people, side by side with abstract philosophy.
Only in this way can the solution dating back to Socrates—“our philosophy must
descend from the stars to human beings” (122)—be realized in an also politically
enlightened present. The relationship of abstract and healthy philosophy is
defined by Herder as the relationship of science and art: “philosophy for the
healthy understanding” (122) should relate to the abstract part just as art relates
to science by applying the principles that the latter delivers (cf. 122, 126). The
characteristic of the “application” intended here—through which it differentiates
itself from the previously negatively judged directing of people through philo-
sophical instruction—consists in the fact that it has do to with an “immediate”
(122) education of the people. The people’s thinking and acting should not be
indirectly promoted through the generalization of scholarly philosophical know-
ledge that is then extended to them; what is intended is rather to preserve the
special nature of the healthy understanding, which is lively but not aimed at
distinct thought, and to support these natural capabilities that are fully adequate
to the ends of life.18 “Instead of logic and moral theory, with a philosophical
spirit, [philosophy] educates [bildet] the human being in self-thinking and in the

16
All uses of the word “education” in this chapter are translations of the German word Bildung.
17
For Herder’s later conception of Volk in relation to the idea of humanity, see Heinz 1996.
18
What is required is not guidance, but rather an improvement of the people’s capabilities,
FHA 1, 114.
 ANTHROPOLOGY AND CRITIQUE OF METAPHYSICS IN HERDER

feeling of virtue” (122; 126).19 As this clue to the “philosophical spirit” necessary
to the education of the people already reveals, it is a philosophy grounded in
psychology that alone can be entrusted with this emancipatory work. As a
philosophy that returns to the origin of the principles of knowledge and action
in the human soul, not only does it make the soul an object of knowledge, thereby
being able to know the lower forces that are determinative for the people in their
genuine capacity, but it also understands itself, which means as a science, as a free,
mental source of efficacy. Decisive for Herder’s understanding of a philosophical
education of the people is the intention to educate the people to be human being
and citizen first (122; 126), and on this basis to then “imprint in him a philosoph-
ical spirit” (126; 23), and this means to impart to the people the capacity to think
and to act for itself without explicit knowledge of the underlying rules: let the
people’s “main law be freedom and dependence on oneself, uncompelled self-
observation, and independence from others’ judgement” (126; 23).
Now in order to clarify the relationship between metaphysics and anthropology
in this key early text, attention must be directed, above all, to Herder’s claim that
a philosophical plan for education is needed, that is, an idea from which its
content, methods, addressees, etc. must be developed. On this the text offers only
the brief instruction: “Our philosophy has for so long still lacked a plan of
education. Let the human being be taken out of philosophy, and applied to
everything else” (131). Philosophy should accordingly provide the concept of
the human being, which is to form the foundation of the plan for the education
of the healthy understanding. That is, philosophy as science, through the concept
of the human being, furnishes the principle that is brought into use in the
philosophy of the healthy understanding, which is itself an art. The human
being is conceived of by Herder, as in the school philosophy (Schulphilosophie),
as the thinking and willing subject determined through the lower and upper soul-
forces. Also constitutive for the philosophical concept of the human being is a

19
Herder envisions two parts to the inner organization of philosophy for the healthy under-
standing: in the first part, philosophy should “merely educate [human beings] into acting machines”
and that means enabling them, without the mediation of distinct principles, to act on the basis of
confused but lively representations. This part, which requires no explicit engagement with prin-
ciples, has the status of an “art” (125) and its addressees are subjects in their natural constitution as
living beings. Differentiated according to logical, moral, and political education on the one hand,
and according to the addressees—men and women—on the other, Herder traced out this area of his
project for the education of the people in outline (126–31). The other part of the philosophy of the
healthy understanding also conveys to one part of the people the principles of acting and thinking,
without in turn grounding them. Thus will “half-educated [individuals]” (Halbgelehrte) be trained
who are in fact qualified to be teachers and for other choice vocations, without, however, being able
to be seconded into the fraternity of science (125). This part of healthy philosophy is a “technical
science” (125).
 MARION HEINZ 

theory of the soul-body relationship that Herder works out in contemporaneous

pieces, such as, e.g., in Plato sagte, daß unser Lernen bloß Erinnerung sei.20
Herder’s theory is a variation of the theory of physical influx, according to
which the soul expresses itself in the formation of a body and, in the context of
its effects on the body and its corporeally mediated experiences, takes shape in an
individual form. This philosophical concept of the human being results, accord-
ing to Herder, in the conception of the “history of humanity” (131). With this the
thought of a human species which develops its essence in spatio-temporal
dimensions is touched upon whose changes are to be studied as part of “nature
itself ” (132), the inner nature of human beings as the object of psychology on the
one hand, and the great “stage” (132), that is, external nature, on the other. The
concept of the history of humanity that follows from his philosophical concept of
the human being fulfills for Herder the function of a prism by making “every-
thing” (132) visible in its diversity and at the same time bundling it together: the
“diversity of bodies, and of minds [Gemüter] etc. of opinions and of tastes, of
sensations, etc.” (132; 27) are to be investigated as unprejudicedly qua appear-
ances of the human being (Menschseins) as are the “works of humanity” and the
“fruits of this which he enjoys as a human being” (132; 27), such as morals and
learning as forms of refined culture (cf. 132; 27). In this context, in which the
concept of the history of humanity is represented as a subordinate point to the
subject “plan for the education of humanity,” the formula “restriction of phil-
osophy to anthropology” appears for the first time (132; 27). Keeping this
connection in mind, it becomes clear that this formula is to be understood as
an abbreviation for the idea of a theory of the human being qua history of
humanity that follows from an application of the philosophical concept of
the human being. And this theory is necessary not only for the knowledge
of the human being for its own sake, but also for the philosophical groundwork
of the education of the people. Moral education thus presupposes insight into the
historical differences of virtue and vice in order not to impart unsuitable ideals
“from foreign times” (129). Even the slightly modified formula “philosophy will
be withdrawn into anthropology, modified according to the kinds of peoples”
(103) appears in connection with comments on the plan for education, here
specifically of women. In this context, the withdrawal of philosophy into anthro-
pology is to be understood as concentrating philosophy on a doctrine of the
human being in a specified sense: not as a historical and cultural being in its

20
See Heinz 1994, 43ff. and for Herder’s text Plato sagte, see 175ff. More recently see DeSouza
2016a, 114–17. Herder’s critique of Leibniz precedes his own conception of the soul-body relation-
ship. See DeSouza 2012.
 ANTHROPOLOGY AND CRITIQUE OF METAPHYSICS IN HERDER

historical and cultural differences, but rather with respect to its determination as
a living being in its natural differences that are relevant to its end of individual
self-preservation and the preservation of the species. Here too, this focus deter-
mines which kind of philosophy is to be made the basis and content of education.
Thus, for example, women should be educated to think beautifully, and a
corresponding “Plan for a female aesthetics” (103) should be developed. Herder
asserts, therefore, that a twofold knowledge of human beings as cultural and as
natural beings is needed in order to be able to construct a plan for the education
of the people on the basis of the philosophical concept of the human being.21
In the above-mentioned formulations of the relationship between philosophy
and anthropology, it is a matter of the description of a modification of philosophy
that can be described, on the one hand, as a concentration, and on the other, as a
narrowing, and which is set against the extension or generalization of philosophy
as science from the scholarly class to all human beings (125). These spatial
metaphors indicate a relationship between two magnitudes: if philosophy is to
become more general in the sense that it is to become relevant not only for
scholars but also for the human being in its natural and civic relations, then as a
science (Wissenschaft) it must withdraw into itself, and that means both to
narrow and to condense or concentrate: to narrow philosophy means that the
subjects and contents that belong to it as science qua science have to be
renounced. This narrowing is at the same time a concentration on its proper
substance, as Herder explains: a philosophy that “draws together as the focus of
its attention” (125) human beings, will be able to judge itself by means of a
“negative logic” (114) and abandon the parts of philosophy that are irrelevant to
the education of the people (125). It will abandon the scientific doctrines of
philosophy, such as, for example, the rules of syllogistic logic, in order to
concentrate on the spirit of philosophy, the capacity for self-thinking that is the
foundation of all education of the people. Anthropology is understood here to be
the theory of those objects of philosophy that are relevant to the education of the
people; this is knowledge of the human being as a being of culture and history on
the one hand, and knowledge about the human being as a natural being destined
to the preservation of the life of individual and species on the other; crucial above
all, however, is the thought that all this knowledge is to be placed under the
principle of self-thinking that belongs to philosophy qua philosophy. This is the

21
By mentioning these two aspects as relevant for a conception of the education of human
beings, Herder refers to the Stoic concept of oikeiosis. According to this concept, human beings have
to behave not only like other living beings in accordance with nature, but also on a higher level as
ethical beings in accordance with both the history they are a part of and the society to which they
belong, provided the social rules have been verified by reason to be in accordance with reason.
 MARION HEINZ 

only norm beyond all empirical knowledge that Herder postulates and whose
origin he posits in a philosophy conceptualized as psychology and oriented to the
model of physics. The above-mentioned elements of human knowledge, of
human beings as natural and cultural beings, and the normative principle of
the education of human beings as self-thinking beings underlie the concrete
development of the philosophy of the healthy understanding: they determine
what material and subjects should be taught, in which form, and for whom.
Crucial is that a philosophy restricted in this way to anthropology finds its
principle in a metaphysics revolutionized on the model of physics in which the
spirit of philosophy came alive: only through its foundation in metaphysics can
philosophy define itself as an art that educates human beings as human beings to
self-thinking and to autonomous acting. It is, however, obvious that Herder’s plea
that philosophy entirely preserve its abstract part is incompatible with this
concept of anthropology that is presented as a result of a negative logic.
To impute to Herder the project of the restriction of philosophy to anthropology
and at the same time to understand anthropology in the sense explained above
leads to a glaring contradiction. Furthermore it seems that Herder’s reflections on
philosophy and anthropology lead to a dilemma: either philosophy is able to
extend its genuine principle, its philosophical spirit, on the unscholarly people by
narrowing itself—which contradicts Herder’s demand for the preservation of an
unrestricted philosophy—or it can be preserved in its entirety with the necessary
implication of renouncing its relevance for the people.
The urgency of finding a solution to this problem is only heightened by taking
into account Herder’s third formulation of the relationship of anthropology and
philosophy: “our whole philosophy becomes anthropology” (134), and thus
prospects for “new, fruitful developments of philosophy” (134) will arise. It is a
question not of a narrowing or concentration, for science’s sake, of a determinate
end, but rather of a transformation of philosophy as a whole into anthropology.
If anthropology were understood in the sense explained above, it would amount
to a vote for the surrendering of a conception of philosophy bound only by
the autonomy of theory, and Herder would thus fall into self-contradiction.
Philosophy would be degraded to a means in the service of life and political
action instead of being preserved “without mutilation” (122), irrespective of its
malformations, as an abstract science subject only to itself as tribunal.22 This

22
A certain caution is appropriate with respect to the conception of metaphysics outlined by
Herder in this fragmentary sketch; it is neither unambiguously clear whether Herder entirely rejects
rational psychology nor whether he is ready to preserve parts of cosmology or rational practical
philosophy. See FHA 1, 121.
 ANTHROPOLOGY AND CRITIQUE OF METAPHYSICS IN HERDER

contradiction can only be avoided if the concept of anthropology is employed here

in a sense other than the one used before. If one assumes here the concept of
anthropology used by Kant following Baumgarten at around the same time,
according to which it is synonymous with empirical psychology,23 Herder’s entire
plan for the reformation of philosophy begins to take shape and with this advance
the above-mentioned dilemma vanishes. His idea of grounding logic and moral
philosophy in a psychology defined as metaphysics entails an anthropologizing of
philosophy as a whole and can be seen as a program for philosophy comparable
to Hume’s philosophy of mind. But Herder emphasizes that his concept of
philosophy as psychology is metaphysics and should be preserved as metaphysics
because he stresses the meaning of metaphysics as the doctrine of first principles.
Here it is qualified as that doctrine of the soul that delivers the first principle of
theory and action. As such, this concept of philosophy does not imply its
reduction either to the theory of the natural and historical constitution of
human beings as the philosophical basis for a plan for the education of the
people or to the philosophical material suitable for human beings and citizens.
In the light of Herder’s thoughts on the necessary crossing of both concepts of
anthropology, the perception of a dilemma dissipates: First, the revolutionizing of
philosophy on the model of the physicists that results in the psychology of the
human soul or anthropology furnishes the principle of the education of the
people and thereby makes possible the restriction of philosophy to anthropology
as the concentration and limitation of philosophy, produced by philosophy itself,
to the art of the education of human beings in self-thinking and autonomous
action. With the development of this form of anthropology, philosophy proves
that it sees itself as a science within the horizon of the history of humanity and
that it is able to continue to develop itself according to this standard. It thus
procures for itself that necessary completion of itself as a science through art,
through which it is able to promote the project of the history of humanity in
keeping with its own spirit. At the heart of Herder’s project is the idea of a
necessary relation of philosophy and anthropology understood as a relation of
science and art.
Herder’s reflections on the education of taste (133f.) provide important indi-
cations as to how this necessity of the completion of metaphysics through
anthropology is to be grounded in an overarching meta-reflection. The concep-
tion of the history of humanity grounded in metaphysics offers, for its part, the
philosophical basis for being able to render cogent the necessity of the outlined

23
Cf. Kant, AA 2, 309. On Baumgarten, cf. Metaphysica §747. For discussion see Zammito 2002,
182, and the literature named on 419, n. 238.
 MARION HEINZ 

project of the reconciliation of philosophy and humanity in terms of the

philosophy of history and the philosophy of culture. This foundational scheme
is introduced in connection with the question about the suitable description and
derivation of philosophical truths—and indeed suitable “not for the inhabitants
of scholarship, but rather also for one’s neighbours [who are determined by
sensuousness]” (133; 28). This popular philosophical (popularphilosophische)
subject matter is framed by Herder in terms of the philosophy of history through
his sketch of the history of the relationship of writers to their public: while the
“oldest periods of the Greek and Roman Republic” were distinguished through
the fact that both spoke the same “language of the sensuous people” (133)—the
language of poetry, which comes first in the history of humanity—this unity is
lost in the course of “more refined education” (133) in which “poetry [became]
prose.” It is not difficult to recognize that the powers of the human being—
sensuousness and understanding—are now used as interpretive categories of the
history of humanity. With this projection of the concept of the human being onto
history, the idea of the whole human being becomes the normative central theme
of an overarching meta-reflection of the entire treatise: as the fruit of “more
refined education” (133), philosophy is not only separated from its public, from
the human being or people determined by sensuousness; as a science of abstrac-
tions it is also based, according to its ways of representation and objects, on the
splitting of the sensuous. There is one one-sidedness that Herder does not,
however, depict as a loss: the gain consists in the perfecting of the human
understanding. If one assesses the development of philosophy within the frame-
work of the history of humanity to which it belongs, a question that transcends
the prize question poses itself: whether—and if necessary how—it would be
possible to preserve the achieved improvement of the human understanding
and at the same time to regain the lost unity and fullness. The presented project
of a metaphysically substantiated anthropology that leaves intact the abstract part
of philosophy in order to keep open the possibility of an improvement of the
principles of the education of the people is Herder’s answer to this self-posed
question. In such a further development of philosophy, Herder recognizes a “new
refinement” (132) that, however, abandons the plan of increasing specialization,
i.e., one-sidedness. By becoming useful to the finest of the people, philosophy
connects itself without loss to the sensuous side of the human being (Mensch-
seins). How abstract philosophy appropriates the sensuous by completing itself
through its concept of the education of the people without surrendering its
abstract part holds in the case of the people too: the people is respected in its
distinctiveness and at the same time its abilities are indirectly improved through
the principles of philosophy. And finally, through education in this sense,
 ANTHROPOLOGY AND CRITIQUE OF METAPHYSICS IN HERDER

philosophy itself becomes practical and political: it contributes to the improve-

ment of the state from below (130).
Herder develops a program of reconciliation that is supposed to eliminate the
divisions, one-sidedness, and losses of humanity in his age, and it is philosophy
that is supposed to provide this cure by bringing about a many-sided reconcili-
ation in itself. The sensuous, for so long excluded, is now to be appropriated in
the widest sense without giving up what has been achieved, the highest stage of
understanding. And this means at the same time that pure theory is to be
connected to good praxis. This is Herder’s idea of a philosophy of reconciliation
before Hegel.24

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Erkenntnis. In: Die philosophischen Hauptwerke, vol. 3, ed. Giorgio Tonelli. Hildesheim.
DeSouza, Nigel 2012: “Leibniz in the Eighteenth Century: Herder’s Critical Reflections
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DeSouza, Nigel 2016a: “Aukflärerische Selbstentwürfe.” In: Herder Handbuch, eds. Stefan
Greif, Marion Heinz, Heinrich Clairmont. Paderborn, 71–121.
DeSouza, Nigel 2016b: “Deux périodes et métaphysiques de l’Aufklärung: Herder et sa
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Rioux-Beaulne. Paris, 191–205.
Forster, Michael, ed. 2002: Johann Gottfried Herder: Philosophical Writings. Cambridge.
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Gjesdal, Kristin 2006: “Hegel and Herder on Art, History, and Reason.” Philosophy and
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Marion Heinz, Heinrich Clairmont. Paderborn, 47–58.

24
For discussion, see Heinz 1997 and Gjesdal 2006.
 MARION HEINZ 

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Marion Heinz, Heinrich Clairmont. Paderborn, 240–66.
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Ritter et al., vol. 3, cols. 166f.
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‘Deutlichkeit.’ ” Archiv für Philosophie 9: 37–66.
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Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt [1751]. Hildesheim.
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Abhandlung über Philosophie im allgemeinen. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt.
Wundt, Max 1992: Die deutsche Schulphilosophie im Zeitalter der Aufklärung. Tübingen
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Zammito, John H. 2002: Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology. Chicago.
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Eckardt et al. Cologne, 46–61.
 3
The Metaphysical and
Epistemological Foundations
of Herder’s Philosophical
Anthropology
Nigel DeSouza

Herder’s thought as a whole is best seen through the lens of the term “anthro-
pology”: all of his writings on literature, the arts, history, language, religion,
and education have at their center the aim of understanding human beings.
The original, and enduring, motivation for this anthropology, beyond his own
profound curiosity and desire to understand, is Herder’s closely related practical
vocation of being a shaper of peoples, an agent of Bildung, his passion for which is
so vividly expressed in his Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769 (Diary of my voyage
in the year 1769).1 While all this is perhaps evident to people in the English-
speaking world who are familiar with Herder’s celebrated philosophical ideas
on culture and history,2 what is perhaps less well known is that Herder early on
sought to work out the metaphysical and epistemological underpinnings of these
ideas. It is these underpinnings that form the basis of the philosophical anthro-
pology that will orient Herder’s multifaceted thought for his whole life.3
My objective in this paper is well defined: I wish to present a synthetic account
of the young Herder’s metaphysics and epistemology. This will involve drawing
on a range of short pieces, sketches, and commentaries that Herder wrote in the

1 2
See FHA 9/2, 9–126. See, e.g., most recently, Sikka 2011, Spencer 2013.
3
Marion Heinz’s contribution in the present volume shows how Herder came to the under-
standing of the relationship between metaphysics and anthropology that forms the background of
the ideas explored in this chapter. See Zammito 2002 and Pross 1987 for detailed studies of Herder’s
role in the rise of anthropology and in the anthropology of the Aufklärung.
 NIGEL DESOUZA 

1760s, and presenting the views contained therein as a whole, rather than
individually and chronologically,4 with the intention of bringing into relief the
strikingly systematic and coherent nature of the young Herder’s metaphysics and
epistemology. The ultimate objective, of course, is to give the reader a greater
sense of the philosophical depth of Herder’s more familiar philosophical ideas on
culture and history. In the first section, we will look at God’s relationship to the
world he creates. In the second, we turn to the analogous relationship, based on
interaction, between the soul and the body it builds for itself. And in the third, we
bring this all together in order to understand how the embodied soul, through
engagement with the world, obtains knowledge, and acquires its identity as a
historical-cultural being.

1 God and World

As with Leibniz, Wolff, and other philosophers in the German Aufklärung, God
plays an important role in Herder’s metaphysics. The world has its origin in the
divine understanding: “the whole world [is] a thought in God’s being,” as Herder
writes in a short piece from 1766 or 1768, entitled Plato sagte, daß unser Lernen
bloß Erinnerung sei (Plato said that all our learning is merely recollection).5 Unlike
Leibniz and Wolff, however, Herder does not maintain that God chooses to
create the best from among many possible worlds; rather, in line with Spinoza’s
necessitarianism, Herder believes that there is only one divine thought, which
contains all that is possible within it, as he outlines in another short piece,
Grundsätze der Philosophie (Principles of Philosophy), from 1769. But differently
from Spinoza, who believed that “everything exists in God” (HWP 2, 52), Herder
maintains that, in order to fully realize himself, God must create the world: God
requires the external manifestation of his thought in the form of the physical
universe and the finite human beings that inhabit it and who share in the divine
thought in a limited fashion and through whose own thought, in the broadest
sense of the word, in part acquired via the senses, the world returns to God via a
form of spiritualized materialism.6 Spinoza thus erred in not seeing that “besides
the perfect being, which itself is a thought, others are necessary, which thus think
of others, just as they think of themselves” and that “no God is therefore possible

4
In this chapter, I am in part drawing on several articles where the objective was just that kind of
more focussed analysis: DeSouza 2012b, 2014, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c, and forthcoming.
5
The manuscript of Plato sagte was edited and published for the first time by Marion Heinz in
Heinz 1994, 175–82, here 175; see Heinz 1994, 43 for the dating of this manuscript. All translations
in this chapter are my own, unless otherwise indicated.
6
See Heinz 1994, xxv–xxvi; Kondylis 2002, 625ff.
 FOUNDATIONS OF HERDER ’ S PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

without world: just as no world without God” (HWP 2, 52–3).7 And correcting
Leibniz, Herder asserts, “the one thought of God cannot but contain all possible
things which are at the same time actual ” (HWP 2, 53).
In conceiving of this necessary divine creation as the creation of the physical
universe and of finite human beings, Herder is reflecting the idea, common since
Descartes, of there being two kinds of created substance: material/bodily and
immaterial/spiritual. However, Herder does not subscribe to this ontology of
substance, replacing it instead with an ontology of forces (Kräfte).8 Bodies and
souls are known by their respective phenomena of movement and resistance, and
thought, whose common underlying cause Herder posits to be not a substance
but a force: “all I know is that once the force of thinking is posited in my soul,
thus do I think forth, just like a pushed body always goes forward in a straight
line” (HWP 2, 52). But these forces of thought and of movement cannot
themselves be further explained. “As little as I can there explain the force of
movement: as little here the force of thought: as little impact there: as little the
creation of thoughts here. Both are nevertheless phenomena” (HWP 2, 52).9
Herder is echoing here a lesson he learned from Kant in his lectures on meta-
physics in the early 1760s and in his pre-critical writings according to which
philosophy must begin from given concepts and phenomena and restrict itself to
analyzing them into their constituent parts/representations and their relations,
but not try to posit explanations that transcend experience.10 However, as we
shall see, Herder develops his ontology of forces in a way that fails to respect this
Kantian limit, but for the purpose not only of securing a certain theological
metaphysics, but also in order to do justice to the phenomenology of human
experience in a way that is impossible within Kant’s strictures.
The divine creation of the universe thus involves the creation of two kinds of
forces: the external forces of attraction and repulsion and the internal force of
thought. Herder does not attempt to provide any kind of explanation of the
nature of matter as res extensa (Descartes) or as a well-founded phenomenon
reducible to the derivative active and passive forces of an underlying aggregate of

7
Herder’s early criticism of Spinoza here stands in contrast to his later interpretation, most
notably in Gott: einige Gespräche.
8
Cf. Heinz 1994, xiii, 102.
9
Herder elaborates on this more fully in the 1778 version of Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der
menschlichen Seele. With reference to his use of the term “force” he writes: “I do not say that I hereby
explain anything; I have not yet known any philosophy that explained what force is . . . What
philosophy does is to observe, order together, elucidate after it always already presupposes force,
irritation, efficacy” (FHA 4, 337–8; Forster 2002, 194).
10
See Kant, Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der
Moral, AA 2, 276; Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik, AA 2, 370.
 NIGEL DESOUZA 

monads (Leibniz), although he does reference this latter definition in some

places.11 His understanding of matter is mainly based on ideas he took from
Kant according to which matter’s outer properties of resistance or impenetrabil-
ity and movement can be understood in terms of its forces of attraction and
repulsion.12 Not only does God as the originary, infinite force thus create these
forces, but the very spatiotemporal structure of the physical universe itself
also corresponds to the necessary nature of God’s thought qua externalized.
The process, according to Herder, is as follows: “God fills space through his
force . . . he fills time through his force . . . [h]is force thinks all possible things
actual . . . The world is an infinite continuum through space: an infinite succession
through time: for space and time are the consequences of the infinite thought of
God, since he thinks every possible thing next to and after each other” (HWP 2, 53).
And within this spatiotemporal universe—Herder drawing heavily here on
Kant’s cosmological account in his Universal Natural History and Theory of
the Heavens (1755)—“planetary bodies in the universe are formed through the
forces of attraction and repulsion.”13
Now what is important to note in this account of the metaphysical origins of
the universe is a basic feature which permitted Herder to construe the universe
both as divinely created and as unfolding according to its own laws, naturalis-
tically.14 This feature combines ideas from both Shaftesbury and Kant, both of
whom explicitly sought to refute Epicureanism (AA 1, 222; Shaftesbury 1999,
304). From Kant, the subtitle of whose above-named treatise reads “An essay on
the constitution and the mechanical origin of the entire structure of the universe
based on Newtonian principles,” Herder derives an understanding of the
mechanism by which the universe arose. The necessity through which this
mechanism operates does not extend only to the laws of motion that result
from the material forces of attraction and repulsion; rather, it extends to the
origin of the very laws themselves. Whereas Leibniz saw these laws as the product
of a divine act of will, according to the Principle of the Best,15 Kant construed
them in The Only Possible Proof-Ground of the Existence of God (1763) as
“non-morally dependent” on God, i.e., not as chosen by God but as necessarily
contained in the very concept of matter (but still demonstrative of divine

11
See e.g. FHA 4, 338.
12
Kant presents this view of matter in Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels
(1755) and Monadologia physica (1756).
13
HWP 2, 53; see e.g. AA 1, 225f.
14
Johannes Schmidt discusses the relationship between the religious/theological and naturalistic
aspects of Herder’s anthropology in his chapter in the present volume.
15
Leibniz, Discours de métaphysique, §19, Leibniz 1965, vol. IV, 444f.; Principes de la nature et de
la grace, §11; Leibniz 1965, vol. VI, 603.
 FOUNDATIONS OF HERDER ’ S PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

providence, who chose to create matter, given the order to which the laws of
motion give rise) (AA 2, 100, 99). Thus, once the decision to create matter is
taken, Kant claims, “the laws of the motion of matter are absolutely necessary”
(AA 2, 100). Herder’s only modification to this story is to add necessity to the
divine act of creation itself. From Shaftesbury, Herder derives an idea that was
foundational for his whole metaphysics (as we shall see in the next section also)
and which in fact underlies this very assertion as to the necessary nature of
creation.16 That necessity derives from a fundamental analogical conclusion that
Shaftesbury makes in The Moralists from our own experience of our body as
being governed by our mind to the existence of a mind that governs the body of
the world as a whole and is responsible for its undeniable order (Shaftesbury
1999, 302–4). On this view, just as no soul is complete without a body, so too is
God incomplete without his own “body,” i.e., the world. Now Herder combines
these ideas he takes from Kant and Shaftesbury to produce his own cosmology,
which is both divine and naturalistic. He writes: “just as planetary bodies in the
universe are formed through the forces of attraction and repulsion . . . so God the
world” (HWP 2, 53).17 Although Herder uses here the analogy of the formation
of a planetary system and refers to God as the “centre of the universe” that
generates “an infinite circle of creation,” he is not thereby making God’s rela-
tionship to the universe that of a physical body to others that orbit it and to which
it has given rise (HWP 2, 52). Rather, God is the Shaftesburian universal mind
who creates the universe, but who physically governs it according to the
Newtonian-Kantian mechanism of the forces of attraction and repulsion and
their resulting laws of motion, which in fact operate independently of God’s
intervention once created.

2 Soul and Body

The divine creation does not only involve the spatiotemporal physical universe.
God also creates finite human beings qua souls, whose fundamental nature
Herder often equates with a “thought-force” (Gedankenkraft or Gedenkkraft)
or power of representation (Vorstellungskraft) as its “central force” (Centralkraft)
in line with Wolffian school philosophy (Schulphilosophie) (Heinz 1994, 175;
HWP 2, 52, 54). Analogously to God, however, these souls realize themselves
through their bodies. There are several related strands to Herder’s theory of the

16
Herder’s high opinion of Shaftesbury is evident from the praise he lavishes on him in letters to
Hamann and Kant. See DA I, 119, 217.
17
See also Herder, Gesetze der Welt: Gesetze der Körper, FHA 9/2, 222; Zum Sinn des Gefühls,
HWP 2, 244, 245f.
 NIGEL DESOUZA 

soul-body relationship, each of which needs to be unpacked. First and foremost,

Herder consistently and resolutely rejects Cartesian dualism, in line with his
rejection of an ontology of substance, as seen above. At the same time, however,
Herder is committed to interaction, partly on the grounds of its phenomeno-
logical self-evidence. On his view, this interaction occurs not between two
distinct substances, but rather between two entities that are ultimately reducible
to the same thing, namely, force. A further strand to this view is Herder’s
interpretation of interaction within the framework of life. Drawing on, but also
very much modifying, Leibniz, Herder construes the soul not only as a thought-
force, but also in Aristotelian fashion as the principle of life.
The human soul’s primordial existence is that of a thought (Gedanke) or power
of thought bound up in itself. “The soul steps into the world: the power of
representation is its essence: but it is itself entirely its thought—the obscure, but
lively concept of its being (Seyn) fills it entirely” (Heinz 1994, 175). Herder is here
rejecting the idea that the soul immediately begins to have representations upon
entry into the world.18 Rather, the soul’s thought initially fills it entirely as an
obscure, but lively feeling (Gefühl) which contains within it all the sensuous and
abstract concepts it will eventually unfold (ibid.). This continuity between feeling,
sensation, and cognition is central to Herder’s thought and forms the subject of
(three versions of) his treatise Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen
Seele (On the cognition and sensation of the human soul), from the 1770s. In order
for this obscure feeling to unfold itself, and for sensation and cognition to become
possible, a body is required. Just as God creates himself a world from what Herder
calls his “thought,” “thought of being,” or “the concept of himself,” so too does
the human soul prepare or construct itself a body (Heinz 1994, 175; HWP 2, 53;
HWP 2, 245). Although originally inspired by Shaftesbury, Herder greatly
extends this analogy between God and world, and soul and body, both meta-
physically and epistemologically. We saw in the previous section how God
realizes himself through the external manifestation of his thought or concept of
being in a physical world characterized by relations of space, time, and force.
Now the human soul, as divinely created thought-force, similarly realizes itself
through the external manifestation of its own thought or concept of being in its
own physical world, namely, its body. There is thus a fundamental double
structural similarity or correspondence between this body and the external
world. First, just as the physical world is governed by the forces of attraction
and repulsion, so too, qua physical entity, is the human body. The world and the

18
He is disagreeing here with Mendelssohn, Abhandlung über die Evidenz in Metaphysischen
Wissenschaften, Mendelssohn 2008, 30.
 FOUNDATIONS OF HERDER ’ S PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

body represent the external limits or spheres of activity of God and the soul,
respectively, and are thus dependent on the latter—indeed, as we shall see in the
next section, the forces of attraction and repulsion are ultimately to be seen as
dependent on, as modifications of, the force of thought (Gedankenkraft or
Vorstellungskraft). Second, just as the physical world is characterized by relations
of space, time, and force, so too is the body, but, what is more, its very senses
correspond to these relations. The sense of sight corresponds to the next-to-each-
other (Nebeneinander) of space, the sense of hearing to the after-each-other
(Nacheinander) of time, and the sense of touch to the in-each-other (Ineinander)
of force (HWP 2, 53; Heinz 1994, 177). Both God and the human soul thus share
the thought of being or Seyn, with the key difference that for God the whole world is
“the one distinct thought of himself ” whereas for human beings, who must
“construct obscurely,” our only mode of access to our soul’s thought and its
fundamental concepts is via the body and its senses (Heinz 1994, 176).
Herder combines this epistemological account of the soul’s self-realization
through the body (to which we shall return in the next section) with a physio-
logical/biological account that seeks to show how the soul, qua principle of life, is
responsible for the body.19 The premise of Herder’s theory of the soul-body
relationship is a commitment to interaction, but not an interaction conceived of
as occurring between two distinct substances. This is clear from his 1768 review
of Kant’s Dreams of a Spirit Seer, in which Herder explicitly rejects Kant’s albeit
hypothetical musings on the existence of two worlds operating according to two
sets of causal laws. According to Kant’s hypothesis, there is a material world, full
of dead matter possessing solidity, extension, and shape and operating according
to laws of contact and impact, and there is an immaterial world, inhabited by
immaterial beings or spirits that are spontaneously active principles, which
operate according to what Kant calls pneumatic laws (AA 2, 329). Kant makes
it clear in subsequent chapters of his work that his “own pretentious theory of the
community of spirits” is meant to be taken tongue in cheek (AA 2, 350). For Kant
had, of course, been attempting in part to ridicule Emanuel Swedenborg and his
reports of his visions and supposed paranormal powers as detailed in Arcana
cœlestia, and to show just how far one could go with hypotheses, in this case
about spirits (Geister), that were not grounded in experience. While we have
internal experience of our own thinking and willing, which we can attribute to an
immaterial substance, Kant claimed that, as well as external experience of

19
Herder would eventually elaborate on the physiological dimension of his theory of how the
soul builds itself a body, in part by exploiting Albrecht von Haller’s concept of irritability. Stefanie
Buchenau’s chapter in the present volume takes up these themes.
 NIGEL DESOUZA 

impenetrable bodies moving and interacting in space that we attribute to a

material substance (AA 2, 320ff.), we have experience only of the phenomenon
of our thinking and willing moving our body (AA 2, 370). That is, because our
only thinkable concept of external activity in space is that of impenetrable and
extended bodies interacting according to laws of impact, the idea of a spirit
moving a body would have to entail the hypothesis that it occupies space, as
demonstrated by its activity in moving a body, but without filling it through
extension (AA 2, 320ff.).20 The soul would thus be hypothesized to possess
impenetrability, but not extension—this, Kant believes, while not impossible, is
unthinkable for me (AA 2, 323). Kant thus ultimately concludes that even though
we experience the phenomenon of our thinking and willing moving our body,
we “can recognize the phenomenon but not understand it,” and thus all judge-
ments that try to explain how this occurs can only ever be “fictions” (AA 2, 371).
As mentioned above, Herder rejects Kant’s two-world hypothesis, but it is not
clear whether his having taken it seriously at all was ingenuous or disingenuous.
The reason for this is that although Kant had not meant for his musings to be
taken entirely seriously, it is clear that he did think that the problem is one of how
the soul as an immaterial substance can be understood to relate to material
substances like the body. It is this very starting point that Herder resolutely
rejects. In the review, Herder characterizes the definition of a spirit as a being
endowed with reason, from which Kant begins, as “arbitrary” and “indetermin-
ate” and construes Kant’s hypothesized spirit-world as a “construction of a
creative philosophical imagination” (AA 2, 319; SWS 1, 127, 129). As Herder
makes clear a few years later, he associates this modern concept of spirit with
Descartes, who “made thinking into his whole doubting I” and, after whom, one
more unnatural system after the other followed, each of which had the objective
of explaining the soul-body relationship for the sole reason that the interaction
between two such fully heterogeneous, immaterial, and material substances was
inconceivable (HWP 2, 583f.).
But if Herder rejects the very idea of the soul as a spirit or distinct, immaterial
substance, and yet believes in soul-body interaction, what is his conception of the
soul-body relationship? Interestingly, the seeds of that conception are to be found
in a possibility that Kant entertains in the very same treatise that Herder
otherwise subjects only to criticism. In the course of his analysis of the concept
of a spirit, Kant turns to the question of the human soul. Whereas it is hard, but

20
See Heinz 2001, 114f., esp. n. 33, for discussion. Heinz 2001 offers a penetrating analysis of
Herder’s review of Kant’s Träume. The interpretation proffered here and in DeSouza 2016a, 2016b is
somewhat different.
 FOUNDATIONS OF HERDER ’ S PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

not unintelligible, he says, to imagine a spirit-substance occupying a space, when it

comes to the soul, its location is easier to specify: “Where I feel, it is there that I am”
(AA 2, 324). Kant gives several examples of how one can feel oneself in different
parts of one’s body and concludes that the soul permeates the body (AA 2, 325). This
experience and that of the natural world, especially of animals, leads Kant to claim
that he is very inclined to assert the existence of immaterial natures, such as his soul,
which are principles of life. But Kant is also keenly aware of the problem, mentioned
above, that this poses with respect to conceiving the interaction between immaterial
and material substances. At this juncture, however, he proposes another hypothesis,
and this time it is one Herder will approve of. Kant writes:

It seems that a spirit-being is present in the matter, with which it is combined, in the most
intimate fashion; and it seems not to act on those forces which inhere in the elements and
in virtue of which they are related to each other; it seems rather to operate on the inner
principles of their state. For every substance, including even a simple element of matter,
must after all have some kind of inner activity as the ground of its producing an external
effect, and that in spite of the fact that I cannot specify in what that inner activity consists.
(AA 2, 328)

In a footnote, Kant provides a justification for this theory by referencing Leibniz

and his claim that the inner ground of all external relations and inner changes of
a substance is its power of representation (Vorstellungskraft). In his review of
Dreams, Herder repeats this Kantian hypothesis that “the soul can be most
inwardly present to the body that it can have an effect on [würkt] the inner
principle of its matter: and this inner state we can think of in nothing but
representations,” and then immediately adds: “these are the author’s new and
very attractive hypotheses” (SWS 1, 128). Herder had, in fact, been introduced to
these hypotheses in Kant’s lectures on metaphysics, to which his lecture notes
attest.21 In his approval here, Herder is also drawing a distinction between the
concepts of spirit and soul, as treated by Kant. With respect to the hypothesis of a
spirit-world, he writes in his review: “Just what is it based on? that spirits [Geister]
perhaps immediately have a community [with one another]; but might an
organic community not be enough, if there are no more than souls [Seelen],
and who knows about others?” (SWS 1, 129). Herder rejects the concept of the
soul as an independent substance or spirit in favour of an “organic” concept of
the soul, that is, of souls as always joined to bodies.
In this, Herder is in agreement with a philosopher whose conception of the
soul had a deep impact on him: Leibniz. Leibniz maintained that no soul existed

21
See Kant, Metaphysik Herder, AA 28.1, 146.
 NIGEL DESOUZA 

without a body and that the soul was the principle of organization and movement
of the body. Herder very much accepted this Aristotelian conception of the soul
but rejected Leibniz’s concomitant belief that the soul and the body, far from
interacting, existed in a pre-established harmony whereby their relations were
only ideal and expressive. This is clear both from Herder’s scrupulous omissions of
all those passages where Leibniz mentions pre-established harmony in his detailed
excerpts from Leibniz’s New Essays on the Human Understanding and, more
explicitly, in his critical reflections on Leibniz’s Principles of Nature and Grace in
a short piece from 1769 entitled Über Leibnitzens Grundsätze von der Natur und
Gnade (On Leibniz’s Principles of Nature and Grace) (HWP 2, 35, 36, 37, 39, 41,
49–51).22 In the latter, Herder begins by immediately throwing into question
Leibniz’s conception of substances or monads as beings capable of action, but
which are also windowless, or incommunicable, unities. Drawing in part again on
ideas from Kant’s metaphysics lectures, in this case the Principle of Co-existence,
Herder argues that even if substances or monads are unities, in virtue of their very
existence they have a relationship to each other such that they can mutually
influence each other (HWP 2, 49). Herder probably has in mind here Kant’s
conception of matter and the relations that emerge from the forces of attraction
and repulsion that the “physical monads” constituting matter possess.23 Leibniz’s
dynamics and his strenuous efforts to explain the purely phenomenal interaction
of bodies and the laws of motion by appeal to the underlying active and passive
derivative forces of metaphysical monads no longer resonated in a post-
Newtonian eighteenth-century philosophical world. However, Herder’s primary
concern was not the interaction between physical bodies, but rather that between
soul and body, and the rest of his reflections on Leibniz’s Principles turns to several
aspects of this issue. In response to Leibniz’s explanation that monads can only be
distinguished from each other in virtue of their perceptions that are representa-
tions of the external, Herder asks how it is possible that these external represen-
tations should derive from an inner force of the soul entirely independently of an
external world and asserts that if this were the case, “[t]hus would thought be
nothing real” (HWP 2, 49). Leibniz’s theory that substances communicate via
expressive relations was obviously felt by Herder to be inadequate. In the third
paragraph of Principles, Leibniz turns to living organisms, which consist of a
dominant soul-monad that is the principle of unity of the mass of an infinity of
monads surrounding it that make up its organic body, through whose properties
the soul represents the outside world and which is a “kind of automaton or natural

22
See DeSouza 2012b for an analysis of Über Leibnitzens Grundsätze von der Natur und Gnade.
23
See Kant, Monadologia physica, AA 1, 477–87.
 FOUNDATIONS OF HERDER ’ S PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

machine” (i.e., the body mechanically acts according to efficient causes as

determined by the predetermined laws of the entelechies governing the monads
of which the body is an aggregate) (Leibniz 1965, VI, 599). The soul’s represen-
tations, however, are not caused by the body in any way; rather, the appetitions
internal to the soul are the principle of change of its representations. Herder rejects
this view in the fourth reflection and argues as follows: “A monad is supposed to
be able to change its representations, and must change them according to its basic
force. Now if these representations are, however, nothing but external connections,
must not the ground of the perceptibility of the external and the ground of the ever
changeable perceptibility also lie in the basic force?” (HWP 2, 50). Paradoxically,
Herder seems here to be agreeing with Leibniz that the cause of the soul-monad’s
representations must be internal. In fact, however, his position is radically differ-
ent. He continues: “There must therefore also be an organic body, which becomes
its [i.e., the basic force’s] measure, and is actually no automaton in itself ” (ibid.).
Herder is arguing here that the soul is indeed the ground both of its own
perceptions and of their changes, but only insofar as it is the principle behind
the body. While Herder thus agrees with Leibniz that no soul is without a body, he
wants to insist that the interaction between the two that we phenomenologically
feel must point to more than a relationship of mere pre-established harmony
whereby the soul acts according to its own internal principle of appetition and the
body, qua automaton, to its own. Herder questions the sense of Leibniz’s position
according to which the soul and the body do not actually exist for the sake of each
other, or interact, but only appear to, for the sake of a third, i.e., God, for whom it
would only be “a game” (ibid.).
This of course means that Herder must have his own, more satisfying, account
of soul-body interaction. Indeed he does and its basis takes us back to that
hypothesis that he found so attractive in Kant’s Dreams whereby the soul is
able to act on the inner principle of matter. Central to this hypothesis is Kant’s
concept of the simple physical monad, which fills space and displays impenetra-
bility through the activity of its repulsive force (AA 1, 480–1). Now what Kant
seems to be envisioning here is that in the case of both souls or soul-monads and
physical monads, each has an inner state that consists of both representations of
varying degrees of obscurity/clarity and inner activity—analogous to both the
series of perceptions and the appetition that governs their change that Leibniz
attributes to the monad—and that the soul-monad’s inner principle should be
able to affect the inner principle of physical monads, whose external activity is
that defined by their attractive and repulsive forces, namely, impenetrability,
motion, etc. The problems with this account notwithstanding (for Leibniz it
fails to heed the autarky of monads and confuses the real metaphysical level of
 NIGEL DESOUZA 

the monad and its representations and the purely phenomenal level of bodies and
their interaction), it evidently greatly appealed to Herder as a potential explan-
ation of soul-body interaction. This explanation allowed for the kind of genuine,
intimate interaction that Herder was after. But for it to be fully satisfactory for
Herder, he first needed to make it his own. We saw above that Herder’s ontology
is grounded on a conception of force as thought-force or power of representation,
be it divine or human. We also saw that there is a fundamental structural
similarity between the world as the external manifestation of God’s divine
thought and the human body as the external manifestation of the human soul’s
one thought: both are physical and exist in relations of space, time, and force. But
since the physical world, consisting of matter that is in turn constituted by forces
of attraction and repulsion, ultimately derives from God’s thought or thought-
force, there is an underlying ontological identity between that thought-force and
the forces of attraction and repulsion. Herder unites the forces of representation/
thought and of attraction and repulsion into one Seiende—infinite or finite, that
is, God and world, or soul and body.24 The forces of attraction and repulsion can
thus be seen as modifications of the thought-force. And on this basis, a genuine
interaction between soul and body is possible because they fundamentally consist
of the same thing, force. On Herder’s account, the soul is able to harness the
forces of attraction and repulsion in matter and build itself a body through whose
senses it is able to engage and interact with the external world (HWP 2, 53; Heinz
1994, 176). The naturalness and self-evidence of this theory to Herder, as well as
its Kantian origin, is given vivid expression by Herder a few years later:

I think the system of preestablished harmony ought to have been alien to the great
inventor of the monad-poem, for, it seems to me, the two do not hold well together. No
one said it better than Leibniz that body as such is only an appearance of substance, as the
milky way is of stars, and the cloud of droplets. Indeed, Leibniz tried to explain even
motion as an appearance of an inner condition which we do not know but which could be
representation because no other inner condition is familiar to us. What? And the soul as
such could not have effect on this inner condition of the forces and substances of its
body?—this soul which after all shares their nature, and is itself innermost, most effective
force. So the soul would govern only in the domain of its sisters, of beings entirely similar
to itself; and it could not govern there? (FHA 4, 338; Forster 2002, 195)

3 Soul, Body, World, and Knowledge

Now this very process by which the soul as a thought-force (Gedenkkraft) or
power of representation (Vorstellungskraft) builds itself a body by harnessing the

24
Cf. Heinz 1994, 102.
 FOUNDATIONS OF HERDER ’ S PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

forces of attraction and repulsion in matter does not stand alone as a mere
metaphysical hypothesis. In the 1769 sketch Zum Sinn des Gefühls (On the
sense of touch), Herder buttresses it with a further, epistemological hypothesis,
which claims that this process was in fact, in principle, perceivable by each of us
through the sense of touch (HWP 2, 244). For the sense of touch is the sense
through which we may primordially perceive the thought-force that forms the
body; it is the sense that bridges the thought-force and the forces of attraction and
repulsion. As Herder writes, “I believe that it is possible for a blind person to
reduce the entire body in its structure to the forces of the soul. I believe that a
person born blind can, as it were, remember how the soul prepared itself its body,
how from each force each sense was formed” (HWP 2, 244). It is thus here that
the ontological identity of the two types of forces can be grasped most clearly, for
it is here that we see how Herder is construing the forces of attraction and
repulsion as modifications of the thought-force. The soul as a thought-force
feels its physical presence in the universe. The blind person could, as it were,
explain his very self by feeling “how his [soul’s] thought reveals itself in the
universe, i.e., how he became a body” (HWP 2, 244). In contrast, we sighted
human beings have become “too thrown outside ourselves” to be able to recollect
this process in the way that Herder hypothesizes is possible for a blind person
whose concepts are “strong, tangible, sensuous” (HWP 2, 243). In this same
discussion, Herder draws an important lesson for philosophy, which standardly
only concerns itself with appearances that we see (Herder associates these
“appearances” [Erscheinungen] with nominal definitions). True philosophy
should be interested, in particular, in the origin of one of these appearances:
“We see and study only appearances; how we have become appearances, we do
not study” (HWP 2, 244; emphasis added). However, Herder muses, this is
precisely what a blind person who became a metaphysician would do, for he
would return to everything in its origin and “remember everything Platonistically
[Platonisch]” (HWP 2, 244).
This invocation of Plato, repeated in another roughly contemporaneous
piece we encountered above, Plato sagte, daß unser Lernen bloß Erinnerung sei,
captures the sense in which the soul’s thought is originally an “obscure, pregnant
concept” that thus contains the seeds of its future unfolding.25 But in opposition
to Plato, and echoing Aristotle instead, Herder maintains that it is only through
the body that this concept can unfold. Although Herder even claims at one point
that “all . . . future, even sensuous, and still more abstract concepts lie in it,” that

25
Heinz 1994, 176. Hans Adler has analyzed the importance of the concept of “Prägnanz” for
Herder in Adler 1990.
 NIGEL DESOUZA 

is, in the soul’s thought, our knowledge of these concepts necessarily proceeds
through our embodiment (Heinz 1994, 175). There is thus not only a tight
connection between the soul and the body metaphysically insofar as the soul
is the principle of life, there is also an equally tight connection between the soul
and the body epistemologically insofar as human knowledge is constitutively
dependent on the body and in a manner that is more profound than mere
empiricism might entail. This is most evident in the ontogenetic account Herder
provides of our most fundamental concepts and of the differentiation of the
senses that this in part depends on. We have seen above how the soul qua
thought-force is initially entirely its thought existing as an obscure but lively
feeling. This represents, as it were, the very bottom rung on the ladder of
knowledge, modelled on but modifying Leibniz, from obscure, to confused, to
clear and distinct ideas. Even at this most basic level of awareness, where the soul
only obscurely feels its thought, there exist the roots of our most basic concept,
namely, the concept of being (Sein). Herder explores this concept in his very
first philosophical treatise, the Versuch über das Sein (Essay on Being) (1763).
The central idea is that the concept of being is not susceptible to any kind of
abstract, rational, philosophical proof, for our fundamental mode of access to
this concept, and our conviction with respect to it, is sensuous in origin. The
concept of being is the first, most sensuous (allersinnlichste), most unanalyzable
(unzergliederlichste), but also most certain concept whose certainty is the
foundation of all other concepts (FHA 1, 20, 19). Our soul, like God, thus has
its own concept of being, which is also a concept of its own being. The key
difference is in the mode of access to this concept: whereas for God the entire
world is the one distinct thought of himself, our concept of being is initially
obscurely felt—our eventual, abstract, and philosophical understanding of this
concept has its origins here.
The unfolding of the concept of being in our soul continues with the acquisi-
tion of a set of concepts that are the next most basic: space, time, and force. This
of course lines up with the corresponding structures of the world (as discussed
above) as the external, physical manifestation of God’s divine thought and of the
human body as the external, physical realization of the soul’s thought—both of
which exist in relations of space, time, and force. We also saw above how these
relations correspond to the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. Herder’s onto-
genetic account seeks to show how our very concepts of space, time, and force
originate in this differentiation of the senses that occurs in the body as it is
constructed by the soul in accordance with the latter’s unfolding of its concept
of being. As Herder puts it, if one thinks of the thought of the soul as a ray of
light, each sense is like a telescope (Fernglas) that captures it and breaks it up
 FOUNDATIONS OF HERDER ’ S PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

(Heinz 1994, 175). The child, Herder says, thus first learns to distinguish herself
from the world and to distinguish her own thought of being through her sensing
of this world (Heinz 1994, 177). In a manner reminiscent of Condillac’s statue,
Herder writes: “With each sensation it [the child] emerges from sleep: strings
[Saite] of [its] being are touched . . . every sensation reminds it [i.e., the soul] of a
modification of its thought, thus does it collect concepts” (Heinz 1994, 177). As
with the concept of being, the child’s primordial awareness of the concepts
of space, time, and force will be pre-reflective, embodied, and experiential.
Judgements, however, gradually emerge from sensations: “With repeated identi-
cal sensations [Empfindungen] the first judgement is formed, that it is the same
sensation. The judgement is obscure and must be so; for it has to last a lifetime
and remain as a perpetual basis in the soul” (FHA 4, 274).26 This is the way our
basic concepts are acquired.
If one considers how many secret connections and separations, judgements and conclu-
sions a developing human being must make, in order to support in himself just the first
ideas of body, of figure, shape, magnitude, distance: one must be accordingly amazed.
In this the human soul has effected and developed, has missed and found, more than
the philosopher in his whole life of abstractions. (FHA 4, 275)

Through this genetic account, Herder is trying to give a naturalistic explanation

for the origin and acquisition of our first concepts. The soul may contain the
seeds of these concepts in its obscure, pregnant concept of being, but it can only
come to awareness of them through the body, which itself is an external realiza-
tion of the most basic set of them (space, time, and force).
This genetic epistemological theory has important ramifications for how we
should conceive of philosophy, Herder believed. Herder accepts the standard
starting point, however: he begins from a particular understanding of the soul
and its capacities that takes its cue from the school philosophy he was taught and
studied. The soul, on this view, has both an upper faculty of knowledge, possessing
intellect and reason and the capacity for distinct perception, and a lower faculty
of knowledge, possessing sensation and imagination and the capacity for sense
perception. But as we have seen, Herder believes a direct line can be traced
between our most abstract concepts of being, space, time, and force (as possessed
by the upper cognitive faculty) and their origin in our first, pre-reflective,
embodied, and experiential knowledge of them (as possessed by the lower
cognitive faculty). For Herder, genuine philosophy must accept this particular,

26
The text I am citing here is the Viertes Kritisches Wäldchen (1769), and, in particular, the
passages of it that cover the same philosophical ground as Plato sagte.
 NIGEL DESOUZA 

human origin to these concepts and the correspondingly limited nature of human
philosophical knowledge and not arrogate to itself a capacity to understand the
world as God does. “A fully philosophical language,” Herder writes, “would have
to be the language of the Gods, which watched how the things of the world were
formed, which beheld beings in their conditions of becoming and arising, and
thus created the name of each thing genetically and materially” (FHA 1, 655).
We humans, in contrast, can only understand how things sensuously appear to us
and how our concepts emerge from our own soul—in both cases they are given to
us. It is the deep understanding of this Kantian insight, which we encountered in
the first section, that underlies Herder’s radical assertions that metaphysics and
ontology must be reconceived as a study of our own soul and that all philosophy
must become anthropology (Heinz 1994, 176; FHA 1, 134).27
Returning to our genetic account of human knowledge, there is an important
sense, however, in which the soul does not contain or account for all the
knowledge, in the broadest sense of this term, that the individual human being
will eventually acquire, and here the body qua spatiotemporal and worldly entity
assumes an even deeper importance. There are two dimensions to the unfolding
of the soul, according to Herder: “Our soul is metaphysically determined from
the inside, but the determinations from the outside give it form” (Heinz 1994,
178). Each soul unfolds its thought of being via the body and its senses, but
sensations do more than simply genetically explain the soul’s acquisition of its
basic concepts. Rather, they shape the very identity of the individual soul. Early
childhood impacts (Anstöße), for example, determine us for our whole lives
(Heinz 1994, 178). To this double-sided process correspond two sciences:
“An external [one], how our senses must be stimulated, our nerves tuned, our
power of determination [Bestimmungskraft] disposed in order to be perfect” and
“[a] science from the inside: to what extent thoughts are required in order to form
this or that sense, in this or that degree, e.g., so much inner striving to represent
the space of the world, or to develop the [soul’s] thought” (Heinz 1994, 178). Both
of these sciences can explain how the individuality of a human soul results, for
while souls and senses are “always the same in sum total”—i.e., ontologically,
every human being shares the same primordial thought of being, power of
representation, and senses—they are or become qualitatively different both
inwardly and outwardly. First, in every human being, all abilities and capacities
should be understood genetically through the unfolding of the embodied, sensu-
ous, human soul, which is unique in every case. But second, it is just as important

27
See DeSouza 2016a and 2016c for an analysis of Herder’s critiques of Wolffian and Baumgar-
tenian Schulphilosophie and of Baumgarten’s Aesthetica.
 FOUNDATIONS OF HERDER ’ S PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

to grasp this unfolding as determined by both the inner characteristics and the
spatiotemporal situation of the soul. That is, the soul individualizes itself through
its outward, corporeally enabled activity in relations of space, time, and force
and it is in turn individualized by the effect of the external world on its senses
(Heinz 1994, 178–9).
This need to also understand the soul in its spatiotemporal situatedness in
order to grasp how it acquires its particular form means understanding how an
individual human being is a product of its historical and cultural circumstances.28
Herder’s genetic approach is no less important here too. We have seen how
Herder tries to provide an organic, ontogenetic account of both the formation of
the body by the soul and of the closely related origin and acquisition of our most
basic concepts. Herder applies this same approach to an understanding of history
and culture. In a word, all of the phenomena of history and culture in and
through which an individual soul in part receives its form or identity are in
turn products of historico-culturally situated human souls. The productivity or
Prägnanz of the lower cognitive faculty or region of the soul thus extends beyond
metaphysics and ontology. As the realm of sensation in a very broad sense,
including feelings, drives, affects, etc., it is here too that history and culture are
rooted and have their origin. One key example is that of morality.29 In opposition
to the idea that we can philosophically work out the norms or values of a
universal morality, Herder believes that these must be seen as particular products
of a specific historical and cultural period. This does not mean that moral
relativism is the necessary outcome, however, because those norms and values
are in turn rooted in moral feelings (moralische Gefühle) that are common to all
human souls and which in fact need to be refined upwards into mores, norms,
values, etc. in order to have any normative power. The moral feelings, however,
remain the originary, motivating anchor (SWS 8, 295–7). Now for Herder, like
morality, historico-cultural products in general have their origin in the lower
region of the soul qua fundus animae with its feelings, drives, affects, etc. and they
in turn can be acquired, learned, integrated by souls with the same capacities for
this very reason. But, as Herder made clear in a philosophically rich epistolary
exchange with Moses Mendelssohn, these “acquisitions” by the soul do not
continue with it on past death. Our soul’s vocation is to realize and develop itself
in this world and all the “learning, education, development” it acquires is “in and

28
See DeSouza 2012a and the contribution by Anik Waldow in this volume for an elaboration of
these ideas.
29
See DeSouza 2014 for a study of Herder’s views on morality and moral philosophy and for his
exchange with Mendelssohn.
 NIGEL DESOUZA 

for this state” (DA 1, 178). After death, the soul returns to its primordial form as a
“naked human soul, in the basic material of its forces and capacities” and builds
itself a new body all over again (DA 1, 179).

4 Conclusion
In arriving at this stage in our reflections, i.e., at the understanding of human
beings as historical and cultural creatures, I believe that we also obtain insight
into the raison d’être for Herder’s metaphysical and epistemological account of
human nature that we have outlined. This is none other than Herder’s passion for
Bildung, with which we began. In the Journal meiner Reise, Herder writes: “The
human soul, in itself and in its appearance on this earth, its sensuous tools and
weights and hopes and pleasures, and characters and duties, and everything that
can make human beings happy here, is my first prospect” (FHA 9/2, 30). By the
soul’s appearance on earth, Herder means the range of cultural products of
human beings throughout history, which in turn give shape and determination
to souls that are initiated into them. But Herder’s study of the soul extends
beyond this. A few pages later, he declares:

If I could be and were permitted to be a philosopher; a book on the human soul, full of
observations and experiences, that should be my book! I would write it as a human being
and for human beings! It should instruct and shape [bilden]! Contain the principles of
psychology, and according to the development of the soul also ontology, cosmology,
theology, physics! It should become a living logic, aesthetics, historical science and theory
of art! From every sense develop a fine art! And from every power [Kraft] of the soul
would emerge a science! (FHA 9/2, 33f.)

Herder is convinced that his wide-ranging practical interests, his desire to be an

agent of Bildung in the widest sense, must be rooted in a profound understanding
of the human soul. And because the wide range of historico-cultural products,
and human beings’ historical and cultural identities, are ultimately rooted in the
lower region of the soul, genuine Bildung must begin there. It must proceed in a
bottom-up, not a top-down fashion; that is, it must seek to understand human
beings as historico-cultural beings through an understanding of the whole
human soul, der ganze Mensch, and not through the upper cognitive faculty
alone in abstract or rationalistic terms.
Now underlying both this particular view of human beings as historico-
cultural beings and this conception of genuine Bildung is a conviction in soul-
body interaction. And it is this conviction, I would contend, that motivates much
of Herder’s metaphysics and epistemology and his particular theory of soul-body
 FOUNDATIONS OF HERDER ’ S PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

interaction. Nowhere is this perhaps clearer than in his recounting of the

deleterious consequences of a theory of the soul in Cartesian terms as a separate,
spiritual substance that he rejects:
The cold, sensationlessly thinking science of the soul has perpetrated its deception as far
as into life and action. What romantic systems of freedom and perfection of the human
soul, which occur where else but in textbooks! The force of thinking, of acting according
to an ideal of perfection, is the essence of the soul; sensations and drives, in accordance
with which it in fact acts, have been considered only as additions, even as disorders in
accordance with which it should not act. Thus there arose a hypocritical figment of the
imagination which the metaphysician calls the human soul, clothed in the gloomy rays of
his abstractions, but which only appears in the presence of his magical lamp.
(SWS 8, 267; Forster 2002, 183)

The soul as mind, as thinking substance alone, leads to a fundamentally false

conception of the human being and its capacities, the representative example
here being that of Wolffian/Mendelssohnian moral philosophy and its principle
of the pursuit of the perfection of the—only contingently embodied—soul.
Herder was keenly aware that a proper understanding of the soul was funda-
mental to any project for Bildung. It comes as no surprise, then, when one realizes
that his metaphysical and epistemological ideas, as we have explored them in this
paper, almost all relate to this question of the soul-body relationship.

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soul-body relationship,” in: Festschrift für Marion Heinz, eds. Dieter Hüning, Gideon
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Leduc, and Mitia Rioux-Beaulne. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 191–205.
 NIGEL DESOUZA 

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 4
Herder
Physiology and Philosophical Anthropology

Stefanie Buchenau

It would be insufficient to view Enlightenment philosophical anthropology as

merely a reformatory movement internal to philosophy.1 A glance at the discip-
linary history of anthropology reveals, on the contrary, that it was a response on
behalf of philosophy to changes affecting philosophy from the outside. More
specifically, it was an attempt on behalf of philosophy to reconquer a territory that
at the dawn of the modern age had been occupied by the very human science that,
historically speaking, had first claimed the title “anthropology,” i.e. medicine.
Besides Herder, the philosophical anthropology of the Enlightenment involved
various philosophers such as Kant and philosopher-physicians such as Ernst
Platner and Markus Herz, who all happened to “stroll along the borders of
both provinces, philosophy and medicine” (AA 10, 422), as Herz put it. To a
certain extent, all of these Enlightenment authors attempted to design their own
“anthropology.”2 Nonetheless, these attempts all possessed several common

1
I would like to thank Nigel DeSouza and Anik Waldow for their precious editorial and stylistic
help with this article, for sharing their own work on these matters with me, and for the fruitful
philosophical discussions. And thanks to Fred Beiser for his comments on a previous draft of this paper,
on Herder’s materialism.
2
See Ernst Platner, Anthropologie für Ärzte und Weltweise, 1772 and Herz’s review of Platner
(1773). Although Herz seems to value Platner’s project very highly, it becomes clear from the review
that “anthropology” was an ambivalent term in the Enlightenment: it designated a discipline at the
crossroads between medicine and philosophy, with changing contours and shifting semantics. Herz
himself adopted a definition of anthropology different from Platner’s. Rather than a “science of man
and those spirits and bodies that bear a relation to man” (Platner, preface), Herz views anthropology
as a form of psychopharmaceutic. As for Kant, in 1773, he explicitly announces to Herz that he is
embracing an “altogether different idea of anthropology” (Kant to Herz, AA 10, 145). The same
seems to apply to Herder. The French also happen to employ the term “anthropology” as a synonym
of “science of man.” Today “anthropology” possesses an even a greater range of different meanings.
Our focus here is on the Begriffsgeschichte—the rise to prominence of the term—on a certain
 STEFANIE BUCHENAU 

characteristics: in particular, they all represented attempts to “recenter” philoso-

phy on the human being3 and offered novel responses to the ancient dictum
“Know Thyself ”, gnothi seauton, inscribed above the Temple of Apollo at
Delphi—an inscription that Karl Philipp Moritz was to take up in the title of
his journal of empirical psychology, or Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde, in
the 1770s.
The change of paradigm from rationalist philosophy to anthropology reveals a
common distrust in Enlightenment scholasticism, or Schulphilosophie, and meta-
physics, now disqualified as “speculative” and “dualist.” At the same time, it also
signals a particular state and progress in science and medicine: all of the new
anthropologies can be characterized by the common attempt to rethink the
interaction between soul and body on a new philosophical and physiological
basis. They all attest to an intensive reception of Albrecht von Haller’s physiology
and of his novel distinction between the irritability of muscle and the sensibility
of nerves.4
This description also applies to the anthropology of Herder, who is one of
the main figures of Enlightenment anthropology. Herder’s anthropology—as
developed in greatest detail in his Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der
Menschheit (Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind)—is a project of
self-cognition that bears the traces of the deep influence left by Haller’s physi-
ology. These are even more manifest in Herder’s earlier treatise Vom Erkennen
und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele (On the Cognition and Sensation of the
Human Soul) from 1774/1775/1778, where he goes so far as to consider Haller’s
physiology to be “the shrine of the soul,” as the very foundation of psychology.
But even at the beginning of his literary career, Herder already seems to be well-
informed about the ongoing debates and the famous polemics between Haller
and Julien Offray de La Mettrie, which had rocked the République des lettres in
the 1750s. He explicitly refers to Haller’s response to La Mettrie in 1765, in a
footnote in Haben wir jetzt noch das Publikum und Vaterland der Alten? (Do we
still have the public and the homeland of the Ancients?) He refers there to the
theological stakes of this medical debate and employs Haller’s defense of religion

“anthropological turn” and disciplinary changes that these semantic changes indicate in comparison
with the rationalist tradition, which precisely did not refer to itself as “anthropology.”
3
“Einziehung der Philosophie auf Anthropologie,” See Herder, Wie die Philosophie zum Besten
des Volkes allgemeiner und nützlicher werden kann, 1765, FHA 1, 132, and the contribution by
Marion Heinz in the present volume.
4
Platner, e.g., began his lifelong dialogue with Haller in 1770, with the Briefe eines Arztes an
seinen Freund über den menschlichen Körper, before publishing, in 1772, the first edition of his
Anthropologie für Ärzte und Weltweise.
 HERDER : PHYSIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

as an example illustrating what he considers to be a “firm experience,” namely,

that “a pure reasonable religion” is the pillar and buttress of the state and the
foundation of our happiness in this life and beyond (FHA 1, 49). While sharing a
number of common features with the anthropologies of his contemporaries,
Herder seems to interpret the injunction “Know Thyself ” in a manner quite
different from his contemporaries. In order to better understand the originality of
Herder’s own anthropological project, I will, in the first part of this article, briefly
sketch anthropology’s disciplinary history between medicine and philosophy and
depict the situation in Germany and Berlin around the time Herder was devel-
oping his anthropology. The reconstruction of the larger context of Herder’s
interpretation may also help to measure Haller’s huge impact on German
philosophy, which, until now, has remained largely unacknowledged.5 In the
second part, I will turn to Herder and his own methodological and philosophical
conclusions, including Herder’s “sagacity adept in the discovery of analogies,”
which are, en passant, what his teacher Kant found most disturbing6 and what his
correspondent and friend Goethe7 found most interesting about Herder.

1 Anthropology, Midway between Medicine and

Philosophy
The disciplinary history of anthropology testifies to the deep affinities and
thematic overlaps between philosophy and medicine (cf. Gaille 2011, Buchenau
et al. 2013). Philosophers and doctors share a common object and a common
vocation insofar as both their disciplines are “humanities” or “human sciences”:
they not only both pursue a common practical and “therapeutic” ambition, which
is to maintain humans in good health and to administer the regimen best suited
to them, but they also share a common theoretical aim to know human beings in
their physical and moral dimensions. This is why the two disciplines, which were
still closely linked during the Hippocratic era, continued a profound dialogue in
the modern age and entered into a competition or a “conflict between the

5
Until quite recently, the history of medical anthropology has principally attracted the attention
of specialists in aesthetics and literature (for a survey of the literature, see Riedel 1994 and Stiening’s
critical review, 2005). A few recent studies (Nowitzki 2003, De Angelis 2010, Gaukroger 2012) at the
crossroads of the history of the sciences and the history of ideas are paying attention to the more
philosophical implications of anthropology.
6
Kant, Review of J. G. Herder’s Ideas for the philosophy of the history of humanity, AA 8,
45, English translation (2007), 124.
7
See the correspondence between Herder and Goethe on comparative anatomy and Goethe’s
discovery of the intermaxillary bone, in particular, Goethe’s letters dated March 27, 1784 and
October 12, 1784.
 STEFANIE BUCHENAU 

faculties,” as Kant would put it toward the end of the eighteenth century (AA 7,
95–116), where each claimed supremacy among the humanities, over both
theoretical principles and institutions and culture (cf. Andrault et al. 2014, ch. 1).
Originally, at the dawn of the modern age, “anthropology” was a name first
applied to certain Renaissance medical works, i.e., anatomical works aimed at
celebrating the human body and recognizing its dignity. In 1501, Magnus Hundt
first published Anthropologium, de hominis dignitate, natura et proprietatibus,
which was to be followed in 1594 by Otto Casmann’s Psychologia anthropologica,
sive animae humanae doctrina, which offered a first definition of the discipline:
“Anthropologia est doctrina humanae naturae” (Casmann 1594, pars prima, 1).
Casmann conceived a work in two volumes, on psychology (or the doctrine of the
soul) and somatics (or anatomy, the study of the human body). The original
anatomical usage of “anthropology” and of related terms such as “anthropog-
raphy” persisted far into the eighteenth century, as testified by the entry “anthro-
pographie” in the French Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and D’Alembert:
“Anthropography, in anatomy is the description of man. This word is composed
of Greek, anthro, man & Graf, I write.”8 This anatomical usage of the terms
“anthropology” and “anthropography” shows that, in this era, medicine began to
claim its role among the sciences of man (De Angelis 2010). Despite the rivalry
between the disciplines, a certain division of labour then still seemed to be
accepted: at the beginning of the eighteenth century, theology still claimed
authority over the soul while medicine was concerned above all with the body,
and philosophy acted as a “handmaiden” (ancilla) of the higher faculties of
theology and medicine and as mediator between them, trying to acquire a leading
status.9 This division—and the supremacy of philosophy and theology—was to
be challenged more deeply by new medical and physiological insights, as dem-
onstrated by the vivid reactions that Haller’s new insights provoked all over
Europe: they tended, at least for a while, to promote medicine to the rank of the
very first human science.
While recognizing his debts to his teacher Boerhaave10 and to a certain
number of predecessors on irritability (Duchesneau 1973), Haller states the
novelty of his distinction in the opening passages of his treatise, Von den
empfindlichen und reizbaren Theilen des menschlichen Körpers (Dissertation on
the Sensible and Irritable Parts of Animals): in his view, it introduced an “entirely

8
“Anthropographie, s.f. en Anatomie, c’est la description de l’homme. Ce mot est composé du
Grec, anthro, homme, & Graf, j’écris,” Diderot and D’Alembert 1751/1758, vol. 1, 497.
9
See Christian Wolff ’s essay, De philosophiae non ancillante, in Horae subsecivae, vol. 1, 1729.
Wolff, Gesammelte Werke, II, 34, 1, 425–78.
10
See Haller’s own narrative in his treatise on sensibility and irritability, Haller 1755.
 HERDER : PHYSIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

new division of the human body” (Haller 1755, preface). His French translator
Tissot went so far as to compare Haller’s effect on physiology to Newton’s effect
on physics.11 It is true that Haller launched some sort of revolution: in the years
following its first presentation, Haller’s treatise was translated from Latin into
most European languages, including Dutch, Swedish, French, and English, and
his experiments were repeated everywhere in Europe. This revolution not only
affected physiology but also philosophy, and it gave rise to new philosophical
traditions all over Europe and on both sides of the Rhine (Steinke 2005). In
both France and Germany, it immediately provoked discussion among those
médecins-philosophes who, like La Mettrie, considered philosophy and the know-
ledge of the human being to presuppose a certain acquaintance with and medical
knowledge of “the labyrinth of man.”12 While the German anthropological
tradition has similar medical origins to the French,13 it nonetheless bears certain
distinct characteristics. In particular, it is clear that the Germans did not employ
anthropology as a weapon against religion as did the French. As Herder’s early
note above on the polemics between Haller and La Mettrie shows, the Germans
seemed rather attached to anthropology’s religious and Protestant origins and to
its bipartite structure as a discipline devoted, respectively, to the body (somatics)
and to the soul (psychology). Instead of simply rejecting the old vocabulary of the
soul like the French, they attempted to refound psychology and save the dogma of
the immaterial and immortal soul and thereby re-found the supremacy of
theology and philosophy among the anthropological disciplines on a new basis.
The proliferation of treatises on psychology and theology in the second half of the
eighteenth century attest to these deep differences and to Germany’s hostility
and/or anxiety toward the French libertins.
In order to better understand the philosophical issues at stake in the polemics,
let us briefly return to the year 1752, when Haller first presented his “new division
of the human body” and his distinction between irritability and sensibility to his
colleagues from the Academic Society of Göttingen. Haller defines as irritable the

11
Tissot, “Discours préliminaire du traducteur,” in Haller (1756): “Nous devons la Physique à
l’Angleterre, on devra la Physiologie à la Suisse & le Mémoire sur l’Irritabilité en sera la base
immuable.”
12
See La Mettrie, “Physicians have explored and thrown light on the labyrinth of man. They
alone have revealed the springs hidden under coverings that hide so many marvels from our sight”
(La Mettrie, 1748, 2).
13
According to Cabanis, who comments on the term in a footnote of the 1805 edition of
the Rapports du physique et du moral, German “anthropology” is even just an equivalent to what
he himself then introduces as the science of man: “la science de l’homme.” Cabanis 1805, 7: “C’est
celle que les Allemands appellent l’Anthropologie.” On the French disciplinary landscape,
see Blanckaert 1989, Moravia 1970, and Gaille 2014.
 STEFANIE BUCHENAU 

part of the body that contracts through motion, while a part is sensible if it
produces signs of pain or pleasure in the animal. Against the doctrines of his
former teacher, Boerhaave, and even against his own prior conviction, Haller
states that these two attributes can be closely associated with, and localized in,
specific organs: while irritability is a property of muscle (of what he calls the
muscular fiber and muscular organs such as the heart), sensibility is a quality of
the nerve (the nervous fiber and organs), and elasticity is the quality of the fiber
that reacts to pressure. Haller establishes this division on an experimental basis
by performing a great number of animal experiments and vivisections in
his laboratory in the newly founded Göttingen University, conjointly with his
colleagues and students such as Johann Georg Zimmermann. By interrupting the
communication between a muscle and a nerve in smaller animals such as dogs,
the muscle remains responsive to stimuli, its irritation continuing to provoke its
contraction. Something similar happens in parts that have been cut out and
separated from the body and even for a while post mortem, as Haller and his
colleagues witnessed, for example, in the case of decapitated frogs. These grue-
some experiments showed that sensation is limited to the nervous organs and
revealed the insensibility of parts such as the tendon.
Although Haller was aware of the philosophical stakes of his discoveries, he
himself seemed reluctant to engage in philosophical debates. He is, of course,
known as one of the last polymaths, as a scientist but also as a writer whose
writings and reviews cover a wide range of disciplinary fields, extending from
anatomy, physiology, and botany, to literature, theology, and philosophy (Steinke
et al. 2008). His poetry, which earned him the title of Switzerland’s national poet,
often touches upon deeply metaphysical topics. His highly interesting literary
diary and the three-volume Sammlung kleinerer Schriften contain a representa-
tive selection of his writings and include a certain number of major book reviews
on philosophy and theology. The Briefe über die wichtigsten Wahrheiten der
Offenbarung (Letters on the most important truths of revelation) present his
theological views in great detail.14 Despite his literary interests, Haller exhibited
a complicated relationship to philosophy. Rather than speculating about those
ultimate causes and origins of the irritability and sensibility that he considered to
be deeply hidden in the fabrica of the body, he preferred to discuss with scalpel in
hand. As a matter of fact, Haller, who like his teacher Boerhaave was a strict
Calvinist, adopted a very pessimistic view of the human capacity to attain true
knowledge. In Haller’s view, both the true nature of things and divine ends are

14
For online access to Haller’s major writings, see http://www.haller.unibe.ch/e/index.php.
 HERDER : PHYSIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

beyond the cognitive reach of human beings, and Haller calls upon his contem-
poraries to refrain from vain speculation about ends that necessarily escape their
view and to humbly accept their own imperfection and finitude. In his view, the
human being, whose fall has spoiled and obscured human faculties, is separated
from God by an infinite distance and an unbridgeable gap. These religious views
motivated Haller’s rejection of contemporary metaphysics and philosophy and
they underlie his views on science and poetry. As a matter of fact, Haller
considered his scientific activity as a solely descriptive and religious exercise
(cf. Duchesneau 1973, Monti 1990). Science is simply a particular form of
physico-theology, aimed at describing the envelope of things and at glorifying
the impenetrable aims of divine creation: just like poetry, it helps to translate
creation’s infinity and beauty into words, and it is meant to foster a vivid,
practically motivating form of conviction and to reinforce faith.
The majority of Haller’s readers, however, did not share his radical agnosticism.
From the 1750s onwards, the Enlightenment began to oppose a more positive
conception of natural philosophy to Haller’s. In the eyes of deists such as
Hermann Samuel Reimarus who, in 1754, devoted his Die vornehmsten Wahr-
heiten der natürlichen Religion (The Noblest Truths of Natural Religion) to an
explicit defense of Haller against La Mettrie, the human being is endowed with a
faculty of knowledge that is to be employed in order to celebrate God’s creation.
Rather than neglecting the truths of reason, religion calls for the exercise of “the
noble gift of healthy reason”: humans need to apply their reason so that they can
know that God is the creator and attain the rational conviction of the divine
origin of the world that is necessary for applying his commands and for leading a
moral life (Reimarus 1754, Vorbericht). For most of his readers, Haller’s physiology
does raise a genuinely philosophical challenge. It in fact requires philosophers to
revise and rethink quite a number of traditional dogmas concerning the soul. There
are three such dogmas that I want to mention here: the simplicity and ubiquity of
the soul, its immateriality and freedom, and its immortality. From mid-century
onwards, these issues are at the center of the philosophical debate and in what
follows I want to shed some more light on the central issues involved in this debate,
taking the three dogmas in turn.
First, sensation and consciousness seem to be more closely linked to certain
bodily organs, i.e., to the nervous system, than had hitherto been assumed. If the
soul is not to be thought of as divisible but as simple, its empire (the realm of self-
consciousness) needs to be restricted to the sensitive, nervous parts of the body as
opposed to the body as a whole; in other words, it cannot reach beyond the
nervous system. This is a consequence that Haller himself partly acknowledges in
his response to objections formulated by Robert Whytt, which were also
 STEFANIE BUCHENAU 

discussed by Haller’s contemporaries. To quote Haller, from his Treatise on

Sensibility and Irritability:
Our soul is that being which is conscious of itself and which represents its own body and
by means of its body the whole world. I am myself and am not someone else, because what
is called I is changed by whatever befalls my body and its parts. If there is a muscle or an
intestine whose modifications relate to another soul, and produces modifications in that
soul but not in mine, then the soul of such a muscle, of such an intestine, is not mine and
does not belong to me. Now, a finger separated from my body, a chunk of flesh cut from
my foot do not concern me anymore, their modifications are no longer connected with
me and occasion neither any pain nor any thought in me. And therefore such a separated
muscle is not inhabited by my soul or by a part of it, and I am not present in such a finger.
My will has remained unharmed.15

From the restriction of the soul’s empire to the nervous system, it follows that one
can no longer consider the soul as the force that, via the nerves, moves the body
(cf. Haller 1757–66, §§ 408–9). Strictly speaking, the soul can no longer be said to
be the principle of the body’s motion. The soul can be held to be the principle of
voluntary movements but not of involuntary ones such as reflex movements,
blood circulation, or the heartbeat. For one has to suppose a second moving force
in the body, different from the soul, responsible for involuntary and vital
motions. As a result, there seem to be two forces hidden in the very fabrica of
the body whose nature and mutual hierarchy and relation necessarily remain
unknown. This idea seriously threatens the Aristotelian idea of the soul as the
animating principle of the body, as the principle of motion and life.
La Mettrie’s discussion of Haller illustrates the problem very well. Himself a
former disciple of Boerhaave, La Mettrie was well informed about the Göttingen
experiments and famously dedicated his Homme-Machine to Haller as early as
1748, devoting a substantial section of it to Haller’s experiments at a strategic
point of the treatise (La Mettrie 1748, 22f.). La Mettrie argues that our ignorance
of the relation between the forces of voluntary and involuntary motion seriously
threaten the second dogma mentioned above, i.e., the immateriality and freedom
of the soul. Could it not be, he asks, that what we perceive as an intentional, willed
motion of our limbs does not originate in an immaterial soul, but rather in the
muscle itself or in some sort of material force of the body? This would mean that
what we perceive as an immaterial and spontaneous cause determining our will
and setting our body in motion is not a soul that works via the nerves and the
animal spirits, but rather a material cause that has its origin in “the very

15
Haller, 1756–60, I, 51. I would like to thank John Zammito and John Dillon for their help with
the translation of this passage.
 HERDER : PHYSIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

substance of the body parts” (La Mettrie 1748, 22). And it would also mean that
“each part . . . contains its own ‘springs’ [ressorts], more or less strongly depend-
ing on the part’s needs” (ibid.). What La Mettrie calls automatic or involuntary,
i.e., reflex movements, such as the heartbeat or certain emotive reactions such as
sudden blushing, seem to confirm the hypothesis of the man-machine and the
brain-muscle:
Let’s look in more detail at these springs of the human machine. All the body’s
movements—vital, animal, natural, and automatic—are carried out by them. Aren’t all
of these mechanical? The body draws back, struck with terror at the sight of an unex-
pected precipice, the eyelid blinks under the threat of a blow, the pupils contract in bright
light to protect the retina and dilate to see objects in the dark . . .
I shan’t spend any longer on all these subordinate little springs that everyone knows.
But there is another more subtle and wonderful one, which drives them all. It is the source
of all our feelings, all our pleasures and all our thoughts; for the brain has muscles for
thinking as the legs do for walking. I am talking about the instigating and impetuous
principle, which Hippocrates called ενορμων [the soul]. This principle exists and is
located in the brain at the starting point of the nerves, through which it exerts its control
over all the rest of the body. This explains everything that needs to be explained.
(La Mettrie 1748, 23f.)

This passage shows in what sense Haller’s distinction threatens the immateriality
and freedom of the soul. In La Mettrie’s materialist and naturalist interpretation
of it, human action (and reaction) is reduced to some sort of muscular reflex
movement whose sole difference from animal movement lies in its greater
complexity. The principle of organization that philosophers held to be an
“immaterial soul” originates here in a certain matter, endowed with motion
and sensitivity, and reveals itself to be no more than a fiction of our
imagination.16
Such a conclusion has ramifications, thirdly, not just for the soul’s immateri-
ality or spirituality, but also for its immortality: if “between a spiritual substance,
and a material substance, there is no other difference than the one that one
supposes to exist between the modifications or the ways of being of a same
substance,” then the idea of immortality expresses no more than a natural
inclination of our mind to rid itself of the distressing idea of death (La Mettrie
2004, 183). These insights thus “shake the very foundations of the sacrosanct
theology,” as La Mettrie put it (La Mettrie 2004, 339). Again, as the correspond-
ence between La Mettrie and Haller’s colleagues from the faculty of theology at

16
See the discussion of different types of soul—vegetative, sensitive, and rational—in La Mettrie’s
Traité de l’âme.
 STEFANIE BUCHENAU 

the university of Göttingen reveals, La Mettrie is acutely aware of these

consequences.
La Mettrie’s attack on Haller was devastating, and all the more so because it
was grounded in Haller’s very own premises. It gave rise to one of the major
polemics of the century, whose first stage was carried out by La Mettrie and by
Haller himself in the Göttingischen Gelehrten Anzeigen and was later continued
by a number of colleagues (cf. Guthke 1962, Hintzsche 1968, Knabe 1978).
Haller’s reviews of La Mettrie’s translation and commentary of their teacher
Boerhaave’s Institutions médicales and of La Mettrie’s own L’Histoire naturelle
de l’âme illustrate a gradual change of attitude from curiosity and benevolence to
anger and indignation. Haller ended up directly accusing the author of plagiar-
izing and stealing his ideas, and of lacking both intellectual rigor and integrity.
Here again, Haller refrained from venturing into philosophical territory, merely
pointing out the difficulty of conceiving of parts of the body as communicating
with each other without also invoking a centralizing agency. Haller then reacted
with great indignation to La Mettrie’s ironical dedication to him in L’Homme-
machine. The polemics continued in the Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, which
reviewed not only all of La Mettrie’s writings, but also the literary productions of
La Mettrie’s adversaries such as the physician Ludwig Tralle and the theologians
Samuel Christian Hollmann and Adam Wilhem Frantzen. La Mettrie replied in a
number of new pamphlets such as Epitre à mon esprit (to Hollmann) and Les
animaux plus que machines (to Tralle). In the meantime, he found refuge
in Berlin where he had been nominated member of the Berlin Academy by
Frederick the Great, who even delivered a eulogy to him after his accidental
death at the French Embassy (cf. Pénisson 2006). The polemic reached its peak in
1751 with Haller’s letter to Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, president of the
Berlin Academy, demanding that his honor be reestablished. The letter arrived
the day of La Mettrie’s death.
Throughout this time and long after his death, La Mettrie remained at the
center of the German philosophical stage. Of course the enemy was not always
called by his true name—often, he was discussed under the more general title of
“materialism” and “new epicureanism.”17 Nonetheless, from the 1750s on, one
observes a proliferation of defenses of the soul’s immateriality and immortality
within and beyond the circles of the Berlin Academy. Among them, Moses
Mendelssohn’s Phaedon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele from 1767,
Bonnet’s Palingénèse philosophique from 1769, and Sulzer’s treatises Observations

17
See Lessing’s Laocoon (I, 3, FHA, 5, 2, 33) for La Mettrie’s portrait as a modern Epicurean,
and Herder’s comment in the first Kritisches Wäldchen (1769), FHA, 2, 133.
 HERDER : PHYSIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

sur quelques propriétés de l’âme comparées à celles de la matière: pour servir à

l’examen du matérialisme from 1773 and Sur l’immortalité de l’âme, considérée
physiquement from 1779. Bonnet, who, in a letter to Haller dated 1755 expresses
his deep admiration for Haller’s treatise,18 speaks for many when he writes: “This
irritability is something that is worthy of being meditated on further. But where
will these meditations lead us in such a dark night?”19

2 Enlivening Haller “like Pygmalion’s statue”: Herder’s

Physiological Psychology
It is true that before the mid-1770s Herder rarely referred to La Mettrie or to
Haller. When first sketching his anthropological project in his 1765 treatise How
philosophy can become more universal and useful for the benefit of the people, he
did not develop its physiological underpinnings at all. Nevertheless, there is no
doubt that Herder was deeply influenced by the German debate sketched above,
and he was surely well informed of the polemics20 and well acquainted with the
philosophical claims of most of its protagonists, including Haller, La Mettrie,
Bonnet, Reimarus, and Sulzer. He attentively followed the philosophical debates
of the Berlin Academy and was very receptive to its novel philosophical impulses.
In his writings from the 1760s, he already elaborated a metaphysical physics and
a novel concept of “force”; in his 1772 prize essay On the origin of language,
he already considered the physiological dimension of communication and
“language” in the broader sense of the word, the bonds of sympathy between
beings, their receptivity and activity. These are issues he had probably struggled
with for years before finally tackling them in his prize essay, On the cognition and
sensation of the human soul, in its three versions from 1774, 1775, and 1778, later
elaborating his argument in the first book of the Ideas. The prize essay On
cognition leaves absolutely no doubt about the major significance of Haller’s
physiology for Herder’s own psychology and anthropology. In two subsections
entitled “Irritability” and “Sensation,” Herder first presents the physiological
context of his psychology. In the published version from 1778, one reads:

18
“Jamais Morceau de Physiologie ne m’a plu autant que la Dissertation sur l’irritabilité.
Je la relis la plume à la main. Chaque ligne de cet excellent Ouvrage renferme une Vérité; et ces
Vérités sont-elles fécondes en Conséquences utiles! Un nouveau Jour vient éclairer la Médecine et la
Chirurgie. L’Expérience triomphe de l’ignorance, de l’erreur et du préjugé.” Charles Bonnet to
Albrecht von Haller, Geneva, January 27, 1755, Bonnet 1983, 59.
19
“Cette Irritabilité est quelque chose de bien digne de nos Méditations. Mais où nous
conduiront-elles ces Méditations dans une Nuit si profonde?” ibid.
20
See the reference to Haller in the footnote from 1765, quoted above.
 STEFANIE BUCHENAU 

In my modest opinion, no psychology is possible which is not in each step determinate

physiology. Haller’s physiological work raised to psychology and enlivened with mind like
Pygmalion’s statue, then we can say something about thinking and sensation.21

Herder’s 1775 draft contains the following variant:

Sensation is only the aggregate of all obscure irritations, just as thought is the luminous
aggregate of sensation. Physiology is the shrine of the soul. Haller’s work is Pygmalion’s
statue warming up under the hands of the lover of the human soul.22

Similar praise of the “immortal” Haller’s physiological discoveries can be found

in the Ideas:
The immortal Haller has discriminated the different powers that display themselves
physiologically in the animal body, as the elasticity of the fibre, the irritability of the
muscles, and the sensibility of the nervous system, with an accuracy that will not only
remain upon the whole incontrovertible, but promises the most valuable application to
physiological psychology [physiologische Seelenlehre], even in other than human bodies.
(FHA, 6, 86, 48 f.; transl. Herder 1803, slightly revised)

However, Herder, who notes at the beginning of the prize essay on language that he
only writes for those “quiet and decent readers” (stille und züchtige Leser) capable of
religious feelings, chooses a novel line of defense and draws more radical conclu-
sions from Haller’s novel insights than any of his German contemporaries. Since it
no longer seems possible to stipulate the primacy of sensation (that is, the primacy
of the nerves transmitting the soul’s impulse to voluntary motion in the body) over
irritability, and thus, likewise, to stipulate the causal agency of an immaterial soul,
Herder suggests adopting the inverse perspective. By supposing the original identity
or some sort of genealogical link between the different bodily functions, that is,
between the elasticity of the inorganic fiber, the irritability of muscle, and the
sensation of the brain, it is still possible to defend the Aristotelian idea of the soul
as the animating principle of the body, and to reconcile it with the view of the
moderns of the soul as a force of representation.
Of course, for Herder, the knowledge of ultimate causes of effects such as
irritability and sensation in the body lies beyond our cognitive limits. In this
respect, Herder shares Haller’s Newtonianism and agnosticism. He furthermore
admits that Haller’s distinction has complicated the claim that the soul has an
immaterial origin and for this reason can in fact explain the possibility of

21
SWS, 8, 180. See also the remarks on Haller in the 1775 edition, SWS, 8, 250: “die Haller, Mead,
Zimmermann sind mehr als alle Grübler a priori [die] Vertrauten [des inneren Menschen].”
22
SWS, 8, 277. For a comparative study of the different versions of Herder’s treatise, see Heinz
1994, 109–74.
 HERDER : PHYSIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

freedom. And yet can we not save our old convictions? Can we not suppose that
human attributes developed out of attributes we share with animals, just as
sensibility, reason, and will can be thought of as having emerged from the
irritability of the muscle, or from the even more primitive force of elasticity?
Can we not assume, contrary to La Mettrie, that a certain “immateriality” (see the
edition of On cognition from 1778) or at least a sacred or divine part of the
human soul originates in materiality? This is the solution that Herder seems to
suggest in On the cognition and sensation of the human soul and that he will
further develop in his Ideas.

We probably cannot accompany sensation in its origination further down than to the
strange phenomenon that Haller has called ‘irritation’. The irritated little fibre contracts
and expands again—perhaps a stamen, the first little glimmering spark, toward sensation,
to which dead matter has purified itself up through many courses and levels of mechan-
ism and organization.—As small and obscure as this beginning of the noble capacity that
we call sensing may seem, it must be equally important—so much gets achieved through
it. Without seeds there is no harvest, no plant without delicate roots and filaments, and
perhaps without this sowing of obscure stirrings and irritations our most divine forces
would not exist. (Herder SWS 8, 171, transl. 2002, 189)

Similarly, one reads in the Ideas:

I shall not now explain whether these three phenomena, different as they appear, may not
arise at bottom from one and the same power, displaying itself in one manner in the
fibres, in another in the muscles, and in a third in the nerves. As everything in nature is
connected, and these three effects are so intimately and multifariously combined in the
living body, we can scarcely entertain a doubt about it. Elasticity and irritability border on
one another, as do fibres and muscles. Since muscles are but an artfully interwoven
structure of fibres; irritability is probably nothing more than elasticity infinitely height-
ened and intimately combined, exalting itself, in this organic interlacement of numerous
parts, from the inanimate fibrous sensation to the first step of animal feeling. The
sensibility of the nervous system would then be a higher species of the same power, a
result of all those organic powers; since the circulation of the blood at large, and all the
vessels subservient to it, seem contrived to humectate the brain, as the root of the nerves
with that subtle fluid, which considered as the medium of perception is so much exalted
above the faculties of the fibres and muscles. (FHA 6, 86; transl. Herder 1803, 1, 86)

A few commentators have found these passages disappointing (Steinke 2005,

Nisbet 1970, Pross 1984). After having praised Haller’s immortal physiology,
Herder here seems to again blur the boundaries so laboriously established by
Haller and to regress to some pre-Hallerian position where irritability, sensation,
and elasticity are all mixed up as the various manifestations of one single
all-pervading force. But as has been discussed, Herder was deeply immersed in
the debate and familiar with its controversial points. For him it is precisely
 STEFANIE BUCHENAU 

because of the distinction and close association between sensation and thought,
and their link to particular bodily structures, that a new philosophical starting
point had to be developed, one that broke most fundamentally with the trad-
itional metaphysical outlook.
For Herder, the dualistic perspective, which is closely tied to traditional
Cartesian metaphysics and its Leibnizian variant, is no longer convincing.
These rationalists pretend to reach self-knowledge, i.e., insight into the human
soul and into attributes such as substantiality, personality, immortality, reason,
and freedom via introspection alone, and to know the soul without or before
inquiring into its physiological foundation—in Herder’s view, they pretend that
souls “lay formed in the moon, in limbo, and waited, doubtlessly naked and cold,
for their preestablished sheets, or clocks, or clothes, the not yet formed bodies.”23
For Herder, in contrast, the soul is closely tied to the body and it can only know
itself by turning to what is different and external to itself, i.e., its body and the
external world.24
Herder here develops a Wolffian idea of the parallel progression of knowledge
of the world and self-knowledge. For Wolff, the world is a mirror of divinity, just
like the soul (Wolff, German Metaphysics, §1045), and knowledge of the world
helps to progressively refine and render more distinct a self-consciousness that
first presents itself as self-feeling (ibid., §1). Herder takes up the same pattern and
is simply more explicit than Wolff in excluding the possibility of self-knowledge
via direct introspection: at the outset, I am opaque to myself, and I do not have
more than a unique obscure, but vivid, self-feeling (Selbstgefühl).25 I need to
direct my attention to the world and to the beings surrounding myself, to the
nature of the very body that, according to Herder, “mirrors” (cf. Heinz 1994, 139)
the soul. Anthropology is to be attained via cosmology and via an analogical or
comparative method exploring the similarities between the plant, animal, and
human realms.
In a sense, Herder’s insights are also foreshadowed by Sulzer, who is Herder’s
direct interlocutor in his prize essay and, as a member of the Berlin Academy,
formulated the 1775 academy question to which Herder responded in his essay.
Note that Sulzer himself develops a “physics of the soul” (Sulzer, Sur l’appercep-
tion et son influence sur nos jugements, 415), nourished by Wolff on the one hand,

23
Herder, On the Cognition, 193. See also the 1774 and 1775 variants (SWS 8, 253 and 266) about
Cartesianism and Spinozism.
24
See DeSouza 2012, in particular 779 and 784.
25
On original self-feeling (“ein dunkles, aber Einziges lebhaftes Gefühl”), see the very beginning
of Plato sagte, daß unser Lernen bloß Erinnerung sei; on the relevance of the sense of touch for
remembering how our soul built itself a body, see Zum Sinn des Gefühls and Plastik.
 HERDER : PHYSIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

and Haller’s physiology and a certain number of medical experiences on the

other. It is clear that Herder wishes to enter into a dialogue with Sulzer on these
issues and on similar grounds. Unfortunately for Herder, who is aware that
he was forsaking his chances of winning the prize,26 the two authors build very
different psychologies on the basis of the new physiology. The formulation of the
academy’s question, “On the two basic faculties of the soul: the cognitive and the
sensitive,” already indicates that Sulzer thinks of both faculties as separate. Sulzer
considers feeling as an attention turned inward and away from the object,
whereas Herder considers feeling as a primitive form of representation and
cognition, and in this sense assumes their unity.
In order to justify this claim, Herder employs a highly original cosmological
method, and in doing so, he draws upon two major philosophical traditions,
namely physicotheology and natural history. With respect to the first, Herder
directly follows in the footsteps of Reimarus, who, in his Die vornehmsten
Wahrheiten, had already expanded the scope of physicotheology to include a
proof not only of God’s existence and perfection, but also of human perfection
and purpose (Bestimmung).27 Physicotheology here had already transformed itself
into anthropology, just like in Herder. Second, Herder borrows from the analogical
methods of natural history and comparative anatomy, zoology, and physiology.28 In
Ideas, he develops this analogical method in the greatest detail. Herder explicitly
affirms that he employs such comparative anatomy (and physiology) as the guiding
thread of his philosophical anthropology or natural history.
How many animals, altogether unlike man in outward appearance, are internally, in the
structure of the skeleton, the principal parts of sensation and vitality, nay in the vital
functions, strikingly similar to him! This will be evident to anyone who peruses the
dissections of Daubenton, Perrault, Pallas, and other academics. Natural history for
children and youth must content itself with some distinction of outward form, to assist
the eye and memory; manly and philosophical natural history investigates both the
external and internal structure of the animal, to compare them with his mode of life,
and to find his character and place. With respect to plants this has been called the natural
method; and comparative anatomy is the guide that must lead to it step by step in animals.
This naturally gives man a clue to himself, which conducts him to the great labyrinth of

26
Herder includes an explicit justification of his strategy of not employing Sulzer’s work as the
foundation and the objective of his own at the beginning of the essay published in 1775, where he
praises the merits of Sulzer’s psychology and compares his own procedure to that of a sailor who
needs to turn his back to his true aim, i.e., to the coast he wants to reach. See the 1775 edition, SWS 8,
270 and, for discussion, Heinz 1994, 109.
27
For Herder’s debate with Reimarus, whom he highly appreciates, see in particular Herder,
FHA 1, 711f., FHA 6, 100. On the anthropological dimension of Reimarus’s physicotheology,
see Buchenau, forthcoming.
28
A few studies such as Nisbet 1970, Zammito 2002, and DeSouza 2012 develop this aspect.
 STEFANIE BUCHENAU 

living creation; and if we can say of any method that through it our understanding
ventures to scrutinize the profound comprehensive mind of God, it must be this.
(FHA 6, 74; transl. Herder 1803, 71f. slightly modified)

All these disciplines share the same methodological premises. There must be an
analogy between more primitive and original manifestations of the various
human faculties and lower forms that can offer a path to the knowledge of
man. The new comparative methods emerging in the early modern period are
based on the conviction that the comparison with the animal (and, to a certain
extent, the plant) can help to explain the internal structure or “mechanism” of the
human “organ” or “tool,” as it is called in Greek, which otherwise remains
hidden. For animals present the nature and economy of the same functions in
greater simplicity and at the same time with greater variety. They reveal the
adequacy of the tool or organ to the end. As Claude Perrault, one of the pioneers
of comparative anatomy puts it: “The admirable functions of animals are
produced by instruments that we can see.”29 Later anatomists, and physiologists,
will develop these thoughts in a new framework conceiving nature as a continu-
ous chain of being, expressive of divine intentions, and whose first and last
element is man. These are ideas that Herder will expand upon, noting the great
interest of such a comparative methodology for physiology. In line with the
physiological insights just discussed, however, Herder radicalizes the former
approach. Even human reason, consciousness, and Humanität need to be derived
solely from anatomical and physiological criteria, from the analogy with, and
similarity to, the animal faculties of irritability and sensibility, from material
movements of attraction and repulsion, and from the organic fiber’s movements
of expansion and contraction (DeSouza 2012). This is a paradoxical and a highly
original claim. Although the former tradition had likewise explored the analogy
with the animal, they had mostly relied upon a more traditional division of labor
between medicine (or natural history) and philosophy and had believed that only
the latter treats man’s properly human attributes. This comes from the difficulty
of grounding the distinction between the chimpanzee and the human being on
anatomical and physiological criteria alone, as Edward Tyson had shown in
his treatise Orang-outan, sive Homo sylvestris, or The Anatomy of a Pygmic
Compared with That of a Monkey from 1699, which lists forty-eight anatomical
and physiological resemblances and thirty-four differences. Herder concludes
that “internally and externally the Orang-Utan resembles man” (FHA 116; transl.
Herder 1803, 125). This resemblance had led Buffon to finally assume some kind

29
Perrault (1680): “Les fonctions admirables des animaux sont produites par des instruments
que nous pouvons voir,” 7.
 HERDER : PHYSIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

of invisible difference, but Herder views such argumentative strategies as vain

rhetoric. In his view, “Buffon wastes the stream of his eloquence in vain, when he
takes occasion from these animals, to combat the similitude of the internal
organism of nature to the external: the facts, that he himself has collected,
sufficiently refute him” (FHA 6, 117; transl. Herder 1803, 127 f.). In order to
determine man’s nature or his peculiar economy or proportion of forces, it is
necessary to apply a more indirect procedure and to negatively measure the gap
separating him from the animal.
Plants and animals mirror man because they yield insight into functions or
faculties in which the human being has a share. Precisely because man does not
possess all of the animal faculties in the highest perfection, because he is among
animals that “intermediate creature in whom the most numerous and subtle rays
of similar forms are collected, as far as consists with the peculiarity of his
purpose,” he may learn from studying those beings who fulfill alone those
functions that are subordinate ends in himself (FHA, 6, 74; transl. Herder
1803, 51). It is in this sense that the plant can shed light on humans’ most
fundamental functions of nutrition and reproduction; precisely because these
functions determine the nature of the plant, which is “so to speak all mouth,”
it elucidates “the nobler creature” who possesses the same functions while not
being “intended to be the slave of his belly” (FHA, 6, 77 f.; transl. Herder 1803,
85f.). Similarly, cold-blooded animals like frogs show a fundamental function
equally present in humans: they possess some “excessive” (ibid.) irritability that
makes their members contract even when separated from the body and allows the
body to renew its members, a capacity that warm-blooded, higher, and sensitive
animals and humans lose. Muscular strength and irritability cease to be the
predominant tendencies as sensibility creates new reciprocal relations and
connections between the parts: “The more numerous and delicate the nerves of
an animal, the more multifariously they are connected, artfully strengthened, and
allied to nobler parts and senses; and lastly the larger and more delicate the focus
of all perception, the brain; the more intelligent and exquisite is the kind of
organization” (FHA 6, 82; transl. Herder 1803, 95 f.). The project is thus to enter
into the comparison between the human being and his fellow creatures in order
to revise some of the central claims and methodologies of Aristotelian natural
history; it assumes that features of humanity can be found in the lower creatures.
This new method of reaching psychology via cosmology and the comparison
with the lower creatures offers novel solutions to the various philosophical
problems raised by Haller’s physiology. First, it presents a completely new
perspective on the simplicity and the ubiquity of the soul: it abandons the vain
debate on the “interaction” between soul and body—as if it could make sense,
 STEFANIE BUCHENAU 

first, to conceive of two substances, i.e., of a soul and a body, and then to inquire
into the modes of interaction between both and the possible “seat” of an
“immaterial” soul of the former rationalist tradition. In Herder’s view,
all the experiments hitherto collected by Haller, the most learned physiologist any nation
has yet produced, show how futile it would be to seek the indivisible work of the
formation of ideas in substance and distributed among the material parts of the brain.
The least calm reflection tells us that these faculties are not locally separated, as if
judgment resided in one part of the brain memory and imagination in another, the
passions and sensitive powers in a third; for the thought of our mind is undivided, and
each of these effects is the fruit of thought. It would be in some measure absurd therefore,
to attempt to dissect abstract relations, as if they were bodies, and to scatter the mind, as
Medea did the limbs of her brother. (FHA 6, 125; transl. Herder 1803, 136)

Setting out from the faculties’ fundamental unity and common origin in irrit-
ability and even elasticity proves to be a far better strategy for ensuring both the
soul’s ubiquity and its simplicity. From the outset and even in its most primitive
manifestations, such a soul is present everywhere in the body. It is, at the same
time, simple insofar as it can be related to a unique principle and a self. As such,
simplicity depends on the soul’s most fundamental faculty, sensibility. For
sensibility is not only a more differentiated form of irritability and elasticity,
conditioned by the higher blood temperature and the free circulation of the most
refined material of sensation. It is not only the measure determining what Herder
calls a “moderation” or “proportion,” an economy and direction of forces. It is
more: it is a primitive form of selfhood, consciousness, and reflexivity.
Moreover, Herder contrasts his views on the soul’s immateriality and freedom
with those of La Mettrie. If it is true that complete knowledge of the nature of the
forces that govern the universe cannot be had, the same must be said about the
force of our soul. Despite the necessity of positing such a force, its nature and
ontological reality can only be grasped in an infinite process of clarification.
Additionally, if there is something such as immateriality, such immateriality
needs to be thought of as resulting from a progressive transformation and
purification of matter: “I do not know, what material or immaterial would be—
but I don’t believe that nature would have erected iron walls between both” (FHA
4, 354, transl. Herder 2002, 208). And whatever the material or immaterial nature
of the soul’s causality may be, its freedom must simply lie in the intellectual
insight into the conditions of the exercise of the force constituting its very nature.
It is compatible with a certain kind of servitude, that of serving as an organ to
divinity. “The more profound, pure and divine our cognition is, the more divine,
pure and universal is our action, and the freer is our freedom” (SWS 8, 202).
Immortality, finally, is a necessary attribute of such a human being and divine
 HERDER : PHYSIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

organ. Although such immortality cannot be deduced from the soul’s substanti-
ality, as in earlier metaphysics, it is still conceivable as a continuous and an
infinite progression and elevation toward greater perfection.

3 Conclusion
Herder’s philosophical anthropology is a post-Hallerian account, which is intrin-
sically linked to Haller’s discoveries and which must be understood within this
physiological and medical context in which it first takes shape. For Haller’s new
insights restrict the empire of the soul to a faculty or force of voluntary motion
while positing a second force of involuntary motion whose cause and relation to
the first remains unclear. These views deeply challenge traditional perspectives
on the soul as the principle of life and motion and, together with it, claims about
its immateriality, freedom, and immortality.
In line with Haller’s own thought, Herder attempts to defend the possibility of
free will against the frightening materialist consequences of Haller’s doctrine that
were first articulated and emphasized by La Mettrie and which then haunted both
French and the German debates. Herder’s turn to cosmology results from the
new idea that the external world can reflect my own ends or functions and offer a
path to self-knowledge. This is a conviction that Herder shares with certain
physicotheologists and modern comparative anatomists who employ the more
primitive animal organism as an epistemic tool for gaining insights into the more
complex human being. Herder offers novel responses to the various philosophical
problems opened up by Haller’s physiology while consolidating philosophy’s
rank as the first anthropological discipline and its priority over medicine.
For ανθρωπος, according to the etymology suggested in the Briefe zur Beförderung
der Humanität (Letters on the Promotion of Humanity), expresses the human and
philosophical capacity to direct the eyes upwards and to come to know itself
through the study of its own body, other bodies, and the world as a whole and by
recognizing itself as being a small world or “microcosm,” according to both an
old and a new idea.

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 5
The Role of Aesthetics in Herder’s
Anthropology
Stephen Gaukroger

We can think of Herder’s project to establish a philosophical anthropology in

terms of a threefold naturalization. First, he approaches reason by understanding
it in terms of thought. Reason is something abstract, thought by contrast is
something embodied, something that occurs in a person’s head, and to that
extent it is something concrete. Second, Herder approaches thought via what
the Wolffian tradition characterized as empirical psychology. By contrast with
rational psychology, empirical psychology for Wolff proceeded primarily by
means of an analysis of our own psychological states, and through an analysis
of the behaviour of others. Whereas Wolff had believed that empirical psychology
merely provided the materials for rational psychology to work on, however,
Herder did not see empirical psychology as merely a stage to something else.
Rather—and this is the third element in his account—he reworks it, rejecting
Wolff ’s introspective and behavioural tools. Instead, Herder uses language,
which he treats as an empirically analysable manifestation of thought.1 This
empirically analysable manifestation has a historical dimension: the history of
languages—‘history’ in the eighteenth-century sense, as something that has both
a diachronic and a synchronic dimension—is a history of thought, which in turn
is a history of reason.
The core question here is that of how language needs to be thought of, in such
a way that it can be made to contribute to a project of philosophical anthropology.
What I want to argue is that, in order to meet this requirement, the aesthetic
dimension of language turns out to be crucial. Without it, Herder would not be

1
Actually, as we shall see, it is richer than merely a manifestation of thought, but this charac-
terization will do for our immediate purposes.
 STEPHEN GAUKROGER 

able to use language to generate the kind of anthropological understanding he

needs. Language would remain in the realm of philology, and that would not be
enough for his purposes.
The appeal to language transforms sensibility from something inhabiting a
private sensory realm into a public manifestation of sensibility which brings with
it a rich source of evidence. It amounts to an extension of naturalizing resources
to include language, so that language is no longer merely a means of expression of
thoughts, but something that goes to the heart of what it is to think. If empirical
psychology was to go beyond the role that it played in Wolff ’s metaphysical
project (Wolff 1732) (and following him that of Baumgarten 1750–8), if it was to
offer an analysis of thought that had genuine aspirations to clarity and under-
standing, then thought, in all its distinctiveness, had to be captured somehow.
Reason could not simply be rejected in favour of sensibility, along Rousseauean
lines, nor could thought simply be reduced to a form of physiological activity,
along the reductionist lines that La Mettrie was proposing. If Herder’s project was
to have any plausibility, thought had to retain some autonomy: there had to
remain something distinguishing about it which successful explanation was able
to capture.
Herder had a number of possible resources in his thinking about language.
There was a sophisticated tradition in which linguistic, cognitive, hermeneutic,
and historical-cultural factors all play a part, and although it flourished in
Germany it originated not there but in France, the formative text being
Condillac’s Essai sur l’origine des connoissances humaines of 1746 (see Aarsleff
1982). For Condillac, linguistic signs were not merely a convenient medium in
which to express our thoughts. Although humans, like animals, can have
thoughts without language, what makes us human—as opposed to mere
animals—is language, for it is linguistic signs that provide us with the means to
work on our perceptions of the world in a conscious fashion. The mind would not
be what it is without language, and the increasing sophistication of the mind
mirrors the increasing sophistication of language. Here we have the two key
issues in Condillac’s account: the way in which language provides us with a
window onto the activities of the mind; and the importance of the origins of
language to the study of its significance.
On the first question, it is a central thesis of Condillac’s account that there is a
fundamental difference between gestures and the primitive signs designating
action, on the one hand, and a fully fledged language on the other. The faculty
of reflection was gradually developed as human beings began to free themselves
from their environment, to dissociate natural and gestural language from its
associative contexts, and to employ arbitrary signs. Natural and gestural signs are
 THE ROLE OF AESTHETICS IN HERDER ’ S ANTHROPOLOGY

immediate and have no internal differentiation, whereas the distinctive feature of

fully fledged language is its linearity: language requires the breaking down of
thoughts and ordering them in a linear fashion. One can analyse one’s thoughts,
and those of others, because one can present them in a structured linear fashion:
linearity is a precondition of the reflection that is distinctive of human thought.2
In short, language does not simply capture thought, but orders it in a distinctive
way, which enables one to think reflectively. This in turn provides language users
with the means to control the operations of the soul: memory, imagination,
and attention.
On the second question, that of the importance of the origins of language to
the study of language, we can identify different kinds of concerns in the German
and French traditions before mid-century, although in both cases the general
issue is whether primitive forms of language could exist, or could be called
languages, if they lacked something crucial to language as we now know it.
We can confine our attention here to the French case, where the issues were
more directly and explicitly concerned with the question of what it takes for
something to be a language. Rousseau, for example, reflecting on Condillac’s
account, takes up a worry in Condillac about how the move from primitive
sounds to articulate ones could have been possible, and transforms it into a
problem that will shape the subsequent discussion of language in the eighteenth
century. Rousseau’s problem is how human beings with no reflective reason
could invent conventional signs for abstract notions (Rousseau 1755).
These kinds of concerns about the origins of language became the subject of
intense discussion in Germany with Maupertuis, who was most instrumental in
transferring the debates to Berlin. By 1756, he had shifted from an earlier
sensationalist model to one more in line with Condillac’s account (Maupertuis
1756). Now it is a case of an early expressive language that evolves into a system
of artificial signs. This was Condillac’s view: the faculty of imagination is grad-
ually developed as human beings come to dissociate natural and gestural
language from its associative contexts and to employ them as arbitrary or
conventional signs. This is a process in which human beings gradually manage
to free themselves from their instinctual response to their environment.
But here we are back with Rousseau’s problem. Herder bites the bullet (Herder
1766–7): the human ability to reflect is constitutive of what it means to be human

2
Analysis in Condillac goes beyond the ability to break down one’s own thoughts, and his theory
that science is a well-constructed language, one in which analysis is primary, was to have significant
impact in a range of areas of scientific research in the final decades of the eighteenth century:
see Albury 1972.
 STEPHEN GAUKROGER 

(see Mücke 1990). As such, it is not, and could not be, the product of an
evolutionary development: there is simply no gradual development from natural
language to human language. Human beings do not have to free themselves from
their instincts because they are not ruled by instincts: unlike animals, human
beings are not restricted to particular fields of activity or responses.
In his Fragments on German Literature, 1767–8, Herder writes that language
is ‘a form of cognition not merely in which, but also in accordance with which,
thoughts take shape, where in all parts of literature thought is tied to expres-
sion, and forms itself in accordance with the latter’ (Herder 2002, 48). Such
linguistic naturalism has an immediate advantage over materialist forms of
reductionism, for these latter were widely deemed to commit one to determin-
ism, whereas the linguistic naturalism that Herder is offering here clearly has
no such consequences. It simply has no bearing on the question of determin-
ism. Linguistic naturalism also has a positive advantage in that it allows a
comparative form of study. By comparing earlier languages with present ones,
and by comparing contemporary languages with one another, one is comparing
forms of thought.
Herder set out a comprehensive account of language in his prize-winning essay
On the Origin of Language (Herder 1772), his entry in a competition announced
in 1769 by the Berlin Academy. Responses were invited to the question: ‘If human
beings had only their natural faculties, would they be able to invent language?
And by what means could they invent it?’ A recently deceased academician, the
demographer J. P. Süßmilch, had set out a comprehensive account of the divine
origins of language (Süßmilch 1766), and the competitors were invited to discuss
Süßmilch’s account with a view to presenting the case for the natural origins for
language. Süßmilch’s target had been Maupertuis’s Condillac-inspired account of
the transition from a speechless state to the association of arbitrary signs with
things. Defenders of this thesis had stressed the length of the period over which it
was supposed to have occurred, but Süßmilch argues that this does not help
resolve the conceptual problem. The interdependence of signs and human
cognition was the only solution to the dilemma posed by Rousseau. Süßmilch
assumes that naturalistic theses about the origins of language must follow an
evolutionary model,3 so naturalism is ruled out: human language must have been
a product of intelligent design.

3
Lifschitz 2012, 84, notes that Süßmilch was aware that some non-naturalistic views also
accepted an evolutionary account: Richard Simon, for example, following Gregory of Nyssa, argued
that Adam did not receive a fully developed language at creation but merely the capacity to develop
language further.
 THE ROLE OF AESTHETICS IN HERDER ’ S ANTHROPOLOGY

Rejecting both the evolutionary model and the hypothesis of intelligent design,
Herder’s task was to rescue a naturalistic account of language. The idea of a
divine origin of language, he writes,
is useless and extremely harmful. It destroys all efficacy of the human soul, explains
nothing, and makes everything, all psychology and all sciences, inexplicable. For have
human beings, then, with language received all the seeds of forms of knowledge from
God? So nothing comes from the human soul? So the beginning of every art, science, and
form of knowledge is always unintelligible? (Herder 2002, 163)

One of his main criticisms of Süßmilch is his lack of any developmental under-
standing of language, taking a fully formed, rich, contemporary version of
language as effectively its only form, ignoring ‘a thousand indications in one
language, and millions of traces in a variety of languages’ that ‘peoples have
learned gradually to think through using language, and to use language through
thinking’ (Herder 2002, 57). But this does not mean that naturalist alternatives
are on the right track. Herder is quick to criticize those theories that find the
origins of language in animal cries. ‘I cannot conceal my astonishment’, he writes,
that philosophers, that is, people who seek distinct concepts, were ever able to arrive at the
idea of explaining the origin of human language from this cry of the sensations. For is
human language not obviously something completely different? All animals, down as far
as the dumb fish, sound forth their sensation. But it still is not the case that, just because of
that, any animals, even the most perfect, make the slightest real beginning towards a
human language. Let one form and refine and organize this cry however much one wants:
unless an understanding is added, so as to use this sound with intention, then I do not see
how from the preceding natural law human, voluntary language ever comes about.
Children utter noises of sensation like the animals, but is not the language that they
learn from human beings a quite different language? (Herder 2002, 74–5)

Herder identifies Condillac and Rousseau as the prime culprits here. Condillac he
accuses of maintaining that children in the desert would immediately commu-
nicate through signs expressing their sensations. How, Herder asks, are they
supposed to know what kinds of thoughts are to be associated with particular
signs? Rousseau, who holds that language came into being with the spontaneous
expression of emotion, is criticized on similar grounds. In both cases, the
cognitive content of language is ignored, yet this is precisely what we should be
attempting to capture in a theory of the natural origins of language.
How then does Herder propose that language originates? He begins with a
crucial contrast between animals and human beings. Animals work within a very
confined range of activities, and are well served by instinct for this. The human
being, by contrast, ‘has no such uniform and narrow sphere where only a single
sort of work awaits him; a world of occupations and destinies surrounds him.
 STEPHEN GAUKROGER 

His senses and organization are not sharpened for a single thing; he has senses for
everything and hence naturally for each particular thing weaker and duller
senses’ (Herder 2002, 79). What he needs, in these circumstances, is not particu-
lars but general facts. ‘Needs’ is the key word here, because Herder argues that
human beings need language if they are to survive, by contrast with animals, who
have no use for it. Language provides a means of organizing our mental life.
It orders and clarifies our experience by individuating things in such a way as to
re-identify them, by providing a means of storing and conveying general facts.
Without this, our distinctively human form of life would not be possible.

*
Does this provide us with enough to capture what is distinctive about human
beings? Is this all there is to Herder’s anthropology? I suggest not. There is a
further ingredient that Herder needs, and which marks his account out from the
competing ones: aesthetic sensibility.
One of the distinctive features of Herder’s account of language is its rich
aesthetic dimension, for as well as a theory of language in which thought is
dependent on and bounded by language, he also offers a theory of interpretation,
and a theory of translation (see Forster 2010, 55–90). The theory of interpretation
is based on three principles. First, Herder denies the widespread view that the
author of the text to be translated may have thoughts that transcend linguistic
expression. Second, the task of the translator, as far as capturing the meaning is
concerned, is simply to determine the author’s pattern of word usage. But, third,
the interpreter must also imaginatively recapture the sensations and affective
states that accompany the author’s word usage.
These considerations also shape Herder’s theory of translation. If one is to
reproduce the distinctive meanings of an author from a remote historical period
or culture, for example, the usage of words in the target language must be ‘bent’ in
order to approximate the usage of words in the source language.
This aesthetic dimension, one that goes beyond literal meaning, is not an
added extra for Herder. Language is not just a means of representation for him,
but above all a means of expression, and it is the expressive role of language that
is crucial to his account of the shaping of character, which is the end point of his
anthropology. Representation alone could never play this role. The importance
of language lies in the fact that it provides an embodied medium for expression:
self-understanding comes not from the deliberations of a disembodied rational
soul, but from concrete forms of expression, and here it is theories of art, rather
than theories of language as such, that are able to serve as the model. In this
context, Herder develops a conception of aesthetics that Baumgarten did much to
 THE ROLE OF AESTHETICS IN HERDER ’ S ANTHROPOLOGY

promote. Baumgarten had raised the standing of aesthetics, as a general study of

sensibility from sensation to artistic creation, and he had done this largely by
drawing attention to faculties associated with sensibility (Empfindung) that Wolff
had either glossed over or ignored. Because he also insists that sensibility is both a
state of the soul and a state of the body, it involves self-consciousness, and he is
able to go some way to transforming what in the Wolffian tradition are the lower
faculties (Baumgarten 1739, §640: see Buchenau 2013, 170–1).
Although intellectual knowledge—governed by reason—is still the ultimate aim
for Baumgarten, and indeed the defining feature of the human character, at the
same time he had an essentially epistemological conception of aesthetics: it is a
form of knowledge, namely sensible as opposed to intellectual knowledge.
As Beiser points out, the arts that fall under his concept of aesthetics are those
necessary to acquiring knowledge: the art of attention, the art of abstraction, the
art of memory, and the art of imagination, among others (Beiser 2009, 120).
Indeed, aesthetics is not merely a practical discipline but also a moral one, to be
judged by the principles of moral philosophy (see Baumgarten 1740; 1760; 1763).
It is part of character formation, Bildung, refining sensibility and giving one’s life a
direction. Herder will take up and develop this conception, deposing reason as the
core of philosophy, and transforming aesthetics from a mere guide to taste to the
centrepiece of the new anthropologically motivated philosophy (see Adler 1990).
If it was Baumgarten who was the key figure in establishing aesthetics as central to
the project of a philosophical anthropology, it was Baumgarten’s one-time student
Winckelmann who, more than anyone else in Germany, established the importance
of understanding something in terms of its place in cultural and historical context.
Wolff and Baumgarten had been concerned with matters of taste and aesthetic
judgement, and for this purpose art is something abstract and ahistorical: simply
a concrete manifestation of beauty and harmony. Winckelmann by contrast
treats works of art as products of particular historical cultures. Unlike Wolff
and Baumgarten he was not a university teacher, but someone with a practical
understanding of ancient art. In 1755 he was appointed overseer of the antiquities
collection of Cardinal Alesandro Albani, in his villa outside Rome, and in 1763
also became prefect of antiquities at the Vatican. He paid two visits to Hercula-
neum and Pompeii, where excavations had begun in 1738 and 1748 respectively
(see Parslow 1995). Integrating accounts of the sculpture newly discovered at
these sites, together with his unparalleled knowledge of the sculpture of classical
antiquity familiar to him from Rome, as well as the detailed descriptions of art in
Pliny’s Natural History, he builds an account of the art of antiquity as a product
of its age and culture, a product that can and should serve as a model for all art since
that time. There is no hint of aesthetic relativism here. Quite the contrary, classical
 STEPHEN GAUKROGER 

antiquity provides what are effectively the only standards of good art, standards that
will always remain valid. This is why the study of classical culture itself is so
important. As Beiser has pointed out, the next generation of German thinkers
influenced by Winckelmann—Schiller, Hölderin, and Friedrich Schlegel—saw
Greek antiquity as humanity’s childhood, a pagan version of paradise with parallels
with Rousseau’s state of nature (Beiser 2009, 192).
Crucial here is the idea of art as a historical-cultural artifact. Winckelmann’s
survey of art in antiquity, his very influential The History of Art in Antiquity,
published in 1764, treated the history of art as part of an organic growth of
humanity, and it opened up an empirical dimension of art, not as a direct
empirical test of aesthetic judgement, but rather an empirical study of the
artifacts of a historical culture, and the mutual relations between these and the
culture in which they were produced. What Winckelmann sets in train is a way of
using art to explore a culture, and culture to explore art. He concentrated on
sculpture, but the canonical role of sculpture in the arts was questioned by
Lessing in the final sections of his Laokoon (1766). Lessing sought to reinstitute
literature, and especially drama, as the paradigm form of the arts, but he did not
question Winckelmann’s cultural-historical approach. In Laokoon, the discussion
is carried out in terms of what Greek aesthetics did and did not allow Greek
sculptors, painters, and writers to do. Again there was no concession to aesthetic
relativism, but rather an extension to language of the kind of enquiry that
Winckelmann had carried out. It is crucial to understanding what is at issue here
to appreciate that both Winckelmann and Lessing are ‘aesthetic rationalists’: neither
of them believes that the idea that different kinds of art emerge from different
historico-cultural contexts implies aesthetic relativism. Quite the contrary, they use
the art to judge the culture from which it emerges, because they have absolute
standards in the former case. Recognizing Herder as the outcome of this aesthetic
tradition is important because what it brings to light is that historico-cultural
contextualization does not automatically bring cultural relativism in its wake.
Various other versions of such contextualization do equate the two, particularly
nineteenth- and twentieth-century ‘conceptual schemes’ varieties, which were in
effect introduced by Franz Boas,4 in which the attention is often focused on the
way in which vocabularies in different languages cut across one another, providing
different conceptual maps of the world as it were.5 But a project of historico-cultural

4
See Stocking 1968, 201–14. Stocking and others have traced Boas’s influences back to Herder,
but this seems to me a misreading of Herder. See Denby 2005.
5
There is no problem with the idea of languages providing different conceptual maps of the
world but profound difficulties arise once these are taken to be constitutive of our experience of the
world and incommensurable with one another: see Gaukroger 2012, ch. 5.
 THE ROLE OF AESTHETICS IN HERDER ’ S ANTHROPOLOGY

contextualization does not in itself commit one to following the path of cultural
relativism.
This kind of contextualization is absolutely crucial in Herder, and he insists
that the greatest commentator is one ‘who does not transform his subject into
someone who is in accord with the taste of the present century, but rather
explains him in terms of all the nuances of his own time’ (FHA 2, 277),
for ‘it is absolutely essential that one draw from an author what belonged
to his time or the world preceding him, and what he leaves behind to posterity . . .
The more he makes himself of service to his world, the more he must
accommodate himself to it, and he must penetrate its ways of thinking if he
is to shape them’ (FHA 2, 579). Herder’s criticisms of Winckelmann focus on
his use of a criterion derived from one culture to assess the art of other
cultures. He writes:

The best historian of art, Winckelmann, obviously only passed judgement on the artworks
of the Egyptians according to a Greek criterion, hence depicted them very well negatively,
but so little according to their own nature and manner that with almost every one of his
sentences in this most important matter the obviously one-sided and sidewards-glancing
aspects glare forth. (FHA 4, 23)

Even ethics, very generally construed, is a matter of shaping oneself in the context
of a particular culture:
If human nature is no independent divinity in goodness—it has to learn everything, to be
formed through progressions, step ever further in gradual struggle—then naturally it is
formed most or only on those sides where it has such occasions for virtue, for struggle,
for progression. Therefore in a certain respect each human perfection, is national,
generational, and, considered most exactly, individual. People form to greater fullness
only what time, environment [Klima], need, world, fate give occasion for. (FHA 4, 35;
Herder 2002, 294)

It is important to note, however, that when Herder thinks of different cultures

and physical circumstances shaping humans in different ways, he gives historical
examples, not synchronic ones, and his descriptions of these imply a sequence
with a definite direction:
One can also see why in reality no nation after another, even with all the accoutrements of
the latter, ever became what the other was. Even if all the resources of their cultures were
the same, their culture was never the same because always all the influences of the old,
now-changed nature needed for that were already missing . . . . Also, into no land has
civilization [Bildung] been able to take a step back so as to become a second time what it
was: the path of fate is iron and strict. The scene of that time, that world, is already over;
the purposes for which they were destined to exist, are past. (FHA 4, 87–8; Herder 2002,
339–40)
 STEPHEN GAUKROGER 

This developmental strategy is crucial to Herder’s understanding of the relations

between cultures. It is very much part of the Enlightenment notion of develop-
ment towards maturity, and the diachronic modelling of the relation between
cultures shapes how one thinks of co-existing cultures. But the last stage in the
sequence does not provide the kind of vantage point that it does for Diderot and
d’Alembert. As John Zammito points out, the aim of Herder’s ‘history of man-
kind’ was not to trace the trajectory of ‘progress’, but ‘to discriminate the varieties
of human excellence’ (Zammito 2002, 333). Moreover, he does not assume—as
did Diderot and d’Alembert—that there is a single sequence for all cultures.
For Herder and his German contemporaries, what was important was that their
culture could trace a direct lineage to that of classical antiquity, and that is why
the values of classical antiquity were so important to it (see Leifer 1963;
Marchand 1996; Taminaux 1967; Williamson 2004).
Herder’s project for an anthropology worked in terms of naturalization, that is,
opening up questions that had previously been treated as purely conceptual or a
priori to empirical investigation. But this did not mean that he assimilated
cognitive values generally to scientific ones. Quite the contrary, the value of a
culture lay in its broadly aesthetic culture, not in its scientific culture, because in
its most crucial respects a civilization was a manifestation of its aesthetic culture.

*
In conclusion, let me sum up Herder’s anthropological project. Three elements
can be distinguished in it. The first is the claim that the route to the understand-
ing of the mind is that of empirical psychology. The idea of an empirical
psychology comes from Wolff and its scope was widened and its standing
enhanced in Baumgarten. Herder takes Baumgarten’s innovations further, making
empirical psychology not only autonomous with respect to rational psychology,
but able to accomplish all the tasks that rational psychology had claimed as its
own, not least those of organizing and making sense of experience. The second is
the idea that language is integral to thought, shaping it, not merely being an
expression of it. This conception owes a great deal to Condillac, but it required a
workable account of the origin of language, and this Condillac failed to provide.
Herder identifies the problem and argues for a non-evolutionary but nevertheless
naturalistic account of language, tightening the connection between thought and
language by stressing the idea that the cognitive dimension of language is integral
to it, not something that it could have lacked at some stage in some postulated
evolution. Language becomes the vehicle for cognition. The third ingredient is
the idea that language is a historico-cultural phenomenon. It is from the aesthetic
tradition of Winckelmann and Lessing that Herder takes this idea. Winckelmann
 THE ROLE OF AESTHETICS IN HERDER ’ S ANTHROPOLOGY

establishes the compatibility of aesthetic rationalism—the belief in absolute

aesthetic values—with viewing the plastic arts as made possible by, and as
distinctive products of, definite historical cultures. Lessing set out to topple the
plastic arts from the role of aesthetic standard, reinstating literature in this role,
but he followed Winckelmann in the idea that it was the aesthetic products of the
culture of classical antiquity that set the standard. Aesthetics is crucial to Herder’s
project, and he operates with a highly aestheticized conception of language in
which expression rather than just representation is crucial. This conception is
complemented by his understanding of different languages as expressing differ-
ent conceptions in his treatment of interpretation and translation. And the ability
of different languages to generate and express different conceptions paves the
way for Herder to develop a more general account of different mentalities.6
These three elements together help to provide the basis on which to explore
what different mentalities tell us about the human condition: in many respects,
they are constitutive of Herder’s anthropology. In the practical realm, philosoph-
ical anthropology was directed towards Bildung, the cultural formation of char-
acter. Here the true significance of aesthetics comes to light. The cultivation of
character based on an aesthetic model, as opposed to the traditional religious,
metaphysical, or humanist models, or the newer socio-political and medical ones,
was to prove a powerful and lasting conception.

References
Aarsleff, Hans (1982). ‘The Tradition of Condillac: The Problem of the Origin of
Language in the Eighteenth Century and the Debate in the Berlin Academy before
Herder’, in Aarsleff, From Locke to Saussure: Essays on the Study of Language and
Intellectual History (London), 146–209.
Adler, Hans (1990). Die Prägnanz des Dunklen: Gnoseologie, Ästhetik, Geschichtsphilosophie
bei J. G. Herder (Hamburg).
Albury, William Randall (1972). ‘The Logic of Condillac and the Structure of French
Chemical and Biological Theory, 1780–1801’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Johns
Hopkins University.
Baumgarten, Alexander (1739). Metaphysica (Halle).
Baumgarten, Alexander (1740). Ethica philosophica (Halle).
Baumgarten, Alexander(1750–8). Aesthetica (2 vols, Frankfurt an der Oder).
Baumgarten, Alexander (1760). Initia philosophiae practicae primae (Halle).
Baumgarten, Alexander (1763). Ius naturae (Halle).

6
It also leads him to a very intellectualized notion of culture: economic, commercial, legal aspects
of material culture are entirely missing. See Broce 1986, 150–70.
 STEPHEN GAUKROGER 

Beiser, Frederick C. (2009). Diotoma’s Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from

Leibniz to Lessing (Oxford).
Broce, Gerald (1986). ‘Herder and Ethnography’, Journal of the History of the Behavioural
Sciences vol. 22, 150–70.
Buchenau, Stefanie (2013). The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment:
The Art of Invention and the Invention of Art (Cambridge).
Denby, David (2005). ‘Herder: Culture, Anthropology and the Enlightenment’, History of
the Human Sciences vol. 18, 55–76.
Forster, Michael (2010). After Herder: Philosophy of Language in the German Tradition
(Oxford).
Gaukroger, Stephen (2012). Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford).
Herder, Johann Gottfried (1766–7). Fragmente über die neuere deutsche Literatur (Riga).
Herder, Johann Gottfried (1772). Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache (Berlin).
Herder, Johann Gottfried (2002). Philosophical Writings (Cambridge).
Leifer, Walter (1963). Hellas in deutschen Geistesleben (Bad Herrenalb).
Lifschitz, Avi (2012). Language and Enlightenment (Oxford).
Marchand, Suzanne L. (1996). Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in
Germany, 1750–1970 (Princeton).
Maupertuis, Pierre-Louis Moreau de (1756). ‘Dissertation sur les différens moyens dont
les hommes se sont servis pour exprimer leurs idées’, Histoire de l’Academie, 1754
(Berlin), 349–64.
Mücke, Dorothea E. von (1990). ‘Language as the Mark of the Soul: Herder’s Narcissistic
Subject’, in Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, ed., Herder Today (Berlin), 331–44.
Parslow, Christopher Charles (1995). Rediscovering Antiquity: Karl Weber and the
Excavation of Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabiae (Cambridge).
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1755). Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité
parmi les hommes (Amsterdam).
Stocking, George W. (1968). Race, Culture and Evolution: Essays in the History of
Anthropology (New York).
Süßmilch, Johann Peter (1766). Versuch eines Beweises, daß die erste Sprache ihren
Ursprung nicht vom Menschen, sondern allein vom Schöpfer erhalten habe (Berlin).
Taminaux, Jacques (1967). La nostaglie de la Grèce à l’aube de l’idéalisme allemand
(The Hague).
Williamson, George S. (2004). The Longing for Myth in Germany: Religion and Aesthetic
Culture from Romanticism to Nietzsche (Chicago).
Wolff, Christian (1732). Psychologia empirica, methodo scientifica pertractata, qua ea,
quae de anima humana indubia experientiae fide constant, continentur (2nd edn,
Frankfurt and Leipzig).
Zammito, John (2002). Kant, Herder and the Birth of Anthropology (Chicago).
 6
Understanding as Explanation
The Significance of Herder’s and Goethe’s
Science of Describing

Dalia Nassar

In the 1880s, Wilhelm Dilthey offered an important methodological distinction

between the human and the natural sciences: while the natural sciences “explain,”
the human sciences “understand.” The natural sciences offer an account of cause-
effect relations, while the humanities, Dilthey argued, provide an account of
mental expressions; the latter’s aim is not to explain how an idea is caused or
to trace it back to an effect. Rather, the goal of the humanities is to make explicit,
determinate, and actual the implicit, indeterminate, and potential states of mind.1
Dilthey’s aim was, in part, to protect human actions and expressions from the
causal explanations of the increasingly prevalent natural sciences.2
This distinction between the natural sciences and the humanities has become a
cornerstone of our understanding of their respective aims and significance, as
evident in its various reiterations over the twentieth century (mostly famously in
C. P. Snow’s idea of the “two cultures”). However, although this methodological
separation has partly achieved its aim of protecting the humanities from natural-
scientific explanations, it has also contributed to the increasing fragmentation of
knowledge and to a certain dissonance in our understanding of the human being.
For these reasons, over the last few decades there have been a number of attempts
to facilitate dialogues between the sciences and humanities and develop greater
interdisciplinarity.3 The most recent and arguably most significant of these

1 2
Dilthey, 1990, 318. Beiser, 2011, 347.
3
See for instance the collection of essays on the “third culture,” Schaffer, ed., 1998.
 DALIA NASSAR 

attempts emerged out of environmental concerns.4 After all, the environmental

crisis is, as Val Plumwood has argued, not merely a biological or physical crisis,
but also a “crisis of reason.”5 That is to say, it is inseparable from the ways in
which we conceive and represent the natural world and our place within it.6
Thus, our ethical and political responses to the crisis must assess our conceptual
tools and the methods by which we approach nature. For this reason, any serious
attempt to understand the breadth and implications of the environmental crisis
must take account of insights from both the natural sciences and the humanities.
This means that the long-held distinctions between the human and the natural
sciences must be reconsidered, both in relation to their subject matter and their
methodologies.7 What might such a reconsideration involve and how would it
challenge, or learn from, Dilthey’s distinction? The aim of this chapter is to offer a
response to this question by examining Herder’s and Goethe’s “science of
describing,” a scientific methodology that explicitly did not seek to deliver a
causal account of the natural world.
Herder argued that the study of nature requires the use of artistic or poetic
devices. More specifically, he maintained that it is only through analogy that we can
achieve insight into natural forms.8 Goethe, in turn, undertook scientific research
inspired by Herder’s analogical methodology and further elaborated its underpin-
nings.9 Although, as I will show, Herder’s and Goethe’s notions of “description,”
“analogical reflection,” and “explanation” do not map onto Dilthey’s notions of
“understanding” and “explanation,” their claim that describing and analogical
reflection are essential for scientific knowledge furnishes an important (and
under-studied) alternative to Dilthey’s account of natural-scientific knowledge.
Thus, in contrast to Dilthey, they argued that the study of nature demands the
use of tools and methods associated with the study of literature, history, and

4
Researchers in the sciences as well as the humanities have called for this reunification of
knowledge, or, at least, increased collaboration. A good example of such a plea can be found in
Fischer et al., 2007.
5
Plumwood, 2002.
6
As Plumwood and others have argued, as soon as we begin to conceive of nature as passive,
inert, or dead, we grant ourselves permission to manipulate it and force our own purposes or goals
on it. In other words, our conception of nature fundamentally influences our practices in relation
to it.
7
This goes hand in hand with the claim that we must rethink human history in relation to
natural history. See Chakrabarty, 2009.
8
All references to Herder’s works are to Johann Gottfried Herder: Werke in zehn Bänden
(Herder, 1985–2000) [= FHA].
9
All references to Goethe’s works will be made in the body of the text as follows: MA = Goethe,
1985–98; LA = Goethe, 1947; WA = Goethe, 1887–1919.
 HERDER ’ S AND GOETHE ’ S SCIENCE OF DESCRIBING

the arts.10 Their claim, then, is not that the methods of the humanities must be
superseded—quite the opposite. Their claim is that the natural world cannot be
understood merely through causal explanation, and that causal explanation does
not exhaust the meaning of explanation. Understanding, through description and
analogical reflection, is also a form of explanation.
My first aim, then, is to consider the way in which Herder and Goethe
challenge the view that scientific knowledge amounts to causal explanations,
and to show that they arrived at this conclusion in response to a fundamentally
scientific problem. It was precisely because causal explanations faltered,
I contend, that an alternative approach based on description and analogical
reflection emerged. My second aim will be more suggestive, in that I seek to
show that this moment in the history of philosophy—and Herder’s and Goethe’s
contributions in particular—remains relevant for our contemporary methodo-
logical concerns and our attempt to bridge a gulf between the ways in which we
think about nature and culture (natural history and human history).

1 Background
It might strike the reader as odd to turn to the late eighteenth century in order to
furnish a response to a contemporary question. Additionally, the reader might
wonder about the fact that this period in the history of Western thought has often
been identified as the moment in which Dilthey’s later distinction was first
articulated and practiced. As Goethe himself retrospectively remarks, the diffi-
culties he faced as a scientist were due to the fact that by the late eighteenth
century, poets were no longer considered to be capable of making real contribu-
tions to the natural sciences (MA 12, 71–2). Thus, although poets (and philo-
sophers) were discussing nature, their approaches began to take on a vastly
different shape from the approaches of the natural scientists. The introduction
of tropes from the study of history and literature for the study of nature appears
to demonstrate the increasing distance between poets and philosophers, on the
one hand, and scientists, on the other. Or, as Axel Goodbody argues, the use of

10
Over the last decade, there has been strong interest in uncovering the extent to which the
methods of the humanities influenced the methods of the natural sciences, especially in relation to
philology. Philology was considered the science par excellence in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, and its emphasis on note-taking, collating, and indexing are regarded as precursors to the
scientific use of these same methods. See Daston and Most, 2015. My interest here is not to simply
claim that there are similar methodologies between these two modes of research, but to demonstrate
how the specific methods of describing and interpreting, and especially the use of analogy and
metaphor, played a significant role in understanding the natural world in the late eighteenth century,
and can play a similarly significant role today.
 DALIA NASSAR 

notions such as the “book of nature” or the “language of nature” in the late
eighteenth century signifies a shift in the way in which poets understood them-
selves.11 Poets came to regard themselves as doing something fundamentally
different from the natural scientists. There is some support for this view. In his
unfinished novella, The Novices at Sais (1800), Novalis distinguishes between the
scientific approach to nature, which is only concerned with dead or sick nature,
and the poetic approach. It is the latter approach, he writes, that regards nature as
a “magic writing, even a grammar . . . ”12 Similarly, Kant invokes the idea of the
book of nature in the Critique of Judgment (1790), writing that the beautiful form
of nature offers a “cipher by which nature speaks to us figuratively” (AA 5, 301).13
This beautiful form, however, must be distinguished from a cognitive (i.e.,
scientific) account of nature; the botanist, Kant contends, would not be able to
experience the flower as beautiful precisely because her engagement with the
flower is conceptual (AA 5, 229).
However, and despite Kant’s distinction between the non-conceptual experi-
ence of natural beauty and the cognition of nature, this interpretation of the
emergence of the distinction between the natural and human sciences falters in at
least two ways: first, it fails to recognize that the introduction of literary and
artistic devices emerged out of a scientific context, and was not a uniquely poetic
approach to nature; and second, it overlooks the fact that those seeking to
interpret nature regarded themselves as contributing to a scientific (rather than
a purely poetic) endeavor. Specifically, at the end of the eighteenth century,
philosophers and scientists were struggling to offer a coherent account of natural
forms. While the question of form emerged out of the struggle to grasp the
distinctive character of living beings, the concern with form was not limited to
the attempt to offer a coherent account of life. For, as Kant explains in the
introduction to the Critique of Judgment, form is a necessary tool by which to
grasp living beings and to order and classify the natural world (AA 5, 180). It was
to achieve both of these goals that Herder and Goethe introduced poetic or
artistic devices into the study of nature.14
The aims of mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century had been to
determine the fundamental nature of reality by reducing it to one homogeneous

11 12
Goodbody, 1984, 29–30. von Hardenberg [Novalis], 1960–88, vol. 1, 199.
13
All citations to Kant are to Gesammelte Schriften (Kant, 1900–) [=AA]. English translations
used are Kant, 2000.
14
Thus Herder writes in the Ideen that his aim is to inaugurate “a new world of knowledge,”
which would bring together various scientific disciplines and show the influence of chemistry and
electricity, climate, and geography “on the mineral and plant kingdoms and on men and women”
(FHA 6, 38). See also Goethe’s studies of granite, basalt and clouds (all in MA 12) and most famously
his Farbenlehre (MA 10).
 HERDER ’ S AND GOETHE ’ S SCIENCE OF DESCRIBING

stuff, matter, and explicating its actions and behaviors according to a set of laws
based on mathematically tractable motion in space. Newton introduced the
notion of force in order to explain the relations between non-impact objects,
but maintained the fundamental view that matter, along with efficient causality as
realized in the laws of motion, and various (mainly passive) forces (invoked in
order to make sense of the ways in which bodies move in space), are the
fundamental principles according to which reality can be understood.15 This
perspective ran into difficulties in the mid-eighteenth century, when repeated
attempts to explain animal generation according to mechanical principles failed.
What became apparent was that matter, efficient causality, and passive forces
simply could not account for the active character of the material bodies of living
beings or for the fact that living beings maintained their forms through their
development, growth, and reproduction. Thus, nourishment and growth, gener-
ation and reproduction demanded a different set of explanatory principles.16 The
fact that the polyp could be cut in half and grow its missing parts anew, so that
out of one polyp two emerged, led to the question of how a material body could
spontaneously generate new parts. Where did these parts come from, if they had
not previously existed in the body? How could new parts emerge at all? Some
force or drive, it appeared, must exist that is internal to matter and that makes
this generation possible. But what would such a force be? Is it some kind of active
(but blind) Newtonian force? Or is it an intelligent force, with a purpose? If this
force were blind, how is it the case that a human always generates a human, a
chicken always a chicken, etc.? Or, as Albrecht von Haller put it, how is it that the
eyes are always in the right place, and never on the knee?17 In other words, how
can you explain form from force?

15
The key point is that for the mechanical philosophers, the aim was not to grasp the distinctive
character of material beings, but to determine the laws according to which homogeneous matter
moves in space. Thus the forces that Newton invokes are specifically concerned with illuminating
motion, and, as he puts it in Query 31 of the Opticks, are not at all concerned with distinguishing the
specific character of these material bodies. This is a clear departure from the Aristotelian emphasis
on form (and hence specificity) and the interdependence of form and matter. As we shall see, Herder
and Goethe reintroduce form as an essential natural-scientific category or tool. Thus, the crucial
difference between the forces invoked by mechanical philosophy and Herder’s and Goethe’s science
of describing is that for the former, scientific knowledge is knowledge of the laws of motion and of
the forces that are implied by these laws, while for the latter these laws of motion (including the
active and passive forces that they imply) are inadequate explications of the specific forms of nature.
On the development of mechanical philosophy and its failure to offer a comprehensive account of
various natural phenomena, see Gaukroger, 2011.
16
For a lucid overview of the debates in eighteenth-century theories of generation, see Roe, 2003.
17
von Haller, 1981, 320. For a detailed account of the debate between the two most well-known
proponents of preformation (Haller) and epigenesis (C. F. Wolff) on the question of animal
generation, see Roe, 1981.
 DALIA NASSAR 

These were the questions that troubled the mid-eighteenth century, and the
last of these, the question on the relation between form and force, was the most
significant. For it became increasingly apparent that natural forms and the
formation of these forms were simply not explicable through any conception of
force. Form implies specificity and distinctness as well as a certain continuity over
space and time, while force implies generality and non-distinctness and thus
cannot function as a means by which to explain continuity between species across
geographic and temporal distances.
The question then was: how can we derive distinct forms from the sources that
mechanical philosophy offered, i.e., matter, efficient causality, and a variety of
active and passive forces? The debates surrounding this question continued well
into the late eighteenth century, with competing accounts seeking to offer
explanations of development. I will not go into this debate, but simply note
that the aim was to resolve the question of derivation, more specifically, the
derivation of form from force.18 Underlying this debate was a fundamental
methodological assumption, namely, to explain natural forms it was necessary
to offer a causal account, so that form should be causally derivable from that
which is unformed (matter, or matter and force, or matter in space). This is the
essence of a scientific explanation; yet, with increasingly failed attempts to offer
any such explanation, it began to falter.

2 Kant on Explanation versus Description

Kant is an important segue point in this story, because his work evidences a
transition from an account of science as causal explanation, i.e., derivation from
necessary and universal laws of motion, to an account of science as the science of
describing natural forms. Although Kant remained opposed to the idea of a
“science of describing,” his later work, especially the Critique of Judgment,
evidences a greater appreciation of the significant role that describing can play
in scientific knowledge—not, it is important to add, as the casual or informal
description of physical phenomena (such as a travel narrative), but as a system-
atic description of forms.

18
This was the specific aim of epigenesis, because, unlike preformation which assumed a pre-
formed germ or seed at the beginning of existence (from the moment of creation), epigenesis argued
that no such germ can be seen, and that growth is the transformation of what is originally unformed.
The most radical epigenetic position was put forth by C. F. Wolff, who, in order to explicate form,
invoked the notion of force (vis essentialis). Blumenbach invoked the notion of a “formative drive”
(Bildungstrieb) in contrast to what he saw as Wolff ’s “blind” force, which lacks any determination
and thus cannot account for the specificity of form across time and geographic distances. See
Blumenbach, 1781, 12.
 HERDER ’ S AND GOETHE ’ S SCIENCE OF DESCRIBING

In his essay on physical geography from 1775, Kant distinguishes “natural

history” from mere description, with the aim of making natural history into a
proper science. The key, he explains, is to “transform the currently diffuse
systems of academic natural description into a physical system for the under-
standing [i.e., science]” (AA 2, 434). In other words, he continues, natural history
must “bring forward purposive causes where natural ones are not easily dis-
cerned, and natural ones where we cannot observe purposes” (AA 2, 435). What
distinguishes the science of natural history from mere description is that the
former offers a causal explanation of natural phenomena, while the latter is a
mere collection of data.
Kant reiterates this distinction in his 1788 essay on the use of teleological
judgment, where he differentiates natural history from travel narrative. Travel
narrative does not tell us anything “of a purposive nature,” because such a thing
could not be found “through mere empirical groping without a guiding principle
of what to search for . . . ” This is in contrast to the science of natural history,
which would consist “in tracing back, as far as the analogy permits, the connec-
tion between certain present-day conditions of the things in nature and their
causes in earlier times according to laws of efficient causality . . . ” (AA 8, 61).
Kant again draws a line between science and description in the Critique of
Judgment, where he identifies science with explanation, adding that “to explain is
to derive from a principle [denn erklären heißt von einem Prinzip ableiten].” This
scientific explanatory model is contrasted to insight achieved through teleological
judgment. Kant identifies teleological judgment with “description [Beschreibung]”
(AA 5, 417) and “elucidation [Erörterung]” (AA 5, 412), because although it is “a
necessary maxim of reason,” it “does not make the way in which these products
have originated more comprehensible . . . ” (AA 5, 411). In other words, it does not
offer a causal explanation. For this reason, he maintains, teleological judgment
does “not constitute a proper part of theoretical natural science” (AA 5, 383).
Science, then, involves the determination of causes, which is what Kant takes to
be explanation. Description, by contrast, cannot derive or determine objects
through their causes, and thus does not furnish science. Underlying Kant’s
distinction is his conception of necessity: precisely because explanation deter-
mines or derives an object from a priori principles, it can furnish scientific
necessity; description, even if guided by the principle of teleological judgment,
does not proceed according to a priori legislation and thus does not result in
necessary knowledge.19

19
This explains Kant’s distinction between “proper science [eigentliche Wissenschaft]” and
“improper science” in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786). Proper science is
 DALIA NASSAR 

Yet, and despite Kant’s injunction against the idea of a science of describing,
his contemporaries were developing precisely such a science. Herder, as well as
Goethe, came to the conclusion that to understand natural forms, it was neces-
sary to develop an alternative to the causal model of scientific explanation. That is
to say, they both realized that to understand natural diversity, the relations
among natural beings, and the distinctive character of living beings, it was
necessary to focus on their forms, rather than attempt to derive them from the
universal laws of motion. In this way, they challenged Kant’s identification of
scientific knowledge with explanation and a priori derivation, arguing that
description too can achieve scientific insight. This did not mean, however, that
the science of describing amounted to merely contingent knowledge; rather, as a
science based in observation, the science of describing that Herder and Goethe
developed did not exclude necessary knowledge or scientific insight. In fact,
Goethe came to the conclusion that it is only via description that explanation—
and thus necessity—can be achieved. In this sense, Herder and Goethe stand
opposed not only to Kant, but also to a large number of philosophers, who
argued that empirical knowledge can only be probable or contingent, but
never necessary.20
While they did not always use Kant’s word “description” to speak of their
scientific enterprise, Herder and Goethe were aware of the distinction he drew
between description and explanation, and Herder even employed it, possibly in
order to distance his position from Kant’s. Goethe, in turn, developed the science
of description par excellence, morphology. Kant’s disapproval and rejection of
Herder’s methodology is well known.21 And one can assume that had he become
familiar with Goethe’s science of form, he would have rejected it too. My aim is
not to discuss Kant’s, Herder’s, and Goethe’s reciprocal critiques, but rather to
consider the meaning and significance of the methodology that Herder and
Goethe developed. More specifically, my goal is to show that Herder’s and
Goethe’s move to a science of describing did not imply a move away from
scientific knowledge or a giving up on necessity. Rather, it implied rethinking
the meaning of knowledge and necessity and in this way ushered in an important

the domain in which “certainty is apodictic” (AA 4, 468). This means that it must proceed according
to a priori or rational construction (it must construct matter purely rationally), which is itself based
on mathematics. Thus, Kant writes that “in any special doctrine of nature there can be only as much
proper science as there is mathematics therein” (AA 4, 470).
20
In other words, their empiricism stands in contrast to the British empiricist tradition in
general, and to Hume in particular.
21
For a comprehensive study of Kant and Herder’s relationship, see Zammito, 2002. For a
discussion of Kant’s critique of Herder’s methodology, see Nassar, 2015.
 HERDER ’ S AND GOETHE ’ S SCIENCE OF DESCRIBING

(and I think under-studied) shift in the sense and significance of necessary

knowledge after Kant. As I will suggest in the concluding section, Kant too
eventually came to recognize the significance of the science of describing. But
first, let us turn Herder’s attempt to furnish a science of natural forms.

3 Herder
Well before the third Critique, Herder argued that knowledge of nature and
scientific discovery involve an artistic way of seeing. “Newton,” he writes in an
essay from 1778, “became a poet contrary to his wishes,” and, like Buffon, “gave
birth to the greatest and boldest theories” through “a single new image [Bild], a
single analogy [Analogie], a single striking metaphor [auffallendes Gleichnis]”
(FHA 4, 330). For this reason, Herder concludes, it is a mistake to overlook or
underestimate the role of metaphor, analogy, and artistic description in scientific
insight. It is only through these devices that we can grasp the distinctive forms
and varieties of natural phenomena and thus order the natural world.
Herder realizes his ideas in the Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der
Menschheit (1784–5), where he develops an integrated account of natural order
through comparative description, metaphor, and analogy. He begins with a bold
affirmation of his position: if we want to do more than “play with sweet words,”
then we must dig deeper into the “analogy of nature [Analogie der Natur].” Only
by examining “nature’s totally reigning similarity,” Herder continues, can we
begin “to gather hope” (FHA 6, 165). The hope to which Herder alludes is the
hope of establishing a coherent and meaningful account of natural order and
diversity. And it can be fulfilled only if we begin to see nature analogically. Why is
this the case?
According to Herder, analogical reflection is a seeing of one thing through or
as another. Or, as he puts it, analogy means studying one object “in the other,”
such that “the one explains the other” (FHA 6, 73–4). His claim is that it is only
by placing two objects alongside and in relation to one another—seeing the one
in the other—that insight into either can be achieved.
Importantly, the analogical seeing-as that Herder invokes implies not just any
kind of comparison, but the specific comparison of forms. For, he notes, “we
cannot perceive in the inner realm of nature’s forces; it is thus in vain and
unnecessary to desire internal, essential inference, no matter what circumstance
it concerns. But the effects and forms [Wirkungen und Formen] of her power lie
before us . . . ” (FHA 6, 165). This means that analogical reflection cannot grant
insight into a hidden cause or intention, into what does not appear before us,
through some kind of inference. In other words, the aim of analogical reflection is
 DALIA NASSAR 

not to infer the cause of one thing by comparison with another. Analogical
reflection thus does not offer an explanation in Kant’s sense. Rather, analogical
reflection is concerned with seeing the structure and form of an object through or
in the structure and form of another object. It must therefore remain with what is
perceived—with the effects and forms observed in nature—and not move to infer
or identify their causes. It is for this reason, I think, that Herder repeatedly
distinguishes analogical reflection from explanation: “I do not say that I hereby
explain [erkläre] anything; I have not yet known any philosophy that explains
what force is, whether force stirs in a single being or two beings. What philosophy
does is observe [bemerken], order [ordnen] together, elucidate [erläutern] . . . ”
(FHA 4, 338–9).
It might appear that Herder’s focus on form and structure means that ana-
logical reflection concerns superficial or surface phenomena, without serious
investigation of the internal make-up of an object. Moreover, it is not clear how
analogical reflection can furnish a resolution to the problem of form, i.e., by
overcoming the explanatory gap between the formed and the unformed. Finally,
if analogical reflection is merely description or elucidation, then in what sense can
it achieve scientific insight? The three points are related. For the question ultim-
ately is: what is the outcome of analogical reflection—does it grant us insight
beyond contingent, superficial knowledge and how does it deliver something
other than a generalizing concept that is not divorced from the phenomenon?
To answer these questions, we must consider the structure of analogical
thinking more carefully. In an analogy, the connector “as” in contrast to “is”
does not imply identity, which would in turn imply subsumption under a shared
general concept. Rather, the “as” contains both the difference and similarity of
the two elements, beholding the like and unlike simultaneously, without collaps-
ing their relation into a relation of identity. There is thus no move to an abstract
concept, no transition from empirically grounded observation and comparison to
a concept that is divested of difference and particularity. Rather, by referring to
both elements at once, by regarding them in and through one another, analogical
reflection maintains a tension that obstructs any such transition. What emerges
out of this tension is not an abstract concept that precludes difference, but insight
into the relation between the two elements; insight that maintains the likeness
and unlikeness of the two elements. For it is only by seeing the two elements in
and through one another that they emerge as objects of knowledge.
Herder elaborates this insight by providing examples from nature. It is only by
seeing fish, for instance, in relation to birds, by seeing the form of a fish in and
through that of a bird, that we gain insight into the similarities and differences of
their parts, discern the ways in which their structures mirror their contexts, and
 HERDER ’ S AND GOETHE ’ S SCIENCE OF DESCRIBING

begin to grasp the significance of their structures. Thus, Herder writes, “The bird
flies in the air,” such that “every divergence of its form from the build of land
animals can be explicated through its element . . . The fish swims in water; its feet
and hands are grown into fin and tail: it has only little articulation of its members”
(FHA 6, 75–6). As Herder sees it, it is only by seeing the fish in relation to other
forms and within its environment that we can grasp its distinctive structure and
unity; and it is only after grasping its distinctive structural unity that we can begin to
consider its development in causal terms. In other words, to claim that fish was
formed in such and such a way (i.e., to offer a genetic-causal account) assumes that
we grasp the form of the fish and the relation between this form and its current
context. Ultimately, form (and the illumination of form through comparison) is,
according to Herder, the first port of call for any account of the natural world.
By comparing the structure of birds and fish, humans and other animals,
Herder suggests, we begin to understand their relationships, discern their dis-
tinctive yet related characters, and thus gain insight into similarities within
nature that do not imply identity. Furthermore, by seeing the bird in its element,
and comparing it to fish and terrestrial animals, we see the extent to which its
structure is in dialogue with its context, and thus arrive at an insight of the ways
in which it both differs from and reiterates the structure of other animals.
But what exactly does it mean to regard natural objects as reiterations of other
natural objects? I think this is the key point, and it is what makes analogical reflection
so central for Herder. For it means, first, seeing unity in the differences between the
objects; it also means discerning continuity without reducing it to identity; and it
means finding meaning in what at first sight appears meaningless or chaotic.
But it means more. For it points to an underlying structure or prototype—what
Herder calls a Hauptform. As he puts it, the notion that natural forms reiterate one
another reveals a “certain uniformity of structure [gewissen Einförmigkeit des
Baues]” in the most diverse beings (FHA 6, 73). This uniformity is evident, for
example, in the “similar skeletal structure of land animals . . . the head, the back, the
hands the feet are the main parts in all of them. Even their finest members,” Herder
adds “are formed according to one prototype and at the same time infinitely varied
[nach einem Prototyp gebildet und gleichsam unendlich variieret].”
Herder does not offer a detailed explication of the Hauptform; nonetheless, on
the basis of his remarks, we can conclude the following: As “one prototype” that
is “at the same time infinitely varied,” the Hauptform is like a musical theme that
appears only in variation.22 Just as the prototype is at once both one and many, so
a musical theme is simultaneously one and many; as a theme in variation, the
Hauptform is only in its variations, even if it is only one theme.

22
I thank Luke Fischer for pointing out the parallel between the Hauptform and a musical theme
in variation.
 DALIA NASSAR 

The Hauptform, then, is not a concept that subsumes the observed particulars
under an abstract unity; rather, it is a unity that emerges out of, or, better, that
resides in, the particular; it is not separable from its particular manifestations, for
it only appears in variation—in reiteration. This means that the Hauptform is not
an object in the world, something that can be seen immediately with the eyes.
Rather, because it is only in variation, more is required for it to be seen. This is
where analogical reflection becomes necessary.
What analogical reflection brings forth, then, is not a static or abstract
concept, nor is it something that is merely empirically perceived. Rather,
through analogical reflection we gain insight into how something appears,
i.e., how its structure differs from or reflects its context, how its forms
anticipate similar yet different forms in other beings, or how what is implicit
in one object becomes explicit in another. By emphasizing the how rather
than the what or why, analogical reflection moves from empirical observation
to intelligible insight (the Hauptform) without recourse to abstraction, that is,
without invoking an external cause or hidden intention (a force of some kind
or a purpose), or applying a general principle in order to make the particular
object intelligible. The insight achieved through analogical reflection is nei-
ther a pure or purely intelligible idea, nor is it merely empirical data; rather it
hovers somewhere between the two and might be described as an idea in
motion: insight into an object achieved by seeing it through its relations and
in its various contexts over time; an idea that is not reducible to any
particular object, but is realized in various objects and can be realized in
future objects.
Given the peculiar status or place that the Hauptform occupies, it is difficult to
determine its significance: is it real? Or, more to the point, is it necessary? After
all, necessity is—for Kant at least—the mark of science, such that the scientific
significance of the Haupform should be considered in relation to its necessity.
Herder makes suggestions regarding the necessity of analogical reflection and the
Hauptform. His suggestions, however, remain theoretical, in that he does not
actually employ the idea of the Hauptform in order to undertake scientific
research. It was Goethe, propelled by Herder’s ideas and his method, who
undertook such research. In so doing, I think, he offered the most compelling
evidence for the necessity of the Hauptform.

4 Goethe
Although Goethe did not formulate the theoretical foundations of his practice
until late in his life, his early investigations into the human intermaxillary bone as
well as the archetypal plant were fundamentally inspired by Herder’s notion of a
 HERDER ’ S AND GOETHE ’ S SCIENCE OF DESCRIBING

Hauptform. For it was in a letter to Herder that Goethe first spoke of his discovery
of the bone and it was also in a letter to Herder that Goethe described his findings
at the botanical gardens in Palermo and formulated the notion of an Urpflanze.
Goethe’s later methodological writings similarly reflect key insights learned from
Herder. Thus, in the Preface to the Farbenlehre (1810), Goethe writes that “any
attempt to express the inner nature of things is fruitless. What we perceive are
effects [Wirkungen], and a complete record of these effects ought to encompass
this inner nature. We labor in vain to describe a person’s character, but when
we draw together her actions, her deeds, a picture of her character emerges”
(MA 10, 9). Elsewhere he notes that the scientist should not seek “higher rules
and laws, which do not, however, reveal themselves to the understanding through
words and hypotheses, but . . . [dedicate himself] to seeing through phenomena.
We call them Urphenomena, because there is nothing higher than them in the
world of appearance” (LA 1/4, 71).
Goethe, however, went further than Herder, both in his practice as well as in
his theoretical understanding of the significance of analogical reflection. While he
agreed with Herder’s view that we must remain with the appearances—that it is
in and through the appearances that we can gain insight and understanding of
what is before us—he additionally showed that analogical reflection results in
necessary insight. Let me explain.
It was Herder’s notion of a Hauptform, of a “certain uniformity of structure,”
that inspired Goethe to search for and locate the intermaxillary bone in human
beings. It was, furthermore, Herder’s analogical method that led Goethe to
discover the missing link in the human structure. For, as he reports in a letter
to Herder from March 27, 1784, “I have found it—neither gold nor silver, but
something that makes me unspeakably happy—the os intermaxillare in the
human! With Loder I compared human and animal skulls, came upon its trace,
and saw that it is” (WA 4/6, 258). Through comparing human and animal skulls,
and relying on the idea of a Hauptform or, as Goethe came to call it, Urtypus,
Goethe was able to “see” the intermaxillary bone in the human structure. Now,
what he saw was not a replica of the bone that he saw in other animals; rather, it
was a variation or a transformation (a reiteration, if you like) of the Hauptform in
the human.
Thus Herder’s idea of a Hauptform in animals did not only inspire Goethe’s
investigations, but also guided his research. More specifically, it put him in a
position from which he knew what to look for and how to look for it. On the basis
of the Hauptform, he knew not to look for a replica of the bone of other animal
structure. He also knew that to find the bone in the human, he must take account
of the human organism as a whole and compare it to the structure of other
 DALIA NASSAR 

animals in their wholeness. In other words, he had to look for the bone within its
larger context and in relation to its environment. This did not mean that he
sought to derive the form from its historical or geographical context, but rather to
discern it in relation to its context. He knew, furthermore, that the human bone
may not appear like the animal bone; over time it may have undergone vast
alterations so that it no longer bears any perceptible similarity to the animal
structure. The similarity, then, is not necessarily to be found in the perceptible
appearance, but in the structural and formal integrity of the whole. These
considerations are all provided by the idea of the Hauptform.
Importantly, Goethe was certain that he would find the intermaxillary
bone; this certainty was founded on his view that the Hauptform is not an
arbitrary or subjective invention, but possesses necessity, or reality. The kind
of necessity it possesses, however, differs from Kant’s conception of necessity;
the Hautpform, after all, is not something that can be propositionally proven
nor does it provide principles from which to draw necessary conclusions. It is
not a general (and thereby universal) concept under which particulars can be
subsumed. It is, rather, a position, a way of regarding nature, which can be
and is confirmed by experience. The Hauptform allowed Goethe to look for
the intermaxillary bone, and, upon his discovery, gave confirmation of the
idea. Others, Camper and Blumenbach, had compared human and animal
skulls, but did not find the bone.23 What distinguished Goethe was the
position from which he investigated the various animal skulls, the position
that enabled him to see natural variation as manifestations of an underlying
structural integrity.
In this sense the Hauptform is not just a regulative idea or an investigative
guide, as it is in Kant. It is also a point of view or position. As a position,
furthermore, it enables actual discovery, i.e., its insights are confirmed by experi-
ence. Thus, by discovering the intermaxillary bone, Goethe did not simply
discover a bone, or prove continuity between humans and other animals; he
also illustrated the significance, and necessity, of the Hauptform. Precisely
because the Hauptform was confirmed in experience, because it revealed some-
thing real about the world, it is neither a merely subjective or arbitrary idea, nor
simply a regulative idea that can have no confirmation in experience.
The kind of necessity at play here is distinctive; it does not involve predictability
or derivation, but concerns a lawfulness that enables understanding and is con-
firmed in experience. To regard Herder’s and Goethe’s methods as based on

23
For an account of the differences in the methods and assumptions of Goethe, Camper, and
Blumenbach, see Feigenbaum, 2015.
 HERDER ’ S AND GOETHE ’ S SCIENCE OF DESCRIBING

necessary insight, i.e., on the Hauptform, thus requires rethinking the meaning of
necessity and explanation. To explain, for Herder and Goethe, is not to derive from
a principle (whether the laws of motion, passive or active forces, or a priori
principles) or determine an object through an external cause; it means, rather, to
grasp its structure, discern its integrity, see how it relates to and differs from other
objects. To study the form of an object is not to derive the form from something
other than itself, but to discern it by way of comparison—with other forms and
over historical and geographic differences. This means that to understand it in its
context is not to seek to explain it via its context, but to grasp its distinctive structure
in relation to its environment and history. Necessity, in turn, means seeing how a
particular object manifests a necessary structure; how this object, in turn, trans-
forms or adds to this structure; it means, ultimately, seeing unity in diversity. As
such, explanation does not require departing from the appearances, but remaining
with the appearances and finding necessity (structural integrity) within them.

5 Conclusion
At this point, it is helpful to pause and consider the implications of Herder’s and
Goethe’s methodology. For the claim is that the study of nature demands the
study of forms, not in order to determine their origins through a causal explan-
ation, but through a comparative approach, in which one form is studied in and
through another, similar yet different, form. This approach does not aim to grasp
the phenomenon through something else—through its material make-up,
through some efficient or final cause, or through an animating, occult force.
For it does not seek to explain in the Kantian sense, but rather describe and
elucidate the phenomenon. Thus Herder and Goethe remain on the level of
phenomenological description. However, it would be mistaken to identify this
description with something like a travel narrative. For although it is not a causal
explanation, their approach is not non-explanatory, or non-illuminating. Rather,
their approach illuminates the structure of the phenomenon, by situating it in a
particular place, grasping it in relation to other similar structures, discerning the
relations between its parts, and determining the relation between their form, their
place within the whole, and their function. As such, it shows us nature in a
different way, a way that does not reduce a phenomenon to something other than
itself. And, importantly, it offers us a way by which to resolve the problem of
form: form need not be reduced to any cause or force, because it is itself the
starting point, or the object of science.
Historically this was certainly the case. Biology as a distinctive field emerged
precisely when form became an object of investigation. Or, as Hans Driesch put
 DALIA NASSAR 

it: “it is form particularly which can be said to occupy the very centre of biological
interest; at least it furnishes the foundation of all biology.”24 From at least this
perspective, then, Kant’s and Dilthey’s distinction between explanation and
understanding, and their identification of the former with science, is problematic.
There are, however, systematic reasons, and not only historical ones, for
embracing Herder’s and Goethe’s phenomenological account, and challenging
the view that scientific explanation amounts to a causal explanation. By way of
conclusion, I will turn once again to Kant, to examine the reasons why he
introduced teleological judgment, and, in this way, hope to show how a non-
causal explanation of nature can offer an important account of the natural
world—an account that may be relevant for current methodological discussions.
The aim of the second part of the Critique of Judgment was to resolve the
problem of classifying and ordering natural forms, and to explain the distinctive
form of organized beings. Kant introduces the problem by discussing the form of
a bird in the first section of the “Critique of Teleological Judgment.” He writes:

if one adduces, e.g., the structure of a bird, the hollowness of its bones, the placement of its
wings for movement and of its tail for steering, etc., one says that given the mere nexus
effectivus in nature, without the help of a special kind of causality, namely that of ends
(nexus finalis), this is all in the highest degree contingent [zufällig]: i.e., that nature,
considered as mere mechanism, could have formed itself in a thousand different ways
without hitting precisely upon the unity in accordance with such a rule, and that it is
therefore only outside the concept of nature, not within it, that one would have even the
least ground a priori for hoping to find such a principle. (AA 5, 360)

Kant’s claim in this passage is that if one seeks to explain the bird via the
mechanical laws of motion, it appears that no such explanation is forthcoming.
All that we achieve is a sense of its contingency: it could have been completely
different; from the perspective of the mechanical laws of nature, there is nothing
necessary about its structure. However, to simply state that something is highly
unlikely does not tell us much about the thing—its structure and form, the
relations between its parts, their various functions, and the extent to which its
structure reflects its environment. In other words, while calling something
“contingent” may be appropriate from one perspective (namely, that of general
mechanics), it is inappropriate from another perspective: the perspective that
seeks to order and specify nature. The aim of the “Critique of Teleological
Judgment” is to develop a methodology that would make sense of what appears
as merely contingent from the perspective of physics. As Kant puts it in the
introduction to the third Critique, the laws of nature “as empirical, may indeed be

24
Quoted in Nyhart, 1995, 1.
 HERDER ’ S AND GOETHE ’ S SCIENCE OF DESCRIBING

contingent in accordance with the insight of our understanding, but which, if

they are to be called laws . . . must be regarded as necessary on a principle of the
unity of the manifold . . . ” (AA 5, 180). It is only through teleological judgment,
Kant contends, that empirical laws gain necessity (AA 5, 183).
Although teleological judgment does not proceed according to a priori legis-
lation, it is not haphazard. Rather, it proceeds according to the analogy between
the activity of reason and the generative capacities of living beings.25 Thus, the
description or elucidation that teleological judgment delivers specifically aims to
show how the various parts of an organized unity are in dialogue with one
another and the whole; it aims to elucidate how these parts achieve their specific
functions, and how they reflect their environment. A descriptive account based
on teleological judgment is thus an account focused on comparing the structures
of living beings, discerning their similarities and differences, without seeking to
determine their origins via a causal account of their emergence. As Kant puts it,
the investigator of life must aim not to explain the origins of living beings, but to
strive “to know their constitution through observation, without rising to the level
of an investigation into their fundamental origin” (AA 5, 389–90). That is to say,
the aim is to illuminate the “internal constitution” of organisms through prin-
cipled reflection on their form and structure (AA 5, 398). Indeed, Kant goes so far
as to maintain that it is only through the principled reflection of teleological
judgment that we can gain insight into the form and structure of the natural
world and begin to grasp living beings. As he puts it, “even the thought of [living
beings] as organized . . . is, without associating the thought of generation with
intention, impossible” (AA 5, 398). In other words, the phenomenon of organ-
ization in nature is, without the principle of teleological judgment, which is itself
based on analogy, impossible even to think.26
The distinction between an artistic way of regarding the world and a scientific
one is thus much more tenuous than Kant explicitly stated; for as he recognizes,
form is at the heart of both beauty and life, and it is the form of beauty that gives

25
See Breitenbach, 2009, esp. 96–116.
26
In the Critique of Judgment, Kant describes analogy as a presentation “in which the power of
judgment performs a double act” (AA 5, 352). More specifically, it involves a “carrying over
[Übertragung] of reflection on one object of intuition to another, quite different concept, to which
perhaps no intuition can ever directly correspond” (AA 5, 352–3). Through analogy, then, that
which is otherwise unpresentable is brought to presentation. For this reason, it is only by way of
analogical reflection (in the form of teleological judgment) that organized beings can be brought to
presentation, i.e., through analogy with the activity of reason. For an account of Kant’s use of
analogy and its proximity to Herder’s use, see Nassar 2015. For a comprehensive account of Kant’s
understanding of the analogy between nature and reason, see Breitenbach, 2009.
 DALIA NASSAR 

us the clue for investigating living beings.27 Thus, although Kant did not grant
teleological judgment scientific status, he came to recognize, with Herder and
Goethe, the significance of principled describing (i.e., in accordance with ana-
logy) for grasping living beings. He too, one can say, came to the conclusion that
understanding natural forms, and especially the forms of living beings, cannot be
based on the model of causal explanation.
My suggestion is that Herder and Goethe offer an important philosophical
challenge to the distinction between understanding (or describing) and (causal)
explanation, by demonstrating how the methods that are often associated with
the interpretation of literary texts or artistic works are necessary for the study of
nature as well. For it is only through this alternative approach that certain natural
phenomena gain significance and become meaningful objects of investigation at
all. This has important implications, both for our approach to nature and for our
attempt to develop interdisciplinary methodologies that challenge the distinc-
tions between the human and natural sciences. I propose that the model devel-
oped by Herder and Goethe emphasizing form and structure can offer an
important way forward in our attempt to carry out this project.

References
Beiser, Frederick C. 2011. The German Historicist Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich. 1781. D. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach über den Bildung-
strieb und das Zeugungsgeschäfte. Göttingen: Johann Christian Dieterich.
Breitenbach, Angela. Die Analogie von Vernunft und Natur. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2009. “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” Critical Inquiry 35
(Winter): 197–222.
Daston, Lorraine and Glenn W. Most. 2015. “History of Science and History of Philol-
ogies,” Isis 106(2): 378–90.
Dilthey, Wilhelm. 1990. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5. Edited by Georg Misch. Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Feigenbaum, Ryan. 2015. “Toward a Nonanthropocentric Vision of Nature: Goethe’s
Discovery of the Intermaxillary Bone,” Goethe Yearbook 22: 73–93.

27
He writes: “The self-sufficient beauty of nature reveals to us a technique of nature, which
makes it possible to represent it as a system in accordance with laws the principle of which we do not
encounter anywhere in our entire faculty of understanding, namely that of a purposiveness with
respect to the use of judgment in regard to appearance, so that this must be judged as belonging not
merely to nature in its purposeless mechanism but rather also to the analogy with art. Thus it
actually expands not our cognition of natural objects, but our concept of nature, namely as a mere
mechanism, into the concept of nature as art: which invites profound investigations into the
possibility of such a form” (AA 5, 246).
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Fischer, Joern et al. 2007. “Mind the Sustainability Gap,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution
22(12): 621–4.
Gaukroger, Stephen. 2011. The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science
and the Shaping of Modernity, 1680–1760. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 1887–1919. Goethes Werke (Weimarer Ausgabe). Edited by
P. Raabe et al. Weimar: Hermann Böhlau.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 1947. Die Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft. Edited by D. Kuhn
et al. Weimar: Hermann Bölhaus Nachfolger.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 1985–98. Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens
(Münchner Ausgabe). Edited by Karl Richter. Munich: Hanser.
Goodbody, Axel. 1984. Natursprache: Ein dichtungstheoretisches Konzept der Romantik und
seine Wiederaufnahme in der modernen Naturlyrik (Novalis—Eichendorff—Lehman—
Eich). Neumünster: Wachholtz.
Haller, Albrecht von. 1981. “Reflections on the Theory of Generation of Mr. Buffon,” in
From Natural History to the History of Nature: Readings from Buffon to His Critics,
214–327. Edited and translated by J. Lyon and P. R. Sloan. Notre Dame, IN: University
of Notre Dame Press.
Hardenberg, Friedrich von [Novalis]. 1960–88. Novalis Schriften: Die Werke von Friedrich
von Hardenberg. Edited by R. Samuel, H.-J. Mähl, P. Kluckhorn, and G. Schulz.
Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer.
Herder, Johann Gottfried. 1985–2000. Werke in zehn Bänden. Edited by Jürgen Brummack
and Martin Bollacher. Frankfurt am Main: Deutsche Klassiker Verlag.
Kant, Immanuel. 1900–. Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by Preußische Akademie der
Wissenschaft. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Kant, Immanuel. 2000. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Edited by Paul Guyer, trans-
lated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nassar, Dalia. 2015. “Analogy, Natural History and the Philosophy of Nature: Kant,
Herder and the Problem of Empirical Science,” Journal of the Philosophy of History 9:
240–57.
Nyhart, Lynn K. 1995. Biology Takes Form: Animal Morphology and the German Universities,
1800–1900. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Plumwood, Val. 2002. Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason. London:
Routledge.
Roe, Shirley. 1981. Matter, Life, and Generation: 18th-century Embryology and the Haller-
Wolff Debate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Roe, Shirley. 2003. “The Life Sciences,” in The Cambridge History of Science, volume 4:
The Eighteenth Century, ed. Roy Porter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schaffer, Elinor S., ed. 1998. The Third Culture: Literature and Science. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Zammito, John. 2002. Kant, Herder and the Birth of Anthropology. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
PART II

The Human Animal

Nature, Language, History, Culture
 7
Herder between Reimarus
and Tetens
The Problem of an Animal-Human Boundary

John H. Zammito

It would seem strange to inquire what animals are if it were not a means to
understand better what we ourselves are.
(Condillac, 1755, 111)

In his prizewinning Treatise on the Origin of Language of 1772, Johann Gottfried

Herder famously observed: “Condillac and Rousseau inevitably erred concerning
the origin of language because they were so famously and variously mistaken
about this difference [between animals and human beings]—since the former
made animals into human beings, and the latter made human beings into
animals” (Herder, 1772, 77). We need to set that famous quip in a wider context
and thus to situate Herder’s importance in the development of life science in late
eighteenth-century Germany. The issue of the animal-human boundary pivoted
around the unpleasant contention that if animals were machines, then humans
had to be, as well: a position very few, if any, thinkers of the epoch could
countenance (La Mettrie, 1747).1 Hence the contrapositive had to be explored:
if humans were not machines, then neither were animals. But then, what were
they? And how could they be explained? The questions divided the intellectual
community between those who believed that natural science had to have a role
in this explanation and those who believed that only a supernatural recourse
was possible.

1
La Mettrie (1747) was the decisive provocation forcing the Enlightenment to choose between a
ubiquitous mechanism including man and the recognition of the need for a different register for
understanding life forms, including the human, as well, but in a more epistemologically and
ontologically liberalized space of reasoning.
 HERDER AND THE PROBLEM OF AN ANIMAL - HUMAN BOUNDARY

Certainly, as we will explore below, Hermann Samuel Reimarus embraced the

latter view (and even Immanuel Kant leaned toward it [Kant, 1763, 114; 1790,
423–4]). By contrast, it seems that Herder was launching a line of thought that
sought to naturalize the issue (Palti, 1999; Pross, 2006; Zammito, forthcoming;
Zammito et al., 2010). His treatise on language is usually seen as a dispute with
Johann Süßmilch, rejecting the idea of a divine origin of human language, and
with the Abbé de Condillac, denying continuity with mere animal sounds
(Aarsleff, 1974, 1996; Stückrath, 1978; Frank, L., 1982; Kieffer, 1978; Marbach,
1964; Salmon, 1968; Forster, 2010). What needs to be brought to light, as Astrid
Gesche and Nigel DeSouza have already recognized, is the central role of Herder’s
engagement with Reimarus and the theory of animal instinct (Gesche, 1993;
DeSouza, 2012). In my elaboration of the theme Gesche and DeSouza opened up,
I will endeavor to stress that it was this third interlocutor who brought out what
was most distinctive in Herder’s effort to develop a naturalistic yet distinctive
theory of the origin of human language, by drawing a new conception of the
animal-human boundary.

1 Reimarus and the Problem of Animal Instinct

In 1754 a work appeared that, as its modern editors observe, proved “a key to
the understanding of the German Enlightenment” (Emsbach and Schröder,
1985, 25). This was Die vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion by
the Hamburg scholar Hermann Samuel Reimarus. This two-volume work was so
well received that a second edition appeared only a year later. The Vornehmsten
Wahrheiten was translated into Dutch in 1758 and then into English in 1766.
It was regarded, for example by Kant, as the foremost effort in the vein of natural
religion to appear in Germany (Kant, 1790, 476). It would be followed by two
other major works from Reimarus before the close of the decade: his Vernunft-
lehre in 1756 and his Allgemeine Betrachtungen über die Triebe der Thiere,
hauptsächlich über ihre Kunsttriebe in 1760. This body of works revealed a
fascination with the question of animal instinct, turning on the question of the
relation between human consciousness and animal behavior in terms of the long-
standing debate over the “animal soul.”2

2
“The concept of the animal soul did not give rise to any serious problems until the seventeenth
century, when Cartesian dualism brought out distinctions which had been latent in the dominant
Aristotelian tradition. Aristotle had postulated graduations from inert, inanimate matter to plants,
which had the additional functions of nourishment and reproduction, to animals, which were also
endowed with sensation, motion, and all degrees of mental functions except reason: he reserved
reason for man” (Young, 1967, citing 122). See Vidal, 2011; Frank, 2001; and Ingensiep, 1994. These
 JOHN H . ZAMMITO 

Reimarus approached the whole question from the vantage of the Leibniz-
Wolff school of philosophy and the principle of sufficient reason.3 For him, the
physical world had no intrinsic reason to be so and not otherwise; its lawfulness
was, in that sense, imposed from without, not self-generated, and therefore it was
an imperfect being, dependent upon something that did have the power to create
from its own resources, and which could give purpose to the inert material world
in the form of living beings (Reimarus, 1754, 72).4 Reimarus insisted not only
upon a transcendent creation but also upon the teleological structure of this
creation: there was not simply a cause but a goal in creation. The mere order and
proportion of the material world did not suffice for perfection, according to
Reimarus; that required purposiveness. The physical world “is not for itself but for
the sake of the living, of man.” More explicitly: “the usefulness for living things
constitutes the essential reason according to which all reality and essential
properties of the material [of the world] get determined” (Reimarus, 1754, 893).
Once he had disposed of the case that the world or nature could be eternal or
self-sufficient, Reimarus turned to animals and humans. They, too, had to have
an origin, but the notion that this would be the physical world or natural process
alone, Reimarus contended, was absurd. He scoffed at the notion that the sun’s
warmth, working on the “slime” of the earth, could have awakened an impulse to
life which, through many missteps, could have eventually generated viable
organisms of many distinct species, culminating in man (Reimarus, 1754, 150).5
Such was the lore of the ancient materialists, Epicurus and Lucretius, but it
appalled Reimarus that in his enlightened times figures like La Mettrie should

preoccupations in the German philosophical landscape were reflected in works by the key Wolffian
philosopher at Halle, Georg Friedrich Meier (Meier 1742, 1747a, 1747b, and 1750).
3
Though no orthodox Wolffian, Reimarus—like Moses Mendelssohn—proved to be part of a
creative revision within school philosophy around mid-century which took up key tenets of the
Leibniz-Wolff school without doctrinal slavishness. It is clear that Reimarus was profoundly shaped
by Wolff ’s two works on rational and empirical psychology, as well as his key work on metaphysics,
the text on God, world, and soul. Whether he also knew and worked with Wolff ’s texts on teleology
and animal organism is not so clear from his references. See Hinske, 1980. On Wolffianism and its
critics at mid-century, see: Mühlpfordt, 1983; Ciafardone, 1983; Hinske, 1983; Zande, 1995.
4
“A dead, unfeeling matter and blind nature knows nothing of itself, and cannot enjoy or sense
its own existence, but it is rather a matter of indifference whether it exists or not, or whether it
should be something else” (Reimarus, 1754, 202). But everything actual must be determinate: there
must be sufficient reason for it to be so and not otherwise (ibid., 89). Since the physical world could
not boast an intrinsic reason for its own determinacy, it was an imperfect being, requiring its
constitution by some other being. This argument was developed most extensively in the third
Abhandlung.
5
The argument that mechanical cause could not generate life or explain organism was, of course,
the central plank of all thought about life forms in the eighteenth century. For Reimarus, there was
no question that the physical world was a mere machine and inherently lifeless.
 HERDER AND THE PROBLEM OF AN ANIMAL - HUMAN BOUNDARY

try to revive “this collapsed body of doctrine [dieses verfallenen Lehrgebäude]”

(Reimarus, 1754, 151n).6 He lapsed into outrage in place of argument: “I cannot
understand how nowadays people can permit themselves to uphold before the
court of their own reason such arbitrary concoctions [willkürlichen Erdichtun-
gen], which are formed from raw ignorance of nature and from numerous
contradictions and errors” (Reimarus, 1754, 152). The ancients were faulty
enough, but the moderns had no ground to stand on, for spontaneous gener-
ation had been definitively refuted in modern times by “the best natural
scientists [Naturkündiger]” (Reimarus, 1754, 153).7
Above all, Reimarus could not countenance the notion that life forms could
have arisen from the material world by chance (Reimarus, 1754, 179–80). He
scorned this both in the ancients and in the moderns, especially La Mettrie, and
he offered an analogy: the implausibility that the Aeneid could have been
composed simply by the chance combination of all the letters in its individual
words (Reimarus, 1754, 184ff.). He insisted that the complex unity of an organ-
ism could simply not be the product of chance (Reimarus, 1754, 183).8 What he
loathed was that authors like La Mettrie, as he saw it, preferred chaos and chance
to the intervention of an intelligent designer: they would rather ascribe “all,
instead, to unfeeling, dumb forces of a dead material, and . . . give themselves
over to blind fate or random chance” (Reimarus, 1754, 206).
For Reimarus, there was no point to natural-scientific knowledge if nature had
no purpose we could discern (Reimarus, 1754, 364–5). The world made no sense
without God. And the best evidence for this—without which, he asserted, natural
science could not comprehend animal behavior—was the innate perfection of
drives or instinct in animals.9 Thus he upheld Swammerdam, Réaumur, and others
who found a divine hand in the marvels of invertebrates and infusoria, against
Buffon and Maupertuis who scoffed at all that (Reimarus, 1754, 382–3, 433).

6
Reimarus read La Mettrie’s Système d’Epicure, traité de l’ame (the revised version of his earlier
Histoire naturelle de l’ame of 1745), and Discours préliminaire in the posthumous edition of La
Mettrie’s Oeuvres philosophiques (La Mettrie, 1753). Though La Mettrie was dead, the rage against
his rampant “Epicureanism” persisted here as it did with Haller (though the latter had the
motivation of a personal grievance). On Epicureanism, Spinozism, and French materialism in
eighteenth-century Germany, see: Wilson, 2008; Leddy and Lifschitz, 2009; Lifschitz, 2012; Nisbet,
1986. The fear of a deluge of French materialism was widespread in Germany at mid-century, as
evidenced by Trinius, 1759. See Zammito, 2003.
7
Reimarus meant the work of Francesco Redi (1626–97), published in 1668 as Esperienze intorno
alla generazione degli insetti (Experiments on the Generation of Insects).
8
This was one of the central arguments for preformation, but Reimarus had his philosophical
issues with that theory as well (Reimarus, 1754, 195ff.).
9
This was the thrust of his fifth “dissertation” (Reimarus, 1754, 382ff.), on the specific drives of
animals. For Reimarus, this was the best evidence of intelligent design.
 JOHN H . ZAMMITO 

Nothing was absurd for Reimarus in the natural order, if it gave a sign of God’s
Providence. Anyone who did not see it that way was an “Epicurean,” i.e., tantamount
to an unbeliever.
One of the striking consequences of Reimarus’s line of thinking was that he
consigned all plants to the lifeless, material world (Reimarus, 1754, 382–3).10
They had no “inner perfection,” they had no intrinsic purpose, but existed merely
for the sake of animals (Reimarus, 1754, 222, 239). To exclude plants from living
forms was a drastic consequence of his metaphysical, not his scientific orienta-
tion, and it begged essential questions about organic form and intrinsic organ-
ization. But this was consistent with his express ambitions: “My project here is
not [merely] to demonstrate the divine wisdom and intention in physical organ-
ization, but at the same time immediately in the forces and capacities of the soul”
(Reimarus, 1754, 444). He believed “this way of seeing things fills the great gap
that we still have in philosophy, and links . . . natural science [Naturlehre] with
metaphysics” (Reimarus, 1754, 273). The soul—animal as well as human—was
the lynchpin of this metaphysical connection, and of its theological concomitant.
The thrust of Reimarus’s culminating work of 1760, the Triebe der Thiere, was
to deny Condillac’s contention in his Traité des animaux (1755) that animals
learned by experience, on analogy with human development (Reimarus, 1754,
319–21).11 Instead, Reimarus built a powerful case for the innateness of instinct,
different in kind from human learning. “I demonstrate from the powers of
animals and from the properties of the creative drives that they do not consist
in an effectiveness that the animals achieved for themselves through experience
and reason, nor through a degree of reason, but that these are innate capacities
which arise out of the determinate natural powers of animals [angeborne Fertig-
keiten sind, welche aus den determinierten Naturkräften der Thiere entstehen]”
(Reimarus, 1760, 66–7).12
Notably, Reimarus saw himself as more than simply a philosophical specula-
tor; instead, he engaged richly with the natural-historical literature.13 Thus he
allowed himself to disparage Condillac’s view as “one of those hypotheses that

10
This stance was replicated emphatically in Reimarus, 1760.
11
Reimarus offers a clear summary of Condillac’s position (Reimarus, 1760, 319–21). In his
“Opening Remarks,” Ernst Mayr insists that Condillac was not the original catalyst for Reimarus’s
project, which is certainly true, since he had been concerned with these matters since 1725, and
Condillac’s work appeared only in 1755, but Mayr himself makes the crucial point: “Condillac’s
book notably receives more pages of analysis than the work of any other author” (Mayr, 1982, 14).
12
While there can well be an analogy in the effects of reason and instinct, the causes remain quite
distinct.
13
Mayr drew a clear contrast between the philosophical and the observational approaches to
animal behavior and recognized Reimarus as bridging these two (Mayr, 1982, 13).
 HERDER AND THE PROBLEM OF AN ANIMAL - HUMAN BOUNDARY

can only appear valid in the scholar’s study,” and which would have been
overturned had Condillac paid more attention to observing nature (Reimarus,
1760, 325). Reimarus proclaimed: “all hypotheses turn into idle figments of the
mind, which arise in the scholar’s study, without sufficient knowledge of actual
nature . . . ” (Reimarus, 1760, 266). He believed that the interpretation of Trieb (or
instinct) could only advance through a systematic articulation of its empirical
features. He not only presented an extensive documentation of animal instinctual
behavior but, with Germanic thoroughness, also undertook a taxonomy of these
features, articulating ten classes and fifty-seven subclasses.14 He distinguished
globally among “mechanical,” “representational,” and “elective” [willkürlichen]
drives (Reimarus, 1760, 65). But what really interested him were the differenti-
ated, elective drives of animals—the Kunsttriebe [drives of skill]. He began by
characterizing Trieb in general as “all natural efforts toward particular actions
[alles natürlichen Bemühen zu gewissen Handlungen]” (Reimarus, 1760, 65, 78).
Already in the fifth Abhandlung of his Vornehmsten Wahrheiten, Reimarus
offered a clear conceptualization of the essential features of the concept Trieb
(or “endeavor” [Bemühung]—with echoes of conatus): it was the capacity to
pursue a self-beneficial goal “without any individual reflection, experience and
practice, without any training, example or model, from birth onward, with an
artfulness ready from birth that was masterful in achieving its end” (Reimarus,
1754, 379). He characterized as Kunst [artifice; skillful activity] all “regulated
[i.e., rule-governed] capacities for certain actions” (Reimarus, 1760, 147). Thus
the decisive features of the Kunsttrieb were that it was natural and yet it was
agential. That is, what Reimarus discerned as the key to animal behavior was
intrinsic purposiveness. It was purposive precisely in that it aimed “at the
maintenance and well-being of the animal and its species [auf die Erhaltung
und Wohlfahrt des Thieres und seines Geschlechtes]” (Reimarus, 1760, 66). It was,
moreover, innate: this was his overriding theoretical insistence. By virtue of this
innateness, it required divine intervention: all Triebe were “endowed by the
Creator [von dem Schöpfer eingepflanzt]” (Reimarus, 1760, 66).
That meant that animal behavior could neither be acquired by experience nor
derived from reason, and thus there was a systematic difference in kind between
animals and humans. While they shared certain features of sensibility—external
sense organs, imagination, memory, an internal sense for pleasure and pain and

14
See ch. 7 of Reimarus, 1760 for this elaborate taxonomy. It was replicated exactly in the 1777
revised edition of the Paris Encyclopédie, which seems, consequently, to have been directly influ-
enced by Reimarus. There is some reason to believe it may have been composed by Haller. The
original version on instinct in the Encyclopédie (1762) showed no trace of acquaintance with his
work. See Kempski, 1982, 53; Jaynes and Woodward, 1974.
 JOHN H . ZAMMITO 

inclinations derived from these—all had a different significance in the whole

structure of mental life in that in the case of animals, they were never capable of
conceptual relation or inference. “It is from this, then, that we can grasp how the
animals know things and discriminate among them, as well as how they are aware
of what they are conscious of. Everything is merely indistinct and confused, and
yet very lively” (Reimarus, 1760, 107). These are the key categories of German
school-philosophical faculty psychology, derived from Descartes and Leibniz and
systematized by Wolff (Corr, 1972). Thus we see how Reimarus’s empirical
biological project of classifying animal instinctual behavior came to be integrated
into a clearly school-philosophical (Wolffian) project of “faculty psychology.”
Reimarus rigorously distinguished the conscious content and operative faculties
of the human mind from those of animals.15 He worked through the levels of
human logic—from concept-formation through judgment to inference—as
developed in German school-philosophical teachings, and demonstrated that
animals could do none of these. Instead, they acted from conditioned reflex
and habit. “If, then, all thought consists in concepts, judgments, and inferences,
then we cannot, in the literal meaning of the term, say that animals think”
(Reimarus, 1760, 121).
Humans operated discursively: it was from a general concept that we were
enabled to discriminate instances of commonality (Reimarus, 1760, 111).
Humans had the capacity for reflection, the true source of reason, and this was
linked to their unique capacity for language (Reimarus, 1760, 123). “The animal
discrimination of species and genera has an entirely different basis and must be
essentially different from our own” (Reimarus, 1760, 110). In animals, “sensibility
in the vast majority of instances suffices to recognize and to distinguish individ-
ual things as well as types” (Reimarus, 1760, 113). Yet there were compensations
in animals for this lack of reflection: they were by instinct far more effective in
achieving the end of self-preservation. This efficacy was immediate, inveterate,
and sufficient for its ends. Enhanced senses, exquisitely intricate and appropriate
behaviors, and restricted but functional needs all worked to make animal drives
efficacious far beyond anything that the considered and labored achievements of
individual humans could attain.16 It took the generational accrual of implements

15
This was the project above all of his Vernunftlehre. See Reimarus, 1760, 336ff., where Reimarus
takes up in detail the work of the Halle philosopher G. F. Meier, 1750, concentrating on the key
school-philosophical distinction between the “higher” and “lower” faculties of mind, the key move in
the rational psychology of the Wolffian school.
16
Reimarus insisted that the proportionality between efficacy and restriction was essential: “All
the drives of animals are enclosed within the restrictions of their sensual awareness and desires”
(Reimarus, 1760, 222). “No species of animal has unnecessary or superfluous creative drives” (ibid.,
224). “No single animal has by nature alien, false, or perverse creative drives” (ibid., 225). Moreover,
 HERDER AND THE PROBLEM OF AN ANIMAL - HUMAN BOUNDARY

and skills through the trial and error of rational reflection to bring humans to a
superior estate in the natural order. “The same behaviors appear among these
animals, from the start of their lives, a capacity which, without slow and awkward
experimentation, without preliminary errancy and confusion, from the very first
produces masterpieces” (Reimarus, 1760, 170).
It would be odd indeed should animals have accomplished this through reason
or reflection, or even through learned habit, for then they would clearly exceed
humans in all these capacities. That was absurd, and so the notion that there was
anything learned or rational about this had to be false. Instead, Reimarus
concluded, it had to be completely innate. “Therefore we can offer no grounds
to ascribe reason or any grade of the same to animals, as contrasted with us
humans, nor even to ascribe to their brains any natural images or innate figures
which would be of use for this faculty [einige diesem Vermögen behülfliche
Naturbilder und angebore Figuren in dem Gehirne beylegen], or even to take
into the account any extraordinary intervention by God” (Reimarus, 1760, 363).
What, then, could explain the phenomenon?

How is it then conceivable that the animals, with such lowly physical and spiritual powers,
in part without any external experience, without upbringing, guidance, examples, or
verbal instruction, but above all without any reflection and actual thinking, without
concepts, judgments, inferences, and the discoveries that flow from these, without them-
selves knowing any purpose or the ability to recognize the relationship of means to that
purpose, without experiments and long practice, nonetheless find themselves at all times
capable of constructing completely and masterfully the most ubiquitously useful and
clever artificial actions [Kunsthandlungen] for the many needs of every aspect of life and
for the preservation of their species, and notably oftentimes from the very moment they
come into the world? (Reimarus, 1760, 364)

Reimarus argued there were only four possible sources: (physical) mechanism;
sensory stimulus and responsive imagination; inner experience (i.e., affect and
desire); or “endowed blind dispositions”—or, most likely all of these in inter-
action (Reimarus, 1760, 364–5).17
The fundamental problem remained how to connect the forces of inanimate
physical nature with the determinate drives that constituted animal life. Reimarus

“there arise just as few new arts among the animals as are lost or become weaker” (ibid., 234). “Every
animal expresses the creative drives of its species, from the very first trial, with a complete, regular
competence, without previous instruction, exercise, or mulling-over” (ibid., 235). Still, it is possible
for animals to make discriminating use of their creative drives, under given circumstances (ibid.,
248). They can also err in the application of their instincts (ibid., 256).
17
This formulation would be the point of departure for Moses Mendelssohn’s decisive critical
commentary on the work, which would largely define its reception, both for Reimarus himself and
for the German philosophical and scientific community (Mendelssohn, 1760).
 JOHN H . ZAMMITO 

adopted the methodological maxim of experimental Newtonianism: the inter-

action between soul and body was ultimately a “mystery, and how it actually
works it will always be impossible for us to know” (Reimarus, 1760, 395).
Nevertheless, experience and observation made it clear that these things hap-
pened, both in animals and in humans, and thus “we thereby must presume the
actual connection between the soul and the body, merely according to experience,
even if we cannot explain the nature of this mutual interaction” (Reimarus, 1760,
406). The crucial difference appeared to be that forces cause, but drives act. In just
this manner, Reimarus brought the notions of efficient and final causation into
relation. Purposes mobilized forces to fulfill their aims; indeed, metaphysically
these final causes were prior to the efficient causes they evoked and employed
(Reimarus, 1760, 377–82). Reimarus emphasized the distinction between the
invariance of physical forces and the creativity of animal drives (Reimarus,
1760, 447). He drew the classic contrast between a clockwork and an organism.
Nonetheless, he insisted that drives had a determinate lawfulness about them
(Reimarus, 1760, 429). This insistence upon the “sensual mechanism” of animal
drives, “blind desires” which “are set in motion by sensual stimulation and blind
election,” remained Reimarus’s fundamental divide between such animal drives
and human faculties of autonomy (Reimarus, 1760, 396).
Reimarus concluded that the “rule according to which the sensual representa-
tion of animals proceeds appears to be completely the same as the rule of our
lower faculties of soul [niederen Seelenkräfte]” (Reimarus, 1760, 381). This was
the fundamental point that brought Reimarus’s natural historical approach to
animal drives into concordance with school-philosophical faculty psychology.
While the higher faculties distinguished the human soul from the animal soul, the
lower faculties were in fact identical in humans and animals. That was a pro-
vocative continuity, because it could threaten human superiority to have any-
thing in common. It suggested that there might be too much animal left in the
human. (Kant, for one, would aim explicitly to expunge it.)18
This school-philosophical dimension played a decisive role in the reception of
Reimarus’s work, particularly by Moses Mendelssohn, who took it up critically
precisely as a proposal within Wolffian empirical psychology. In a series of
contributions to the key Berlin Enlightenment journal, Briefe, die neueste Litter-
atur betreffend, Mendelssohn subjected Reimarus’s work to careful scrutiny,
concentrating on the four sources of instinctual behavior that Reimarus articu-
lated in his concluding discussion of Triebe der Thiere (Mendelssohn, 1760, 795).

18
Kant, 1798, 321–2. Kant contrasted what nature made of man with what man “can, does and
should make of himself ” (ibid., 119).
 HERDER AND THE PROBLEM OF AN ANIMAL - HUMAN BOUNDARY

He was deeply dissatisfied with the way in which Reimarus, having found the first
three sources of instinctual behavior—physical mechanism, sense-stimulus and
imaginative response, and (conscious, or at least “sentient”) disposition or
desire—inadequate to explain all the phenomena, relied heavily on a fourth—
“implanted blind inclination [eingepflanzte blinde Neigung].” For Mendelssohn,
this was no more of an explanation than those intermediate agencies (e.g., the
“hylarchic principle”) that Reimarus had appropriately written off as “empty
noises” in his review of the philosophical tradition (Mendelssohn, 1760,
799–802). Mendelssohn did not dispute that Reimarus had described something
essential about instinctual behavior—most prominently, animal artificial
constructions like beehives, spider webs, and beaver dams—but he reiterated
the distinction Reimarus himself articulated between description and explan-
ation and insisted that Reimarus had failed in his explanatory ambitions
(Mendelssohn, 1760, 812–13).

2 Herder’s Treatment of Reimarus

This would be exactly where Herder took up the matter in his prizewinning essay
for the Berlin Academy in 1772. The challenge was to be true to Reimarus’s
careful articulation of the features of instinct that distinguished animal behavior
from that of humans, and yet to offer a more convincing explanation for why
these features arose. With his characteristic panache, quintessential to the Sturm
und Drang movement he was inaugurating and to his sense of personal genius
and its license, Herder disparaged everyone who had taken up the question
hitherto, not excepting Reimarus, even if he admitted the latter was “thorough”
(Herder, 1772, 78).19 He condemned Reimarus, along the lines Mendelssohn had
laid down, for having “to assume blind determinations . . . which destroys all
philosophy” (Herder, 1772, 79). Herder believed that he could, instead, offer a
“genetic explanation.”20
“That the human being is far inferior to the animals in strength and sureness of
instinct, indeed that he quite lacks what in the case of so many animal species we
call innate abilities for and drives to art [Kunstfertigkeiten und Kunsttriebe], is
certain” (Herder, 1772, 77–8; italics in original). Reimarus had made this fact of
comparative ethology incontrovertible. The problem was to make sense of it, to

19
On Herder, Sturm und Drang, genius, and arrogance, see Koepke, 2003, 74. For the wider
context, see: Zammito, 2006; Dahnke, 1997; Sauder, 2003. See also Luserke, 1977.
20
The phrase “genetic explanation” was underscored in Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’s important
response to Herder’s critique of Reimarus (Jacobi, 1773). It will remain to be seen what that sort of
explanation entailed—both for Herder and for Jacobi.
 JOHN H . ZAMMITO 

offer a compelling explanation of its origin and significance. Herder argued that
the question of the laborious human development of capacities, relative to the
ostensible “perfection” of animal behavior grounded in drives or instinct, could
be explained in terms of a fundamental difference in environmental situatedness
(what he called the “sphere” of the animal’s life), and hence the intensity of
the stimuli attending it (Herder, 1772, 78). Other animals had drastically nar-
rower spheres of life than humans. Their ecological niche—to use modern
terminology—was circumscribed both in space and in survival constraints, so
that within that narrow field, Herder contended, animal experience was sensually
more intense and focused, hence more immediately effective and complete. He
enunciated his theory in a proposition: “The sensitivity, abilities, and drives to art
[Kunsttriebe] of the animals increase in strength and intensity in inverse propor-
tion to the size and diversity of their circle of efficacy” (Herder, 1772, 79; italics in
original). The narrowness and intensity of focus of sensual experience in animals
had, as a consequence, an immediacy that made language redundant.21 While
they uttered sounds in response to their feelings, they had no need and hence no
capacity for the elaboration of formal language. Such animal “language,” Herder
commented, “is, along with senses and representations and drives, innate and
immediately natural for the animal” (Herder, 1772, 80). That is, “if we wish to call
these immediate sounds of sensation ‘language,’ then . . . their origin . . . is clearly
animal: the natural law of a sensitive machine” (Herder, 1772, 74). Herder’s point
was that this was of no use in understanding human language, for the latter was
“something completely different” (Herder, 1772, 74). “The most sensuous con-
dition of the human being was still human, . . . and the least sensuous condition of
the animals was still animalistic” (Herder, 1772, 87).
In contrast with the specificity of every other animal niche, humans had
literally a global environmental orientation. Human capacities had, accordingly,
to be far more undifferentiated and open to adjustment for difference in context
and challenge.22 “The human has no single work, . . . but he has free space to
practice in many things, and hence to improve himself constantly” (Herder, 1772,
82). This made humans develop more tentatively but also enabled them
to become more complex and reflexive in their assessment and action. “The
instinctless, miserable creature which came from nature’s hands so abandoned
was also from the first moment on the freely active, rational creature which was

21
“[T]he smaller the sphere of animals is, the less they need language” (Herder, 1772, 79).
22
This notion that humans were defined by the ubiquity of their settlement on the planet was one
of the crucial ideas of emergent anthropology and comparative zoology. It was decisive for Kant, for
Herder, and for the German natural historical community led by Blumenbach, the Forsters, and
E. A. W. Zimmermann.
 HERDER AND THE PROBLEM OF AN ANIMAL - HUMAN BOUNDARY

destined to help itself, and inevitably had the ability to do so. All his shortcomings
and needs as an animal were pressing reasons to prove himself with all his forces
as a human being” (Herder, 1772, 128; italics in original). Herder wanted to use
this difference to establish a species differentiation: “[t]here must, instead of
instincts, be other hidden powers sleeping in the human child!” (Herder, 1772,
81). That is, “in the hollow of that great bereftness of drives to art, the germ of a
substitute [ . . . ] would be a genetic proof that ‘the true orientation of humanity’
lies here, [ . . . ] that the human species does not stand above the animals in levels
of more or less, but in kind” (Herder, 1772, 81). Herder conceived this in terms of
a general principle of compensation, which he saw as a “great relationship, which
runs through the chain of living beings,” whereby the absence of one endowment
or capacity was made up by the elaboration of another (Herder, 1772, 81, 78).
This would prove seminal for the development of life science, especially as taken
up and elaborated by Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer (Kielmeyer, 1793; Pross, 1994).
For Herder, the immediate point was to discern “a natural gift, as essential to
[man] as instinct is to the animals” (Herder, 1772, 81).
Several key points need to be distilled from this last phrase. First, Herder
conceived of this as natural, not some divine dispensation. It was, moreover, a
gift—an endowment from nature, not something that man arbitrarily imposed
upon the natural order. Finally and crucially for his thesis, Herder insisted that
this was the essential characteristic of the human species. It was in this philo-
sophical sense of the nature of humans that Herder saw his way to navigate the
circularity of the language/reason problem that defined the Berlin Academy
quandary over the origin of language. Herder believed, in short, that he had a
philosophical (essential) as well as a biological (“genetic”) basis for recognizing
language/reason as the thoroughly interconnected essence of the human species.
Hence his confidence that he had “develop[ed] [all this] not from voluntary or
societal forces, but from the general economy of animal life” (Herder, 1772, 82).

3 The Philosophical Uptake of Reimarus and Herder

The wider German Enlightenment took Herder’s discussion of animal instinct
and Reimarus to be a significant new theoretical conceptualization of the prob-
lem. Of particular salience is the response of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (Jacobi,
1773).23 The latter recognized that Herder elaborated his theory of animal
instinct in passing, as a step toward his actual project in the prize essay, which

23
But see also the discussion of Herder’s “system concerning the drives to art of animals” in
Anonymous, 1775, 20.
 JOHN H . ZAMMITO 

was to explain the origin of human language. Nevertheless, Jacobi took Herder’s
discussion as an important new “theory of animal drives of art [Kunstttriebe]”
(Jacobi, 1773, 102). He carefully summarized Herder’s proposal, noting that
Herder offered little empirical evidence before leaping to his generalization.
Jacobi proposed to offer more detail, both conceptual and empirical. He argued
that what animals and humans shared as the basis for behavior was “intuition,
perceptual experience [Intuition, anschauende Erkenntnis]” (Jacobi, 1773, 103).
In animals, Jacobi contended, these intuitions were more intense and immedi-
ately inciting, thus “in an economy of this sort, as few missteps are possible as
innovations” (Jacobi, 1773, 105).
Jacobi concluded that he found Herder’s conception insufficient in its claim to
be a “genetic explanation” (Jacobi, 1773, 111). He presented specific instances of
animal instinctual behavior [Kunsttriebe] in all their stunning complexity and
spontaneity, and denied that Herder’s notion of a restricted sphere did anything
to illuminate what was taking place. The behavior remained “an irresolvable
mystery for the human understanding” (Jacobi, 1773, 113). While Jacobi con-
ceded to Herder that philosophically (i.e., a priori) there ought to be a rational
explanation, empirically, he insisted, Herder had not achieved one, and he
himself could do no better than fall back on Reimarus’s disparaged notion of a
“blind, necessary endowment” (Jacobi, 1773, 119–20). Jacobi conceived the
stimulus-response in animals as mechanism: “involuntary motions which [the
stimulus] arouses in animal and vegetable bodies for the benefit of their nature”
(Jacobi, 1773, 106). He conceived it as “automatic, . . . a mechanism preformed for
this purpose” (Jacobi, 1773, 107). In particular, Jacobi cited Reimarus for elab-
orating the functional specificity of animal parts in connection with the stimulus-
response mechanism. All, he contended, was systematically “preformed” (Jacobi,
1773, 107–8). Humans had, in compensation for a lesser intensity of sensation
and immediacy of response, the capacity to work up these intuitions further into
“signs [Zeichen]” and thus the “capacity to create and to compare general
concepts [das Vermögen, allgemeine Begriffe zu bilden und zu vergleichen]”
(Jacobi, 1773, 103). That capacity for reflection or reason, as Reimarus had
argued, was the distinguishing feature of the human, compensating for the
immediacy of animal response with the capacity to learn and adapt.
In a crucial appendix to the eleventh essay of his Philosophische Versuche
(1777), Johann Nicolaus Tetens elaborated his position on the question of the
origin of language in rebuttal to the views of Süßmilch and especially Herder.24

24
“Anhang zum eilften Versuch: Einige Anmerkungen über die natürliche Sprachfähigkeit des
Menschen” (Tetens, 1777, 1, 766–84). Tetens was skeptical about Herder’s style: “everything said in
 HERDER AND THE PROBLEM OF AN ANIMAL - HUMAN BOUNDARY

Tetens denied the philosophical necessity Herder postulated for the human
invention of language. Instead, he argued that language creation was contingent
upon external circumstances and upon human community (Tetens, 1777, 1,
778–84).25 This made understanding the origin and nature of language and
human rationality an empirical problem of history and culture, not one that
could be resolved by a philosophical argument. Moreover, it reopened the
question of the animal-human boundary and brought to the fore Herder’s
engagement not with Süßmilch but with Reimarus. This was in fact the theme
of Tetens’s eleventh essay, to which his discussion of the language problem served
as appendix. The title of that eleventh essay was: “On the fundamental force of
the human soul and the character of humanity” (Tetens, 1777, 1, 730). Tetens
addressed the crucial question: “In what measure any hypothesis concerning the
nature of the soul must offer a distinction of the fundamental character of
the human soul from other animal souls” (Tetens, 1777, 1, 738–40). Thus, the
animal-human boundary was the essential issue for a theory of a distinctively
human nature.
Tetens considered three fundamental proposals concerning this distinction:
Rousseau’s notion of perfectibility, Reimarus’s notion of reflection, and Herder’s
notion of an inverse proportionality of scope and intensity of consciousness. By
perfectibility, Tetens understood Rousseau to be addressing the ontogenetic
development of human capacities from an infantile state of incapacity to one of
increasing mastery with maturity (Tetens, 1777, 1, 742–3). (He was not so
concerned with the question of historical species development, which would
become paramount for Kant, who simply dismissed perfectibility as beyond the
frame of an individual human life span [Kant, 1784].) Tetens recognized the
paradox that individual animals achieved complete perfection of function either
immediately at birth or at the first exercise of their capacities (a fact crucial both
for Rousseau and for Reimarus), whereas humans had to develop their capacities
laboriously through trial and error (Tetens, 1777, 1, 740–3). Thus a human infant
seemed a dramatically inferior being compared to an animal (Tetens, 1777, 1,

a lively and stronger manner, as is the nature of the genius of Mr. Herder, who rather paints his
concepts than logically deploys them . . . One must be grateful to him for having touched up these
ideas with strong imagination, illuminating them with such a bright light, which however can
oftentimes be blinding” (ibid., 748–9). Tetens even alleged that Herder was projecting his own
strong sense of personal genius back upon primordial humans in their necessary creation of
language and reason through Besonnenheit (ibid.). Kant must have loved reading these lines!
25
Tetens also disputes Herder’s argument for the importance of the sense of hearing in language.
For Herder this was a function of the determinacy of sounds in creating reliable signs in the mind,
but Tetens argued that it was actually a matter of communicability, concomitant with what one
might anachronistically term his whole social-epistemological revision of Herder.
 JOHN H . ZAMMITO 

763). Tetens contrasted the slow and majestic growth of an oak tree to the rapid
but ultimately circumscribed growth of a shrub as an analogy for the ultimate
superiority of human capacities to those of animals (Tetens, 1777, 1, 761). Yet he
felt that Rousseau’s notion of perfectibility did not fully articulate what was
distinctly human about these capacities, or how they came to proper function.
This led him to a consideration of Reimarus and his contrast of instinct and
reason, with emphasis on the distinctive capacity for reflection as the key to
human rationality and hence as the fundamental difference in kind from animals
(Tetens, 1777, 1, 744–9).26 Tetens evinced enormous respect for Reimarus.27 He
endeavored to defend him from the criticisms of Mendelssohn as well as those of
Herder. Tetens argued that a proper understanding of Reimarus and of Herder
would show that the latter’s views, deflated to their actual empirical plausibility,
did not differ that much from what the former had in fact been trying to establish
(Tetens, 1777, 1, 748). The inverse proportion of scope of ecological niche to
developmental capacities did not appear to offer nearly the theoretical explana-
tory power that Herder envisioned. It allowed for considerably more contingency
than Herder imagined. This was why he insisted that Herder was wrong in
asserting the necessity of the development of language in humans. It was always
contingent on environmental, and in particular, social-communal context.28 “For
Tetens, every mental activity had its origin in concrete interaction of the indi-
vidual with the environment” (Muller-Brettel and Dixon, 1990, 225).
Tetens contended that empirical psychology had to deal with the whole man,
with the embodied mind (Tetens, 1777, 2, 149, 301). His conception of a “natural
history of man” entailed a characterization of the stages of ontogenetic develop-
ment that not only traced these in the development of the organism from embryo
through adulthood to decline, but found a systematic analogy between the
development of the bodily organism and the development of the mind or
“soul.”29 Empirical psychology needed to trace out how from the stimuli of
sensations the innate faculties of consciousness were triggered into activity,
thus developing the crucial plasticity and self-determination that were the

26
Tetens taught Reimarus’s Vernunftlehre of 1756 in his logic classes, and he was steeped in the
other great works we have considered above.
27
Tetens 1777, 1, 744. Tetens wrote of his reverence for Reimarus, that “perceptive and worthy
man,” expressing the “highest esteem . . . that I have for this philosopher and which as I believe
Germany will always have for him, as a man who combined deep metaphysical theories with a
breadth of empirical knowledge . . . ” (ibid.).
28
This was the essence of Tetens’s own theory of the development of language: its cultural-
contextual contingency, notwithstanding the innate potential in humans for language. He insisted
that circumstances could thwart it, and he pointed to feral children as crucial evidence.
29
Tetens, 1777, essay 14, part 3.
 HERDER AND THE PROBLEM OF AN ANIMAL - HUMAN BOUNDARY

distinguishing features of human beings, i.e., rationality and agential freedom.

“Tetens sought to investigate the development of mental capacities. Indeed, the
idea of development is a constitutive feature of Tetens’ psychology” (Muller-
Brettel and Dixon, 1990, 225).30
Tetens considered Herder’s great achievement to have been to recognize an
innate potentiality for development as the defining character of man and to have
proposed that it be traced out in terms of the relation of the senses to various
capacities of mind. With that frame, Herder had offered a full theory of human
cultural attainment (Tetens, 1777, 1, 748–9). It seems clear that Tetens was aware
of Herder’s participation in yet another Berlin prize competition, this one in 1774,
on the relation between sensibility and reason. Herder did not win the prize that
time, but published his essay independently (Herder, 1778). Before that publica-
tion, Tetens wrote a critical review of the prizewinner, indicating his sense that the
problem should have been addressed in a more developmentally adequate man-
ner. That is, Tetens pursued lines parallel to those Herder would develop in his
own publication. Notably, the core of these efforts was to work out a physiological
psychology, to explore the “whole man,” the embodied mind, and to trace out the
developmental process of human self-actualization. Together, these figures articu-
lated what has come to be called the commitment to the “whole man” in German
Enlightenment anthropology (Schings, ed., 1994). In Barnouw’s view, Tetens,
“like Herder and Schiller, was constantly working to undermine faculty psych-
ology” (Barnouw, 1979, 309, 329n). That is, he resisted rigid segmentation,
insisting rather on a continuity from sensation to concepts. Moreover, he insisted
that everything began with sensation, a principle that in fact brought the human
and the animal experience far closer together than German school philosophy and
its traditional view of the animal soul found comfortable (or than would Kant
from his full, transcendental-philosophical position).

4 Conclusion
The philosophical uptake of Reimarus’s thoughts on animal behavior proved
directly fruitful for the development of the empirical life sciences, because the

30
“For Tetens, development is the basic principle without which no new forms can appear”
(Muller-Brettel and Dixon, 1990, 223). The authors draw a wider contextual connection that is
crucial: “a perspective that at the turn of the 19th century was becoming increasingly influential in
such sciences as biology (e.g. evolutionary biology) and geology . . . [namely] the notion that under-
standing contemporary phenomena—whether mountain ranges, species, or behaviour—could profit
from research focused on the processes and conditions that led to their emergence and present
situation” (ibid.).
 JOHN H . ZAMMITO 

question of the boundary between humans and animals raised essential questions
that both philosophical anthropology and comparative physiology independently
sought to comprehend. The crystallization of life science would be mediated by
the philosophical considerations of Herder and Tetens. Without this intense
philosophical work on the animal-human boundary, I conclude, the emergence
of the extraordinary morphological approach of early nineteenth-century
German biology would have been conceptually and empirically deprived of
essential elements in its research program. Philosophical engagement with the
animal-human boundary was decisively enabling for the emergence of develop-
mental morphology and hence for the constitution of biology as a special science
by the early nineteenth century.

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 8
Between History and Nature
Herder’s Human Being and the
Naturalization of Reason

Anik Waldow

For Herder, history is like a tree and societies are like organisms: they are fitted to
specific environmental conditions that influence which particular human con-
vention can take shape at a particular point in time and space. One consequence
of this view developed in This Too a Philosophy of History for the Formation of
Humanity (1774) and Ideas for a Philosophy of History of Humanity (1784–91) is
that organizational structures of societies cannot be understood independently of
a highly complex and ramified system of causes: diachronically, the emergence of
societies and their conventional practices depends on preceding historical con-
ditions, while synchronically, natural and social environmental conditions influence
the formations of specific social practices.
In this essay I argue that the significance of Herder’s account of history as a
form of natural growth lies in its ability to explain how it is possible to think of
human reason as a capacity that develops in interaction with specific situational
contexts. By stressing this developmental aspect of human reason, Herder not
only helps us to correct an overly universalistic conception of reason that ignores
the impact that environments have in the shaping of cognitive structures; he also
allows us to comprehend that the very capacity that has traditionally been seen as
distinguishing humans from all other animals—namely human reason—evolves
out of a capacity we share with them; that is, the capacity to adapt to the demands
of the particular environmental milieu in which we find ourselves in our
situated lives.
Section 1 examines Herder’s conception of the human being as an animal that
acquires reason via the acquisition of language in order to show that within
 HERDER ’ S NATURALIZATION OF REASON

Herder’s framework, right from the start, natural and historical influences are
taken to work together in the formation of the human being. Section 2 argues that
it is precisely for this reason, namely that the human sphere develops in inter-
action with the constraints provided by nature, that for Herder history and
nature cannot be understood in isolation from one another. However, although
Herder argues that there is this strong connection between history and nature,
section 3 will demonstrate that he does not reduce history to nature. As a result,
human actions and their historical consequences need not be understood as the
mere effects of causal processes that unfold in accordance with fixed natural laws;
and this means that Herder is able to salvage the conception of human beings as
free agents without introducing a concept of reason-guided action that is inde-
pendent of the influences nature exerts on us.

1 The Human Animal and its History

For Herder the fact that we are creatures who have a history is intimately related
to his conception of the human being as a special kind of animal, an animal that
develops language and reason because it lacks many of the instincts that other
animals have. In his prizewinning essay Treatise on the Origin of Language (1772)
Herder developed this account, arguing that instincts typically force an animal to
direct its attention to the world, so that it fails to concentrate on what is
happening within its own mind.1 For humans, who are marked by a relative
lack of instincts, this means that there is plenty of room for them to become
aware of the fact that they have sensations (“Empfindungen”). Endowed with this
special form of awareness (“Besonnenheit”), humans proceed to organize their
sensations in such a way that they appear in larger clusters that are brought into
relation with specific sounds. Herder gives the following example: “White, soft,
woolly—his soul operating with awareness, seeks a characteristic mark—the
sheep bleats!”2 The sound of the sheep thus turns into a sign that connects
with all those sensations that are typically caused by the presence of sheep.
In the Treatise Herder provides a deep and complex account of the formation
of language, and to do justice to it here would exceed the scope of this essay. In

1
By understanding our conscious state of mind in this way, namely as a precondition for the
development of specifically human attributes and as belonging to humans qua species membership,
Herder stresses that humans and animals are different in kind, and that this is so precisely because
they are born this way. Commentators who take Herder’s innatism to stand in conflict with his
account developed in the Ideen are Meineke, 1972, and Wells, 1960.
2
FHA 1, 723, F 88 (the reference designated by the abbreviation “F” refers to the page number in
Herder: Philosophical Writings, edited by Michael Forster; I have used Forster’s translation for all
passages referenced in this way).
 ANIK WALDOW 

what follows I will therefore only focus on those aspects of Herder’s theory of
language that distinguish the specifically human way of relating to the world from
the manner in which animals respond to their environments.
Once linguistic signs have been instituted,3 Herder claims, reason is able to
evolve gradually.4 This is because, for him, reason arises through the mind’s
ability to structure its thought linguistically,5 which in turn brings with it the
ability to organize commingling sensations into a linear “succession of ideas”
(FHA, 1, 773, F 130). Importantly, for Herder the linearity of thought engenders
the ability to combine ideas in new ways.6 In the Treatise he makes this point in
relation to the fox which, according to him, remains bound in its “thinking” to
the order of its previously experienced sensations and for this reason cannot
escape the cunning of its hunter. Herder here presumably wants to say that the
fox cannot anticipate what the hunter will do next because the fox’s ideas cannot
change the order of previously experienced sensory ideas.7
In the Ideas, Herder expresses a similar point when distinguishing human
thinking from animal cognition. The ape, he explains, is closest to the human
being owing to its relative lack of instincts. Yet he stresses that although the ape’s
“power of thinking stands close to the brink of reason” (FHA 6, 117), it still is “the
meagre brink of imitation” (ibid.).8 What this means is that although the ape can
“process a thousand combinations of ideas of sense” (ibid.)—which is necessary
for its skilful imitations—it cannot process its ideas in such a way that they attain
an order that was not already given in experience; the ape imitates and this is
exactly why he lacks reason.
The distinguishing feature between human and animal thinking is thus defined
in terms of the human mind’s capacity to organize its own thoughts creatively, so
that human thinking can go beyond the imaginative reproduction of events
experienced in the past. Put this way, it becomes clear that reasoning is not

3
See Lifschitz, 2012, 2f, for the claim that these signs are artificially instituted, even though the
sounds used to refer to the sheep are part and parcel of one’s natural environments and, for this
reason, could be seen as naturally connecting the mind’s language with the particular portion of the
world that emerging linguistic agents encounter.
4
Nigel DeSouza has argued that, for Herder, reason and language necessarily develop given that
humans are put in the state of “Besonnenheit” that no other animal experiences. But he agrees that
what is necessary for this development to occur is that humans interact with their environment. In
this context he speaks of the “flooding of the senses by the external world” as the cause that “activates
the individual’s sensorium commune” (DeSouza, 2012, 227).
5
For a particularly clear statement along these lines see FHA 6, 375.
6
Charles Taylor interprets Herder’s claim that the human mind is able to produce new
combinations of ideas as a statement about the mind’s power to control its sensations; see Taylor,
1991, 50. I argue in Waldow, 2013, that, for Herder, taking control does not mean that reason
detaches itself from the order of sense perception and imagination, but rather supervenes on it.
7 8
See FHA 1, 772, F 130. All translations of passages taken from the Ideen are my own.
 HERDER ’ S NATURALIZATION OF REASON

simply the capacity to operate with general ideas that have been formed on the
basis of particular experiences; rather it consists in the ability to adopt a specific
attitude towards one’s experiences, one that enables the mind to arrange its ideas
in a specific way. The attitude in question is what Herder calls Besonnenheit:
a particular kind of awareness that brings with it a reflective state of mind
(“allgemeine Reflexion”, FHA, 1, 772, F 130) through which, as Herder notes,
the sensory manifold receives a distinct unity organized by “an overarching law
of clear wakefulness” (ibid.). Most importantly, by having this kind of reflective
awareness, humans become able to relate to the world in a self-directed way.
Instead of simply receiving ideas in a specific order that cannot be altered,
humans who are aware of their ideas can understand them and organize their
actions accordingly.
What exactly is involved here becomes clearer if we once again turn to the
animal–human comparison. For Herder, only humans are able to express mean-
ing in their actions. This is so because words are the marks of an inner process of
“taking-awareness” (“Besinnung”, FHA 1, 731, F 96), which entails that the mind
is conscious of the connection between words and the ideas they signify. By
contrast, animals, as Herder points out in a very Cartesian fashion, may be able to
produce sounds, but they lack Besonnenheit and for this reason cannot have the
kind of reflective awareness that enables humans to mark their ideas by words
and grasp their meanings (ibid.). Evidence for this lack of understanding in
animals, Herder argues, is provided by their conduct. The dog can learn to relate
words to the gestures and actions of his master; but it cannot understand the
meaning of the words as such, which, if it could, would enable it to “think” the
words and to “create for itself ” (FHA 1, 731–2, F 96) a certain course of action, so
that he would no longer simply serve his master.9
We can here see that having Besonnenheit, language and reason stands for a
specific way of being in the world, namely, as an agent who is not simply
responding to the demands of her environment but who is self-organizing her
actions. Frederick Beiser remarks in this context that for Herder reason “is an
active self-realising energy, and one that adapts to all kinds of circumstances.
What we should mean by reason is not a kind of thing but a way of acting, and

9
A similar point arises when Herder insists on the difference between human language and
animal cries. Animal cries, Herder claims, can never be refined and organized in such a way that they
become a language, “unless an understanding is added, so as to use this sound with intention” (FHA
1, 708, F 74–5). The emergence of language, although necessary for humans, is thus conceived as
requiring an intention, while the ability to have intentions seems to presuppose the ability to
understand meaning. By referring to intentions in this way, Herder again stresses the importance
of the human mind to self-organize itself; see John Zammito’s chapter in this volume for further
discussion of this point.
 ANIK WALDOW 

indeed a second-order way of acting that organises, directs and unifies all of our
particular activities” (Beiser, 2011, 124). This point will become important in
section 3 when investigating how it is possible for Herder to conceive of human
cognition as fitted to specific environmental conditions, without falling into the
trap of subsuming human action under causally structured, natural philosophical
explanatory models.
While in the Treatise the signs for the use of language are provided by nature
itself—the first sound to name the sheep is the bleating we hear when confronted
with a sheep—once language has evolved, the manner in which other people
interact with one another and express their thoughts in language becomes crucial
for the development of linguistic capacities. This shift from an individual’s
engagement with her natural environment to the analysis of the influences that
the environment of a specific community of language users has on the formation
of linguistic capacities in principle already follows from Herder’s conception of
the human animal as a Mängelwesen. This term stresses that the feature that
essentially characterizes our existence as humans is our lack of instincts, instincts
that enable non-human animals to find guidance in nature.10 Deprived of this
guidance, Herder notes, humans must “artificially” fill out what nature has left
blank for them, which can be achieved if we start learning from one another:
“Thus man is an artificial machine; endowed, it is true, with a genetic disposition
and plenitude of life; but the machine does not operate itself, and the ablest of
men must learn how to operate it” (FHA 6, 337).
Learning to live as a human being of course involves the acquisition of
language, but this, as the passage above tells us, cannot be achieved in solitude;
our engagement with other language users, their traditions, cultural and moral
practices is required in order to for this to happen. Since for Herder humans
acquire reason through the acquisition of language, it follows that the human
capacity for rational thought is necessarily tied to a specific socio-cultural con-
text. In the Ideas Herder expresses this thought as follows:

A people has no idea for which it has no word: the liveliest experience (Anschauung)
remains an obscure feeling, until the soul finds a characteristic mark for it, and by means
of a word incorporates it into the memory, the recollection, the understanding, indeed,
finally into the understanding of mankind, into tradition: a pure reason, without language,
on Earth, is a utopian land. (FHA 6, 347)

Taking this dimension of human learning into account, Herder defines human
reason as “an aggregate of observations and practices of the soul; a sum of the
education of our species” (FHA 6, 337).

10
See FHA 1, 770, F 128.
 HERDER ’ S NATURALIZATION OF REASON

Through this account, Herder stresses that there is a good deal of contingency
involved in how we form the capacity for rational thought. After all, languages
vary in their grammar, syntax and idiosyncratic expressions across different
cultures and times, and this means that the structures of thought and reason
that develop out of the engagement with different language contexts will vary too.
Herder’s theory of language thus systematically undermines the attempt to think
of reason in universalistic terms, since his conception of how we acquire reason
suggests that the structures of reason can take on different forms.
This even holds if we leave aside for one moment the importance of social
learning and once again focus on the dynamics through which language is taken
to have arisen originally. As we have seen, for Herder, human beings acquire
linguistic capacities when they start to name the objects in their environment,
while the sounds used to name these objects are also found within this environ-
ment. Since not all human environments have the same kind of objects and
sounds, it follows that the structures of reason that emerge in processes of
naming vary. For this reason universality can at best be attributed to the
structural features of the process of naming (e.g. naming consists in pulling a
mark out of the manifold), but not to the particular manner in which reason
manifests itself when the mind becomes able to think of objects as objects:

The human being demonstrates reflection when the force of his soul operates so freely that in
the whole ocean of sensations which floods the soul through all the senses it can, so to speak,
separate off, stop, and pay attention to a single wave, and be conscious of its own attentive-
ness. The human being demonstrates reflection when, out of the whole hovering dream of
images which proceed before his senses, he can collect himself into a moment of alertness,
freely dwell on a single image, pay it clear, mere leisurely heed, and separate off characteristic
marks that this is that object and no other. (FHA 1, 722, F 87; emphasis mine)

I will come back to this point in the next section when arguing that, for Herder,
the manner in which human reason articulates itself is constrained by the specific
space-time coordinates in which a community of language users finds itself.
Before turning to this discussion, however, it is important to see that it is because
of our dependence on other persons in our development as creatures of reason
that, for Herder, an understanding of what makes us human cannot be obtained
by focusing on one person alone. What is needed instead is a historical narrative
that tracks over time the influences that humans have on one another:
If man received everything from himself, and then developed it independently of external
things, thus would a history of a human being indeed be possible, but not of human
beings, not of their entire species. But, since our specific character lies in the fact that, born
almost without instincts, we are formed to humanity only through a lifelong practice, and
both the perfectibility and corruptibility of our species are based on this, thus does the
 ANIK WALDOW 

history of humanity too necessarily become a whole, i.e. a chain of sociability and shaping
tradition, from the first to the last link. (FHA 6, 337)

The study of history thus emerges as a tool that enables us to understand

ourselves as humans; and it does so by offering a perspective that weaves together
the influences of a diverse net of social and cultural traditions. Moreover, history
is here conceived of as a “chain of sociability and shaping tradition”. Given that,
for Herder, reason forms itself in processes of social transmission, history thus
offers an indispensible resource for the next generation to develop a locally and
temporally situated form of reason. This form of reason emerges out of the
engagement with conventions, traditions and the manner in which the people
of one culture and place communicate with one another; through this they
manifest a specific manner of engaging in reflection and rational thought, since
for Herder language and reason cannot be separated from one another.
We can here see that although Herder rather traditionally suggests that having
reason and being a creature of history belong together, he nonetheless ties this
account to the more fundamental conception of the human being as an animal.
This animal is special because of its relative lack of instincts and the need to find
its own particular way of relating to its environment. The human animal does so
by inventing words that pick out and reorganize sensory ideas into discursive
thoughts. Understanding meaning and acting in line with this understanding
thus become a genuine possibility; and yet this possibility is only given because
Besonnenheit “naturally” structures our way of being in the world. The full
importance of the claim that humans create a link to their environment in the
formation of language and reason will become clear in the next section when
examining Herder’s conception of history as an integral part of nature.

2 The Organic Growth of Human History

Crucially, for Herder, history does not only stand for influences that come to us
from the past; it also unites synchronic developments that occur when nations
with different traditions, values and beliefs enter into one another’s “Gesicht-
skreis” (FHA 6, 259) and “rub” against one another. Before this rubbing occurs,
he explains in This Too a Philosophy of History, people can be seen as living in a
self-contained manner and as possessing within themselves “the centre of their
own happiness”.11 Challenges to such culturally stabilized forms of happiness

11
Herder writes: “So jede zwo Nationen, deren Neigungen und Kreise der Glückseligkeit sich
stossen—man nennts Vorurteile! Pöbel!” (FHA 4, 39).
 HERDER ’ S NATURALIZATION OF REASON

emerge when we start to go beyond our confined circles. To illustrate this point,
Herder refers to the discovery of the compass, which led to the innumerable
forays into the new world that caused so much cruelty and oppression.
In order to stress the interdependent nature of historical influences, Herder
often uses the language of organic growth. Thus he tells us that the different
“peoples and nations” (FHA 4, 31) constitute the canopy of a tree, while the core
traditions of a self-contained nation are taken to be the sturdy trunk that allows
its culture to flourish (FHA 4, 39). Nations are also seen as able to “blossom”
(FHA 4, 34) just as historical periods are described as organic bodies (his example
is the “Gothic body” of the Middle Ages) that undergo processes of “fermenta-
tion” and “abrasion” (FHA 4, 50). Even when talking about education, which, as
we have seen, signifies for Herder the specifically “artificial” condition of human
existence, he explains that in order for education to succeed, “genetic” and
“organic” forces have to be at work that make it possible for humans to assimilate
the “nutrients” into their system. When discussing the influence of despotism
and slavery in the Ideas, he points out that a “nation is as much a plant of nature
as it is a family” (FHA 6, 369). Herder makes this point in order to acknowledge
that although governments have an influence on the formation of “national
character”,12 they have to reckon with traditions that go a long way back and
that often relate to the geographical situation of a people as it tried to cope with
the demands of nature.
To understand better in which particular way nature is taken to influence the
formation of traditions, it is useful to note that in This Too a Philosophy of History
Herder conceives of history in analogy with the maturation of a human organism.
Thus he writes that only because human history was still in its infancy could
Egypt develop a political culture where “religion, fear, authority, despotism”
(FHA 4, 22) constituted the ruling principles of political organization. Import-
antly, the reason why Herder naturalizes human history in this way is not to
legitimize oppression, but to guard against eighteenth-century European arro-
gance that, as he critically remarks, tends to judge history by its own “modern”
standards (FHA 4, 53).13 In opposition to this approach, Herder suggests that we

12
Hans Adler and Wulf Köpke point out that for Herder the concept of a nation should not be
seen in the context of the attempt to realize an aggressive “nationalistic dream”; see their introduc-
tion to Adler and Köpke, 2009, 8. Herder, they argue, thinks of national culture and character in
opposition to the “ancient regime” (ibid.).
13
This is precisely the point he raises against Kant’s conception of history in his essay Idea for a
Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim (1784), where Kant develops the perfectionist ideal that
human history uniformly ascends to its ultimate fulfilment in the enlightenment of the human
species. I will say more about this conception of history in section 3.
 ANIK WALDOW 

can understand the historical other only if we allow an agent’s time and place to
set the parameters for our evaluation.
While Herder thinks of temporal situatedness in terms of maturation, his
concept of climate explains a society’s ability to fit into specific geographic
conditions.14 Thus he argues that when Egyptians started to cultivate their land
(for Herder culture often simply stands for a people with “agriculture”; see for
instance FHA 4, 20) they clearly benefited from the existence of the Nile. Yet
because of the river’s regular flooding, it became necessary for them to engage in
sophisticated processes of measurement and calculation, which paved the way for
the construction of dams, canals and complex city structures. To emphasize this
interrelatedness of natural and “artificial” features, Herder speaks of a “culture of
the land” (FHA 4, 22), thereby drawing attention to the fact that often the
topography of the earth determined how a specific society came to organize itself
and what kinds of activities became central to its culture.15
Geography also matters when Herder is trying to understand the development
of language and social norms. He sees mountains and oceans as natural barriers
that explain how different linguistic and cultural practices could spread along
distinct fault lines, thereby giving way to what Herder calls a “portrait of climatic
national formation” (“Gemälde klimatischer Nationalbildung”, FHA 6, 390).
Commerce is also seen through its function of promoting the transmission of
language and culture. But for Herder it is the question of whether or not a nation
found itself close to or remote from oceans, deserts and mountain ranges that
explains why some nations were more successful in trade than others. For this
reason, the Greeks are not seen as lacking in commercial skills or cunning when
compared to the extremely successful Phoenicians, but rather as having been
affected by the mere geographic fact that they “had no Lebanon or India behind
them” (FHA 4, 29).
Given that, on Herder’s account, culture, language and tradition count as
climatically susceptible in the sense that they are adapted to particular geographic
conditions, it is not surprising that for Herder the history of humankind is yet

14
As we will see in what follows, Herder’s concept of climate embraces even more than this.
Besides standing for the influences that air quality, topography and constitution of the soil have on
the formation of humans, climate also captures the impact of man-made influences, such as
entertainment, arts and social and moral practices; cf. Beiser, 2011, 155.
15
Sonia Sikka has recently pointed out that Herder’s pluralism is limited; it only applies to the
conception of different cultures that form different nations, but not to differences within one nation;
see Sikka, 2011; also see Beiser’s chapter in this volume. Herder’s account of nations and cultures as
growing out of specific spatio-temporal constellations seems to support this reading, as it suggests
that each nation is adjusted to its own niche and for this reason needs its own sphere.
 HERDER ’ S NATURALIZATION OF REASON

another history of nature.16 What this means in more concrete terms is that
within Herder’s concept of history multiple layers of connectedness are at work at
once: 1) the connectedness that arises through the manner in which the geog-
raphy and climate of a specific place shape the emergence of specific social,
cultural and political institutions, which, as we have seen in section 1, Herder
takes to impact on the formation of linguistically organized structures of cogni-
tion; and 2) the connectedness that emerges when language and reason flow back
into actions through which humans shape their social and natural environments.
In a second loop these artificially crafted environments then become the breeding
ground for yet another temporally and locally situated form of human reason
that emerges when humans engage with the conventions and linguistic practices
of their social surroundings.
Here, then, we can see that on Herder’s account nature cannot be conceived of
as a mere background against which history unfolds in order to grow into a plant
of its own. Rather, nature assumes a constitutive role in the shaping of collective
human action and the history that follows on from this action; it does so by
“climatically” conditioning the traditions and social practices that underlie
human learning and, through this, also influences the specific way in which
human reason, which forms itself through human interaction, articulates itself
at each juncture in history. Nature and history thus remain closely intertwined as
they jointly impact on the manner in which the human sphere continues to shape
itself again and again across different times and places.

3 Historical Explanations
It is important to stress at this point that despite Herder’s strong emphasis on the
link between history and nature, he does not reduce history to nature. Such a
reductionist account would examine history through the same deterministic
framework that also structures the analysis of nature. As such, it would export
the perception of fixed causal structures from the study of natural processes into
the analysis of the social realm, so that processes of enculturation would appear
as the outcome of determining causal constellations. Herder’s holism, however, is
far more complex than this.

16
This holds at the collective and individual level; thus Herder stresses in On the Cognition and
Sensation of the Human Soul (1778): “What I am, I have become. I have grown like a tree: the seed
was there; but air, earth and all the elements, that I did not deposit around myself, had to contribute
in order to form the seed, the fruit, the tree” (SWS 8, 198, F 213).
 ANIK WALDOW 

As discussed in section 1, for Herder it is because humans are deprived of

many natural instincts that their awareness is focused inwardly. And this in turn
is taken to be a precondition for the development of reason and language. If we
combine these insights with Herder’s claim that history is constituted by the
influences that humans exert on one another across different times and places, it
becomes clear why, for Herder, historical explanations must go beyond the
tracing of fixed patterns of cause and effect. Tracing such patterns is without
doubt useful for developing an understanding of the specific constellation of
natural and social circumstances within which human interactions take place;
and Herder is indeed committed to this explanatory strategy. However, on his
account, it holds that human interactions cannot be understood through causal
patterns alone, because the principles that rule human action must be analysed in
relation to the fact that humans have developed language and reason, and that
they have done so because of a relative lack of instincts. This lack implies that in a
situation in which an animal cannot help but follow a certain course of action, for
instance when exhibiting specific nesting behaviour, human beings can choose
their conduct freely; and they do so when they use their reason to self-organize
their thoughts and actions.17 Given this possibility of freedom, causal explan-
ations are insufficient when trying to understand human actions in relation to
historical processes.
One could here perhaps object that education could be seen as a determining
principle in itself, one that fills in for the absence of natural determinants. After
all, for Herder education is what provides guidance and compensates humans for
their relative lack of instincts: “There is an education of the human species; since
everyone becomes a man only by means of education, and the whole species lives
solely in this chain of individuals” (FHA 6, 338). Indeed, if education were no
more than a process of conditioning (as for instance Helvétius argued),18 specific
manners of thinking and the actions through which they manifest themselves in
history would emerge as effects produced by specific educational programmes
embodied in specific social environments.19 Approached from this perspective,

17
Herder explicitly draws the connection between being “instinctless” and being a “freely active,
rational creature” (“freitätige vernünftige Geschöpf ”) in the Treatise; see FHA 1, 770, F 128.
18
Helvétius states in his Treatise on Man that “the understanding, the virtue and genius of man”
is no more than the “product of instruction” (Helvetius, 1810, 31). See Hulliung, 1994 for a
discussion of the philosophes’ opposition to Helvétius’s deterministic account of education.
19
Indeed, Herder’s concept of “manner of thought” clearly stresses that our thinking and even
our capacity for rational thought is historically and culturally situated; this at least forms part of the
major argument in On the Change of Taste (1766). Yet this does not mean that with the acquisition
of this capacity it is impossible to go beyond the limits of our familiar manners of thought, as I will
explain presently.
 HERDER ’ S NATURALIZATION OF REASON

one could think that a causal approach towards history that traces these causal
connections might make sense.
It is clear from what has been said so far that this reading fails to acknowledge
an important aspect of Herder’s theory of education. As discussed in section 1,
for him education is the very process that fosters the emergence of the capacity
for reason through fostering the capacity for language; and he takes reason to
enable humans to go beyond merely imitating in their thoughts what is put before
them: reason enables humans to self-organize their thoughts and actions. This
clearly follows from his comparison between the human being and the ape, which
is bound to copy the order of its sensory ideas and therefore fails to exhibit
human reason. Moreover, Herder stresses that with the emergence of linguistic
capacities it becomes possible to understand meaning, which in turn allows
humans to create a course of action in line with their understanding, instead of
being prompted to perform a certain kind of conduct in response to the demands
of their environment (recall the dog that cannot understand the meaning of
words and for this reason simply follows the orders of its master).
What this means in more general terms is that although Herder conceives of
human reason as climatically conditioned in the sense that it takes shape through
interactions with a community of language users whose social and linguistic
practices have emerged within a given natural milieu, reason is still understood as
the very capacity through which it becomes possible to act freely. This is because
for Herder it is clear that by adopting a specific manner of thinking humans reach
a point where they can self-organize their thoughts and through this can go
beyond simply sticking to the order of received ideas that is characteristic of
animal behaviour.
With this in mind, it would appear that although Herder thinks of history as a
chapter within the greater book of nature, he nonetheless acknowledges that
genuinely historical explanations are needed. These are explanations that leave
enough room for an account of human agency that is not exhaustively determined
by causal structures. Of course, the claim that we need explanatory principles
specifically attuned to the conception of humans as agents is not particularly
surprising. However, what deserves our attention is that with the attempt to see
humans as part of nature, it was not always clear how their special status as creatures
of reason and free agents could be integrated into a by and large naturalistic
explanatory framework. Kant’s essay Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopol-
itan Aim (1784) provides a good example that illustrates this difficulty.20

20
This essay sparked a controversy between Kant and Herder over the status of history that was
to last for the rest of their lives; see Irmscher, 1987, 111–92.
 ANIK WALDOW 

In this essay, Kant, like Herder, regards the emergence of history in relation to
the fact that humans are not bound by instinct.21 But he nonetheless stresses that
although metaphysically speaking the assumption of freedom of the will is
uncontroversial, when dealing with “its appearances, the human actions”, we
have to recognize that they “are determined just as much as every other natural
occurrence in accordance with universal laws of nature” (AA 8: 17, 108). Kant
here seems to state an obvious point, namely, that human beings are part of
nature in that their will can only bring about actions that are compatible with the
laws of nature. However, a closer look at the methodological perspective
employed throughout this essay reveals that more is at stake. The dominant
explanatory principle applied to answer the question why the actualization of the
full human potential as rational and free agents has not yet been realized is
deterministic. Nature, he explains, has set a rather short term for one human life
span; due to this fact each individual human fails to practise reason for a
sufficiently long time, and the result is that it has not yet come to full fruition.
Kant concludes from this that “nature perhaps needs an immense series of
generations . . . in order finally to propel its germs in our species to that stage of
development which is completely suited to its aim” (AA 8: 19, 110). Humans here
do not seem to act as agents but are collectively determined by nature to reach
their fulfilment as a species.
Anyone familiar with Kant’s critical writings knows the importance of freedom
for his conception of humans as rational agents. In this particular passage,
however, Kant approaches the analysis of the conditions of human existence
through a natural philosophical framework. And this framework, as Kant expli-
citly states in the essay On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy (1788),
pursues the goal of offering a series of determining causes that traces “back, as far
as the analogy permits, the connection between certain present-day conditions of
the things in nature and their causes in earlier times according to laws of efficient
causality” (AA 8: 162, 197, emphasis mine).22 This means that for the concrete
project of approaching humans in their empirical conditions and as part of

21
See for instance Kant’s remarks in Review of Moscati’s “Of the Corporeal Essential Differences
between the Structure of Animals and Humans” (1771), Akademieausgabe (henceforth AA) 2:425,
80–1 (the reference after the comma refers to the page number in The Cambridge Edition of the
Works of Immanuel Kant). The germ of reason is here taken to enable humans to live in society and
by implication to have history.
22
See Nassar, 2015, for an analysis of Kant’s commitment to teleological causes that goes beyond
the claim that teleological explanations possess a heuristic function (for this reading see for instance
Ginsborg, 1996, and McLaughlin, 1990). Also see Kant’s essay On the Use of Teleological Principles in
Philosophy (1788), AA 8: 159, 195.
 HERDER ’ S NATURALIZATION OF REASON

history, they have to be approached as parts of “nature”, where nature is

conceived as the “sum total of all that exists as determined by laws” (AA 8: 159).
Against this background, Kant’s deterministic account of history seems to
make sense. In order to be able to offer a natural history of humanity, he needs
to see humans as behaving in a lawful way that integrates them into an overall
plan and a systematic unity held together by the laws of nature. And this means
that humans cannot be taken to act freely, since acknowledging the power to
choose one’s own moves would dissolve the past into a “planless aggregate of
human actions” (AA 8: 29) that is chaotic, and, because of this, fails to form part
of an orderly natural history that sets out to trace the “regular course” (AA 8: 26)
of nature free of variations and derivations.23
Different from Kant, Herder is not interested in bringing order to historical
events by treating them as governed through fixed causal laws. Pointing out that
historical constellations are too complex in their contingency to be brought
under general principles and systematic, abstract formulas, he speaks of the
“chaos of scenes, peoples and periods” (FHA 4, 35) that flicker before our eyes
when we try to find unity in the diversity of human practices. To deal with this
situation, Herder appeals to our ability to feel ourselves into the situation of the
historical other: “Feel yourself into everything—only now you are on your way
towards understanding the word” (FHA 4, 33, F 292).
On Herder’s account, “Einfühlung” (hereafter sympathy) is able to take us
beyond our own conceptual framework, thereby helping us to discover some-
thing genuinely novel.24 Yet Herder acknowledges that an engagement with
foreign manners of thought is a difficult task that all too often leads to projection
rather than the detection of the hitherto unknown.25 To illustrate this point,
Herder refers to Shaftesbury’s failure to engage with the spirit of Homer’s
writings. Because of Shaftesbury’s propensity to project the values of his own
time onto Homer, he fails to understand the pedagogical use of Homeric poetry
in antiquity.26

23
For Kant nature is neither chaotic nor organized “by chance”—a view Kant attributes to
Epicurean materialism. From his earliest writings (A Universal Natural History and Theory of the
Heavens [1755] and The Only Possible Argument in Support of the Demonstration of the Existence of
God [1763]) to his rejection of Spinozism in the third Critique (1790) Kant vehemently rejected this
view, as it makes it impossible to explain order, beauty and the existence of life. For a more detailed
discussion of this point see Waldow, 2016.
24
Herder lays out the details of this method in the introduction to his writings about Thomas
Abbt (1768). The aim of this method is to “let every great mind speak in his own tongue” (SWS 1, 5),
which more or less means that we should strive to capture the perspective of the historical agent in
relation to her time and place.
25 26
FHA 1, 157–8, F 253–4. FHA 1, 321–2, F 46–7.
 ANIK WALDOW 

A solution to this problem comes into sight, Herder suggests, if we learn to

make use of our imaginative and sentiment-based capacities as resources for new
experiences. The logic here is that in order to widen our linguistic capacities, and
the related manners of thinking, we need to integrate new linguistic elements into
our existing conceptual framework.27 When dealing with historical agents and
their specific position in time and place, such new elements become available
when we imaginatively immerse ourselves in their situation, for instance by
letting their language and their imagery speak to us: “Instead of leaving it at
that appalling image that Homer spewed out, firm up your mind to drink from
the ocean of inventions and particularities that flows around you without going
pale” (FHA 1, 449).
The important point about this method is that it enables us to turn to the
particulars—here the particular images evoked by Homer’s writings—which,
when placed before us, evoke certain experiential responses. They thereby allow
us to form concepts that gain meaning through their relation to the concrete
circumstances of the historical situation under consideration. Through this
method, on the one hand, we avoid inadequate generalizations and what Herder
calls the “fashionable judgements of our century” (FHA 4, 35). Such judgements
are based on concepts that were cultivated in relation to experiences situated in
our own time and place. On the other hand, by using a sympathy-focused
method that focuses on particular historical situations, we are in a position to
accept that history is full of “contradictions and derivations” (FHA 4, 36) and
does not exhibit the systematic unity that Kantian natural history presupposes.
Herder does not explicitly state what the causes for history’s contradictory and
derivative nature are. But in line with what has been said above it seems that one
contributing factor is that human history manifests itself through human actions,
which, according to Herder, cannot be comprehended in deterministic terms and
for this reason can also not be expected to exhibit the same lawfulness charac-
teristic of natural events. For him human actions can be understood only if
analysed in connection with the human capacity for rational and meaningful
thought. A sympathy-driven historiographical method that focuses on historical
agents responds to this insight. It invites us to use our own minds to latch onto
the particular combination of social, cultural and natural causes characteristic of
a specific historical situation. This happens not so much from the point of view of
the detached spectator as from the perspective of someone affected by the
relevant causal constellations. We thus approach history by creating a cognitive
relation to the causal determinants of a situation of the past, thereby bringing into

27
Cf. Forster 2002a.
 HERDER ’ S NATURALIZATION OF REASON

focus the specifically human way of relating to the world. Ideally this will enable
the historical judge to comprehend historical processes and related human
actions that even a full reconstruction of causal factors—if possible at all—
necessarily fails to explain.28
It is not the place here to explore in further detail the benefits of this sympathy-
driven historiographical account.29 What matters in our context is that Herder
defends a methodology that is empirical in that it approaches an understanding
of humans by entering into a specific historical situation.30 The rationale for this
approach is provided by a complex causal holism that undercuts the possibility of
forming a generalized, abstract idea of the condition of humanity as a whole as
much as it rules out the possibility of explaining human actions through the
analysis of environmental determinants alone.31 But although Herder’s anthro-
pology focuses on the concrete situation of empirical agents, and for this reason
could easily be seen as constituting an empirical science,32 his agenda is distinct-
ively philosophical. By investigating humans in their situatedness, Herder’s
anthropology traces the conditions under which language, concepts and reason
develop. Although proceeding empirically, it is thereby able to shed light on an
important philosophical question. This is the question of how the human mind
can form the concepts through which it is possible for it to be cognitively engaged
with the world.
As we know, Kant tried to answer this question by offering transcendental
arguments that stipulate the existence of specific structures (i.e. the existence of
the categories) in the mind as a precondition for the possibility of experience. But
Herder’s anthropology takes its cue from the opposite direction; it begins with a
world in which humans experience themselves as historically shaped and yet
natural creatures. He thereby avoids a conception of reason that comes to us from

28
Katherine Harloe convincingly argues that for Herder “every historical reconstruction is
necessarily imperfect” (Harloe, 2013, 239f.). She sees this imperfection as an effect of the infinite
complexity of the causal connections of human influences. See Irmscher, 1973, 27, for the claim that,
according to Herder, a complete understanding of history would require a God-like perspective that
limited human beings can never have.
29
A good account of this is given in Harloe, 2013, ch. 7, which analyses the relationship between
Winkelmann and Herder. Also see Forster, 2002b; Adler and Köpke, 2009, 1–2.
30
Zammito, 2002, 335. Although Zammito here stresses Herder’s commitment to the empirical
method that emphasizes the situatedness of culture and tradition, he nonetheless thinks of Herder’s
sympathy-based approach as a form of historical art. Beiser thinks of historical investigation as an
ineffable experience; see Beiser, 2011, 136.
31
To say this is of course not to deny that for Herder it is possible to weave together the insights
gained through our sympathetic engagement with history; what results is what Zammito has called a
“historical metanarrative”; see Zammito, 2009.
32
For Kant, this fact alone is sufficient for denying Herder’s philosophy the status of a science;
see Arens, 1996, 108.
 ANIK WALDOW 

an unfathomable beyond and instead opts for an approach towards rationality

developed from the vantage point of the empirical world itself.

4 Conclusion
In this essay I have argued that Herder’s account of reason is ultimately
grounded in the idea that this capacity develops when humans interact with a
specific community of language users. The possibility of having history is here
seen to develop out of our dependence on others and the education that we
receive in a culturally and historically situated context. Yet, as we have seen, all
of this happens in communication with the constraints provided by nature.
History can therefore neither be conceived as unfolding in isolation from
nature, nor as constituting a realm of its own. Rather, history must be seen as
constituted by series of events that reveal the specifically human way of
engaging with the “climatically conditioned” world; as such, history describes
the reality of empirical agents embedded in specific natural, cultural and social
constellations.
A major advantage of Herder’s approach is that he spares us the tedious task of
explicating how it is possible that something that has no place in nature can
manifest itself in nature. This, as we have seen above, is exactly the problem that
Kant faces and tries to tackle when approaching the analysis of reason-guided,
free human action through the lens of a deterministic framework that makes it
possible to locate the history of human beings within the system of nature.
Herder’s account is not only simpler than this; it also enables us to see how
empirical investigations can bear on philosophically interesting questions, as his
account exemplifies how it is possible to investigate the structures of rationality
by investigating the world.

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 9
Human Nature and Human Science
Herder and the Anthropological Turn in
Hermeneutics

Kristin Gjesdal

From within the philosophy of history and history of science alike, attention has
been paid to Herder’s naturalist commitments and especially the way in which
his interest in medicine, anatomy, and biology facilitates philosophically signifi-
cant notions of force, organism, and life.1 As such, Herder’s contribution is taken
to be part of a wider eighteenth-century effort to move beyond Newtonian
mechanism and the scientific models to which it gives rise. In this scholarship,
Herder’s hermeneutic philosophy, as it grows out of his engagement with poetry,
drama, and both literary translation and literary documentation projects, has
received less attention. That is, while it is often remarked en passant or in
footnotes that Herder, in his work on poetry, appeals to organic tropes and
metaphors, it remains to be seen whether his theory of interpretation is in fact
reflective of the outlook that saturates his understanding of nature. This is a
particularly relevant path of inquiry because Herder’s work in hermeneutics
predates the sharp distinction between the sciences of explanation and those of
understanding that has shaped hermeneutics from Dilthey, Heidegger, and
Gadamer, to Habermas, Apel, and beyond. Taking as my point of departure
Herder’s early work on the ode, his reflections on the origin of language, the
eulogy on Thomas Abbt, and his somewhat later discussion of the belles lettres,
I propose that, in his hermeneutic work, Herder develops a notion of an organic
relationship between the individual and humanity (enabling sympathy and an

1
See for example the contributions by Zammito, Buchenau, and Waldow in the present volume.
See also Schick, 1971 and Reill, 2005.
 KRISTIN GJESDAL 

initial openness toward the outlook of an other), and also between an individual
and his or her concrete historical context (allowing an interpreter, through
critical scholarship, to emphasize otherness and the way in which a given text
or expression differs from his or her own outlook). This twin strategy, cast in the
eighteenth-century wording of divination and criticism, allows Herder to formu-
late an anthropologically sensitive approach to the human sciences that, while
recognized by just about every hermeneutic thinker in his wake, has still not
received the attention it deserves.2

1
Herder’s philosophy of language develops through three stages revolving,
respectively, around his early and, at the time, unpublished essay on the ode,
Fragments of a Treatise on the Ode, and his survey of contemporary literature in
the better-known Fragments on Recent German Literature, and his Treatise on the
Origin of Language, a text that is often perceived as marking his transition from
literary history to systematic analysis of language and thus frequently referenced
in the philosophical literature.
In Fragments of a Treatise on the Ode, Herder discusses how language first
takes shape in the image-rich expressions of the ode. In his words, language
developed through poetry, and poetry initially took the form of “dithyrambs,
odes of love and heroes, [in which] one chanted mostly of one’s feelings [Gefühl]”
(SEW 44; FHA 1, 89).3 For Herder, the connection between poetry and language
remains even when art, in modernity, has lost its more traditional (religious and
societal) functions. Language, as he puts it, is the “forecourt” of literature, and
language without poetry is ein Unding, i.e., an absurdity (FHA 1, 584).4 Literature
and language are closely related (“literature grew up [wuchs] in the language, and
the language in the literature,” PW 50; FHA 1, 559). A proper understanding of
language requires a proper understanding of its poetic and literary aspects—and

2
Heidegger and Gadamer praise Herder’s work, yet none of them engages his hermeneutics in
much detail. See Gadamer, 1987, 318–36 and Heidegger, 2004; 1999. For a different approach, see
Dilthey, 1996, 89; 1914, 649.
3
Only later does poetry, and with it language more generally speaking, become objective (SEW
44; FHA 1, 89). Such a development, though, is not entirely negative. For, according to Herder, a
more abstract language is also more perfect (SEW 106; FHA 1, 183).
4
Later, Schleiermacher too will insist that applied language is marked by a poetic dimension. As
Schleiermacher puts it, between poetry and prose “lie all the different kinds of composition and the
modifications of the hermeneutic process determined by them” (Schleiermacher, 1998, 65;
Schleiermacher, 1993, 140).
 HUMAN NATURE AND HUMAN SCIENCE : HERDER ’ S HERMENEUTICS

vice versa.5 As it covers language both historically in its development and

systematically in its various expressive modi, such an approach constitutes a
philosophical study of language (ein philosophisches Sprachenstudium) (FHA 1,
548). This is the outlook that informs Herder’s treatment of language in Frag-
ments on Recent German Literature, the work through which he initially gained
his reputation as a literary critic and philosopher of literature and the arts.
Fragments on Recent German Literature, however, is not simply a work on
literature; it also addresses other critics’ receptions of contemporary poetry and
drama, especially in the Literaturbriefe with its contributions by Lessing, Abbt,
Mendelssohn, and others. As part of this discussion, Herder deepens his thoughts
on the origins of human language.
Just as he had done in his study of the ode, in Fragments on Recent German
Literature, Herder contrasts his philosophical approach to language with the
quest, prevailing among his fellow German philosophers and theologians, for its
divine origin. For Herder, the turn to poetry and, with it, the history of language
is part of a larger endeavor to understand human nature in naturalistic terms. In
his study of the ode, Herder had argued that the appeal to a divine origin is anti-
intellectual.6 In Fragments on Recent German Literature, his concern becomes
more specific, and he points out that, to the extent that it emphasizes the
perfection of human language, the appeal to divine origins overlooks not only
the historical origin of language, but also its development once it has, as it were,
originated.7 A philosophical approach to language should not culminate in an
appeal to its historical origin, but must explain how this origin can itself entail a
possibility for growth and development. The origin of language should be sought
within the sphere of the human and, when understood as human, language is by
definition viewed as historically evolving.
In Herder’s view, a hypothesis about the human beginning of language is
epistemically more responsible than a hypothesis about its divine beginning.
Further, it makes for a more satisfying epistemic (or even broader intellectual)
outlook. For in line with Herder’s thinking, only an anthropological-historical
approach will allow a human being to understand itself and its own existence as
human—i.e., only such an approach will facilitate self-understanding. In this way,

5
Herder’s work on Hebrew poetry also reinforces this point (FHA 5, 676, 673, 964).
6
Herder’s discussion is here designed to counter the prominent demographer Johann Peter
Süßmilch and his appeal to a divine origin of language. As he quasi-modestly puts it, “I may
therefore always presuppose a human origin. Every other origin is beyond our sphere” (PW 58; FHA
1, 608). However, the fact that Herder is critical of some aspects of Süßmilch’s position does not
imply that he rejects each and every part of it. For a discussion of this point, see Forster, 2010, 63–4.
7
As he puts it, “[n]ot how language should have arisen or could have arisen, but how it arose—
that is the question” (PW 55; FHA 1, 605).
 KRISTIN GJESDAL 

the perspective from Herder’s earliest reflections on the ode is extended and
Fragments on Recent German Literature facilitates a more general discussion of
our linguistic capacities, our historical existence, and the relationship between
them, as well as of the particular gains of the human being investigating,
hermeneutically and reflectively, its being in culture and history. This approach
to language—and to the study of human self-understanding—is further devel-
oped in the Academy Preisschrift, Treatise on the Origin of Language, which takes
advantage of the methodological framework developed in Fragments on Recent
German Literature (the emphasis on the historicity of language and its develop-
ment) and yet adds to it a more subtle discussion of how language shapes and
defines humanity.
The challenge of the Academy is spelled out in French: “En supposant les
hommes abandonnés à leurs facultés naturelles, sont ils en état d’inventer le
langage? (Supposing human beings abandon their natural faculties, are they in a
position to invent language?)”8 Right from the opening of his treatise, Herder
undermines the premise of the Berlin Academy, namely, that language is an
“invention” (and, relatedly, that we could meaningfully entertain the notion of a
languageless human being).9 Even though Herder repeatedly uses the term
“invent [erfinden],” the question, as he views it, is not whether a human being
left to its own resources is clever enough to devise language (as a tool applied by a
previously pre-linguistic being), but, rather, how human nature is intrinsically
and profoundly linguistic. In Herder’s view, we could not be human without
language—and thus the very idea of a human being inventing language does not
make sense. The capacity for language is part of our nature, constitutive of the
kind of beings we are. This marks a shift in eighteenth-century philosophy of
language.10 With reference to Condillac and Rousseau, two towering figures in
this field, Herder seeks to uncover a way of thinking about language as natural,
while nonetheless plotting an alternative to the elevation of animals to the level of
human beings (as he reads Condillac) and the reduction of human beings to
animals (as he polemically reads Rousseau) (PW 77; FHA 1, 711). According to
Herder, language and humanity should be viewed as intimately connected; for
the human being, language is “as natural . . . as is his being as a human being”

8
Haym points out that Herder’s submission appears to be written at such great speed that one
cannot help assuming—thus further supporting the notion of a continuity between the early work
on poetry and the Treatise on the Origin of Language—that the main arguments of the Preisschrift
must have already been in place. Haym, 1954, vol. 1, 429–30.
9
For a discussion of this point, see Sapir, 1907, 109–11.
10
While Herder’s insights, especially with respect to the relationship between thought and
language, have been traced back to Hamann, this genealogy is questioned in Forster, 2010, 56–9.
 HUMAN NATURE AND HUMAN SCIENCE : HERDER ’ S HERMENEUTICS

(PW 87; FHA 1, 722). Yet, no other animal has language, and only “the human
being as a human being [der Mensch, als Mensch] can and must invent language”
(PW 96; FHA 1, 732, emphasis added; see also PW 83–4; FHA 1, 718). As the
medium of human interaction, language is social: “[t]he human being is in his
destiny a creature of the herd, of society,” as Herder puts it (PW 138; FHA 1,
783). This herd splits into different groups, which in turn give rise to the variety
of languages (PW 147–8; FHA 1, 791–2). Given the different conditions of life
and human flourishing, each of these groups and the members within it develop
in individual ways.
The focus on individuality and historical-cultural diversity brings with it a new
hermeneutic challenge: the challenge of understanding others. With this in mind,
we turn to Herder’s commemorative essay on Thomas Abbt.

2
Thomas Abbt was a contributor to the Literaturbriefe, the literary letters to which
Herder’s Fragments on Recent German Literature responds. Abbt, however, was
also affiliated with the rationalist movement (Clark, 1955, 76–8) and was thus no
obvious accomplice for Herder. However, Abbt had distinguished himself as an
outspoken voice in the battle against teleological explanations and as a critic of
Johann Joachim Spalding’s argument for providence in history.11 Furthermore,
he had been a student of Georg Friedrich Meier and had joined Moses Mendels-
sohn in his efforts to translate Shaftesbury into German (see Redekop, 2000, 129).
Most importantly, however, Abbt’s contribution to the Literaturbriefe (especially
his exchange with Meier) had identified a close connection between thought and
language (see Forster, 2010, 60). In Herder’s view, this made Abbt a writer for
humankind (FHA 2, 581), a thinker who brought philosophy back down to earth
and prepared for a new approach to the studium humanitatis (FHA 2, 584)—the
study of a human being as it realizes itself in and through culture and symbolic
practice. Herder thus turns to Abbt’s philosophy in order to uncover a set of
conceptual tools through which the human sciences can be understood. He
discusses two separate, but nonetheless related, issues: the subject matter of
the human sciences (which Herder identifies with the human being in its most
diverse, i.e., individualized, form) and how it is best approached.
As Herder views it in the 1760s, interpretation is the modus operandi of the
human sciences (as we would put it today). Understanding and interpretation,
further, are rooted in the engagement with a specific linguistic expression or

11
See Zammito, 2002, 165–71, for a review of this debate.
 KRISTIN GJESDAL 

symbolic utterance. “A human soul,” he writes, “is an individual [ein Indivi-

duum] in the realm of minds [Geister]” (PW 167; FHA 2, 571). Language is used
by particular individuals, who see the world from a particular vantage point. For
Herder, the elasticity of language is not simply a fact that determines one’s
perspective (in that each language embodies an outlook on the world); it also
entails a possibility for individual expression and self-formation.12 In Herder’s
words, “Each head who thinks for himself [selbst denkt] will also speak for
himself, and so his manner of expression gets formed in his own way too: he
will impress on his language characteristic features of his manner of seeing”
(PW 51; FHA 1, 560). The ability to think for oneself, which occupies the heart of
the young Herder’s Enlightenment program, requires an ability to find adequate,
perhaps even novel, linguistic forms.
However, while all language is to some extent individualized in its use, poetry
conveys such an individual point of view in a particularly significant manner.13 In
his 1765 essay How Philosophy Can Become More Universal and Useful for the
Benefit of the People, Herder had worried that philosophy, to the extent that it is
geared toward universal laws and definitions, is not well equipped to under-
standing language and expressions as individual.14 In On Thomas Abbt’s Writing,
Herder turns to a related science, that of psychology. Can psychology, he asks,
bring us closer to the human being in its individualized, symbolic manifestations?
In his essay on Abbt, Herder takes psychology, whose main purpose is to
establish the laws that govern the human mind and behavior, to be a top-down
and rule-oriented science (he thus distinguishes between Seelenlehre, which is
more positively described [FHA 1, 111] and Psychologie, which, in this context, is
characterized more critically and said still to be in its early days [FHA 2, 571]). As
such, it fares no better than philosophy (that is, than the kind of [school]
philosophy Herder had already been criticizing in his 1765 essay). Psychology,
he explains, “continues on its way through inferences and conjectures merely in

12
In the spirit of his critique of authority-based models of philosophy and learning, Herder
suggests that this aspect of language is curbed by schoolmasters who one-sidedly emphasize formal
rules and grammar (FHA 1, 550). Herder maintains this criticism throughout his writing and there
are echoes of it, for example, in his critique of a formalistic approach to grammar in The Spirit of
Hebrew Poetry (SHP 26; FHA 5, 672).
13
As Herder explains in On the Cognition and Sensation of the Human Soul, while a universal
language would have had to be invented by someone who could neither speak nor hear, poetry is
reflective of the diversity of applied language: “No two poets have ever used one meter in the same
way, or probably felt it in the same way either” (PW 204; FHA 4, 349). This point is later repeated in
Schleiermacher, 1998, 65; 1993, 140.
14
Herder discusses the state of contemporary philosophy (including school philosophy) in How
Philosophy Can Become More Universal and Useful for the Benefit of the People (PW 3–33; FHA 1,
101–35).
 HUMAN NATURE AND HUMAN SCIENCE : HERDER ’ S HERMENEUTICS

accordance with the most familiar element which all human souls have in
common, without paying attention to the peculiarities of individual subjects”
(PW 167; FHA 2, 571, emphasis added). Focusing on universal laws and prop-
erties, psychology downplays or even overlooks the uniqueness of individual
lives and is therefore bound to miss out on the expressions of an individual
human being.15
Having criticized the law-orientation of contemporary psychology, Herder
turns to another branch of the human sciences, namely, biography (PW 169;
FHA 2, 573). Biographers, he points out, have an adequate goal in mind, that of
explaining “the peculiarity of the individual subjects” (PW 167; FHA 2, 571) and
yet they often fail to reach this goal. For them, Herder argues, individuality is
ineffable; they assume that it should be explored through aesthetic accounts such
as character sketches, portraits, and vignettes. However, proceeding in this
manner, biographers can only reach a vague notion of individuality, one that,
in Herder’s words, “is often a fiction [ein Roman] of [the biographical subject]
and more often a fiction [ein Roman] of their author’s” (PW 169; FHA 2, 573).
Herder thus remains unconvinced by the attempt to capture individualized
human experience by way of an aestheticizing or merely particularist approach.16
As such, both the universalizing and the particularizing approaches prove
faulty. While the universalizing strategy moves from law to particular instance
(as subsumed under a given law or concept), the particularist approach focuses
on the uniqueness of the expression at stake. In spite of their apparent methodo-
logical differences—the former insisting on a universalist approach, the latter on
an aestheticizing reading—they share an important premise, namely, the idea of
an abstract opposition between the universal and the particular, each of which is
one-sidedly prioritized, respectively, by the psychologists and by the Schöngeister.
What is needed is therefore not a move from one extreme to another within this
dichotomy, but an attempt to overcome the very dichotomy in the first place.
This, for Herder, is a thoroughly philosophical undertaking.

15
Here Herder echoes Shaftesbury’s observation that “[t]he most ingenious way of becoming
foolish is by a system” (Shaftesbury, 1999, 130). This remark, importantly, features in Shaftesbury’s
discussion of the urge to “truly know ourselves” (Shaftesbury, 1999, 128) and his emphasis on the
fact that the “study of human affection cannot fail of leading me toward the knowledge of human
nature and of myself ” (Shaftesbury, 1999, 133). In drawing on Shaftesbury, Herder insists that he is
going beyond Kant and the framework of Kantian philosophy (for discussion of this point see
Irmscher, 1987, 54).
16
Another version of this argument is found in Herder’s earliest texts on philosophy and poetry.
There Herder worries about the bifurcation of philosophy into “observers of nature” and Schönge-
ister and suggests that philosophy proper must combine the best of both (PW 6; FHA 1, 108). For his
thoughts on the combination of observation of nature and aesthetics (and the way in which German
philosophy is fit to undertake such a task), see SEW 39; FHA 1, 83.
 KRISTIN GJESDAL 

3
Herder celebrates Abbt’s ability to get beyond the one-sidedness of what we today
would term a narrow scientism (in the guise of psychology), on the one hand, and
narrowly aestheticizing approaches, on the other, by emphasizing a third alter-
native: that of hermeneutic philosophy (while Herder does not use this term
himself, his work, including the essay on Abbt, systematically explores the
conditions for and nature of understanding and interpretation).17 Abbt himself
had not only theorized, but also contributed to this field through his interpret-
ative practice. Perceiving the works he engages with as expressions of individual
human beings and, at the same time, of a shared humanity, Abbt recognizes their
status as both individual (representing a particular point of view) and universal
(contributing to a human point of view, more broadly speaking).18 In this way,
Abbt, plotting a route beyond the one-sidedness of law-oriented psychology and
particularizing biography, demonstrates the possibility of a method that is
attentive to the notion of a more organic relationship between particular and
universal. Herder terms this method “divination” (PW 174; FHA 2, 605, see also
PW 218; FHA 4, 366).
As Peter H. Reill points out, the term “divination” was already used in Buffon’s
history of nature, in which it denoted an attempt to grasp nature as a unity in
diversity: “[I]f nature was a unity in diversity, then the scientist was to investigate
closely the manifold variety of individual empirical phenomena and to cultivate
creative scientific imagination. The proposed answer [to this dual task] was to
do both at once, allowing the interaction between them to produce a higher form
of understanding than provided either by simple observation or by discursive,
formal logic. This type of understanding was called Anschauung, divination, or
intuition” (Reill, 1996, 17). Here nature, as a totality, is viewed as growing out of
and articulating itself through the particular—the particular, as it were, contains
the universal as its potential—and the scientist is seeking to grasp the totality of
nature while still being attentive to its individual parts.
However, once we turn from the relationship between the human being and
other aspects of nature to the human being relating to its own expressions, the

17
This quest for a third alternative is related to Herder’s larger attempt to overcome the
distinction between the human being as rational and sensible. For a discussion of this aspect of
Herder’s work, see Heinz, 1994.
18
For a discussion of this dimension of the Enlightenment, see Frazer, 2010. As Frazer defines
sentimentalism, it is “an age not of reason alone, but also of reflectively refined feelings shared
among individuals via the all-important faculty of sympathy” (Frazer, 2010, 4).
 HUMAN NATURE AND HUMAN SCIENCE : HERDER ’ S HERMENEUTICS

language of divination approximates that of sympathy.19 As Herder views Abbt’s

hermeneutic practice, his (Abbt’s) “human and moral judgment . . . is founded on
sensation, not on rules” (PW 175; FHA 2, 606). In On Thomas Abbt’s Writings,
Herder does not offer a clear-cut definition of hermeneutic feeling.20 Like Kant in
the 1760s (Kant, 2011, 66; AK 20 4), he may have assumed that feeling is a
universal, human quality and, as such, is not in need of philosophical explan-
ation. Further, we must keep in mind that at the time the idea of sympathy had
gained currency through an increased interest in the work of David Hume, whose
discussion of taste had resonated in Herder’s work in the 1760s.21 For Hume,
sympathy is both an immediate and a mediating, that is, communicative relation,
i.e., it funnels into language and intersubjective interactions more broadly speak-
ing.22 Similarly, Herder makes it clear that the ability to evoke feeling in other
human beings depends on an ability to express oneself. It is a question of the

19
The notion of sympathy also figures in Herder’s understanding of nature. In Treatise on the
Origin of Language, Herder describes how we can establish bonds of sympathy that, ultimately,
pervade nature as such: “As alone and individual and exposed to every hostile storm of the universe
as it seems, [an individual] is not alone; it stands allied with the whole of nature!, delicately strung,
but nature has hidden in these strings sounds which, stimulated and encouraged, awaken other
equally delicately built creatures in turn, and can communicate sparks to a remote heart, as though
through an invisible chain, so that it feels for this unseen creature” (PW 66; FHA 1, 698).
20
In the years after the Abbt essay, Herder continues to explore the role of sympathy in art and
human communication. In Journal of My Voyage in the Year 1769, he sketches a program very
similar to the one he plots in his eulogy. Inspired by his travels at sea, Herder enthusiastically
exclaims: “What would I have given to have been able to read Orpheus and the Odyssey on board!
When I do read them again, I will throw myself back in their times” (SPC 72; FHA 9/II 22). Likewise,
This Too a Philosophy of History describes how an interpreter should seek to empathize with the
“whole nature of a soul, which rules through everything” (PW 293; FHA 4, 33). Herder also
emphasizes the need to “feel yourself into everything” so as to be “on your way to understanding
the word” (PW 292; FHA 4, 33, see also PW 291; FHA 4, 33). The 1775 edition of Vom Erkennen
und Empfinden discusses the relationship between self-feeling and feeling for others (SWS 8, 295–7).
And Ideas for the Philosophy of History of Humanity addresses a notion of “organic sympathy” that
not only characterizes the human being, but, potentially, can also be ascribed to higher primates,
though Herder notes that “the human organization, being the most exquisite of all, is of necessity
more peculiarly formed, to repeat the tones of all other beings, and sympathize with them” (PHM
232; FHA 5, 345). In fact, it could even be claimed that Herder allows for the idea that nature is itself
a poetic totality—a tönende whole, as he puts it—with which we feel sympathy. While first brought
to the foreground in the eulogy on Abbt, the notion of sympathetic identification thus figures
centrally in Herder’s entire work. He does not, one could say, seek to offer a final definition, yet
keeps amending the notion so as to make it ever more concrete and relevant.
21
Meinecke captures the continuity from Hume to Herder: Herder “was intent upon writing ‘a
history of the human soul in general,’ as Hume had been before him, but in a more profound sense;
and for all these reasons he was able to discover with a real stroke of genius new provinces in the life
of history as a whole, and become the creator of a new method of ‘sympathetic identification’
(‘Einfühlung’—a word that he himself invented); and by the use of this method, all the fields of
history he did not himself cover were gradually able to be explored” (Meinecke, 1972, 297; Meinecke,
1936, vol. 2, 385).
22
See for instance the discussion in Hume, 2007, 273 (2.3.6).
 KRISTIN GJESDAL 

author’s style of writing, his or her way of presenting feelings, thoughts, and
intuitions—or, as Herder calls it, his or her tone.23 Abbt’s writings exemplify this
point and cultivate an unusually fine-tuned style of expression (PW 174; FHA 2,
605). In this way, Abbt is able to let imagination remain “a sister of truth” (PW
175; FHA 2, 606).24
Abbt’s expressive abilities go hand in hand with his skills as a reader. For, in
order to express herself in an exemplary way, an author must be attentive to the
perspective of other human beings (i.e., be able to place herself in the situation of
others). The ability to articulate his feelings therefore is not distinct from, but
reflective of, Abbt’s hermeneutic gifts. In both cases, we encounter an ability to
see the world from the point of view of another—to relate to language not only as
an instrument of reason, but also as an expressive medium. Herder thus goes
along with Hume (whom he describes as “one of the greatest minds of our time”
[PW 265; FHA 2, 21]), but also beyond him in that, in the spirit of Abbt’s
hermeneutic practice, he merges the notion of sympathy with an expressivist
understanding of language and humanity.25
For Herder, thought and expression presuppose and enhance each other.
Expression is not added to thought (as if thought could exist independently of
language), but is its very foundation. Just as Abbt had pointed out, with reference
to Meier, that the image of thought and language as one of body and clothing is
inadequate, so too does Herder write: “Thought and Expression! Are they related
here as the gown to its body? The finest gown, to a beautiful body, is only a
hindrance.—Are they related as the skin to the body? That, too, is not sufficient;
the color and smoothness of the skin never account fully for beauty” (SEW 204;
FHA 1, 404).26 If the tone of an expression conveys an author’s individual
orientation in the world (and thus also from within a given historical culture),
then a hermeneutically trained reader should be sensitized to this aspect of
individuality. In On Cognition and Sensation of the Human Soul, Herder

23
For a discussion of this point, see Sauder, 2009, 320 and Kelletat, 1984, 50–1.
24
In The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry Herder speaks of the need for poetry to “combine beauty with
truth and animate both with sympathetic feeling [teilnehmender Empfindung]” (SHP 1, 73; FHA 5,
724) and suggests that the poetry of the Orientals evokes sympathy with flowers, plants, and herbs
(ibid.).
25
This is a point that Herder maintains throughout the 1770s and beyond. In On the Cognition
and Sensation of the Human Soul, for example, he describes how poetry can trigger an almost
physical response (characterized as Reiz) in the reader. He also argues (and this will be relevant with
respect to the discussion of recognition in the next section) that a feeling for oneself is intrinsically
connected to the ability to feel for others. In this later text, Herder, returning to a topic from the
Abbt text, entertains the possibility of a new and better kind of biography (PW 197–9; FHA 4,
340–1).
26
For a discussion of this point, see Forster, 2010, 59–61.
 HUMAN NATURE AND HUMAN SCIENCE : HERDER ’ S HERMENEUTICS

emphasizes that one “ought to be able to regard every book as the offprint of a
living human soul” (PW 217; FHA 4, 366). As described by Herder, feeling
represents an openness toward the humanity of individual others and, as such,
it transcends the either-or of subsumption under generalizing laws (as Herder
finds in psychology), or a merely particularizing response (as Herder finds in the
biographical vignettes). The ability to live oneself into the point of view of
another is a precondition for the production and interpretation of meaning.
Both production of meaning (placing something in the space of intersubjectivity)
and understanding (seeking to grasp the meaning of an utterance from within
this space) require an openness to what the world might look like from someone
else’s vantage point. Just as it had been the case in the divinatory grasping of the
totality of nature in its particular parts, we encounter here an ability to move
from a given expression, as particular, toward a more general position, a shared
and communal space of meaning—ultimately the space of the human being as it
realizes itself within a linguistically mediated world.
Herder’s position is bolstered in On the Influence of the Belles Lettres on the
Higher Sciences. In this later essay, he discusses the human sciences (humaniora)
and the way in which they can serve humankind. We are all human beings and
should heed humanity in ourselves and others (SWA 344; FHA 4, 230). The belles
lettres facilitate such respect and provide exercises that develop the feeling of
humanity within us (SWA 345; FHA 4, 230); they cultivate what Herder, in
Critical Forests, had already designated as a true sensus communis (SWA 179;
FHA 2, 252). From this point of view, feeling, as it is introduced in Herder’s early
work (and developed in his later writing), allows us to appreciate the points of
view of others, while all the same seeing these different points of view as
contributions to the articulation of a shared human nature. Hence, the relation-
ship between humanity and its concrete manifestations is that of a unity in
diversity, an organic co-dependency between the whole and its parts, and not
one of abstract subsumption of the particular under a universal or a cultivation of
the particular for its own sake. The individual is neither torn loose from, nor
subsumed under, humanity (a universal), but serves to give it life and reality.

4
In the context of his hermeneutic work, Herder discusses how understanding can
generate tolerance and an expansion of the interpreter’s horizon. This is one
reason why, in his view, cultural encounters have an intrinsic value. As he puts it
in Fragments on Recent German Literature: “What is more worthy and important
for human beings than to investigate productions of human forces, the history of
 KRISTIN GJESDAL 

human efforts, and the births of human understanding?” (PW 58; FHA 1, 608).
However, while Herder appeals to a notion of sympathy, he is also—possibly
under the influence of Hume—well aware of the fact that we often perceive and
judge others in biased and prejudiced ways. Thus the question emerges as to how
the individual interpreter, in the process of understanding, can minimize the risk
of over-extending sympathy to those who are similar to him or her or of judging
those that are unlike him or her in too unfavorable ways. In the Abbt eulogy,
Herder tackles this question through an analysis of the relationship between self
and other that, in many ways, anticipates Hegel’s later and better-known dia-
lectics of recognition.
Herder critiques what he calls the misguided (Cartesian) view that under-
standing mirrors or is made possible by an immediate access an individual
interpreter has to his or her own inner thoughts. This kind of thinking is based
on two fundamental mistakes: the claim that the human self is transparent to
itself and, relatedly, the idea that its relation to others can be derived from its
relation to itself.
According to Herder, we have a natural tendency to approach human expres-
sion and practice by inference from self-knowledge. For, as Herder puts it, “[i]n
the degree of depth of our self-feeling [Selbstgefühl] lies also the degree of our
feeling for others [Mitgefühl], for it is only ourselves that we can, so to speak, feel
into others” (PW 214; FHA 4, 365, trans. modified). This, however, does not
imply that the human being is transparent to itself. Nor does it imply that self-
knowledge is immediate. According to Herder, even self-feeling finds expression
in and through language and symbolic expression more generally speaking.27
And just as Herder argues that the mind is embodied, so too does he emphasize,
with yet another critical gesture toward Cartesian philosophy, that our most
fundamental relation to ourselves is mediated by our feeling for others. The
knowledge we have of ourselves is neither immediate nor certain. Human beings
possess no transparent or immediate self-understanding, nor do they have
immediate access to the minds of others. They only have access to themselves
and to others as they express themselves, i.e., make themselves known.28 Imme-
diate hermeneutic access, Herder points out, would require a divine point of view
(PW 168; FHA 2, 572). Hermeneutics, by contrast, is a human activity and part of

27
For a discussion of this point, see Irmscher, 1973, 33.
28
In On the Cognition and Sensation of the Human Soul, in line with his work on the ode, Herder
discusses how language grows out of an initial self-feeling (“this medium of our self-feeling and
mental consciousness is—language” [PW 211; FHA 4, 357]). In the same period, Herder writes the
incomplete Zum Sinn des Gefühls (1769) (FHA 4, 233–42). Here he speaks about the feeling of being
and offers his own take on the Cartesian cogito, sum: “Ich fühle mich! Ich bin!” (FHA 4, 236).
 HUMAN NATURE AND HUMAN SCIENCE : HERDER ’ S HERMENEUTICS

the studium humanitatis and, as Herder lays it out, does not involve knowledge
about other minds independently of their actions and expressions. However, the
impossibility of immediate access does not imply that human beings cannot
understand themselves or each other at all.29 Nor does it imply that the insight
gained through an initial sympathy or openness cannot be epistemologically
verified and expounded. Feeling and reflection, sympathy and critical scholar-
ship, should go hand in hand.30 In his early work, Herder draws three implica-
tions from this point.
First, Herder points out that only that which is given form and voiced and
expressed (in one way or other) can be an object of hermeneutical inquiry. In
order to appear as meaningful (to appear as a potential object of interpretation), a
feeling, sentiment, experience, or response must be brought into the space of
symbolic practice (which cannot be reduced to discursive practice).31 In Herder’s
words, since “we do not even know ourselves from within . . . it follows that the
historian must all the more study his author from without in order to scout
out his soul in words and deeds” (PW 169; FHA 2, 573).32 As opposed to
their modern descendants, the ancient biographers realized this. They saw their
subjects as they expressed themselves in symbols and actions and had no
intention of reaching an inner world behind these expressions (PW 169; FHA
2, 573). To them, the mind was publicly accessible; nothing was hidden. Just as
nature, for Herder and Goethe, is accessible to those who are sufficiently percep-
tive and attuned to it, so the meaning of a work is not behind, but rather in its
expression.33 Hence, when Herder later discusses the legitimacy and proper
subject area of the humaniora, it should come as no surprise that he places
special emphasis on the example of the classics (SWA 345–6; FHA 4, 231–2).34

29
Thus I depart from Leventhal, who offers a deconstructionist reading of Herder’s notion of
divination, seeing it, ultimately, as reflecting an “irreducible multiplicity of the subject” (Leventhal,
1994, 198).
30
This point is later reiterated by Schleiermacher, who insists not only that divination should go
hand in hand with grammatical-historical or comparative studies, but also that the very discipline of
hermeneutics must be closely related to criticism. Schleiermacher, 1998, 3–4 and 92–3;
Schleiermacher, 1993, 71–2 and 169–70.
31
Herder can thus be said to defend a broad (rather than a narrow) expressivism. For a
discussion of this point, see Forster, 2010, 102–13.
32
In this context, Herder refers to Montaigne. Montaigne’s philosophy is a constant point of
return for the young Herder. In the slightly later On the Cognition and Sensation of the Human Soul,
Herder compares Montaigne’s expression of humanity and its dependence on sensation with that of
Shakespeare (PW 219; FHA 4, 367–8).
33
I would like to thank Dalia Nassar for pointing out this parallel and for other helpful
comments on an earlier version of this paper.
34
Leventhal draws attention to a later passage in which Herder makes it clear that if we view
things in the world as words in a book, we will soon discover that there is nothing behind the words
 KRISTIN GJESDAL 

Second, Herder infers that just as the understanding of others depends on a

certain ability for self-understanding, so self-understanding depends on inter-
action with others.35 In his words, we only “recognize ourselves at the moment
when another person exhibits thoughts which seem taken from our own soul”
(PW 168; FHA 2, 572). Both expression and understanding are genuinely
intersubjective affairs.36 The idea that an interpreter can, so to speak, climb
into the head, soul, heart, or mind of her subject and feel her way to her inner
essence overlooks that there is nothing to discover inside of, or behind, the
expression: even a basic feeling or orientation in the world forms itself in
expression, and expression, in turn, is not, Herder points out in his Älteste
Urkunde, necessarily unified or pointing to one meaning or totality of meanings
(SWS 6, 317–18).
Third, Herder proposes that individuality is of hermeneutic interest—indeed is
only possible—to the extent that the expressive faculties of an individual are
tempered by his or her culture.37 As expressed or formed (gebildet), feeling is, by
definition, historically and culturally mediated.38 It is, Herder points out, a matter
of being formed in a cultural context, of Bildung or education. Both text and
interpreter are situated within a particular context, which can serve as an
impediment to understanding. Rather than projecting his or her outlook onto
the text, an interpreter should seek to understand the expression with reference to
its context of origin. As a consequence, whoever tries to rob an author of the
“birthmarks of his time” risks “taking from him the traits of his individuality

and that the meaning is in the words themselves. See SWS 21, 173 and Leventhal 1994, 200. Again,
however, I disagree with Leventhal’s reading of this as an anti-hermeneutic position (ibid., 204).
35
Strangely, this dimension of Herder’s work is not discussed in Taylor’s survey of Herder’s
importance for Hegel in Taylor, 1975, 18–29.
36
Hence, as long as the inadequate biographical approach is the only model available, humanist
scholars and philosophers are in a certain sense right in turning away from a study of individuality,
and in holding, like Herder’s contemporaries, to the identification of philosophy with universal
concepts and rules. This response, however, is inadequate in that it fails to ask to what extent this
biographical model, subjective and aestheticizing as it is, provides an acceptable concept of human
individuality in the first place.
37
This point is later echoed in Schleiermacher’s discussion of technical (psychological) and
grammatical interpretation, focusing, respectively, on that which is unique for a given language user
and that which is shared with his or her linguistic and cultural community. See Schleiermacher,
1998, 8–11; Schleiermacher 1993, 77–80.
38
In discussing embodied (expressed) thoughts, Herder speaks of interpretation as a metaphor-
ical dissection. The historian should approach the human mind in the same way the “natural
scientist [dissects] the bodies of animals in order to steal into the inner workshop of nature” by
carefully investigating the material at hand in its unique and particular manifestation (PW 167; FHA
2, 571).
 HUMAN NATURE AND HUMAN SCIENCE : HERDER ’ S HERMENEUTICS

[Eigenheit]” (PW 172; FHA 2, 579).39 Individuality is but a function of how the
world is perceived from a particular point in time, place, and culture.40 According
to Herder, the interpreter seeks to grasp the individual neither as opposed to his
or her culture (and humanity), nor as subsumed under it, but as its realization.
Hence a cultural framework is not ascribed to, or forced upon, the individual, but
is its precondition. The scholar Herder celebrates is “the explainer who defines
the borders of an author’s past world, own time, and world of posterity—what the
first supplied to him, how the second helped or harmed him, how the third
developed his work” (PW 173; FHA 2, 580). This “explainer” grasps an expres-
sion as an individual-universal—as an individual expression that is presented in
and through a particular realization of (and contribution to) a shared culture.41
Individuality and culture are mutually dependent.42 Expression only takes
place in a context of culture and education (Bildung). As Herder sees it, “each
great author must bear on himself the birthmarks of his time” (PW 172; FHA 2,
579).43 This, however, requires that the interpreter be able to let an expression
stand forth in its own right. As Herder elaborates, “that commentator on an
author is for me the greatest who does not modify him to accord with his own
century, but explains him in all the nuances of his time” (PW 172; FHA 2, 579).
And, as he puts it in On the Cognition and Sensation of the Human Soul, “this
living reading, this divination into the author’s soul, is the only reading, and the
deepest means of education [Bildung]” (PW 218; FHA 2, 366, see also PW 167;
FHA 2, 571).
In Herder’s view, understanding must take into account the context, period, or
culture in which an agent understands herself and her practice and expression

39
Again, this insight is echoed in Schleiermacher’s claim that “every person is on the one hand a
location in which a given language forms itself in an individual manner, on the other their discourse
can only be understood via the totality of language” (Schleiermacher, 1998, 8; Schleiermacher 1993,
78). In his hermeneutics, however, Schleiermacher offers more specific guidelines for interpretation
than Herder does. For a discussion of Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics, see Gjesdal, 2014, 92–109.
40
As such, there is a distinctively Leibnizian twist to Herder’s argument. For a discussion of the
importance of Leibniz’s notion of individuality for eighteenth-century philosophy, see Cassirer,
1961, 115–17. For a discussion that emphasizes the importance of Leibniz’s understanding of the
mind-body relationship, see DeSouza, 2012.
41
I am borrowing the expression “individual-universal” from Manfred Frank’s work on Schleier-
macher (Frank, 1985). Schleiermacher’s position on technical and grammatical interpretation
echoes Herder’s understanding of individuality and its cultural mediation.
42
Herder has little interest in the notion of a homogeneous culture, but seeks to analyze, rather,
the constitutive diversity of culture. Hermeneutics pays attention to this diversity and seeks to
integrate it into human self-understanding at large.
43
Furthermore, Herder notes, presumably with a reference to classicist criticism, that if Aristotle
had been read in this way (i.e., with reference to his historical context) his work would not have been
so harmful (PW 173; FHA 2, 580).
 KRISTIN GJESDAL 

find meaning. Individual expression is concrete and historical. By combining

hermeneutic openness with ongoing critical work, the interpreter gradually
uncovers the historical presuppositions for a given expression and, at the same
time, contributes to her own Bildung. Just as the self, for Herder, is closely related
to its other, so our relationship to others, as honed through hermeneutic practice,
is developed in the intersection between sympathetic openness and critical
reflection.

5
Bildung is constitutive of human nature, of the way in which human beings
compensate for weak or underdeveloped instincts (see for instance PW 82; FHA
1, 716). In the essay on Thomas Abbt—but also in closely related texts such as
Treatise on the Origin of Language, On the Cognition and Sensation of the Human
Soul, and On the Influence of the Belles Lettres on the Higher Sciences—the notion
of Bildung plays an important role. There Herder argues, for example, that as an
individual in the realm of minds (Geister), each of us “senses in accordance with
an individual Bildung” (PW 167; FHA 2, 571).
Herder exemplifies his ideal of Bildung by offering concrete exercises in
understanding, by showing how we learn and expand our outlooks through
endeavors in interpretation. The eulogy on Abbt serves as one such example—
and, indeed, an example of Herder’s engagement with a thinker who himself had
produced a theory of language, understanding, and interpretation. Observing and
learning from Abbt’s interpretative practice, Herder shows how, as it escapes the
narrowly constructed alternatives of, on the one hand, plain subsumption under
laws (as Herder finds it in psychology) and, on the other, aestheticizing musings
(as in biographical narratives), hermeneutics is part of a broader human self-
formation. From this point of view, there is a continuity between Herder’s
naturalism and his hermeneutics. Once Herder’s philosophy of interpretation is
perceived as part of his larger philosophical outlook in the late 1760s, it becomes
clear that his vision for an anthropological hermeneutics is part of his effort to
rethink the role of humankind in nature and acknowledge that, precisely as
natural, human beings realize themselves in and through culture. Herder can
thus be seen to operate with a distinction akin to that of first and second nature,
both of which are and should be objects of scientific inquiry: fields through which
a human being seeks to take responsibility for and develop itself. The discourse of
Bildung addresses the cultural aspects of human nature and, as such, involves
reference to a dimension of freedom, spontaneity, self-understanding and
-formation, as constitutive of a shared humanity. Throughout the 1770s, the
 HUMAN NATURE AND HUMAN SCIENCE : HERDER ’ S HERMENEUTICS

basic claims from Herder’s early work—that a human mind only knows itself
through an other (PW 168; FHA 2, 572) and that this encounter entails a
possibility for Bildung (PW 167; FHA 2, 571)—gain meaning and concreteness.
By engaging her past, the culture of which she is a part, and cultures that
(historically or geographically) differ from her own, the interpreter will work,
philologically and critically, toward self-understanding and the understanding of
others. Just as sciences such as biology, medicine, geology, chemistry, mathem-
atics, and physics (many of which Herder had already addressed in his 1765
essay, How Philosophy Can Become More Universal) contribute to our under-
standing of (first) nature and the human being’s place within it, so hermeneutics,
both as a theoretical and as a practical discipline, contributes to our understand-
ing of ourselves as beings whose (second) nature it is to realize ourselves through
language, culture, and history.

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 10
Herder’s Religious Anthropology
in His Later Writings
Johannes Schmidt

Religion is a term that commonly designates the principal framework of an

individual’s innermost convictions and practical truths. On this basis, one
could attempt to answer the question what the word religion entails for Johann
Gottfried Herder. The eighteenth-century writer and philosopher is known
primarily for his philosophy of history and theory of language. He was a contem-
porary of such figures as Goethe and Schiller as well as Rousseau, Hume, and
Byron, and his vast writings and contributions to a wide variety of fields in the
humanities had a profound influence on German romanticism, idealism, and
beyond. Most recently, interest in Herder has been amplified in the studies of
multiculturalism, cultural anthropology, and colonialism. At the same time,
Herder was a clergyman all his life; he never held a position outside of the church.1
He was a Protestant preacher and teacher in the Baltic city of Riga from 1764 to
1769, then at the court of Wilhelm von Schaumburg-Lippe (in Bückeburg near
Hannover) during the first half of the 1770s, and finally from 1776 on he was the
General Superintendent for the Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach, where he
was also a member of the consistory and of the upper council of the consistory,
chief pastor and first preacher at the city church of St. Peter and Paul. As a
Christian and clergyman, he produced an impressive corpus of works that rivals
his other publications. In fact, it is often difficult to distinguish between his secular
and theological-religious work. All of his writings bear a strong affinity to his
occupation, evoking God as reason in and for nature and Jesus as the principal

1
Except for a short period from 1769 to 1771 during which Herder traveled and accompanied
Prince Peter Friedrich Wilhelm of Holstein-Gottorp as private scholar and preacher. It was then that
he met Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Joachim Christoph Bode, and most notably Johann
Wolfgang Goethe.
 HERDER ’ S RELIGIOUS ANTHROPOLOGY

teacher of humanity (Humanität). And this is where the difficulty lies in recon-
structing Herder today. While his religious writings and his ecclesiastical work have
long been neglected by scholars, theology has rediscovered Herder as an important
figure.2 But, in so doing, theology at times disregards Herder’s uncompromising
ideas about nature, history, culture, and language, in which the human being, not
God, is the director of her/his destiny. Similarly, other scholars tend to dismiss
noticeable references to God as the founding principle of everything and Chris-
tianity as the moral compass in his writings.
What I propose here is a different approach that will generally sidestep the
dichotomy between Herder’s thoughts on nature, history, and culture on the one
hand, and his religious and theological views on the other. I intend to avoid an
uncomfortable compromise between Herder as a Christian and Herder as a secular
philosopher. Instead, I will focus on what I call Herder’s religious anthropology. We
need to abandon the categorical differentiation between religious and secular texts for
Herder. This means placing Herder’s study of the human being as a historical and
religious being at the center of my inquiry. In order to do so, I intend, first, to discuss
the problem of Herder and religion in more detail. My understanding of Herder’s
religious anthropology will then be explained in relation to this discussion. The
following two sections will present an example of how to read Herder’s texts with a
focus on the historicity of Christianity as a human religion and its limits, Jesus as a
human being, and Herder’s allusion to a future of religions with humanity at its
center. All this will present an eighteenth-century view on religion that may strike the
reader as unusual for a German cleric. What is more, my reading yields a surprising
conclusion once Herder’s religious anthropology is given its due. Herder places the
human being above Christianity, and as I will also show, he thereby anticipates a
future human religion that allows for individual and diverse cultural (religious)
practices not limited to or bound by a single world religion like Christianity.

1 Herder and Religion

Herder defines religion mostly by its negative. Religion is neither belief in
miracles, symbols, or dogmas, nor is it merely a cultural practice, or some kind
of philosophical deliberation. Religion, for Herder, is rather a fundamental
purpose or, better, disposition of the individual human being with respect to
the relationship to God in every aspect. Religion must therefore be essential for all

2
Here I have to exclude Herder’s theological and clerical writings, and his correspondence as
General Superintendent.
 JOHANNES SCHMIDT 

of Herder’s thought, but with its main focus on the human being.3 To borrow
a phrase from Hans Dietrich Irmscher—whose lifelong scholarship provided an
important impetus for the re-examination of Herder after 1945—the human being
occupies the main position as the “middle point” in Herder’s studies (cf. Irmscher
2001, 129–31) and must accordingly become the focus of any philosophy. Herder
expressed this idea early on in a draft from 1765 entitled How Philosophy Can
Become More Universal and More Useful for the Benefit of the People (FHA 1,
101–34). Here, Herder suggests that first, “all philosophy ought to be philosophy of
the people,” and second, that “all of our philosophy [must] become anthropology”
(ibid., 134).4 If furthermore, as Herder later puts it in the Ideas for a Philosophy of
History of Mankind (Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, 1784–91),
“religion is the highest humanity [Humanität] of the human being” (FHA 6, 160),
then we can conclude that his anthropology always necessarily understands
the human being as a religious being. “This is the way of philosophy, and the
first and last philosophy has always been religion” (ibid., 161), says Herder.
But, because human beings must determine their purpose in the world from
history, they are also essentially historical beings. And this connects to the
religious dimension since God reveals himself not only in nature but in history,
and one cannot seek historical truths—as Herder would put it—without neces-
sarily seeking truths about God and his creation. Already in Another Philosophy
of History for the Education of Mankind (Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte
zur Bildung der Menschheit, 1774), Herder describes history as “God’s pathway
amongst nations” (FHA 4, 87; cf. also Menze 2000). Similarly, later in the Ideen—
arguably Herder’s most important historical work and his monumental (and
failed) attempt to write a universal history—he declares about nature:

God’s pathway into nature, thoughts, which the Eternal One physically bestowed upon us
through his successive works: they are holy books whose letters I have—certainly as less
than an apprentice, but at least with fidelity and zeal—tried to decipher and will continue
to decipher. (Ideen, FHA 6, 16; transl. Gaier 2009, 185)

Similar to his conception of the human being as both a religious and historical
being, Herder, I will later describe further, anthropomorphized Jesus, and likewise
the origin of Christianity. Since the human being stands at the center of Herder’s
writings, Jesus logically occupies a central position among human beings, or at least
among Christians. Herder actively seeks to undo the interpretation of Jesus

3
Hence Wulf Koepke emphasizes that “Herder’s ideas on religion allow insights into his ultimate
concerns which were motivating forces behind his philosophy of history, his theory of language, his
anthropology, and aesthetics, even his pedagogical ideas” (Koepke 1982, 153).
4
All translations mine, except otherwise noted.
 HERDER ’ S RELIGIOUS ANTHROPOLOGY

and Christianity as otherworldly (for example in opposition to Jacobi; cf. Bunge

1990, 313) and was convinced that the Bible is of human and not of divine origin
(cf. Irmscher 2001, 29–31). This entails profound consequences for Herder’s
understanding of religious texts (cf. Koepke 1987, 40; Spencer 2013, 71), which
accordingly have to be read as expressions of individual human beings whose sole
purpose was to instruct and educate other human beings. In a word, Herder
understands Jesus first of all as a human being, emphasizing in the Ideen “Christ’s
humane way of thinking” (FHA 6, 713; cf. also Nisbet 1992).

2 Herder’s Religious Anthropology: The Human

Being as the “Middle Point”
This human-centered way of thinking I call religious anthropology. I do not,
however, want to use the term as equivalent to theological anthropology. Such an
anthropology would operate within the framework of systematic theology, in
which the human being is construed from a Christian-theological viewpoint with
a specific emphasis on the essence of human beings and their nature with respect
to God. Rather, I understand Herder’s religious anthropology independently of a
specifically Christian context. This does not stand in contrast to the fact that
Herder remained a Christian throughout all of his inquiries, but it allows us to
acknowledge his inclination to freely change his perspectives. In this way, Herder
arrives at a notion of religion that is human first, independent of institution and
dogma. In this sense, as we will see later, he gives credence to that which is
particular among religions. It also allows him to accept other beliefs as legitimate
alternatives not only to Protestantism but also to Christianity, making all reli-
gions mere means to an end. Finally, he opens a critical dimension that is
overlooked by inquiries into his thought that assume Christianity as the center
of his writings.
The human being is first of all, according to Herder, a being of nature,
inseparably connected to the universe because all aspects of human existence
reside in nature. For Herder, there is nothing outside of the world; any extra-
mundane appearances, if they exist at all, are inaccessible and must be disre-
garded. Therefore, human experience and perception of a higher being can only
be located in nature (cf. Wolfes 2005, 297) where human beings and God-nature
come together as one. The divine being in nature expresses itself in all possible
accounts of its manifestation equally as nature-forces; the reciprocity of divine
and human reason then allows human beings to sense these forces and in
virtue of this they are able to perceive God. Herder’s theory of forces (Kräfte)
and his reinterpretation of Spinoza is crucial here (cf. Cordemann 2010, 103–5 or
208–9; as well as Wolfes 2005, 300–2).
 JOHANNES SCHMIDT 

This in turn makes it possible to understand God using the same empirical and
sensual data that Herder considers for his understanding of nature, history,
culture, and human beings. As part of a family, tribe, state, or nation, humans
participate in their own history, culture, and of course also their own religion.
Because of human beings’ connectedness to nature and the essence of nature
as an expression of the divine, they are ultimately religious beings. Herder’s
religious anthropology does not seek to understand the human being from a
particular religious, let alone Christian-theological, standpoint, but from a point
of view that fully embraces the oneness of human beings with nature.
This reconstruction of Herder’s religious thinking may at first appear not to
differ fundamentally from a theological anthropology that attempts to allow both
a religious and a historical reconstruction of Herder while simultaneously inte-
grating his naturalist and Spinozistic appropriations. However, my approach
renders possible an important new argument. Herder’s religious anthropology
allows him to tolerate other religions and denominations precluded by a
Protestant/Christian-theological anthropology. Christianity qua superior religion
would oppose some of his advanced views on what we would call cultural
pluralism, especially on aboriginal cultures. Because Christianity, we shall see,
is for Herder not the only means and goal for humanity, he can judge and
criticize the historical actuality of Christianity. But perhaps most importantly,
Herder does not have to arrive at Christianity as the one and only future religion.
Rather, it constitutes, in Herder’s anthropology, one of various ways for human
beings to reach the goal of humanity (Humanität) and a human religion. This is
no trivial conclusion and it is likely to raise the eyebrows of some Herder
scholars, for it contravenes to some extent both secular philosophy as well as
theology. Yet, for Herder, no inconsistency arises from this and he is able to
maintain his Christian views as much as his particular form of Spinozism.

3 Herder’s Understanding of Human Religion

As already noted, Herder’s thought is deeply rooted in his philosophy of history,5
which is based on empirical and sensual observations. His understanding of
one age informs the next, thus all ages are connected, including the future: “A
foresight of the future from specific circumstances of history according to the
analogy of things themselves” (Adrastea, FHA 10, 461). For example, before

5
John Zammito specifies: “There is a case to be made that everything Herder wrote expressed a
historical point of view, whether he discussed philosophy, literature, or language” (Zammito 2009,
65; also cf. Irmscher 2001, 102–41).
 HERDER ’ S RELIGIOUS ANTHROPOLOGY

Herder sets out to describe the origin and development of Christianity in the
Christian Writings (Christliche Schriften),6 he opens with an exposition explain-
ing to the reader the historical dimension of the Bible: “Every author of history
belongs, like his history, to the people, the time, the language, the circumstances, in
and under which he writes. As indisputable as this sentence is, it is of such great
consequences for this history and these writers of history” (FHA 9/1, 622). The
reference is to the apostles and their stories—Herder here uses the plural
(Geschichten)—about Jesus. It soon becomes obvious that Herder does not read
the Gospels literally as the Word of God, but as ancient records created by human
beings for a specific purpose and audience.
Herder’s history of religion, as he presents it in detail in the Fifth Collection
(1798) of the Christliche Schriften, is from the outset an anthropological reflection
on past human action rather than theological deliberations. Herder begins with a
summary of the favorable character of the Hebrew people. The original situation,
climate, language, and trust in the God of their fathers correspond to their
occupation as tribal herdsmen. In analogy with the stages of life (cf. for example
Irmscher 2001, 117), Herder describes them as ingenuous children, calling this
period the “childhood of the peoples” (FHA 9/1, 624). A holy use of the written
word belonged to this time as much as the belief in prophecies. Herder recon-
structs from the Old Testament the history from Moses to John the Baptist. His
main concern here lies with the specific situation of this people. For example, a
new anticipation emerged among Hebrews during and after the Babylonian
captivity, a hope for “an eternal kingdom” of the house of David, despite the
insignificance of the “speckle” of Bethlehem “from which David sprouted.”
Herder identifies here the origin of the messianic belief that “one descendant”
will “execute such great things.” Herder paints an image of an oppressed
people: unhappy, scattered, and deprived of “favor, beauty, power, fortune, and
joy” (ibid., 625–6). He reconstructs the historical reports in closest proximity to
the described events—as if one had actually been there—and imagines the point
of view of a Hebrew. Here, Herder operates entirely within the framework of his
philosophy of history as developed in Auch eine Philosophie, where he asks the
reader of history to “enter into the epoch, the cardinal clime, the whole history,
feel your way into it all—now you are on the path to understand the word” (FHA,
4, 33; transl. Zammito 2009, 74, slightly altered).

6
The Christliche Schriften offer—in five Collections (Sammlungen)—Herder’s popular-
theological ideas on the life and teachings of Jesus; the “First Part” and the “Second Part” of the
First Collection appeared separately in 1793 and 1794, the following Collections in the following four
years. It represents Herder’s last major religious text that is, however, informed throughout by his
philosophies of history and language.
 JOHANNES SCHMIDT 

When Herder begins to discuss the emergence of Christianity his focus shifts;
now a single human being comes to the fore: “Among many others, a young man,
thirty years of age, came to John the Baptist’s baptism, Jesus of Nazareth” (FHA
9/1, 632). Age, name, and origin are indications for Herder that here one human
being encounters another human being. Herder’s anthropology, the study of the
human being as the middle point, becomes now the study of the ideal human
being: Jesus as the middle point, the epitome of humanness. Herder insists that
Jesus recognized John the Baptist as a prophet but not himself as God’s son.
Herder calls into question the authority of Christ as a divine being on earth.
Using references from John and Matthew, Herder directs the reader’s attention to
the disappointment frequently expressed in the Gospels that Jesus was not the
“almighty who has to come” to save the human race. Jesus himself, Herder
continues, acknowledged that he was “reprehended” for his “forgiving gentle-
ness” (ibid., 634). Describing Jesus as loving, kind, and merciful, Herder accen-
tuates the general qualities of an ideal human being. Jesus strove to overcome
human vices: “He [Jesus] will neither bicker nor bray; one will not hear his voice
in the alleys. Yet, no buckled pipe will he break, no smoldering wick will he
extinguish” (ibid., 637). Elevating Jesus as the perfect human being, his deeds can
then become a model for all human beings. The human dimension of all aspects
of Jesus’ teachings is most important to Herder: “All, however, are to the highest
degree human [menschlich], just like the one about the Samaritan, about the
debtor, about the stern judge” (ibid., 650).
At the same time, Herder recognizes the profound impact of miracles, stories,
allegories, parables, and “comparisons [Vergleichungen] to the kingdom of
heaven” (ibid.). And he does not deny the possibility of Christ’s resurrection,7
comparing this miracle to that of Jonah, which he reads as a “the strongest
symbol of a miraculous rescue in all of Jewish history, for it was beyond
probability itself ” (ibid., 660). But he stresses the historical-mythological char-
acter of the very reports Christianity is based on and, more importantly, through
which this new religion originated and spread initially: at that time, the audi-
ence’s expectation necessitated the use of miracles to convey the stories and
teachings of Jesus effectively. In this context, Herder repeats his now well-known
assertion regarding the connection of writers of history to their nation, time, and
language (ibid., 666–7). The point is twofold. First, Herder reminds the reader

7
In “On the Resurrection as Belief, History and Doctrine” (“First Part” in the First Collection of
the Christliche Schriften), Herder discusses in detail the sometimes conflicting reports regarding the
trial, torture, execution, entombment, and possible resurrection of Jesus as a response to Lessing and
Reimarus (cf. SWS 19, 81–99).
 HERDER ’ S RELIGIOUS ANTHROPOLOGY

once more that the three reports by Matthew, Mark, and Luke8 are biographies
and stories that must be understood as historical documents. Second, he stresses
that these reports were written in the style of the Hebrew people for the Hebrews,
and that the apostles too were human beings writing for their respective human
audiences. They were not following the “ideal of the Greeks and Romans” (ibid.,
666) regarding historical records. On the contrary:
The historical style of the Hebrews belongs, like their poetry, to the childhood of the
human race . . . Their stories are dynasty registers, sagas about the patriarchs, prophets
and kings, all in the tone of the simplest tale, with views of the world that childhood loves,
as they were indispensible for humankind at that time, with phenomena of miracles,
poetic expressions, speeches of parables etc. (ibid., 668)

Furthermore, as Herder points out, all three apostles were different types of
authors,9 recording different points of view, for different audiences, and with
different intentions. Consequently, Herder is less interested in the historical
accuracy of the reports of the resurrection. He reads them as oral accounts of
the events surrounding Jesus’ death; during these trying and eventful times, the
disciples reflected on the life and teachings of their mentor. Herder thus perceives
these oral accounts as the actual origin of Christianity whereas the written
Gospels emerged later and as a result of the emergence of Christianity. Questions
concerning the accuracy of the reports become irrelevant in light of the arrival of
a new religion. The original reports were highly effective as stories that founded it.
They were so successful, Herder continues, precisely because they were told and
retold by human beings who experienced the events themselves and conveyed them
to their contemporaries in the manner of their time: “Christianity was subsequently
propagated as the living tradition of an experienced history and a bright hope; and
the Christian congregation was founded as a living institution on this history and
this hope” (First Collection of the Christliche Schriften, SWS 19, 113).
In the Ideen, Herder concentrates more on the historical situation of the
origin of Christianity rather than on Jesus and his disciples, but here he also
maintains his notion “that Christ was a mere human being, the son of Joseph and
Mary” (FHA 6, 721). Jesus was born a human being in “poverty although he
descended from an old royal house” (ibid., 708). Herder also describes the twelve
disciples, “men of his [Jesus’] caste” (ibid.), as poor like Jesus and as occupied in
similar professions. Accordingly, Jesus was originally called “the human son”

8
Herder devotes the entire Third Collection of the Christliche Schriften to the Gospel of John
(1797, SWS 19, 253–424).
9
Herder describes the Apostle Mark as a story teller, Luke as a scholar, and Matthew as a
translator (cf. FHA 9/1, 688–97).
 JOHANNES SCHMIDT 

(Menschensohn) who wanted to form “human beings of God,” and to advance the
“perfection and happiness of human beings on earth” (ibid., 708–9).
A human being had to be the founder, or better, instigator, for Christianity as a
human religion, according to Herder. The first to follow this new religion had to
be ordinary human beings as well, and their stories had to be human stories.
Herder further argues that these stories, like any story, required “tales, tradition,
and belief” (ibid., 748), and that they had to be told in the language and manner
of the eyewitnesses. Written records appeared only after the first storytellers were
no longer living. At that point, miracles and wonders were added, Herder claims,
because the authors and their audiences needed these aspects to create “a new
Christian mythology” (ibid., 749).
In the Christliche Schriften, Herder not only presents Jesus as a human being,
but also, perhaps more importantly, he presents his teachings as worldly. Hence,
the written word in the Gospels cannot be understood as the Word of God. Jesus
himself created stories, allegories (Erzählungen (Parabeln)), and emblems (Sinn-
bilder (Embleme)) for the growing number of people he encountered during his
travels. And what Herder calls comparisons (Vergleichungen) to the “Kingdom of
Heaven” were reprehensions, warnings, and words of comfort that Jesus offered
to address “his hard-headed friends” (FHA 9/1, 650). Yet, the human dimension
was common to all stories Jesus told and he typically used common objects and
situations for his parables (“fish, grain, and such”). He also, Herder explains
further, adopted, disregarded, and changed his stories for effectiveness according
to the requirements of the occasion or situation. For Herder, all parables express
in the end only the same idea, through which Jesus wanted to see himself as
embodied in (einverleibet) or part of “all human beings . . . especially the sick,
suffering, oppressed, forgotten human beings” (ibid., 651). Herder describes Jesus
as “the great organ of humaneness” (ibid.).
All “heroes” with “noble” goals were called “God-like, sons of gods” (SWS 19,
374), says Herder in the Third Collection (1797) of the Christliche Schriften. He
explains how the apostles, especially John, understood the notion “Christ, the son
of God”: “They [the apostles], just like him [John], located the purpose of Christ’s
kingdom in the awakening of that which is divine in our nature, by means of God-
worthy dispositions [Gesinnungen], in holiness of habits, adequacy, love for
human beings, and generosity” (ibid., 350). But it is the impact of the stories—
not the Godlike association—that affected human beings through the ages
(cf. Irmscher 2001, 33), Herder insists.
It is quite telling that Herder declares at the end of the Christliche Schriften that
Jesus was a human being and his religion a human religion. In the closing of the
work, Herder no longer uses the term Christianity, but introduces an alternative.
 HERDER ’ S RELIGIOUS ANTHROPOLOGY

He equates religion and humanity (Humanität) and proposes the expression

“Christ religion” (Christus-Religion; FHA 9/1, 856), a term he uses nowhere else.
Then, in the last sentence of the last Collection of the Christliche Schriften, it
becomes “human religion” (Menschenreligion; ibid., 857) as a reference to a “pure
religion” of/for humanity that is yet to come. Christianity was for Herder merely
a name, coined by the Greeks as a designation for a sect (cf. ibid., 856).10 Whether
this name remained or disappeared is irrelevant. Only Jesus’ teachings were of
central importance, along with the fact that he was a human being. Herder asks:
“What did Christ call himself? The son of man, i.e., a common, pure human
being. Cleansed of dross, his religion can be called nothing other than the religion
of pure human kindness, human religion” (ibid., 856–7).

4 The Future of Christianity in the Adrastea

The conclusion of the Christliche Schriften raises two important questions: first,
how are we to understand this human religion of the future; how is it different
from Christianity, if at all? And second, what is Herder’s expectation for Chris-
tianity? I read the Adrastea as an answer to these questions. Here, we also find his
strongest rejection of Christianity as a universal religion of the future.11
It is one of Herder’s principles that speculations about the future must be
grounded in historical deliberations, as specifically expressed in Auch eine Phi-
losophie: “No one is alone in one’s age; one builds on what has come before, which
will be nothing but the foundation of the future [and] wants to be nothing but
this” (FHA 4, 41; transl. Herder 2004, 31, altered). And similarly in the Letters for
the Advancement of Humanity (Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität, 1793–7),
Herder states: “The present is pregnant with the future; the fate of posterity lies in
our hands, we inherited the thread, we weave and spin it further” (FHA 7, 118).
We can, then, partly reconstruct Herder’s idea of a future religion for all human
beings. On the one hand, we have his criticism of the manifold misuses of
Christianity and the “sheer Anti-Christianity” that he sees “in the doctrines,
customs, and formulae of Christianity” (Christliche Schriften, FHA 9/1, 856).
On the other hand, the teachings of Jesus include two important notions for
Herder: humanity and community.12 The idea of a religious community of all

10
“Without conviction of the mind the word religion is [but] a name, a mockery of things, which
one turns into religion without it inwardly being religion for us, [and it is] consequently a delusion, a
masquerade” (FHA 9/1, 735).
11
Note Sonia Sikka’s brief discussion of the “universal dimension to Herder’s understanding of
religion” (Sikka 2011, 237–41); we should note that Sikka explicitly analyses Herder’s cultural
anthropology, which certainly includes religion as part of cultural practices.
12
A discussion of Herder’s concept of humanity (Humanität) would extend the scope of this
inquiry; instead I refer the reader to Hans Adler’s summary and evaluation of the term (cf. Adler
 JOHANNES SCHMIDT 

human beings may very well be the central idea here.13 He praises small (not
always Christian) communities as models of human companionship, such as in
his many reflections on early parenthood, tribehood, and communities of peoples
as well as in his description of the first gatherings of Christians (cf. “First Part” in
the First Collection (1793) of the Christliche Schriften, SWS 19, 1–134).
But when thinking of and feeling himself into the past and then anticipating
the future, Herder cannot conceive of Christianity as the final purpose for the
progression of religion and mankind. Just like the Christliche Schriften, the Ideen
also present unapologetic criticism of Christianity, the papacy and monasticism,
the church’s false emphasis on eschatological teachings (cf. FHA 6, 720), the
undue enshrinement of martyrs, blind followers of “adventurous imposters,” and
the “tyrannical, opulent rulers” who “disdained and depredated the sciences,
eradicated and destroyed monuments and the arts, institutions, and human
beings . . . and sometimes put whole nations into turmoil” (ibid., 720–1). Herder
condemns the expansion of the church’s power, its institutions, and their repre-
sentatives (ibid., 721–54). He clearly identifies a decline of Christianity early on
due to its misuse, corruption, and despotism. Later in the Ideen, Herder once
more turns to Christianity briefly when he criticizes the church’s worldly intru-
sions (ibid., 823–31) and the Crusades (ibid., 871–82).
In the Adrastea,14 Herder resumes his study of the historical development of
religions, first discussing, again, the historical development of Christianity, but
then also its future prospects. Approvingly, he quotes from Johann Jortin’s
Remarks on Ecclesial History (1756, 1757; cf. FHA 10, 1062) regarding the early
deterioration of Christianity: “Thus was Christianity diverted from its path and
the matter proceeded from evil to worse [than evil], from foolishness to deprav-
ity, from weakness to godlessness” (ibid., 135). Then, Herder disguises his
speculations concerning the future of religions as the dreams of two interlocutors,
called Winnfried and Dietrich.15 In three conversations, Herder asks how the
existence of distinct national religions can be reconciled with the notion of one
human world religion. He insinuates, through Winnfried, the central problem of

2009, 93–116) as well as Irmscher’s excellent commentary on the Humanitätsbriefe (cf. “Herders
Verständnis von ‘Humanität,’ ” FHA 7, 817–37).
13
Arnd Bohm proposes a similar idea, in this case, a political commonwealth of all human beings
(cf. Bohm 2009).
14
Herder named his journal Adrastea in direct allusion to the goddess Nemesis-Adrastea to
judge and reattribute the bygone century. Published between 1801 and 1804 in ten “Pieces” (Stücke),
of which the last Piece appeared posthumously together with two additional sections from Herder’s
notes, the Adrastea presents some of his clearest views about the future of Christianity.
15
Dreaming here refers to Herder’s method to reorder history, a story, or an idea in the form of
fiction: “I too did leaf through many clerical and political emblems (Empresas) in many books with
delight. My dream emerged from these impressions” (Adrastea, FHA 10, 622).
 HERDER ’ S RELIGIOUS ANTHROPOLOGY

the universal and the particular, or the tension between the human race and the
individual human being: if Christianity is the ultimate goal for all of mankind all
other religions will consequently have to cease to exist in the future. Here,
Dietrich objects: “It seems to me we are speaking about one individual religion,
given that we wanted to speak about national religions [National-Religionen]”
(ibid., 610). He realizes that Winnfried is discussing national religions as if they
are particular to their respective cultures and nations, but at the same time
universal. Winnfried replies that any national religion must be an individual
religion in order to become the true conviction of one’s faith, just as
a people arises from families, one national language arises from the language of related
tribes. Likewise national religions. Examine the oldest of all parts of the world; . . . all
national religions were and are founded on the deepest traits of its national character.
(ibid., 610)

The analogy of language development is revealing. Herder employs his own

philosophy of language in order to equate the development of languages with
the evolution of religions. He grounds his argument in his own proposition that a
people cannot be separated from its language. To force a foreign language on a
people is to destroy its culture, its identity, and most of all its individuality.
Reciprocally, any religion is based on language.16 On this account, any religion,
whether family, tribal, or national, must be grounded in the language of the
respective family, tribe, or nation: “The inherent living culture of the peoples . . .
always began . . . with the awakening and formation of their language” (ibid.,
612). Language is the bond that ties the individual to its nation, Herder acknow-
ledges (ibid., 614), and implies here also a tie to religion.
Consequently, the teachers of early Christianity spoke to their own people in
their language. Herder emphasizes multiple times that Jesus did not speak Latin:
“Christ hardly understood the Roman language of the courts” (ibid., 612).
Similarly, Luther used German to teach Germans about religion and Herder
remarks “one church of his [Luther’s] nation, one German church” (ibid., 613).
Herder here provides further evidence for his study of Jesus as a human being.
Jesus qua human being could not possess a universal, divine language for all
humans; his teachings were not miraculously imparted to his followers. The
central argument regarding human language and its limitations is, for Herder,
its human origin. He resists the notion of a divine origin to language in the
prize essay Treatise on the Origin of Language (Abhandlung über den Ursprung
der Sprache, 1772), arguing that God endowed human beings with the capacity
to develop language on their own. This, for Herder, attests to the universality of

16
For Herder “the proper language of religion is national, in a cultural rather than political
sense” (Sikka 2011, 237).
 JOHANNES SCHMIDT 

all languages—in opposition to their limitations—owing to the common origin

of and a general human capacity for language. The universal aspect of religion
is similar in the sense that all human beings are endowed with a capacity to
recognize themselves as religious beings, which in turn reveals their purpose in
history. This allows Herder to insist on the autonomy of national religions and
to reject and denounce religious conquest and evangelism. In the spirit of
Nemesis-Adrastea, Herder condemns the church’s missionary endeavors
throughout history that forced both Christianity and foreign language on
native peoples.
Yet, in spite of the historical distinctiveness of specific nations, each national
religion had to develop further and had to strive toward improvement: “And
every religion, commensurate with its position, strove . . . to become the better,
that is, the best, of its kind, without measuring itself against or comparing itself
to other [religions]” (ibid., 614). This was true at one point for Judaism, until
its culture and the Hebrew language became a “dead sanctuary” (ibid., 612;
regarding Judaism cf. ibid., 610) and without the possibility of developing
further: “But when times changed, [the religion of the Jews] was no good,
not even for Palestine; thus Christianity appeared in order to educate all
exhausted [verlebt] or soon to be exhausted national religions” (ibid., 610).
Consequently, Herder sees the preaching by the apostles not as proselytism,
but as an indication of the natural decline of one religion from which a new
religion has to emerge. In Winnfried and Dietrich’s view, Christianity human-
ized (humanisieren17) all religions through Jesus’ teachings. While Herder has
to acknowledge that Christianity destroyed other religions and cultures, he also
emphasizes the importance of instruction and education, which was central to
Christianity early on and was radically different from the proselytism practiced
by most religions.
Since no religion should be forced onto a nation, a universal religion for all
peoples is either impossible or would have to preserve the character, culture, and
language of any given people, maintaining it and developing further in accord-
ance with its geographical location, climate, and specific circumstances. Hence,
Winnfried inquires: “Is it not true that peoples differ in everything, in poetry and
pleasure, in physiognomy and taste, in habits, customs, and languages? Is it also
not true that [one] religion—which takes part in all of this—must accordingly
differ from one nation to another?” (ibid., 614–15). Dietrich replies—Herder here
refers in my opinion to the Christliche Schriften—that religion has to be personal,
has to become individual internal conviction rather than opinion or dogma

17
FHA 10, 624, cf. Günter Arnold’s commentary: “it is the historical duty of Christianity as the
most human religion to humanize, but not to remove, national religions” (ibid., 1288).
 HERDER ’ S RELIGIOUS ANTHROPOLOGY

imposed by force: “[Religion must differ] even individually; so that in the end
Everyone would possess his religion, just like his heart, his conviction and
language” (ibid., 615).

5 The Universality of Particular Human Religions

Herder seeks to define the human disposition toward love, kindness, forgiveness,
and care for the sick and poor as a fundamental aspect of all religions. Since it is
common to all human beings, it must be the obligation of Christianity, in fact of
any religion, to educate every individual in order to understand its purpose. The
teachings of Jesus occupy a special place within humanity because he exemplified
these dispositions in the best possible way; his teachings and deeds show how any
human being can strive toward this ideal of humanity. It thus stands for a more
human-oriented idea of justice, community, and universality without comprom-
ising the individual’s culture and religious practice.
In recent years, there have been a few attempts to bring Herder as a religious
thinker to the forefront.18 At the same time, scholars like the historian John
Zammito and the theologian Class Cordemann recognized a deep division in
Herder scholarship and the need for an unbiased approach to the relationship
between religion and nature in all of his writings. It has become clear that an
either/or approach to Herder is equally unsatisfying as a mere recognition of “two
Herders,” one as a Christian and preacher and the other as a philosopher of
history, culture, and language. What I want to emphasize here is the fact that
readers today cannot but see a problem in the duality in Herder’s thought.
Nevertheless, it is safe to assume that Herder himself did not see this as a conflict
at all. The divide between religion and the secular world was unthinkable for him
(as difficult as this may be for us to conceive). More importantly, human beings
in Herder’s view could only be understood as both worldly and religious beings.
In other words, God is to be found in nature, but in a manner consistent with
reason and scientific empiricism, rather than as some kind of ready-made answer
to which we automatically resort. Yet, for us today, the incommensurateness
remains, and it seems to be impossible to think of Herder as both a Lutheran
minister and church official as well as a secular philosopher without detecting a
conflict in his positions.

18
In general, there are very few studies of Herder’s religion and theology (cf. on this problem
specifically Irmscher 2001, 30; Smend, FHA 5, 1311–22; Bultmann and Zippert, FHA 9/1, 861–78),
however, there are notable exceptions (cf. Keßler and Leppin 2005; Keßler 2007), and some recent
articles on the topic (cf. Adamsen 2000; Menze 2000; Keßler 2009; Spencer 2013).
 JOHANNES SCHMIDT 

I see very few attempts in today’s Herder scholarship to reconcile these “two
Herders.” At best, the conflict is recognized and accepted as an intransigent
problem. At worst, the division is ignored or one of the sides dismissed entirely.
One exception is Claas Cordemann’s important study entitled Herders christli-
cher Monismus, which is a foundational study on Herder’s Christology and his
ideal of humanity. Cordemann sees in scholarship that reconstructs Herder as a
Christian theologian a neglect of his proximity to Spinoza, and in others who
want to understand Herder as a Spinozist a dismissal of his religious statements.
Sometimes, Herder is even accused of being insincere in his Christianity, a
philosopher who was required to maintain his status as a clergyman. Cordemann
summarizes:

For it is striking when reviewing the literature on Herder that the Christian-theoretical
dimension in his work and his Spinoza-inspired metaphysics are almost always juxta-
posed without being connected. Whereas whenever Herder is being reconstructed as a
Christian theologian, his Spinozism is more or less passed over, from the opposite
perspective it appears as though Herder was ‘actually’ a Spinozist who maintained
Christian rhetoric in form only and only for the sake of his position in the church.
(Cordemann 2010, 10)

Consequently, Cordemann calls for an unbiased investigation into Herder’s

religious thought and Spinozism. He systematically aligns Herder’s Christology
with his Spinozism; nevertheless, his approach is still problematic and does not
solve the problem in my opinion. Cordemann sets out to describe Herder’s notion
of humanity (Humanität) as fully grounded in Christ and Christianity. Herein lies
the major difference in our approaches, which in turn yields different outcomes.
Cordemann presents Herder’s notion of humanity as the central and unifying
Christological category applicable to all of Herder’s works. It must be clear,
Cordemann writes, that “Herder’s normative and teleological statements only
become intelligible in light of his reasoning for a nature-culture connection” (ibid.,
175–6). In the end, however, Cordemann too is unable to free himself from the
either/or dilemma, for he insists that all of Herder’s writings must be approached
from this particular point of view, which is a Christological viewpoint.
In a certain way, Cordemann in fact offers an alternative approach: instead of
inquiring into whether Herder needs to be read as a clergyman or as a secular
philosopher, he proposes a reading from a religious point of view that unites both
sides of Herder:

Christ is the image of God, from and for which human beings were created. This is the
proposition that holds together Herder’s far-reaching oeuvre in all of its facets. Herder’s
considerations regarding the philosophy of nature and history, anthropology and theory
 HERDER ’ S RELIGIOUS ANTHROPOLOGY

of culture, as well as even his Spinoza-affiliated metaphysics, are thus from the beginning
qualified by a Christianity-theoretical perspective from which they receive their unity.
(ibid., 256)

However, the necessity of an exclusively theological perspective from the start

remains uncertain and Cordemann provides no evidence. It stems, in my opin-
ion, from a somewhat biased approach as well.
But to reassure ourselves that this is the result of the only possible reconstruc-
tion for us today is equally embarrassing: it appears that in reading Herder we are
utterly unable to think both sides of the coin simultaneously, whereas this was
natural for Herder. In my opinion, in order to avoid this dichotomy we have to
fully consider Herder’s religious anthropology, that is, to ensure that any inquiry
into his philosophy is one that takes the human being as central from the outset.
First, we have to insist that Herder always understood the human past as
connected to the present and the future. No division of the ages or contrast in
human history would place specific historical events, persons, and ages outside of
a continuous human history, in which the past informs the future. Otherwise, all
historicizing becomes meaningless:

So what is history, actually? and for what reason do you all read history? In order to find
in it mere facts or even miracles? . . . Only the one to whose mind [Geist], to whose heart
history speaks, only he reads a human-written [menschlichgeschriebene] history humanly
[menschlich]. (Fifth Collection, Christliche Schriften, FHA 9/1, 771)

Here, Herder emphasizes the individual’s own reading of historical documents,

which then has to be used to construct (as poetry) an understanding of one’s own
purpose:
Only the magical clime remained before my eye; I was awake and dreamed. What I saw
was the present-day world and the future; I believed (this is how, in dreams, we mix things
up with each other!) [I was able], with a physical-moral spirit, to deduce from the most
immediate present of things, their consequences; or rather not to deduce, because in
wakeful appearance, present and future were but One. (Humanitätsbriefe, FHA 7, 118)

Here, Herder avoids mere prophesying and divination. Speculations about the future
in this way become informed deliberations, which he presents as fiction or dreams. In
addition, Herder emphasizes the importance of hope. Grounded in historical data,
hope transforms trivial beliefs in progress and perfection into an epistemological
understanding of past, present, and future, and more importantly into an anticipation
and understanding of human purpose. In the Adrastea, he declares:
To hope is indispensable for the human being. Everything that lives, that walks, looks and
hopes forward, toward the future. In Dante, it is one of the infernal punishments to look
 JOHANNES SCHMIDT 

behind oneself with one’s face on one’s back, and in wanting to go forward to go
backward. What use would it be to leaf through the dream book of the past if one were
not to draw conclusions regarding the future from it by comparing it with present things?
(FHA 10, 458)

Once we consider Herder’s religious anthropology to its full extent, we have to

recognize its consequences. If the human being must always be considered to be the
middle point then Herder cannot see Christianity as the only human religion in the
future. The actuality of Christianity places the particular over the needs and desires
innate to the individual, including a need for justice, peace, and fairness as well as a
desire to overcome evil. The future human religion cannot be a particular institution
or a dogma, for Herder wants to locate religion simultaneously in both the universal
and in the particular. It is the particular individual who has to discover her/his own
conviction and purpose independently. Only individually and in their own particu-
larity can human beings find and act upon that which is universal in humanity.
Herder tells us that the human being must discover something that is universal in all
human beings; he calls this individual understanding of human purposefulness
“human religion” (Menschenreligion). Herder’s religious anthropology not only
explains how a future religion proffers a solution to the dichotomy of that which
is universal and that which is particular in religion, but it also explains how the
human race can further progress toward this idea.
The humanness (Menschlichkeit) transforms itself by means of the Nemesis-
Adrastea into the “voice of the world judge” (FHA 10, 625). Herder explains in
Dietrich’s three dreams in the Adrastea “what [the] religion of all religions would
be. An Adrastea it is, but in a far more elevated balance than the Greeks gave her”
(ibid., 624). The “Nemesis of Christianity” means, in Herder’s view, the necessity
for human beings to overcome evil by means of good. He determines this as a
natural law, since the physical as much as the moral world is grounded in balance
and retribution. Herder proposes a general purpose prevalent in all human
beings, that is, a desire for peace, an awareness and sensing of an all-
encompassing understanding of the past and present, and the knowledge that
justice reigns. He concludes that together they constitute general aspects repre-
sented in all religions, “written into the heart of every human being” (ibid., 625).
Then, and only then, in such a “religion of all religions,” will the idea of the
human being as the middle point be fully realized.

References
Adamsen, Johannes 2000: Die theologische Grundfrage in Herder Aufklärungskritik, in:
Vom Selbstdenken: Aufklärung und Aufklärungskritik in Herders “Ideen zur Philosophie
 HERDER ’ S RELIGIOUS ANTHROPOLOGY

der Geschichte der Menschheit”: Beiträge zur Konferenz der International Herder
Society, Weimar 2000. Heidelberg: Synchron: 49–56.
Adler, Hans 2009: Herder’s Concept of Humanität, in: Adler and Koepke 2009: 93–116.
Adler, Hans and Wulf Koepke (eds.) 2009: A Companion to the Works of Johann Gottfried
Herder. Rochester, NY: Camden House.
Bohm, Arnd 2009: Herder and Politics, in: Adler and Koepke 2009: 277–304.
Bunge, Marcia 1990: Human Language of the Divine: Herder on Ways of Speaking about
God, in: Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (ed.), Herder Today: Contributions from the Inter-
national Herder Conference, Nov. 5–8, 1987, Stanford, California. Berlin, New York:
de Gruyter: 304–18.
Cordemann, Claas 2010: Herders christlicher Monismus: Eine Studie zur Grundlegung von
Johann Gottfried Herders Christologie und Humanitätsideal. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Gaier, Ulrich 2009: Myth, Mythology, New Mythology, in: Adler and Koepke 2009:
165–88.
Herder, Johann Gottfried 2004: Another Philosophy of History and Selected Political
Writings. Transl. by Ioannis D. Evrigenis and Daniel Pellerin. Indianapolis, Cambridge,
MA: Hackett.
Irmscher, Hans Dietrich 2001: Johann Gottfried Herder. Stuttgart: Reclam.
Keßler, Martin 2007: Johann Gottfried Herder: Der Theologe unter den Klassikern. Volume 1.
Berlin, New York: de Gruyter.
Keßler, Martin 2009: Herder’s Theology, in: Adler and Koepke 2009: 247–75.
Keßler, Martin and Volker Leppin (eds.) 2005: Johann Gottfried Herder: Aspekte seines
Lebenswerkes. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter.
Koepke, Wulf 1982: Truth and Revelation: On Herder’s Theological Writings, in: Wulf
Koepke (ed.), Johann Gottfried Herder: Innovator through the Ages. Bonn: Bouvier:
138–56.
Koepke, Wulf 1987: Johann Gottfried Herder. Boston: Twayne.
Menze, Ernest A. 2000: “Gang Gottes über die Nationen”: The Religious Roots of Herder’s
Auch eine Philosophie Revisited, in: Monatshefte für Deutschsprachige Literatur und
Kultur 92, 1: 10–19.
Nisbet, H. B. 1992: Herders Anthropologische Anschauung in den “Ideen zur Philosophie
der Geschichte der Menschheit,” in: Jürgen Barkhoff, Eda Sagarra (eds.), Anthropologie
und Literatur um 1800. Munich: Iudicium: 1–23.
Sikka, Sonia 2011: Herder on Humanity and Cultural Difference: Enlightened Relativism.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Spencer, Tom 2013: Personal Impersonalism in Herder’s Conception of the Afterlife, in:
Elisabeth Krimmer, Patricia Anne Simpson (eds.), Religion, Reason, and Culture in the
Age of Goethe. Rochester, NY: Camden House: 56–76.
Wolfes, Matthias 2005: “Das höchste Gut, was Gott allen Geschöpfen geben konnte, war
und bleibt eignes Daseyn.” Herders Ideal freier Religiosität, in: Keßler and Leppin 2005:
293–307.
Zammito, John H. 2009: Herder and Historical Metanarrative: What’s Philosophical
about History?, in: Adler and Koepke 2009: 65–91.
 11
Individualism and Universalism in
Herder’s Conception of the
Philosophy of History
Martin Bollacher

1 Herder’s Critique of the Enlightenment Culture

“Great Historians”, notes the Austrian-American biochemist and cultural critic
Erwin Chargaff in his volume of essays Abscheu vor der Weltgeschichte: Frag-
mente vom Menschen, “write books that are not only studied but even read”
(Chargaff, 1988, 68).1 It is not surprising, therefore, that Voltaire’s name also
makes its appearance in Chargaff ’s canon of great historians; for already during
his own time, Voltaire—whose works were received by a broad international
readership—was recognized as the most famous representative of the philosophy
of the European Enlightenment. When translating and annotating Diderot’s
dialogue Le Neveu de Rameau in 1805, Goethe engaged with the rationalistic
mindset of the previous century and also painted a picture of Voltaire who,
according to him, had succeeded in “spreading his fame across the globe” (HA 12,
269) in virtue of his brilliant abilities and talents. Voltaire struck Goethe as the
personification of the French national character since in him arose “the greatest
writer conceivable among the French and most reflective of the nation” (ibid.).
Voltaire’s nearly three-year-long stay at the Prussian royal court, which ended
with an argument with Frederick the Great,2 actually increased his popularity in

1
The original German version of this chapter (including all citations in German and French) has
been translated by the editors. When using translations from Michael Forster’s Herder: Philosophical
Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, we refer to the page number of the
translation after the standard reference to the German edition.
2
Cf. Kugler/Menzel, [no date], 269–80; Holmsten, 1999, 78–95.
 HERDER ’ S CONCEPTION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

Germany, where he met with an enthusiastic response as a writer, philosopher,

and historian.
While still in Potsdam, Voltaire was able to finish the manuscript of his
cultural history of the age of the “Sun King”, Le Siècle de Louis XIV. This work
was published in Berlin in 1751 and aimed to illustrate “the mind of men in the
most enlightened century there ever was” (Voltaire, 1957, 616). A few years later,
the monumental Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations et sur les principaux
faits de l’histoire depuis Charlemagne jusqu’à Louis XIII (1756) was published in
Geneva, a work that, despite its scathing critique of war and fanaticism, was
marked by the belief in progress and perfectibility, the development of the arts
and sciences, a secular post-religious style, and a universalistic conception of
history that included the Asian peoples. As part of his historiographical writings,
Voltaire also coined the epoch-making concept “philosophie de l’histoire”, which
became the title of his treatise from 1765 and which he later added as a preface to
his Essai sur les mœurs.
One of Voltaire’s most important German recipients was Johann Gottfried
Herder, forty years the renowned French author’s junior. During the latter’s
lifetime, Herder published, anonymously and without naming the publisher or
place of publication, a short but, in terms of its content, explosive essay. It bears
the wordy title Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit:
Beitrag zu vielen Beiträgen des Jahrhunderts. By choosing this title Herder clearly
sought to correct Voltaire’s philosophy of history in its core principles—
something he had already attempted in his Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769,
where, with the vehemence of a young representative of the Sturm und Drang
movement, and equipped with the argumentative arsenal of Rousseau’s cultural
criticism, he attacked the phenomena of alienation pervasive in the intellectual
and bookish culture of the Enlightenment. Herder may have stressed in his letter
to his publisher Johann Friedrich Hartknoch from early August 1773 that his
essay on the philosophy of history had nothing in common with Voltaire apart
from its title—a claim he made in order to insist on the authorial independence of
his work: this “is really my philosophy of history” (DA 3, 35)—however, his
desire for literary autonomy and originality was undermined by his close and
continuous engagement with Voltaire and the Zeitgeist symbolized by him, an
engagement whose critical edge becomes increasingly harsh and polemical over
the course of the work. Thus Herder notes that the books of our “Voltaires . . . and
Iselins” (FHA 4, 51) are full of praise for “the light of our century” and extol their
own epoch as the “non plus ultra” (ibid.) of the progress of humanity. Aleida and
Jan Assmann form a similar assessment of Voltaire’s historiography in their
commentary on his article on “History” that appeared in the Encyclopédie, the
 MARTIN BOLLACHER 

programmatic work of the French Enlightenment, claiming that this historio-

graphy served as a “pedagogy of memory” (Assmann, 2001, 144) that sought to
draw the right conclusions from the catastrophes of the past in order to positively
influence the future. But, they admit, “his [Voltaire’s] Enlightenment optimism
remained oblivious to the limits of this programme” (ibid.).
Following Voltaire’s lead, the Swiss historian Isaak Iselin’s reflections, Philo-
sophischen Muthmaßungen über die Geschichte der Menschheit (1764), revolve
around the idea that self-determining agents will bring about the “progress of
humanity proceeding from the utmost simplicity to an ever greater degree of light
and prosperity” (Iselin, 1786/1976, xxxv).3 This work is also stamped with the
optimistic thesis that the arts and sciences had at that time “reached a height from
which we can duly expect only the most wonderful consequences” (Iselin, 1786/
1976, 378).
The Herder of the Bückeburg period conceives of history in different terms,
namely, as the result of a complex mix of human interaction and providence, of
universal progress, and of the manifestation of an unmistakable and unique
individuality that may even impair the progress of the whole. For Herder,
progress and development, “the refinement and the purifying progress of concepts
of virtue” (FHA 4, 97), are as incontestable qua laws of the historical world as is
the singularity of individual historical and ethnic formations. Hans-Dietrich
Irmscher, therefore, aptly speaks of the “paradoxical unity” of the development
of the whole and the “disparate sequence of individualities” (Irmscher, 1990,
149). The French philosophes, in contrast, and Voltaire in particular, Herder
argues, doubted “God’s action in nature” (FHA 4, 59) but at the same time tended
to judge history “according to the one form of their own age” (FHA 4, 38), such
that they failed to see the tension between unity and plurality that is constitutive
of Herder’s own conception of history: they erroneously go “beyond what is
individual in order to stop at the bright, excellent universal” (FHA 4, 62). This is
Herder’s fundamental objection to the methodology of the ruling rationalistic
philosophy of Voltairean provenance, whose blinding brightness hides the
underside of the Enlightenment, namely, the oppression of the other that defies
subsumption under the general. “Where”, Herder rhetorically asks, “is what
Voltaire writes not read!, almost the whole earth is already lit up with Voltaire’s
clarity!” (FHA 4, 70–1; 325).
Herder and Voltaire—let us momentarily recall the socio-historical standing of
both authors, which could not have been more different! On the one hand, we

3
In Bochum I only had access to the fifth edition, published in 1786 in Basel, with the
abbreviated title Über die Geschichte der Menschheit.
 HERDER ’ S CONCEPTION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

find the materially and intellectually independent writer of great renown, who
lives off his literary revenues, paternal inheritance, financial transactions, and
support of his patrons, while frequenting the royal courts of Europe and thus
embodying the glory of the leading nation of European culture and its capital city.
On the other hand, there is Herder with his provincial petite-bourgeoisie prov-
enance who, after some turbulent years travelling and teaching in Riga, Nantes,
and Strasbourg, where he had travelled as educator of the heir of Holstein-
Gottorp, decided at the beginning of the 1770s to take up the position of
consistorial councillor and high preacher under the Earl of Schaumburg-Lippe
in Bückeburg. Herder, who since his departure from Riga had entertained the
idea of producing a “universal history of the education [Bildung] of the world”
(FHA 9/2, 19), now found himself stranded in one of the many more or less
autonomous small states of a politically tattered Germany. In one of his letters to
his future wife Karoline Flachsland from 1 May 1771, he describes Bückeburg as a
place where one can either “live in paradise or [where] one is well advised not to
unpack one’s suitcase” (DA 2, 15). Herder worked for five years in the provincial
capital and royal seat, dependent on his sovereign, the Earl Wilhelm von
Schaumburg-Lippe, and obligated by the demands of his ecclesiastical office.
It is thus entirely understandable that he sought refuge behind the anonymous
publication of a pamphlet that castigates a universalistic and self-absorbed
Enlightenment—though not the Enlightenment as such—and attacks one of
the main representatives of the prevailing standards of knowledge and social
conventions.4 After all, in Dichtung und Wahrheit, Goethe called Voltaire the
“miracle of his age” (HA 9, 484), albeit with a certain distance. To pillory Voltaire
as the proponent of an Enlightenment proceeding according to aprioristic con-
cepts and oblivious to individual variation and thus indirectly to pillory also the

4
Herder seems here to anticipate aspects of Horkheimer und Adorno’s Dialektik der Aufklärung
by diagnosing the reciprocal relationship of progress as liberation and self-destruction and lament-
ing the potential flipping over of the ethical ideal of humanity into oppression and barbarism. Thus
he attacks the representatives of the ruling (French) philosophy by calling them “apes of humanity”
(FHA 4, 63), and expresses the fear that the “universal dress of philosophy and love of humankind”
can “be made to disguise persecutions, violations of the true, personal freedom of men and countries,
citizens and peoples, such as Cesare Borgia himself could only dream of ” (FHA 4, 99; 89). For
Herder, who in a mix of belief in perfectibility and predetermination did not shy away from the
provocative thesis that the “course of Providence” may proceed “over millions of corpses to its goal”
(FHA 4, 98; 350), the total “instrumentalisation of science” diagnosed in the Dialektik der Aufklär-
ung (Horkheimer/Adorno, 1969, 2) and what Grillparzer later coined in his famous dictum as the
“way of new education [Bildung]” from “humanity / through nationality / to brutality” (Grillparzer,
1960, 500) was nonetheless inconceivable. For this reason his perspective on Voltaire is not marked
by that lopsidedness which is put into the mouths of the apologists for fascism in the sketch “Für
Voltaire” to be found in the notes to the Dialektik der Aufklärung: “Your reason is biased, whispers
biased reason, you have done power wrong” (Horkheimer/Adorno, 1969, 229).
 MARTIN BOLLACHER 

culture of the Ancien Régime was a publishing act of insubordination. But Herder
went even a step further in his Bückeburg essay. He also offers an attack on
the socio-political and ideological foundations of the 1789 French Revolution,
captured in the programmatic motto “liberty, equality, fraternity”, which would
crystallize fifteen years after the publication of Auch eine Philosophie der
Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit. Remarkably, even prophetically, Herder
already used the conceptual triad “liberty, sociability, equality” (FHA 4, 97–8) in
two places in his essay, thereby anticipating, almost word for word, the slogan of
the revolutionaries and of the subsequent French Republic. This slogan, which
became the memorable battle cry of the revolution, was first formulated in June
1791 in the radical Club of the Cordeliers,5 which gathered in the unlocked
convent of the Franciscans (the “cord-wearers”) and counted among its members
Danton, Marat, Desmoulins (named “son of Voltaire”), and Hébert. As the
Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle by Pierre Larousse notes, it is through
these three core concepts that the revolution was able to create for itself a
“comprehensive symbol of new belief[s]” and a “magic motto that made the
heart of the earth race” (Larousse, 1873, 469).
Herder’s socio-critical prophecy of doom stands in opposition to the pride in
the universal validity of the revolutionary slogan “that made the heart of the earth
race”. For behind the proto-revolutionary catchphrase he suspects the same
interdependence between humanity and violence that is also part of that ration-
alistic Enlightenment culture that carries within it the seeds of its self-destruction:

Liberty, sociability, and equality as they are now sprouting up everywhere—they have
caused harm and will cause harm in a thousand misuses . . . . Barriers and turnpikes torn
down; prejudices—as they are called—of class, of education, and naturally of religion
trampled under foot, and even mocked to their harm; we are all becoming—through one
sort of education, philosophy, irreligion, enlightenment, vice, and finally, as a bonus, through

5
What is of relevance with respect to a cultural history, however, is that the three core concepts
were already circulated among the French freemasons in the middle of the eighteenth century and
also figured as the motto of the lodge of the Grand Orient de France. Even today this group sees itself
as a “vigilant defender of the principles contained in its motto that is also that of the Republic:
‘Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité’ ” (www.godf.org/index.php/pages/details/slug/nos-valeurs; accessed 11
August 2015). Herder entered the Loge of Riga as early as 1766 and wrote a sequel to Lessing’s Ernst
und Falk in the 26th letter of his Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität (cf. FHA 7, 132–41). Although
appreciative of the freemasons whom he saw as “as an instrument of Bildung” (Irmscher in FHA 7,
904), he chastised “all secret societies” and the “spirit of domination, fraud, and Kabala” that “creeps
under their covers” (Brief an Christian Gottlob Heyne, 9 January 1786, DA 5, 166–7). By demanding
transparency and openness, Herder however questioned the self-conception of the freemasons or
the function of the Arkanum, for “Masonic freedom, equality, and brotherhood were possible . . .
only if kept under the veil of the secrecy of the lodge located beyond the sphere of the state and
politics” (Contiades, 1968, 141–2).
 HERDER ’ S CONCEPTION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

oppression, bloodthirstiness, and insatiable avarice, which certainly awakens minds and
brings them to self-feeling . . . , we are all becoming brothers. (FHA 4, 98–9; 350)

Herder’s sarcastic-ironic philippic against the later credo of the French Revolu-
tion is unique.6 For liberty and equality are, as Hegel explains with respect to the
1791 French constitution in his Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Welt-
geschichte, “natural rights”, born of the modern “independence of reason” (Die
Französische Revolution, 1985, 860) and intimately tied to the Declaration of the
Rights of Man and Citizen in the preamble of the constitution. Consistently, the
Cordeliers, who gave birth to the conceptual triad of the revolution, chose to
name their club the Society of Friends of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Herder
thus seems to have anticipated in his Bückeburg essay the bloodthirstiness and
perverted brotherliness of the Terror, and with it the violent potential of a human
rights discourse that defines itself in universalistic terms. As a matter of principle,
the authors of the French and American constitutions understood themselves as
champions no longer of merely national and particular rights, but of universal
human rights. Thus Benjamin Franklin, who then acted as an American envoy in
France, writes in his letter to General Samuel Cooper in 1777: “It’s a common
observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are
fighting for their liberty in defending our own” (cited in Steinkamp, 2013, 7). The
Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, too, stresses the “universal character”
of the declaration of human rights, which—it is emphasized—“constitutes their
grandeur, power, and originality” (Larousse, 1870, 240).
In Germany, the initial enthusiasm of many intellectuals for the French Revo-
lution often gave way to a growing scepticism, which, in the face of the ensuing
Terror, could even turn into rejection. It is interesting in this context to turn to the
testimony of Herder’s friend Matthias Claudius, who brought public awareness to
the first seventeen articles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
through their German translation in his work Über die neue Politik (1794) and
then commented on this “code of human rights and liberty” as follows:

6
Herder’s gaze is directed not only towards the future but also towards the past, and the historian
reveals himself here, in Friedrich Schlegel’s apt definition in the Athenäums-Fragmenten, as “a
backwards-turned prophet” (Schlegel, 1985, 33). As examples of his thesis that progress often flips
over into destruction, Herder mentions Luther’s Reformation with the social unrest caused by
Baptists and zealots, and the prophecies of Caiaphas in John 11:49–52. The choice of these
examples—as Jürgen Brummack rightly remarks (cf. FHA 4, 893–4)—underlines the religious
connotations of Herder’s thesis, although this does not undermine the veracity of the actual
historical examples. Even if, as Brummack suggests, Herder’s reference to Caiaphas is a nod to
Johann Georg Hamann’s Aesthetica in nuce, as Brummack himself also stresses, the reference to the
high priest Caiaphas is aimed at Voltaire, “the high priest in the temple of taste” (Hamann, 1979,
109)!
 MARTIN BOLLACHER 

In this charter of human and civic rights we find little mention of human rights; most of it
concerns the citizen. And as is generally the case with universal truths and maxims, so it is
with these ones. They say everything and nothing, taking with one hand what they give
away with the other. (Die Französische Revolution, 1985, 786–7)

An illustration of the conflict between universal truth and the concrete, individ-
ual case can be seen in the “frenzy of revenge” that followed the “the thoughtless
moves of the national convent” in the French colony of Haiti (Kleist, 1970, 160),
as Heinrich von Kleist writes in his novel Die Verlobung in St. Domingo. For in
1794, the year Claudius’s article appeared, the French granted all blacks who
found themselves under their jurisdiction freedom and equal rights and the white
settlers responded by deciding it was “better to die than to share their political
rights with a ‘degenerate race of the human beings’” (Kleist, 1970, 904); this in
turn provoked the rebellion of the black population which Kleist depicted. When
Napoleon reintroduced slavery among the Haitians in 1802, the French were
driven out by a new rebellion of the black population.
It would thus appear that Herder was not alone in his scepticism towards the
abstract Enlightenment philosophy of humanity and the universalist claims of
human rights discourse. When then the news of the French Revolution reached
across the Rhine, Herder at first greeted the French liberation from despotic
absolutism with undisguised sympathy. However, in light of the increasing
outbreaks of violence and bloodthirstiness among the extremist forces, which
culminated in the execution of Louis Capet, he became an outspoken opponent of
the French events. In a 1792 draft of his Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität,
Herder in fact speaks of the “frenzy” of the insurgent peoples, confessing: “I know
of nothing more appalling than an angry, crazed people and this people’s crazed
reign” (FHA 7, 774). The Herder who judges so apodictically here was at the time
general superintendent and Oberhofprediger in the Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-
Eisenach, a “paltry dwarf state” (Biedrzynski, 1998, 151), the capital of which,
however, flourished under the reign of Carl Augustus to become a vibrant
cultural and literary centre and the “intellectual capital” (Madame de Staël,
cited in Wilpert, 1998, 1156) of a particularistic Germany. Herder’s dependence
on the court, society, and clerical office—in addition to his hostility towards the
Reign of Terror—sufficiently explains his critical attitude towards the revolution.
If one were to agree with Hegel, one could say that there was no need for a
political revolution in Protestant Germany since “only Protestants were able to
come to terms with the legal and moral reality” and “felt reconciled with that
reality” (Die Französische Revolution, 1985, 861).
In sum, one can thus say that Herder’s idiosyncratic stance against all forms of
conceptual generalization and against the reign of the universal prevents us from
 HERDER ’ S CONCEPTION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

straightforwardly identifying him with the “normative project of the West”,

whose emergence and consolidation is described by the historian Heinrich
August Winkler in his monumental Geschichte des Westens. For Winkler, the
West is a geographical, geopolitical, historical, and both cultural and moral unity
that reaches beyond Europe, to which the United States of America and other
Anglo-Saxon countries also belong. Characterizing the “normative project of the
West” in his introduction, he writes:

Together with the ideas about inalienable human rights, the rule of law, and representa-
tive democracy, the separation of powers also belongs to the core of what we may call the
normative project of the West or the western community of values. (Winkler, 2015, 21)

Although the origin of the West also lies in the “East” and in the emergence of
monotheism in the Egyptian, Jewish, and Christian cultural spheres, the project
of the West only finds its decisive formulation with the American Revolution of
1776 and the French Revolution of 1789. Winkler wholeheartedly subscribes to
the inalienability of human rights as defended by the American and French
revolutionaries and endorses once again its historiographical credo: “The claim
of inalienable human rights remains a universal one, and as long as they are not
applied worldwide, the normative project of the West remains unfinished”
(Winkler, 2015, 24). In a chapter about the reception of the French Revolution
in Germany and England that cites Herder’s anti-revolutionary tirades in the
Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität (cf. Winkler, 2015, 339), Winkler also
identifies obstacles that hamper the success of the western project. These are
“the non-simultaneity of its [the project’s] implementation” and the “contradic-
tion between project and praxis” (Winkler, 2015, 22). The contemporary histor-
ian could have called on Herder here as chief witness, who, in his Auch eine
Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit, never tires of pointing
out the gap between idea and reality and the perpetual flipping over of progress
into regression.
The argumentative consistency that we find in the construction of the “nor-
mative project of the West” is largely owing to Winkler’s thesis about the
significance of monotheism as rationalistic and civilizing driving force. Thus he
states that for the emergence of the West “more was needed than monotheism,
but without it the West cannot be explained” (Winkler, 2015, 25). The focus on
monotheism, its emergence in the Egyptian Aton cult, its roots in the Mosaic
religion—here Winkler draws above all on Freud’s work Der Mann Moses und die
monotheistische Religion—and its further development by the Christians, leads
however to a questionable omission of classical Greek high culture, without
which the genesis of the West seems hardly conceivable. Winkler’s impressive
 MARTIN BOLLACHER 

work bears the subtitle Von den Anfängen in der Antike bis zum 20. Jahrhundert;
but he fails to do justice to it in so far as, apart from a few fleeting remarks about
Sophocles’ Antigone, Plato’s theory of Ideas, as well as the Hellenistic influences
on Judaism and Christianity (cf. Winkler, 2015, 29–31), he entirely skirts the role
of Greece in the cultural history of the Occident and thus also in the rise of the
West. And yet in Europe, and especially in Germany, ancient Greece was
regarded for many centuries as an unattainable cultural model and as an integral
component of the collective memory of poets and scholars. For Winckelmann,
Lessing, Wieland, Herder, Goethe, and Hölderlin, Greece provided a far-reaching
experience of Bildung and an—albeit idealized—model for their own creative
activity as well as the embodiment of a harmonious humankind that had reached
aesthetic perfection. “Among all peoples,” Goethe acknowledges in Maximen und
Reflexionen, “the Greeks dreamt the dream of life most beautifully” (HA 12, 390).
No less enthusiastically, Herder writes about the Greeks and their influence that
extended right up to his own day in his Bückeburg essay:

The fairest bloom of the human spirit, of heroic courage, of love of one’s fatherland, of
feeling free, of love of art, of song, of the pitch of poetry, the sound of narration, the thunder
of oratory, of the starting of all citizenly wisdom, as it is now, is theirs. (FHA 4, 85; 338)

And in Book 13 of Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, Herder
also paints a detailed picture of the unique high culture of Greece, which not only
represents the birthplace of the philosophy of history, “since only the Greeks in
fact have history” (FHA 6, 555), but which also illustrates how a people that was
favoured by climate, time, character, and genius could attain the highest blos-
soming in the arts and sciences. Herder is also full of praise for the moral and
political wisdom of the Greeks; thus for him “Athens has unquestionably been
the most enlightened city in our known world” (FHA 6, 545).7 Greece therefore
would have to be considered in a history of the West, as it constitutes an essential
component in the formation of a modern but tradition-oriented consciousness of
identity and Bildung.

2 Individuality and Plurality: “Our Earth is a Sphere”

In the history of the education (Bildung) of humankind, Greece may be a glorious
example; nonetheless, it is not repeatable, neither in its singularity nor in its
individual configuration. Laconically, Herder states: “Greece did not come back”
(FHA 4, 85). What holds for Greece applies to all peoples and cultures in general

7
Cf. Herder’s account of Greece in the Ideen; see Bollacher, 1990.
 HERDER ’ S CONCEPTION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

and regardless of whether they are of world-historical importance or merely a

footnote in the endless book of history. With this claim, Herder breaks with the
teleologically structured historiography of his time, which regards every historical
event as a means that is subordinate to the final purpose of reaching a more
advanced stage of civilization. Rather, with a conception of history that respects
the uniqueness of the individual, everything counts as a “means and end at the
same time” (FHA 4, 54). But even on the level of language, Herder does not
follow the normative, discursive method of scientific presentation either, since
instead of the language of abstract conceptuality he uses an affective, sensuous-
intuitive, and imagination-rich diction full of metaphors, comparisons, and
analogies. In accordance with the basic anthropological principle of the unity
of cognition and feeling, Herder stresses, in opposition to the “instrumental
conception of a universal language of concepts” (Heise, 1998, 38), the anchoring
of language in history and the dual sensuous–intellectual nature of the human
being. In particular, his use of analogy serves the purpose of combining together
different areas of knowledge and of being and of heuristically opening up new
territories on the map of human knowledge.8 It is precisely as a historian that
Herder stresses that analogy—e.g. the correspondence of cultural formations
with the biological–physiological processes of aging and the different stages of
life—“is not play” (FHA 4, 20). Rather, analogies function as an organizational
and epistemological device for the historiographer in light of the material bound-
lessness of his object of research and as a helpful category in the assessment of
historical individualities. Thus, in the section “On the life-stages of a language” in
the fragments of Über die neuere deutsche Literatur, Herder states: “A young old
man and a boy who is a man are unbearable, and a monster that wants to be
everything at once is never anything wholly” (FHA 1, 181). Peoples and cultures
are similarly subject to the transformation of time and are marked by “genesis”
and “metamorphosis” (FHA 4, 20), i.e. by the historical, cultural, and geograph-
ical conditions that are constitutive of their individuality and which change in the
continuum of time. The question of the human being’s purpose and his striving
for happiness—“the pursuit of happiness” being firmly established in the Ameri-
can Constitution as a human right9—that emerged in the context of early modern
processes of secularization and the rendering autonomous of the subject, is taken
up by Herder and lent a surprisingly new dimension: opposing his age’s ideology
of progress, he writes: “Each nation has its centre of happiness within itself, just as
every sphere has its own centre of gravity!” (FHA 4, 39; 297).

8
See Irmscher, 1981.
9
See Winkler’s chapter on the American Revolution in Winkler, 2015, 259–310, especially 278.
 MARTIN BOLLACHER 

This is a fascinating and concise theorem whose landmark importance has

recently been stressed by Peter Sloterdijk in his 2,573-page Spheres trilogy.10 In
his monumental theoretical construction, Sloterdijk intends to use the “sphere-
ontology [Kugel-Ontologie]” (Sloterdijk, 1999, 40) to explain nothing less than
the history of the world, and all this is done in a double act: ontogenetically, from
the pre-subjective existence of the human embryo to the self-reflective, respon-
sible subject; and phylogenetically, from the primitivism of the primordial horde
to the planetary circulation of a digital capitalism. Sloterdijk’s postmodern mega
opus might at first seem a far cry from Herder. However, Herder’s work is also
committed to a universal history of humankind and of the world, while Sloter-
dijk’s avowal of the rhetorical figure of the metaphor and of transmission as the
“formal source of creative processes” (Sloterdijk, 1998, 14) are reminiscent of
Herder’s metaphor- and analogy-rich diction. In his review of the first book of
the Ideen, Kant had already criticized Herder’s “skillful cleverness in the discov-
ery of analogies” (Kant 1990, vol. 10, 781) and lack of logical precision, but
Herder preferred a writing style marked by experience, sensibility, and linguistic
images to the purism of (linguistic) reason. For the philosopher of language
Fritz Mauthner, it is indeed true that analogies have no place in logic but rather
belong to psychology, given that the “comparison of similarities” yields no
“logical conclusion” (Mauthner, 1980, 19). Yet he also acknowledges “the com-
pelling force of the metaphorical and language-forming analogy” (Mauthner,
1980, 20) to the extent that the entire structure of language rests on analogical
formations. A recent study on the function of analogy by the American cognitive
scientist Douglas Hofstadter and the French psychologist Emmanuel Sander reads
like a continuation of Mauthner’s (and also Herder’s) thesis of the analogical
structure of language—even if they remain unmentioned in this voluminous
work.11 Their central claim is that “the spotting of analogies pervades every
moment of our thought, thus constituting thought’s core” (Hofstadter/Sander,
2013, 18), for analogizing not only takes place at the everyday level of perception,
but also pervades the artistic-scientific domain. Literature is here only mentioned
in passing and in relation to translation in Chapter 6. Indeed, this monumental
work offers an abundance of examples from everyday life and the sciences, but
the reader is at risk of drowning in the mass of material. Moreover, although
Hofstadter and Sander succeed in clarifying the communicative importance of
analogy, they more or less ignore its historical dimension.

10
On Sloterdijk, see Bollacher, 2016.
11
In accordance with the transatlantic co-authorship agreement, this 800-page study has appeared
in English (Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking) and French (L’Analogie:
Cœur de la penseé). Both editions appeared in 2013; the German translation followed in 2014.
 HERDER ’ S CONCEPTION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

On the other hand, Sloterdijk, who has himself been accused of an “excess of
foreign words and metaphor-deliria” (Lütkehaus, 2004, 1), demonstrates great
respect for “the far reaching intuitions of the precocious cultural historian”
(Sloterdijk, 2004, 127) Herder, and cites the sphere-trope from Herder’s Bücke-
burg historical essay as an example of a pluralistic spherology (cf. Sloterdijk, 2004,
64) that integrates the individualizing tendencies of modernity. In the second
volume of his trilogy, he goes so far as to describe “globalisation or spheropoiesis”
as the “basic event of European thinking” (Sloterdijk, 1999, 48) with reference to
the Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojève. In his work Le Concept, le
temps et le discours: Introduction au système du savoir from 1990, Kojève
describes the sphere of being as “absolutely homogeneous” and as “entirely limited
to itself ” and concludes from this: “One can dis-place oneself in this sphere as one
pleases . . . yet it will everywhere be the same being” (cited in Sloterdijk, 1999,
92–3, note 36). For Sloterdijk, the sphere is not only a “geometric symbol” and
“cosmological image of thought”; rather it is also that which leads to an “altruistic
ethics and eroticism” (Sloterdijk, 1999, 124).
One need not agree with all of the conclusions and claims in Sloterdijk’s
monumental study; but it is clear that for Herder too the rejection of a linear
teleological historiography committed to an ideology of progress and the argu-
ment for a historical-cultural paradigm illustrated through the sphere imaginary
implies an altruistic, cosmopolitan, and pluralistic scientific ethos. The principled
rejection of all hierarchical and elitist theories of history connects his early work
Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit to his Ideen zur
Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, which appeared between 1784 and
1791, the two works together constituting a Herculean endeavour that ends with
the late Middle Ages: “A new epoch is on its way—on the brink of it, the great
historical work comes to a halt” as Rudolf Haym, Herder’s biographer notes
(Haym, 1954, vol. 2, 262). Herder saw himself as unable to depict the modern era
with all its upheavals—the American and the French revolutions—but he had
nevertheless “expanded the circle of ideas far more widely” (FHA 6, 12) than in
the Bückeburg essay. Thus he no longer considers only the history of the
Occident from the Middle East to Enlightenment Europe, but extends his reach
to include all peoples and cultures of the earth. Herder understands himself as a
humble examiner in this gigantic endeavour organized around the key ideas of
individuality and plurality.12 After all, is his aim not to show that “each individual
of the human species is made for that which we call culture?” He continues:

12
In a letter to Christian Gottlob Heyne of 9 January 1786, Herder notes that he tried in the Ideen
“to open up vistas for future researchers with utmost humility” (DA 5, 166).
 MARTIN BOLLACHER 

What is the happiness of humanity? and how far does it exist in this world? considering
the great diversity of all the creatures of the earth, and above all of human beings, how far
is it to be found in every constitution, in every climate, in all revolutions of conditions,
life-stages, and times? Is there a measure of all these different states and has providence
counted on the well-being of its creatures in all these situations as well as on their final and
ultimate purpose? (FHA 6, 12)

It does not come as a surprise that Herder’s ethos of the individual and polycentric
manifold in the historical-cultural world is again illustrated through the image of
the sphere in the Ideen. For the world as the stage of all human action is “nothing
in itself ” (FHA 6, 21); as part of a well-ordered cosmos and as a middle planet it is
tied to its centre, the sun, such that it can thus be regarded “not [as] alone and
lonely” but rather only as “among the chorus of worlds” (ibid.). It is with
admiration that Herder looks at the miracle of the order of the spheres and the
planetary orbits whose natural laws modern science—Copernicus, Kepler, New-
ton, Huygens, and Kant are named—had proved. Herder the historian joins hands
with Herder the preacher and enthusiastically chimes in with the song of the earth:
the earth, our home, is a star among stars, but also the mater generationis, the
“great mother” (FHA 6, 23), who maintains and nourishes all creatures on earth
alike. And again, the image of the sphere is invoked—“Our earth is a sphere”
(FHA 6, 32)—because for the philosopher of history, whose thinking is guided by
the “analogies of nature” (FHA 6, 16) and its internal coherence, the circle as the
most perfect shape illustrates the polarity between unity and plurality. Thus for
him everything on earth is “a changing sphere: no point is equal to another” (FHA
6, 33), but all points remain connected to the centre. For Herder, this coincidentia
oppositorum also possesses an aesthetic dimension:

As the globe revolves, the heads on it also revolve, like the climates; morals and religions,
and hearts and dress alike. There is an unspeakable wisdom in this: not that everything is
so manifold, but rather that, on this round Earth, everything is so seemingly in unison and
in tune. In this law, [i.e.] to effect many things in one and to join the greatest diversity to
an informal sameness, lies the height of beauty. (FHA 6, 33–4)

The sphere image illustrates the interrelations, underlying the Ideas, between
individuality and a unity that is rooted in a “plan” of the whole (FHA 6, 15) that
Herder interchangeably calls God and nature or—conflating the sacred and the
profane—“God’s course in nature” (FHA 6, 16). The idea that the unity of this
God–nature reveals itself in the manifold of individual appearances, whereas in
individual things in turn the universal lawfulness of an all-encompassing nature
comes to expression, Herder may have taken from Spinoza’s Ethics.13 Applied to

13
See proposition 24 in Part 5 of the Ethics: “The more we understand singular things, the more
we understand God” (Spinoza, 1955, 283).
 HERDER ’ S CONCEPTION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

history, this means that the universal unity of the human species is embodied in
the diversity of historical individualities, a species that is capable of cultural
creativity and education at all stages of development and in all nuances; for
“there is but one and the same human species on earth” (FHA 6, 253). Just as in
his folk song collection Herder let the Stimmen der Völker in Liedern,14 that is,
the voices of peoples in songs, strike up a tune as a common cultural heritage, so
are the distinctive individual voices of peoples and cultures combined in the
unisonous choir of humanity. Herder thus rejects the concept of race since it
emphasizes exclusion and the other rather than what is common to the human
species (cf. FHA 6, 255–6).15
Herder conceives of the course of universal history in analogy with a nature
directed by rational laws and he defines the purpose of human nature as the
optimal realization of its innate talents. This purpose, which is immanent in
human nature, he calls humanity (Humanität) (or reason [Vernunft], justness
[Billigkeit]). Humanity is comprised, therefore, of both an intellectual and an
ethical–moral component. In the Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität, Herder
can thus say—once again with recourse to the metaphor of the sphere: “Under-
standing and kindness are the two poles around whose axis the sphere of
humanity revolves” (FHA 7, 128). Herder thus derives the guiding principal
law of his philosophy of history from human nature and history: “Let man be
man! Let him mould his condition in accordance with what he deems best” (FHA
6, 632). Herder the historiographer also follows this law in the characterization of
historical individualities. But how does he avoid the methodological dilemma of
conceptualizing the uniqueness of individual phenomena and of capturing by
means of a system of language that which precisely escapes abstract conceptual
formulation? And if every individual human being, just like every epoch, agrees
only with itself and can only be understood through itself, every comparison that
presupposes something common to both is forbidden. Already in his Bückeburg

14
The now famous title of the Volkslieder, which appeared posthumously and in a revised version
in 1807, was coined by Caroline Herder and Johannes von Müller.
15
Herder’s critique of the concept of race might have been directed at Kant (Von den verschie-
denen Rassen der Menschen) or Voltaire, who depicts races as an important genetic predisposition in
his Essai sur les mœurs. Voltaire in fact stresses the differences between races when claiming rather
drastically: “It is only permissible for a blind person to doubt that the whites, the negroes, the
albinos, the Hottentots, the Laplanders, the Chinese, the Americans are entirely different races”
(Voltaire 1963, vol. 1, 6). But even Claude Lévi-Strauss, in the context of a series of anti-racist
publications initiated by UNESCO, speaks of human races (Race et histoire, 1952), whose existence
he does not deny, emphasizing instead the diversity of cultures. In any case, what matters is the use
of language and the ideas connected to it—in a positive or negative sense. Lévi-Strauss therefore
seems to argue entirely in Herder’s sense when he grounds the originality of cultural achievements in
“geographic, historical, and sociological circumstances” (Lévi-Strauss, 1987, 11) rather than in race.
 MARTIN BOLLACHER 

essay, although or perhaps precisely because he constantly compares and thinks

in analogies, Herder admits that, in principle, “all comparison is infelicitous”
(FHA 4, 38) since it can only lead to universal concepts. When he considers the
individual to be “an ineffable thing” (FHA 4, 32), he has in mind the old
philosophical dictum from which Goethe, in his letter to Lavater of 20 September
1780, sought to derive “a world” (HAB 1, 325), namely “individuum est inef-
fabile.”16 In Leibniz, with whose philosophy Herder intensively engaged in his
early work, he may have read in the Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain
that “two individuals cannot be entirely identical” (Leibniz, 1996, 13–14).
According to the monadology and to the doctrine of pre-established harmony,
individuality contains infinity within itself such that only one who “is capable of
comprehending infinity can possess knowledge of the principle of individuation
of this or that thing” (Leibniz, 1996, 285–6). Hegel grounds the ineffability of the
individual thing at the level of sensuous cognition in a different way, stating that
the sensible object “remains unattainable for a language that belongs to con-
sciousness, to the universal in itself ” (Hegel, 1989, vol. 3, 91–2).
But Herder’s philosophy of history is compatible neither with Leibniz’s theory
of eternal and necessary truths and (even confused) knowledge of infinity17 nor
with the absolute demand of Hegelian philosophy. In the Bückeburg essay, even
more markedly than in the Ideas, where he argues from the perspective of the
theologian, Herder does not claim that it is possible to know the whole and ends
his formally finished but fragmentary work with the famous dictum from Paul
(1 Cor. 13:12–13) about the imperfect knowledge of the divine in the temporal
(cf. FHA 4, 107), which Luther comments on in his Bible translation as follows:
“Although we have everything in faith / and know what God is / . . . this same
knowing is still piecemeal / and imperfect with respect to the future clarity”
(Luther, 1973, vol. 2, 2318). For Herder, all knowledge is perspectival, even in the
secular domain of his philosophy of history, and dependent on the standpoint of
the spectator and his historically and experientially conditioned subjectivity.
Already early on, Herder outlines an anthropology of the whole human being,
which encompasses body and soul, cognition and sensation, and which, in a
decidedly anti-Cartesian manner and against the evidence of disembodied
thought—“[ego] cogito, ergo sum” (Descartes, 1961, 2)18—allows itself to be

16
The exact origin of the expression appears to be unknown.
17
§60 of the Monadologie claims that monads “all reach out confusedly to the infinite, to the
whole”. For the distinction between truths of reason and of matters of fact see §33 in Leibniz, 1982,
20–1 and 27.
18
This key phrase of Cartesian rationalism is usually cited in the Latin version of the Principia
philosophiae (I, 7).
 HERDER ’ S CONCEPTION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

led by an a priori of feeling: “I feel myself! I am!” (FHA 4, 236). And in Vom
Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele, Herder emphatically states:
“The sensing human being feels itself into everything, feels everything from out
of itself, and imprints it with its image, its impress” (FHA 4, 330). According to
Marion Heinz, feelings are “the sensuous schema of reason” (Heinz, 1994, 134).
In the individual relationship of the human being to the surrounding world—a
world it has also shaped—both a “sensing and feeling knowing” and a “knowing
feeling” are combined in a uniform form of knowledge that enables the grasping
of individual and historical diversity in its lawlike promotion of Bildung and
humanity.19 This is precisely the sense of the methodological maxim to which
Herder wishes to commit the philosopher of history in the Bückeburg essay: “Go
into the age, into the clime, the whole history, feel yourself into everything” (FHA
4, 33; 292). Herder is thus no advocate of irrationality; rather, he shows how to
close the “rift” (FHA 4, 33) between present and past by a method based on the
analogies of nature and history.20 Unlike Lessing, who failed to overcome the
“wide, horrible abyss” (Lessing, 1996, vol. 8, 13) between the contingent truths of
history and the necessary truths of reason, Herder’s account closes the gap
between different ages by means of an act of sympathetic knowing. Edward
W. Said, who usually subjects the Western construction of orientalist cultural
patterns to harsh criticism, recognizes the outstanding importance both of
Herder’s hermeneutics of Einfühlung and of “sympathetic identification” to an
unbiased perspective on other cultures:
Thus Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784–1791) was a
panoramic display of various cultures, each permeated by an inimical creative spirit,
each accessible only to an observer who sacrificed his prejudices to Einfühlung.
(Said, 2003, 118)

For Said, the concept of prejudice means the bias of a Western cultural theory
rooted in a Eurocentric perspective against outward forms of cultural otherness.21

19
Anik Waldow also stresses “that diversity, and varying moral standards in different societies,
can be measured and appreciated for what they are only if considered against the background of a
universal feeling of humanity” (Waldow, 2014, 349).
20
Frederick C. Beiser stresses in his well-argued study on German historicism that, for Herder,
“Einfühlung” is an important “supplement for explanation” (Beiser, 2015, 136). However, when he
states that, for Herder, “all historical enquiry should end with an ineffable experience, the direct
intuition into the sheer individuality of an action, person or epoch” (ibid.) he seems to confuse “end”
and “beginning”, for in Herder’s historiography the original act of “Einfühlung” leads to a process of
conceptual interpretation.
21
Herder thinks somewhat differently when, in his Bückeburg essay, he explains from a
historical-cultural perspective: “Prejudice is good in its time, for it makes one happy” (FHA 4, 39);
prejudice appears here as the sign of a strong, solid feeling of national identity.
 MARTIN BOLLACHER 

Indeed, Herder clearly renounces an unreflective universalization of Western

models of thought and strategies of cultural hierarchization:

If we want to philosophise about the history of our species, let us then reject as far as
possible all narrow forms of thinking, taken from the formation [Bildung] of one region of
earth, probably the doctrine of only a single school. Not what the human being is for us, or
what it should be according to the ideas of some dreamer; but rather what it [the human
being] is everywhere on earth as well as what it at the same time is in particular in every
region; i.e. what only the rich variety of coincidences in the hands of nature can fashion it
to be; let us observe this too as Nature’s purpose. (FHA 6, 35)

These sentences taken from the chapter on the spherical shape of the earth in the
Ideen read like a synopsis of the principles of Herder’s philosophy of history and
of its cultural ethos. Herder here transcends the epistemological limits of a
national cultural theory that obeys the Western claim to dominance and sets
his sights on the diversity of earthly life arising from “nature’s purpose”. The
individuality and plurality of life forms find their unity in the plan of the whole
(God, nature, history) that meaningfully structures the chaos of historical events.
It is this insight that gives the philosopher of history the confidence that, although
the pages of his unfinished work may well be scattered in the flow of time, they
will continue to have an effect as the seeds of a yet to be written philosophy of
human history “at the end of our century or millennium” (FHA 6, 18).

3 Final Reflections
So did Herder’s historical-individualistic approach bear the fruit he had hoped
for? According to Nietzsche, Herder had the “bad luck that his writings were
always either new or outdated” (Nietzsche, 1966, vol. 1, 928) and that German
historians and philologians took away from him “what he imagined he had
reserved for himself ” (Nietzsche, 1966, vol. 1, 924). Thoughts have also been
attributed to Herder that were alien to him and which even twisted his revolu-
tionary turn to history into its opposite.
A paradigmatic example of such an interpretation can be found in Alain
Finkielkraut’s La Défaite de la pensée (1987). Finkielkraut states that there is a
fundamental difference between the French universalism of ideal norms
grounded in the Enlightenment and the erosion of reason in the name of
historicism, relativism, and individualism that was fostered by Herder and the
German Romantics. Apodictically, Finkielkraut maintains: “Herder came and
had all universal values condemned by the tribunal of diversity” (Finkielkraut,
1987, 20). But he goes much further than this: Herder appears as an irrational
 HERDER ’ S CONCEPTION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

Dunkelmann22 who prepared the way for pan-Germanism and the Romantic
ideology of the spirit of the people [Volksgeist] with their “totalitarian potential-
ities” (Finkielkraut, 1987, 61–2) and was, in the end, partly responsible for “the
total war” (ibid.) of the twentieth century. But even in postcolonial and multi-
cultural discourses Finkielkraut sees Herder’s disastrous thinking at work:
“God is dead but the Volksgeist is strong” (Finkielkraut, 1987, 143). Historically
speaking, one can distinguish between the German concept of the “genius-nation
[nation-génie]” and the French concept of the “contract-nation [nation-contrat]”
(Finkielkraut, 1987, 44); however, in stating this difference, the French writer is
following the “ideal of a [his] lectern [Ideal {s}eines Katheders]” (FHA 4, 36) and
confuses Herder’s admittedly polemical, but not unjustified, objection to
eighteenth-century rationalistic dogmatism with nationalistic barbarism.
In stark contrast, in his classic work Wahrheit und Methode Hans-Georg
Gadamer acknowledges Herder as the founder of the historical school because
he opposed “the teleological enlightenment historiography” with “a universal
historical worldview” (Gadamer, 1972, 188). Qualifying this statement, however,
Gadamer notes that, with Herder, the historical worldview has not yet reached its
full development since he follows “a reverse teleology” that reserves “perfection
for a past or a beginning of history”23 and thus recognizes “a trans-historical
standard [einen geschichts-jenseitigen Maßstab]” (Gadamer, 1972, 188). It is
indeed clear that Herder, both in his Bückeburg essay and in the Ideen, is oriented
towards a trans-historical standard in every revaluation of the individual,
although the call ad fontes and the importance of the genesis for the formation
of historical forms finds a counterbalance in the inscrutable goal of universal
history. Admittedly, even Herder, a child of his age, is not free from all normative
standards, above all when towards the end of the Ideen he praises the role of
Europe which, as the home of reason and of humanity, deserves a status “above
other peoples” (FHA 6, 897). The justification for the exceptional cultural status
of Europe, however, again entirely conforms to the scheme of an interrelation of
genesis and metamorphosis: for the “climate of Europe, the remains of the
ancient Greek and Roman worlds, assisted all this: and thus the magnificence
of Europe is founded on activity and invention, on the sciences and on a common,

22
The Epistolae obscurorum virorum (1515/16)—thus the Dunkelmännerbriefe written in an
artificially barbaric Latin—contain a satirical “cultural criticism of late scholasticism” and of Cologne
Catholicism [Kölner Katholizismus] from the pen of humanistic authors who slip into the role of
narrow-minded viri obscuri. For the Dunkelmänner it is clear that “everyone who does not believe
what they believe, is a heretic and must be burnt” (H. Rupprich in Geschichte der deutschen Literatur
IV/1, 1970, 713).
23
Gadamer here thinks of the exemplary function of classical antiquity (see Gadamer, 1972, 188).
 MARTIN BOLLACHER 

competitive endeavouring” (ibid.). Herder the historian does not argue in a void;
he is well aware of the situatedness of his account. It is precisely this limited
perspective that justifies the merits of his historical worldview, which unites
individuality and universality by recognizing each epoch and each culture in
their own right to existence: “The New-Zealand cannibal and Fenelon, the
wretched Pesheray and Newton are all creatures of one and the same species”
(FHA 6, 147).24

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24
The Pesheray, to whom Herder often refers as an example of a less developed people, are the
inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego.
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Hans Volz, Heinz Blanke, and Friedrich Kur, 2 vols. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
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 12
Herder and Human Rights
Michael N. Forster

The late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were a great age for the concepts of
“rights” in general and “human rights” (in the form of the rights of “all men,” “les
droits de l’homme”) in particular. Think, for example, of the English Bills of
Rights (1689), the American Declaration of Independence (1776), Constitution
(1787/9), and Bill of Rights (1791), and the French Déclaration des droits de
l’homme et du citoyen (1789).
Herder, as a highly educated man of his time and a sympathizer with the
American and French revolutions, was certainly very familiar with the concept
of human rights, or in his German “Menschenrechte.”1 However, his attitude
toward it is ambivalent. If one reads the two works of his that are most relevant
for this topic (both in terms of their chronological coincidence with the period of
the American and French revolutions and in terms of their heavy preoccupation
with politics), namely Ideas for the Philosophy of History of Humanity (1784–91)
and Letters for the Advancement of Humanity (1793–7), the situation seems to be
roughly the following. On the one hand, Herder does have enormous sympathy
with the American and French revolutions (for example, he originally conceived
the Letters as a series of sympathetic reflections on the French Revolution and in
the original draft from 1792 is explicitly enthusiastic about it, though censorship
and pragmatism subsequently forced him to be more cautious about expressing
this enthusiasm in the published version; furthermore, the published version
includes a highly significant enthusiastic treatment of one of the great leaders
of the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin); in both works he embraces
“humanity” as his highest ethical and political ideal; accordingly, he writes there
at length and with great passion against despotism, imperialism, war, and every

1
See, for example, Letters concerning the Advancement of Humanity (1793–7), at FHA 7,
147, 344.
 MICHAEL N . FORSTER 

other form of abuse, oppression, or exploitation of one human being by another;

and in the unfinished Ideas, where he lambasts the Catholic church for its history
of violating such values, his unrealized plan for the conclusion of the work
included an account of how, by contrast, the Protestant Reformation had pre-
pared the way for the English Bill of Rights.2 But on the other hand, he
conspicuously avoids using the already available terminology and concept of
“human rights” in order to articulate these positions. There thus seems to be a
tension in Herder between, on the one hand, passionate commitment to the
substantive normative goals of the concept of “human rights” and, on the other
hand, some sort of skepticism concerning the concept itself.
This ambivalence strikes me as interesting. It does so not only for historical-
exegetical reasons but also, and indeed mainly, because the ambivalence in
question seems to me reasonable, indeed something that we ought to share
with Herder. I would therefore like in this article to try to identify some of
Herder’s reasons, or at least (since he does not say very much on the subject
explicitly) possible reasons, behind his skepticism about the concept, in the hope
that doing so may not only contribute to a better understanding of his position
but also help us to think through our own stance toward the concept.

1 “Rights” and Law

One set of worries that Herder evidently entertains about the concept of “human
rights” concerns an essential connection between this concept and the concept
of law.
The eighteenth century standardly conceived human rights as belonging to a
system of either God’s law or natural law, the latter in the sense of a set of
universal norms either ordained by God or in some other way inscribed in the
very order of nature. For example, the authors of the American Declaration of
Independence used both of these characterizations, while the authors of the
French Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen left out God and
appealed to natural law alone. The most important subsequent formulation of
a doctrine of human rights, the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (1948), together with related publications,3 essentially continues the
conception of such rights as natural law.
In addition, the concept of human rights emerged during the late seventeenth
century and the eighteenth century within a context of positive law, specifically

2
See FHA 6, 1153.
3
See, for example, the recent UN-sponsored volume concerning human rights Crossing the
Divide: Dialogue among Civilizations (Picco, 2001).
 HERDER AND HUMAN RIGHTS

within the context of framing new constitutional law. The English Bill of Rights,
the American Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution with its
later appended Bill of Rights, and the French Déclaration des droits de l’homme
et du citoyen all exhibit this feature. This intimate connection of the concept with
positive law has again continued subsequently as well. For example, the United
Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights is in effect a legal document
and Amnesty International was founded in 1961 by an English lawyer, Peter
Benenson.
The essential connection between the concept of human rights and the concept
of law must have been especially clear to Herder, not only because of (the relevant
part of) the history just outlined, but also because in German the word for a right,
Recht, often simply means “law,” just as in French the word for a right, droit,
often simply means “law.”
Now Herder would, I think, reject any such legalistic concept of “human
rights” in principle. Consider, first of all, the conception of human rights as
either God’s law or natural law (the latter again in the sense of a set of universal
norms either ordained by God or in some other way inscribed in the very order of
nature).
Herder would, I think, reject the idea that we should regard such rights as
deriving directly from God’s law for reasons that are rather similar to those which
lead him to reject the idea that human language or other natural phenomena are
directly attributable to God. Like his teacher Kant in Universal Natural History
and Theory of the Heavens (1755), Herder in works such as the Treatise on the
Origin of Language (1772) regards direct explanations of natural phenomena in
terms of God as mere pseudo-explanations, and instead seeks naturalistic explan-
ations of them in terms of laws of nature—naturalistic explanations which may
indeed ultimately themselves require God as an ulterior explanans (since while
there are no miracles in the sense of natural phenomena that are inexplicable in
terms of laws of nature, the fact that these laws operate is itself a sort of miracle),
but which do not invoke God directly.
What about a conception of human rights as natural law? Herder would,
I think, be equally dissatisfied with this second way of conceiving them as a
type of law as well. Friedrich Meinecke in his justly famous book Historism: The
Rise of a New Historical Outlook has indeed gone as far as to depict it as one of
Herder’s greatest philosophical achievements to have overthrown the relevant
conception of natural law (and to have thereby ushered in a new historicism
concerning values).4 As on many important issues, Herder is in fact somewhat

4
Meinecke, 1972 (a translation of his Die Entstehung des Historismus [1936]).
 MICHAEL N . FORSTER 

torn about this one. For example, in the Ideas he rather tends to support a
conception in the spirit of the natural law tradition according to which such
fundamental values as “humanity” are universally inscribed in the natural order
by God. However, Meinecke’s reading does, in my view, capture the most
original, influential, and valuable strand in Herder’s thought, a strand that is
prominent in such works as On the Change of Taste (1766), This Too a Philosophy
of History for the Formation of Humanity (1774), and much of the Letters
(1793–7). For in this more important strand Herder argues in sharp opposition
to the natural law tradition that all moral (and indeed also aesthetic and pru-
dential) values are (1) profoundly variable between ages and cultures, and even to
some extent between individuals within a single age and culture, and (2) based
(not in divine commands or a normative structure otherwise inscribed in the
order of nature but) in human beings’ highly variable moral sentiments.5
So much for a conception of human rights as divine law or natural law. But
Herder would be equally skeptical about the traditional close association of them
with positive law as well.
Why? His most important reason is that positive law is different from, and
needs to be constrained by, the deeper phenomenon of morality, and that the
ideals involved in the area of “human rights” really belong to the latter, deeper
level. Thus he writes in the Letters:
Among the Romans, to whom the word humanity [Humanität] actually belongs, the concept
had reason enough to develop itself more definitely. Rome had hard laws against serfs,
children, foreigners, enemies; the upper classes had rights [Rechte] against the people, etc.
Whoever pursued these rights with great strictness could be righteous [gerecht], but he
was not thereby humane [menschlich]. The noble who voluntarily waived these rights
when they were unjust, who acted toward children, slaves, underlings, foreigners,
enemies not as a Roman citizen or patrician but as a human being was humanus,
humanissimus . . . Since therefore humanity [Humanität] first won its name as a tamer
of hard civic laws and rights . . . , let us honour this word and the thing itself . . . We need it
as much as the Romans. For if you now look ahead in history you will see that there came
a time when the word human being [Mensch] (homo) received a quite different meaning,
coming to mean a bearer of duties, a subject, a vassal, a servant. Whoever was not that had
no right . . . Let us then adopt the Greeks’ and Romans’ concept of humanity, for this
barbaric human right [Menschenrecht] makes us shudder.6

5
It is no doubt in large part such specific objections as these that lie behind Herder’s explicitly
but vaguely skeptical stance toward the conception of natural law in his correspondence with
Hamann.
6
FHA 7, 151–3; cf. 723 where Herder argues that political reform is useless without a reform of
people’s moral sentiments.
 HERDER AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Nor, in Herder’s view, does morality itself turn out to be fundamentally like
law, as many thinkers have supposed, but instead a matter of human sentiments.
Herder rejects theories that tend to assimilate morality itself to law—for example,
divine-command theories of morality, theories of morality as natural law, and the
critical Kant’s theory that morality consists in a “categorical imperative.” Instead,
like an important tradition of non-cognitivists before him (including David
Hume, by whom he was almost certainly influenced here, especially via the
precritical Kant), he conceives morality as fundamentally a matter of human
sentiments: “inclinations [Neigungen],” as he usually calls them in This Too a
Philosophy of History, or “attitudes [Gesinnungen],” as he usually calls them in
the 10th Collection of the Letters.
There is, indeed, an important connection between morality and law in
Herder’s view. For not only should law be constrained by morality (as has already
been mentioned), but also the formation of the moral sentiments on which
morality rests depends on a range of social mechanisms which include law—so
that there is in the end a sort of interdependence between morality and law. But
this qualification only inflects Herder’s fundamental picture that morality is
distinct from and deeper than law rather than subverting it. For in his view law
is by no means the only social mechanism, nor even the most important of the
social mechanisms, on which the formation of the moral sentiments depends. For
example, literature is considerably more important. Hence in his essay On the
Effect of Poetry on the Ethics of Peoples in Ancient and Modern Times (1781) he
argues that literature’s capacity for forming peoples’ moral sentiments is unsur-
passed, that among the Christians “songs have always been the most effective
means of inculcating ethical attitudes [Gesinnungen] in the people,” and that
the Arabs “praised . . . not civic laws but their poems. And indeed the latter have
always had more effect on their ethics than the former were perhaps ever able to
have.”7
Finally, while Herder nowhere goes as far as to deny that it is legitimate and
important to complement the moral ideals involved in the area of “human rights”
with a codification of them into law, he also has a worry concerning certain ways
in which such codification tends to weaken them (a very insightful worry in my
view). His worry is roughly that such codification inevitably brings with it both
an increase in the complexity of their formulation and the emergence of a class of
experts on them who are separate from the general mass of the population,
thereby undermining popular identification with them and leading to their

7
FHA 4, 196, 189. Cf. This Too a Philosophy of History, at FHA 4, 67 for some additional
skeptical remarks concerning the power of law as an instrument of moral enlightenment.
 MICHAEL N . FORSTER 

monopolization by the experts, who tend to manipulate them for various pur-
poses rather than simply serving them. Accordingly, in the Ideas he contrasts
what he considers to have been the relatively simple morality of the ancient
Germans with the much more complex system of Roman law that succeeded it in
Europe, to the advantage of the former over the latter, as follows: “In times of
honest simplicity there is no need of many written laws and the primitive
German peoples were right to resist the subtlety of Roman administrators. In
the countries of other civilized and partly decadent peoples not only their own
written laws but soon also part of Roman law became indispensable.”8
For all these reasons, Herder finds the attempt to capture the substantive moral
ideals governing the respectful treatment of other human beings that he basically
shares with champions of “human rights” in terms of the concept of “human
rights” with its legal implications misguided. Instead, he prefers the unequivo-
cally moral concept of “humanity.”
It seems to me that Herder’s criticisms of conceptions of “human rights” as
divine or natural law and his criticisms of the conception that they are intimately
linked with positive law are well founded, and that this fact does indeed pose a
serious, indeed potentially even a fatal, problem for the very concept of “human
rights,” given its essential conceptual connection to the idea of law.

2 “Rights” and Property

A further, closely related set of worries arises concerning the very concept of
“human rights” as well. Although Herder nowhere explicitly articulates the
further worries in question as far as I know, they remain within the general spirit
of his explicit views, including his already discussed explicit concerns about the
misleading legalistic implications of the concept and his likewise explicit left-
wing Christian objections to materialistic values and to sharp inequalities of
wealth.
The concept of “rights” essentially involves a concept of “having” rights and
thereby imports a conceptual connection to the legal institution of property. (This
is especially true if the “having” in question is conceived literally as a form of
property possession, but it remains true to a significant extent even if it is only
conceived in that way metaphorically.)
Such a conceptual connection no doubt seemed acceptable, and indeed wel-
come, to the early developers of the concept of “human rights” in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries—for example Locke, the authors of the English Bill of

8
FHA 6, 889; cf. 889–90.
 HERDER AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Rights, the framers of the American Declaration of Independence, Constitution,

and Bill of Rights, and the authors of the French Déclaration des droits de
l’homme et du citoyen, all of whom were basically champions of the bourgeoisie
and accordingly included property rights prominently in their lists of human
rights. But from a perspective more like Herder’s it looks problematic.
For one thing, his general objection that moral norms are deeper than legal
ones such as those implied by the very concept of a human “right” of course also
speaks against the concept’s importation of a legal norm of property in particular.
For another thing, property is normally conceived as being of its very nature
alienable, i.e. something that its owner can give up (say, in return for some other
real or supposed advantage or out of generosity). But while such an implication
may be acceptable in connection with property rights, it seems far more prob-
lematic where the very fundamental moral norms of respectful treatment of
people that the concept of “human rights” aims at are concerned. (Accordingly,
in the general spirit of rejecting the idea that they can be given up, Herder writes
in the Letters concerning the norm of respecting freedom of speech in particular:
“Should not, just in the spirit of the ancients, the voice of each citizen . . . be
considered a freedom of one’s country . . . ? The poor man could perhaps do no
more than write . . . ; do you want to rob him as he moans of the breath that he
sends out into the deserted emptiness?”9) This problem is presumably the main
reason why the language of “inalienable rights” came to be introduced, for
example in the American Declaration of Independence. However, when the
tight conceptual connections between rights, property, and alienability that
have just been discussed are kept in mind, that locution looks very much like
an implicit contradictio in adjecto. And one might well feel that it would be much
better if the problem that it is attempting to address were not made to arise in the
first place by importing property ownership as a model for the moral norms in
question than to have it arise and then be forced to try to solve it by the desperate
means of such a contradictio in adjecto.
For yet another thing, from Herder’s left-wing Christian perspective it must
seem inappropriate that property—which from a moral point of view is at best
just one area of moral duty among others, and indeed far from the most
important one (for example, refraining from killing people is much more
important)—is here accorded a type of double prominence: not only as one
human right among others, but also as a sort of formal principle enshrined in
the very concept of a “right.” And, of course, anyone who goes beyond Herder’s
relatively moderate ethical-political reservations concerning property to share

9
FHA 7, 335.
 MICHAEL N . FORSTER 

something more like the radical sentiment of Proudhon and Marx that “property
is theft” will have an even more emphatic version of this sort of objection.10

3 “Rights” vis-à-vis Whom?

Up to this point I have been concerned with certain misgivings that Herder
entertains, or at least may entertain, about the concept of “human rights” which
have to do with its conceptual implications (in particular, its implications of a
legal context and of property relations), but I have also suggested that Herder’s
misgivings go hand in hand with a strong sympathy toward the substantive moral
protections at which the concept aims. However, Herder also implies, or at least
may entertain, a further set of misgivings about the concept that involve a certain
qualification of such sympathy. This qualification is modest in the sense that it
does not want to take anything away from the concept’s substantive moral
protections, but rather to add to them. Nonetheless, it remains important.
What are the further misgivings in question?
From its institutional beginnings in the English, American, and French revolu-
tions until today the concept of “human rights” has mainly been oriented to
protecting individual human beings against abuses by their own governments.
Herder certainly thinks that this is an extremely important and valuable goal. But
he also has some reservations about it.
One source of such reservations is a certain proto-Marxian ideal that he
develops in the Ideas: that of a sort of withering away of the centralized modern
state that monopolizes instruments of coercion such as the army, the police, and
the judiciary in favor of a much more decentralized form of government that
possesses only minimal instruments of coercion. If such an ideal were to be
realized, it would tend to render human rights, conceived as mechanisms for
protecting individuals from their own governments, redundant, the problem now
having been solved at a more fundamental level as it were.
But Herder also has another, more pressing source of reservations concerning
the orientation of “human rights” to protecting individuals against abuses by
their own governments. He is not only concerned to protect individuals against
abuses by their own governments, but also and equally against abuses that
come from outside their countries: war, imperialism, colonialism, enslavement,
economic exploitation, and so on. Accordingly, in the Ideas, the Letters, and

10
Marx’s own critique of the notion of human rights in On the Jewish Question may well
implicitly include this sort of concern, though his explicit line of argument is a slightly different
one: that the concept of human rights is just an ideological reflection of bourgeois egoism.
 HERDER AND HUMAN RIGHTS

elsewhere he complains repeatedly and bitterly about both sorts of abuses. This
stance (which seems completely appropriate) causes him to have at least three
additional worries about the traditional concept of “human rights” understood as
a set of mechanisms for protecting individuals from their own governments.
First, and perhaps most predictably, he worries that this set of mechanisms is
at best unacceptably incomplete, in need of complementing with rights or ideals
that protect people against abuses from outside their countries as well. Accord-
ingly, while in the Letters he is noticeably lukewarm about the concept of human
rights, he is strikingly more enthusiastic about concepts of rights that protect a
person not only against abuses by his own government but also against abuses
from outside. In particular, he praises Grotius’s development of a “right of
peoples [Recht der Völker],” i.e., international law;11 and he argues for making
“principles of right and violation of right [Grundsätze des Rechts und Unrechts]”
of a sort that govern not only intracommunal relations but also, and indeed
especially, intercommunal relations central normative criteria for the writing of
history.12
Second, and more radically, Herder also worries that because of this one-
sidedness the concept of “human rights” readily lends itself to a certain insidious
and harmful misuse: namely that of distracting from, and even providing an
ideological rationalization for, types of abuse of people that come from outside
their countries, such as war and imperialism. In this spirit he already writes in
This Too a Philosophy of History: “The universal dress of philosophy and
philanthropy can conceal oppressions, violations of the true, personal freedom
of human beings, citizens, and peoples, just as Cesare Borgia would have liked
it.”13 Herder discusses this issue largely in connection with European wars and
European imperialism imposed on non-European peoples in his own historical
period. However, his worry also has much broader historical relevance. For
example, even the older and more fundamental moral stance of cosmopolitanism
that undergirds the concept of “human rights”—i.e., the stance of moral respect
for all human beings regardless of their country, culture, or race—originally
emerged with the ancient Stoics in the context of Greek and Roman imperialism,

11
FHA 7, 345. Herder had tended to write more negatively about the Recht der Völker earlier, in
This Too a Philosophy of History, indeed even going as far there as to make a case in one passage in
support of national prejudice. However, the change in his position involved is arguably less radical
than it seems. For in the earlier work he was probably to a great extent merely playing devil’s
advocate against such favorite moral ideals of modernity as this one in order to deflate what he saw
as modernity’s smug self-satisfaction and parochialism rather than really opposing the ideals in
question. And his defense of national prejudice was restricted to certain specific past circumstances.
12 13
FHA 7, 707–8. FHA 4, 99.
 MICHAEL N . FORSTER 

serving as a sort of ideological rationalization for it.14 And one only needs to
recall the recent American wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan in
order to see how deeply pertinent Herder’s worry still remains today. Using
“human rights” as a veil to cover, and a rationalization for, aggressive war and
imperialism has a long, dark history.
Third, Herder’s remark in This Too a Philosophy of History just quoted also
implies that the concept of “human rights” readily lends itself to a further sort of
abuse in international contexts as well. Even a nation that (as a rare exception)
intervenes in another nation in order to uphold human rights there without
doing so from ulterior selfish motives will often nonetheless be guilty of another
form of abuse. Given that, contrary to the presuppositions of the traditional
concept of “human rights” itself, there are in fact no universally accepted moral
principles, in particular the moral principles that are enshrined as human rights
are not going to be universally accepted; there are going to be historical periods
and cultures that lack any commitment to them. Consequently, on the attractive
assumption that intervening in another nation in order to enforce a moral
principle there could only be morally justified if the nation itself at least accepted
the principle in question, intervening in another nation in order to enforce
human rights there will often be morally unjustified, namely whenever the nation
itself lacks any commitment to them.
These three worries seem to be Herder’s main reservations about the concept
of “human rights” in connection with intercommunal relations. Before turning to
another area where he may see the concept as leaving important interests
unprotected or even as undermining them, though, it may be worth pursuing
the question of his stance concerning intervening in other nations in order to
uphold (something like) human rights there a little further. His initial formula-
tion of the reservations just discussed, in This Too a Philosophy of History, might
well seem to be so radical that it rules out such intervention altogether. It could in
fact be plausibly argued that even in that work his position is not really so
extreme, that he is instead just working as a sort of devil’s advocate in order to
counterbalance what he sees as the smug assumptions of his time and place
concerning human rights and intervention and thereby generate a more balanced
and nuanced final position. But whether or not that is so, he certainly arrived at
such a position later. For in the Adrastea (1801–4) he allows that intervening in a

14
See on this Forster, 2011. Herder comes very close to making this point himself in This Too a
Philosophy of History, where he writes: “Even just regarded as a tool, it seems that the Roman spirit
of conquest had to precede, opening routes everywhere, establishing a political connection between
peoples that was previously unheard of, and by just this route setting in motion tolerance, ideas of
the rights of peoples [Völkerrechte] previously unheard of on this scale” (FHA 4, 47).
 HERDER AND HUMAN RIGHTS

foreign country in order to protect its inhabitants against abuses by their gov-
ernment can sometimes be appropriate in principle, merely entering a strong
caveat that in practice such intervention usually substitutes even worse oppres-
sion than that which it is meant to cure and hence on the whole turns out to be
unjustified.15
This later position in the Adrastea represents a more subtle and defensible
stance on the issue of intervention than the virtually unqualified rejection of it
that This Too a Philosophy of History at least seemed to imply. For it—as it
were—continues to throw out the bathwater of cynically motivated, harmful
interventions that are merely rationalized in terms of human rights, but now
does so without losing the baby of sometimes allowing interventions that genu-
inely aim at upholding (something like) human rights and which really are
beneficial.
Moreover, this later position may also suggest a more satisfactory stance
concerning the specific problem of intervening in order to impose (something
like) human rights in cases where the nation in which the intervention occurs
does not itself espouse them. The more satisfactory stance in question could be
elaborated in a broadly Herderian spirit as follows: When such fundamental
moral principles of ours as those enshrined in the concept of human rights are
violated in other nations, we have a prima facie moral responsibility to uphold
them there even if they are not espoused there, but since we also have a prima facie
moral responsibility to respect the autonomy of other nations, and in particular
not to impose our own moral principles on them, we also in such cases have a
prima facie moral responsibility not to do so. Such a position might seem
unsatisfactory or even inconsistent. But in fact it is just a specific example of a
much broader class of tragic dilemmas whose existence is an unavoidable con-
sequence of the very nature of normal moral life, resulting from the fact that
moral life consists in having multiple commitments which can in principle come
into conflict with each other on occasion. Moreover, although such tragic dilem-
mas can be awful when they arise, they do not, as they might appear to,
undermine morality, for the following reasons: (1) They are not fundamentally
cases of the logical absurdity of affirming contradictory propositions, but rather
of the perfectly normal and unmysterious phenomenon of having competing
affective sentiments. (2) They are relatively rare, our moral principles often
instead pointing harmoniously toward a single course of action (and when we
are really lucky our prudential interests doing so as well). And (3) even in cases
where they do occur, the conflicts involved are often ones in which there is

15
Adrastea, SWS 23, 502–3.
 MICHAEL N . FORSTER 

nonetheless a clear preponderance of moral weight on one side rather than the
other, so that the morally best course of action remains tolerably clear, albeit that
it is still one that must be undertaken with some degree of moral regret. For
instance, concerning intervention in particular: if we in the West had done the
right thing and intervened in Rwanda in 1994, it would indeed have been
genuinely regrettable that in order to do so we would have had to violate the
moral autonomy of the many people there who did not have a commitment to
human rights, but that moral disadvantage would have been massively out-
weighed by the moral advantage of saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

4 Human Rights?
Herder’s general position also contains the resources for generating a further
misgiving about the concept of “human rights” that likewise concerns a troubling
narrowness in the protection of individuals that it affords.
One of the most attractive features of Herder’s general moral orientation lies in
the breadth of the range of types of human individuals for whom he shows moral
concern, including, for example, Jews, non-Europeans, and women. Accordingly,
whereas the authors of the main eighteenth-century American and French
declarations of human rights had already implied inclusion of the former two
groups but not of the third, women, Herder took it for granted that they should
have gone a step further and included women as well. Thus, whereas the
American and French authors wrote of the rights of “men” and “l’homme” in a
way that excluded women (and consequently got taken to task for this by such
contemporary feminists as Olympe de Gouges in her Les droits de la femme
[1791]), Herder, by translating “les droits de l’homme” as “Menschenrechte,”
implies an extension to women. For, although the word “Mensch,” like the word
“homme,” is linguistically masculine, it does not like the French word imply an
exclusion of women (whereas the natural antonym of “homme” is “femme,” that
of “Mensch” is not “Frau” but rather “Tier” or “Unmensch”). And in the Ideas
Herder indeed goes as far as to say that respectful treatment of women is the
primary criterion of a nation’s moral character: “No other feature allows one to
recognize the real character of a man or a nation as clearly as the treatment of
women.”16
But another highly attractive, and even more radical, feature of Herder’s
general moral orientation lies in a strong tendency also to champion moral
respect for non-human animals. Thus, in the Fragments on Recent German

16
FHA 6, 318.
 HERDER AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Literature (1767–8) he describes human beings’ (supposed) intimate interactions

with animals during early periods of history as an “honor” for human beings;17 in
the Ideas he characterizes non-human animals as “human beings’ older brothers”
and writes in support of our feelings of sympathy with them;18 and in the Letters
he similarly implies the appropriateness of moral respect for them.19
Now, clearly, anyone who takes the ideal of moral respect for animals seriously
ought to view the concept of “human rights” with considerable suspicion. Of
course, a defender of the concept might reply to such suspicion that a person can
perfectly well be a champion of human rights and also of animal rights. But in
order to see how serious the looming problem is and how far such a glib reply is
from really solving it, one need only consider an analogous suspicion and reply in
the case of patriotism: “I’m a German (or American or British or French or
whatnot) patriot.—But isn’t that prejudicial against other nations and therefore
morally dubious? —Not at all, I’m a German patriot and also a friend of other
nations.” The sad truth is that whatever relatively enlightened attitudes of this
sort certain individual patriots may sincerely espouse (at least when in a nice
mood), the ideal of patriotism arguably owes its very existence and power to a
prejudicial exclusion of other nations. A precisely analogous point applies to the
ideal of “human rights” and its exclusion of animals.
It would be an exaggeration to say that Herder actually develops this sort of
criticism of the concept of “human rights.” Indeed, it might be observed in
reinforcement of that admission that his own central moral ideal is the relevantly
similar one of “humanity.” However, he does at least develop the sort of stand-
point of moral respect for animals from which such a criticism can naturally and
cogently be raised. And concerning the point that he himself espouses an ideal of
“humanity,” there is in fact an important difference between the ideal of “human
rights” and the ideal of “humanity” that makes the former much more of an
obstacle to moral respect for animals than the latter is: whereas the ideal of
“human rights” is conceptually focused on the potential victims of abuse and in
consequence clearly only protects human beings, the ideal of “humanity” is
conceptually focused on the agent who might abuse and identifies a desirable
trait in human agents that could very well preclude abuse, not only of other
human beings, but also of animals. (To illustrate the point succinctly: If I
encounter a man cruelly beating a dog, it would sound completely confused of
me to protest to him “But what about human rights!” whereas it would sound
perfectly sensible and appropriate of me to protest to him “But where is your
humanity!”)

17 18 19
FHA 1, 611. FHA 6, 67, 156. FHA 7, 743 (though contrast 156).
 MICHAEL N . FORSTER 

5 Rights and Duties

Finally, one also finds in Herder at least the resources for developing an add-
itional objection to the concept of “human rights” that is closely related to the
preceding objections in various ways.
At several points in the Letters Herder makes the plausible conceptual point
that rights entail duties, and this not only in the sense that one person’s right is
always someone else’s duty, but also in the sense that only individuals who have
relevant duties and who take them seriously can have rights. As he puts it: “There
are no one-sided duties and one-sided rights. Duties and rights belong together,
like the upper and lower side, like the right and left.”20
Some such conception no doubt makes good sense within the legal context
from which the concept of “rights” was originally drawn. But it has very unfor-
tunate consequences when the concept is transferred to the moral plane in the
form of a doctrine of “human rights.” For it makes extending moral protection in
the form of “rights” to deserving individuals who for one reason or another are
not able to have, or to live up to, corresponding duties into a sort of conceptual
absurdity. We have already touched on one group of individuals that falls into
this category: human beings from other cultures whose moral beliefs are sharply
different from our own, in particular because they do not include our commit-
ment to human rights. The same sort of problem also arises in connection with
various other types of individuals to whom people usually want to extend the
moral protections that they formulate in terms of “human rights,” for example
the mentally disabled and infants. (An analogous problem arises for a doctrine of
“animal rights.”)
The legal background of the concept of “rights” indeed imports a whole
family of further problems of a similar nature as well. For example, the concept
of “rights” in addition implies that the individual who has a right can claim it (as
in a legal case). But applied to alien cultures of the sort just mentioned, that
implication makes the notion that they have human rights at least prima facie
absurd, just as it does applied to such groups as the mentally disabled and
infants. (Again, an analogous problem arises in connection with “animal rights,”
where the implication in question conjures up such absurd images as Ratty from
The Wind in the Willows dressing up to go to court and indignantly plead
his case.)

20
FHA 7, 99; cf. 344.
 HERDER AND HUMAN RIGHTS

6 What to Do?
If one shares not only Herder’s deep sympathy with the substantive moral
commitments that the concept of “human rights” attempts to articulate but
also his misgivings about the concept itself (as I am inclined to), then one is
left with the pressing and difficult question of how best to proceed in this area.
As we have seen, Herder’s own solution is essentially to avoid using the
terminology of “human rights” and to substitute for it the different terminology
of “humanity.” However, one may reasonably doubt that this is a good solution.
For one thing, it draws attention away both from the victims of abuse and from
the urgency of their need for protection. For another thing, in a modern world
where much invaluable moral sentiment has already been invested in the ter-
minology of “human rights” (rather than in possible alternatives such as “human-
ity”), a solution of this sort threatens to be ineffective at best and harmful at
worst.
Nor is it at all clear that such a drastic solution is necessary. Ironically enough,
this is largely for reasons that Herder himself has done more than anyone else to
reveal. For two of Herder’s other favorite philosophical theses lie in pointing out
the changing nature of moral (and other evaluative) concepts (see especially the
Fragments) and the role of metaphor in the transformation of concepts generally
(see especially the essay On Image, Poetry, and Fable [1787]). These two theses
prompt the following rhetorical questions: Even if the concept of a “human right”
(or an “animal right”) originally carried, and often still carries, the sorts of
problematic implications that I have discussed in this article—for example,
belonging to law, involving property, and requiring corresponding duties—can
it not easily enough through a process of transformation via metaphorization
come to drop those implications? Indeed, is this not just what is already often
happening when people today champion “human rights” (or “animal rights”)?
That is to say, instead of falling into the sorts of implicit contradictions or
absurdities that I have discussed in this article, are they not often simply
employing the term “rights” in a somewhat metaphorical or metaphorically
modified sense that avoids such problems?
And as for the remaining problems with the concept of “human rights” that
I have considered—first, that it unduly emphasizes the protection of individuals
from their own governments to the exclusion of their protection against abuses
from outside, indeed often even serving as an ideological mechanism that
distracts from or even rationalizes such abuses from outside; and second, that
it prejudicially excludes non-human animals—perhaps the best solution would
simply be to insist that we get used to thinking in terms of an indissoluble
 MICHAEL N . FORSTER 

package of at least three vitally important sorts of fundamental “rights” instead

of separating and exalting just this one sort to the exclusion or marginalization
of the others: not only human rights, but also peoples’ rights [Völkerrechte], and
animal rights.

References
Forster, M. N. (2011). “Genealogy and Morality.” American Dialectic, 1/3, 346–69.
Meinecke, F. (1972). Historism: The Rise of a New Historical Outlook. New York: Herder
and Herder.
Picco, G., ed. (2001). Crossing the Divide: Dialogue among Civilizations. South Orange, NJ:
Seton Hall University.
 13
Herder and the Jewish Question
Frederick C. Beiser

1 Herder’s Pluralism?
In August 1875, a fateful year for the onset of modern anti-Semitism,1 an
anonymous author wrote an article for the Catholic newspaper Germania in
which he cited extracts from great writers in behalf of the anti-Semitic cause.2
Among these authors were Kant, Fichte, and Herder.3 The author’s implicit
message to his readers is that anti-Semitic opinions cannot be too unfair and
too reprehensible, not if such great writers are willing to express them. No one
should be ashamed, therefore, to state such views today.
From a contemporary perspective, it is odd to find Herder regarded as an anti-
Semitic spokesman. Fichte was an obvious candidate, to be sure, and perhaps
even Kant fitted that bill. But Herder? That stretches our credulity. Herder is
better known to us today as an apostle of cultural diversity, a champion of
pluralism who not only tolerated but celebrated human difference for its own
sake. True to that reputation, Herder is often regarded as a philo-Semite, as a
lover of Jewish culture and literature. What, then, we ask ourselves, was this
author thinking? Surely, we protest, his citations are out of context.

1
Historians agree that the 1870s were the decisive decade for the rise of modern anti-Semitism. It
was during this decade that the reaction against emancipation arose, which had been achieved fully
in Prussia only in 1871. The Germania was in the forefront of this reaction, which began properly
only in 1875. In this article I use “anti-Semitism” in the broad colloquial sense for any hatred for
Jews or Judaism, whatever the reason for it, be they cultural, moral, or racial.
2
Germania, no. 185, August 17, 1875 (unpaginated). The author was most probably Christoph
Joseph Cremer, who was then the editor of the newspaper. Cremer was a Catholic apologist and
journalist; for some years, he was a member of the centrist party in the Bundestag.
3
Without citing the exact source, the author quoted extracts from Kant’s Anthropologie, Fichte’s
Beiträge zur Berichtigung der Urtheile des Publikums über die franzöische Revolution, and Herder’s
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit.
 FREDERICK C . BEISER 

We must not forget, however, that the Germania article was only the begin-
ning. Throughout the final decades of the nineteenth century, and well into the
first four decades of the twentieth, Herder was made into a champion of the
extreme nationalist cause in Germany. More than Kant and Fichte, Herder
seemed to serve that cause because he was the founder of the concept of the
Volk, i.e., the ideal of cultural unity. This interpretation only seemed confirmed
by the fact that Herder, now and then, was prone to anti-Semitic utterances. The
protagonists of this interpretation were not just journalists and propagandists;
among them were some of the most prominent names in Herder scholarship, viz.,
Erich Rothacker, Theodor Litt, Benno von Wiese, and Hans Georg Gadamer.4
We need to recognize that our contemporary perspective on Herder is rela-
tively new, the result of a reaction against the nationalist interpretation, which
was entrenched and pervasive. In revealing the more humanitarian, liberal, and
pluralist side of Herder’s thinking, we owe much to the work of Isaiah Berlin,
Emil Adler, and F. M. Barnard, who were writing in the post-war aftermath.5
They showed persuasively that Herder was not a German nationalist, still less a
racist, and that he was a passionate critic of all forms of intolerance and
enthnocentrism. Berlin and Bernard portrayed Herder as philo-Semitic, even as
a proto-Zionist. Rather than an anti-Semite, Herder, in their view, was an
admirer of Jewish culture, which he regarded as the foundation of Christianity;
he was also a defender of the Jewish people, whom he saw as gifted, courageous,
and resilient, though also as the hapless victims of persecution. Under Berlin’s,
Adler’s, and Barnard’s stewardship, the liberal, humanitarian, and pluralist side
of Herder became the new standard and orthodoxy.
Recently, that orthodoxy has come under attack. In his provocative book
German Question/Jewish Question,6 Paul Lawrence Rose has argued that Herder’s

4
See Erich Rothacker, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften (Tübingen: Mohr, 1930); Theodor
Litt, Die Befreiung des geschichtlichen Bewusstseins durch Herder (Leipzig; E. A. Seemann, 1942);
Benno von Wiese, Herder: Grundzüge seines Weltbildes (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1939).
On Gadamer’s early interpretation of Herder, see his Volk und Geschichte im Denken Herders
(Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1942), which was deleted from his Gesammelte Werke. In March 1933
Gadamer, Rothacker, and Litt signed the Bekenntnis der Professoren zu Adolf Hitler. See Monika
Leske, Philosophie im Dritten Reich (Berlin: Dietz, 1990), p. 110. On the national-socialist interpret-
ation of Herder, see Jost Schneider, ed., Herder im «Dritten Reich» (Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 1994).
5
See especially Isaiah Berlin, Vico and Herder (London: Chatto & Windus, 1976), pp. 143–216;
Emil Adler, Der junge Herder und diedeutsche Aufklärung (Vienna: Europa, 1968); F. M. Barnard,
Herder’s Social and Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965) and Herder on
Nationality, Humanity, and History (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press,
2003).
6
Paul Lawrence Rose, German Question/Jewish Question: Revolutionary Antisemitism from Kant
to Wagner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 97–109. All references in parentheses
are to this edition.
 HERDER AND THE JEWISH QUESTION

reputation as a philo-Semite, and as a liberal humanitarian and pluralist, is

“misconceived” (98). If Herder is read more in his historical context, Rose
contends, he reveals himself to be a traditional German “estatist” who was
ready to tolerate the Jews only insofar as they served the state; on no account
was he a defender of emancipation, a spokesman for the civil and political
equality of the Jews. Although Rose fully recognizes that Herder was often critical
of the state, which he hoped would eventually disappear, he still insists that his
ideal of the nation placed so much emphasis on cultural uniformity and unity
that it excluded Jews (103). Of course, Rose is writing from the opposite per-
spective to that of the anti-Semites and National Socialists. He condemns
Herder’s “anti-Semitism” as much as those writers prized it. But, remarkably,
all these authors agree from their opposing perspectives that Herder’s general
views were anti-Semitic.
It should be clear that much more is at stake here than the simple historical
question whether Herder, as an individual, held anti-Semitic views. Rose main-
tains, rightly, that we can regard Herder’s opinions about the Jews as a test case
about his pluralism and humanitarianism (98). There is not only the question
how we are to understand that pluralism and humanitarianism; there is also the
more basic question whether he is a pluralist or humanitarian at all. Toward these
broader issues, Rose, it must be noted, takes a somewhat equivocal stand. He
claims that Herder’s attitude toward the Jews shows both that 1) he cannot be
understood as a humanitarian in liberal terms (98), but also that 2) he is not in
any straightforward sense a humanitarian at all (98, 108). Whatever the peculi-
arities of Rose’s position, it should be clear that larger issues are at stake, at least
about the meaning and limits of Herder’s pluralism and humanitarianism.
Rose’s views are important not least because they question contemporary
interpretations of Herder’s pluralism and humanitarianism, many of which are
greatly indebted to the Berlin and Barnard tradition. Rose maintains that these
interpretations are anachronistic because they read modern liberal views into
Herder’s writings (98). They understand Herder as an advocate of cultural
diversity within a single state and nation, as if he were an apostle avant la lettre
for the cultural pluralism that prevails in many Western liberal democracies. But
this interpretation fails, Rose argues, because Herder never understood pluralism
in this modern sense. Herder accepted a pluralism where there are distinct
nations for different cultures; but he was not ready to endorse a pluralism
where there were different cultures within one nation. Rose poses the question
thus: “Could two organic national cultures exist symbiotically in one territory?”
(101). He thinks that Herder’s answer to the question is a clear “no.” Although
Herder preferred the nation of the German Volk to the state, his nation had little
 FREDERICK C . BEISER 

place for the Jews (103). The Jews were for Herder “an alien people,” who should
not be given civil and political rights, and who should be tolerated in Germany
only in limited numbers (107).
Rose is not alone in his opinion about Herder’s limited pluralism. Some recent
scholars seem happy to agree with him. After a careful and incisive assessment of
his views, Sonia Sikka has accepted his essential contention that Herder cannot
accept cultural diversity within a nation.7 Herder wants distinct cultures to form
different nations, she says, but he does not want distinct cultures in one nation.
The main evidence that Herder cannot accept such diversity, Sikka agrees with
Rose, is because of his attitude toward the Jews. From a similar perspective, Jeffrey
Grossman has argued that Herder had a limited tolerance for people of different
cultures living in the same territory.8 Herder, in his view, was an advocate of
linguistic and cultural homogeneity within one nation, expecting in Europe the
cohesion established by Christianity. This attitude is especially apparent, Gross-
man maintains, in Herder’s attitudes toward Yiddish, the Jewish vernacular of
Central and Eastern Europe. Whereas Herder admired Hebrew because it was a
pure language from one people residing in one place, he scorned Yiddish because
it was a bastard product, a mishmash of different languages from different places.
Given that Sikka and Grossman are in broad agreement with Rose, it seems
that the old orthodoxy is now crumbling and that it is on the verge of being
replaced by a less liberal, less pluralistic, less philo-Semitic interpretation of
Herder. Because such important interpretative issues are involved, we do well
to examine the grounds for this new view of Herder. We will undertake here a
detailed assessment of Rose’s interpretation, because it gives the best arguments
for this view.9 We will find that his interpretation marks not an advance but a
step backward in our understanding of Herder.

2 Estatism and Emancipation

Much of Rose’s case comes from his interpretation of a late piece of Herder’s,
Bekehrung der Juden,10 which he wrote in 1802 for his journal Adrastea. This

7
See Sonia Sikka, Herder on Humanity and Cultural Difference: Enlightened Relativism (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 174–5, 240–6, 254–7.
8
Jeffrey Grossman, “Herder and the Language of Diaspora Jewry,” Monatshefte 86, no. 1 (1994),
59–79, esp. 72–5.
9
Rose’s book has been very controversial. For the reviews of the work, see his German Question/
Jewish Question, p. 380n1. Rose’s reply to some of these reviews is in his “Afterword,” pp. 381–6.
10
Bekehrung der Juden, in Adrastea, Band IV, 7 Stück, in Werke, ed. Günter Arnold et al.
(Frankfurt: Deutsche Klassiker Verlag, 2000), vol. 10, 628–42. All references in parentheses will be
to this edition of Herder’s works.
 HERDER AND THE JEWISH QUESTION

article was Herder’s most sustained effort to deal with “the Jewish question,” i.e.,
the question whether the Jews in Germany deserve equal civil and political rights.
According to Rose, Herder’s answer to this question is mainly negative. Herder
rejects the possibility of converting the Jews to Christianity, and regards the Jews
as “an alien Asiatic people” in Europe, who are ultimately loyal to the Mosaic law
of Israel rather than the laws of the country in which they reside. Because the Jews
are therefore foreigners, they do not deserve equal civil and political rights. Rose
contends that Herder regards the Jews from an essentially “estatist point of view,”
i.e., the viewpoint that the state alone, not any moral principles, should determine
whether the Jews deserve rights. Thus Herder argues that the state should admit
Jews only insofar as they can be useful citizens; they do not deserve equal rights
simply because they are human beings. The net effect of Herder’s stance, Rose
holds, is to leave the Jews “in a hopelessly exposed and precarious position,
without any secure identity or legal status” (104). “The most that he can offer the
Jews . . . is a partial toleration that would consist in their remaining Jews, but
reforming their greedy, trade-oriented national character” (104).
There can be no question that, in this article, Herder does see Jewish citizen-
ship strictly from the standpoint of its utility for the state. After noting that the
Jews cannot be converted to Christianity by religious arguments, Herder states
that the crucial question about them is not religious but political (X, 630). The
political question is for him very simple: How many Jews should be admitted into
the state? That is strictly a question of political convenience, Herder maintains,
because it is the right of the state to admit as few or as many Jews as it needs for its
own benefit. It is striking that, in settling this question, Herder expressly rules out
any discussion about rights or any invocation of general principles of philan-
thropy. We cannot determine a priori, or from general principles of right, he
argues, how many Jews should be allowed in the state. It is strictly a matter of
utility, of how many Jews will work to the advantage of the state. In this respect,
as Rose points out, Herder’s argument is in the estatist tradition of Dohm and
Humboldt, who argued for Jewish emancipation chiefly on the grounds that Jews
could be made useful citizens of the state. Their argument was based not on
general principles of right—that the Jews deserved equal rights simply because
they were human beings—but solely on the utility of the Jews for the state.
Because Herder excludes all questions of right in dealing with the admission of
Jews into the state, and because he allows Jews into the state only to the extent
that they are useful for it, Rose concludes that Herder denies the Jews civil and
political equality. It then seems as if Herder has not moved beyond the traditional
doctrine concerning the legal status of the Jews. According to that doctrine,
which prevailed for centuries, Jews were allowed to reside in the state only to
 FREDERICK C . BEISER 

the extent that they served it. But since they are aliens, Jews cannot be citizens;
they can be only guests. Such guests are allowed the right to stay in the country;
but that right can be given or withheld at the discretion of the government. We
should not reply here that Rose’s charge against Herder is anachronistic, applying
to an eighteenth-century context standards that are modern. For we only have to
compare this traditional doctrine with the status of the Jews in France, who have
received the full rights of citizenship since 1791. Even by contemporary stand-
ards, then, Herder’s stance toward the Jews appears very conservative, indeed
backward. It seems to adopt a pre-revolutionary position regarding the Jews, one
that was already antiquated by ten years.
Although Rose’s complaint is not anachronistic, it misunderstands the inten-
tions and context behind the estatist argument. Rose falsely assumes that the
estatist argument was intended to abrogate or replace human rights, as if they
should have no validity for Jews. But it was an essentially tactical argument,
directed toward the government and appealing to its immediate interests, because
this strategy alone seemed the most likely and effective way to win concessions
for the Jews. Those who used the estatist argument still believed in human rights
and in abstract principles of philanthropy.11 It is just that appealing to them
would have complicated their case and would have been questioned by the
government.
Rose’s conclusion—that Herder denies civil and political rights to the Jews—is
a non sequitur, resting upon a false interpretation of his argument. He treats
Herder’s argument as if it were about the question of emancipation—i.e., whether
Jews deserve equal rights to Christians—when it is really only a question about
naturalization policy—i.e., how many Jews should be admitted into the state and
granted the status of citizens. Herder does not exclude civil and political equality
to all Jews who are admitted into the state; the only question for him is how many
Jews to grant that status. When Herder excludes all questions of right that is
simply because abstract principles alone cannot decide the question how many
Jews are to be citizens. That question is for him a pragmatic matter that each state
will have to decide according to its circumstances and needs. But on no account is
Herder rejecting principles of right tout court, still less their application to Jews
who are admitted into the state.

11
This is clear in the case of Dohm, who continued to believe in the rights of man. See his Ueber
die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden (Berlin: Friedrich Nicolai, 1781), pp. 24, 162, 275, 278. On
crucial points Herder follows Dohm’s strategy and argument. On Herder’s relation to Dohm, see
Karl Menges, “Integration oder Assimilation: Herders Äuβerungen über die Juden im Kontext der
klassischen Emanzipationsdebatte,” Euphorion 90 (1996), 394–415, esp. 399–406.
 HERDER AND THE JEWISH QUESTION

Herder does not think that it would be wise for the state to admit an unlimited
number of Jews into its territories. He states that there are many examples from
history that show the harm such a policy would cause (X,631), though he specifies
none of them. Amsterdam, he contends, cannot be an example for other Euro-
pean countries, which have to deal with very different circumstances. In any case,
in wanting to limit immigration or restrict the number of naturalized citizens,
Herder can hardly be charged with anti-Semitism. There are many reasons for
any state to want to limit immigration or naturalization; and Herder is clear that
the arguments that would limit Jews would also limit any other national group,
viz., Chinese, Indians, Persians, gypsies, etc. (X, 630).
It now should be clear that Herder does not endorse the traditional doctrine
about the status of Jews in the state. That doctrine allowed Jews insofar as they
were useful to the state, where their utility came from their value for commerce
and trade; but Herder makes it very clear in his article that he thinks that the Jews
should break out of their traditional vocations in commerce, banking, and trade;
he wants them to serve the public not simply as merchants, bankers, and
tradesmen but as scientists and artists as well (X, 640–1).

3 Pluralism, Liberal, and Otherwise

Those who maintain that Herder does not envisage pluralism within a state have
some strong textual evidence in their favor. In his Ideen Herder stated explicitly:
“The most natural state is one people (Volk) with one national character” (VI,
369). He also complained about “the unnatural enlargement of the state” because
it led to “the wild mixture of human types and nations under one scepter” (VI,
369–70). F. M. Barnard cites these very lines as evidence for Herder’s pluralism.12
But here he is thinking of only a pluralism between states, not a pluralism within
one. That Barnard does not see the problem of pluralism within a state becomes
clear when he later writes that Herder’s pluralistic state has to be held together by
the bonds of the Volk.13 If one Volk is to hold the state together, there cannot be
different Völker within the same state, a situation that would fracture the unity of
the state.
That Herder’s sentiments followed the one nation-one state rule is clear from
his comments in the Ideen about peoples of foreign nationality living on the
fringes of Europe. Among these peoples are the Turks, gypsies, and Jews.

12
F. M. Barnard, “The Hebrews and Herder’s Political Creed,” The Modern Language Review 54
(1959), 533–46, here 541.
13
Ibid., p. 542.
 FREDERICK C . BEISER 

Regarding the Turks, Herder shows no sympathy at all. He asks: “What are such
aliens, who after thousands of years still want to be asiatic barbarians, doing in
Europe?” (VI, 702). The gypsies he tolerates even less: “What purpose do they
have in Europe? They should be subject to military training, which disciplines
everything quickly” (VI, 703). The Jews come off best in this diatribe, but even
they are described in negative terms (VI, 702). They are a parasitic plant that lives
off the juices of the Europeans. Although Herder concedes that it is improbable
that they brought leprosy to Europe, he still insists that they transmitted an even
worst disease: usury. Although the Jews were cruelly oppressed, they reckoned on
such oppression and retaliated for it by cheating the Christians all the more.
Herder treats the Jews better than the Turks and gypsies because he imagines a
future when they will be integrated into European life. Hence he looks forward to
the day in Europe when one will no longer ask whether someone is a Christian or a
Jew, the day when the Jew will live according to European laws and will contribute
to the state (VI, 702). But here Herder seems to regard the price for living under
European laws to be complete assimilation, total surrender of Jewish identity. This
alone, it seems, would be in accord with his one nation-one state rule.
Granted that Herder’s ideal state corresponds to one nation, the question
remains what attitude Herder has toward a less than ideal state, more specifically,
one that has a minority living within it having a different religion, language, and
culture? Does he maintain that the minority should assimilate, surrendering its
own religion, language, and culture? Although the one nation-one state rule
seems to push in that direction, it is noteworthy that Herder still does not
advocate assimilation. This is clear from his attitude toward conversion. In
Bekehrung der Juden he maintains that the attempt to convert Jews is not only
unrealistic but also misguided because Jewish identity is so closely bound up with
their religion (X, 629–30). It is for this reason alone that he says that the Jews will
remain “an alien Asiatic people.” Herder treats their alien status not as the reason
for denying them rights, as Rose assumes, but as a reason for toleration, i.e., for
not attempting to force them to assimilate. Toleration was one of Herder’s core
values, from which he never departed. Herder makes this very plain from his
personal confession in Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität:

From my youth nothing has been more repulsive than persecuting or reprimanding a person
because of his religion. Who does this concern other than the person and God? . . . How cruel,
how irrational, pointless and inhumane when a person, a tribunal, a synagogue presumes to
declare damnation against someone, even if they are a negro or Indian?14

14
See Brief 56, Fünfte Sammlung, Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität, Werke VII, 291–2. For a
more detailed account of Herder’s belief in toleration, see Sikka, Herder, pp. 112, 219, 237, 246.
 HERDER AND THE JEWISH QUESTION

But the question still remains: “Toleration to what degree?” What legal rights
should Jews have? Does Herder think that they should be given the same civil and
political rights as Christians? The same civil rights means equal protection under
the law, the repeal of discriminatory policies; the same political rights means the
right to vote and hold office. This was sometimes formulated as the distinction
between passive and active citizenship. That Herder is ready to give the Jews equal
civil rights, i.e., passive citizenship, seems clear from his demand to repeal
“barbaric” legislation against the Jews (X, 638). By this, he means discriminatory
legislation, “Sondergesetze,” which forced Jews into ghettos and into specific
vocations. That he envisages giving them the same civil rights as Christians is
also the implication of his demand to give Christians and Jews the same educa-
tion (X, 640). If they have the same education, he argues, they will share the same
moral principles as Christians. Presumably, if they share the same morality they
should deserve the same rights.
But what about the same political rights? Here the evidence is less clear. Herder
does not make such a distinction, and so we can know his attitude only by
inference. However, the implications of some of his remarks seem clear enough:
that the Jews should have political rights too. Often enough Herder states that
Jews should serve the state that protects them, that they should become useful
citizens of the state (cf. VII, 702 and X, 641). It is hard to understand how this
recommendation could be actualized if the Jews were prevented from holding
office or serving in the government. Part of what Herder has in mind by these
statements is that the Jews should serve the state by doing more than investing
money and engaging in commerce; he also means that the Jews should learn new
trades and vocations. Herder’s demands that, in the future, Jews should
be contributors to the “growth of the sciences” would require giving them
rights to hold positions in the universities, rights denied them for most of the
eighteenth century.
Rose thinks that Herder deliberately excludes active citizenship because he
complains about ministries who give the Jews complete control over their
finances, or universities who depend on Jewish financiers or brokers (X, 637).15
But Rose takes Herder’s statement out of context. The target of Herder’s com-
plaint is those ministries or universities who grant the Jews special privileges to
manage finance. Such privileges, he maintains, give them the opportunity for
“dishonest gain and deception” (10, 636). Here Herder is not proscribing political
rights but simply attacking the privileges of the old Schützjuden. In any case,

15
Rose, German Question/Jewish Question, p. 106.
 FREDERICK C . BEISER 

there is nothing in Herder’s remarks that commits him to denying Jews equality
of opportunity and the right to hold public office.

4 Jewish Character
An essential element of Rose’s revisionary portrait of Herder is his complaint that
Herder’s “general attitude” toward the Jews is “very jaundiced indeed and close to
the stereotypes of traditional Jewish hatred” (102). This claim is somewhat
surprising for the standard view of Herder as a philo-Semite, but Rose mounts
considerable textual evidence to support it. There is first of all Herder’s statement
in the Ideen that the Jews are a parasitic nation, a people who live off their host
nations, and who do not aspire to a homeland of their own.16 This was indeed a
common complaint about the Jews, who were often described in such terms
because of their devotion to usury and commerce.17 The Jews, it was often said,
were not productive because they were not engaged in agriculture and manufac-
turing; rather, they simply sold goods already made or earned their living from
lending and investing money. There is also Herder’s opinion in the Briefe, das
Studium der Theologie betreffend that the Jews are “an obstinate, hard, ungrateful,
insolent people as best described in Moses and the prophets.”18 This too was a
common Christian view of the Jews, who were castigated for their refusal to
believe in Christ as the messiah. Finally, there was Herder’s thesis that the Jews,
through their control of finance, dominate and exploit the Christians.19 This was
also an old anti-Semitic theme, one which goes back at least as far as Eisenmen-
ger, who claimed that the Jews were out to rule the world and to make all peoples
their servants.20
So it cannot be denied that Herder has some negative views about the Jews.
He does not think that they are faultless or perfect; and it was not beyond him to
use some of the most common anti-Semitic rhetoric. We can regard some of
this speech as secondary or indirect, so that Herder is not expressing his own

16
Ideen III, 12, iii, Werke VI, 492. See also Ideen IV, 16, v, Werke VI, 702.
17
On the history and meaning of this metaphor, see Alex Bein, “The Jewish Parasite,” Leo Baeck
Institute Yearbook 9 (1964), 3–41. On Herder’s use of this metaphor, see Emil Adler, “Johann
Gottfried Herder und das Judentum,” in Herder Today, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1990), pp. 382–401. Adler suggests (pp. 395–401) that Herder used this metaphor to
balance and conceal his pro-Jewish views, which were unorthodox and controversial in his day.
Adler’s hypothesis is plausible but difficult to prove. The fact remains that Herder did use this
metaphor.
18
Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend, Werke 9/1, 254–5.
19
Ideen III, 12, iii, Werke VI, 490.
20
Johann Andreas Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum (Königsberg: Mit Seiner Königl. Majest.
in Preussen allergnädigsten Special-Privilegia, 1711), Erster Theil, Das XIV Kapitel, pp. 568–88.
 HERDER AND THE JEWISH QUESTION

opinions but simply reporting what other people think about the Jews.21 But then
it is odd that Herder used primary and direct speech when he did not really hold
these opinions.
Assuming that Herder personally held these negative views, we are still left
with the question whether they amount to his “general attitude” toward the Jews,
as Rose contends. And here we have good reason to doubt Rose’s assessment. All
Herder’s negative opinions about the Jews have to be balanced against his more
positive ones. Just consider the following. Herder could hardly have a higher
estimate of Jewish achievement in morality and religion. Although he thinks that
the Jews could claim few accomplishments in science and art, he holds them to be
the masters of religion and morality. It was the Jews, Herder opines in the Ideen,
who laid down the foundation for “the enlightenment of the world.”22 Their
monotheism and morality was indeed the foundation for Christianity. In his Vom
Geist der hebräischen Poesie Herder praised the Old Testament as “the oldest,
simplest and perhaps most lyrical poetry of the earth” and he stated that it was
“the oldest history of the human spirit and heart.”23 The ancient constitution of
Israel was, in his opinion,24 a model for government everywhere, because Moses’
laws were devoted to the sublime idea that the law alone should govern people.
Finally, it is hard to surpass Herder’s eulogy of the Jews in his Briefe: “The Jews,”
he declares, “were and still are the most remarkable people on earth.”25 It is not
least for reasons like these that Herder has been described as philo-Semitic. While
the philo-Semitic account of Herder might give us an incomplete picture, it still
cannot be dismissed as “misconceived.” Those who hold it also have considerable
evidence in their favor.
An essential part of Rose’s argument is that Herder ascribes Jewish “moral
defects” to “an original and enduring national character” (98). Herder does
indeed complain about Jewish national character, which he finds very problem-
atic and unattractive. His complaints about this character are the traditional ones:
that the Jews are a mercenary and materialist people, that they are out entirely for
their own advantage, and that they completely disregard moral constraints and
principles in all their business dealings. Rose is careful to say that Herder does not
think that this character is due to race; he recognizes that this is a long-refuted
interpretation. Nevertheless, he still maintains that this character is “so deeply
ingrained by tradition and religion (‘imbibed with mother’s milk’) that it might as

21
This is the reading of Karl Menges, “Integration oder Assimilation,” p. 412.
22
Ideen III, 12, iii, Werke VI, 483.
23
Vom Geist der hebräischen Poesie, “Vorrede,” Werke V, 669.
24
Vom Geist der hebräischen Poesie, Werke V, 1090–1.
25
Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend, sWerke 9/1, 253–4.
 FREDERICK C . BEISER 

well be racially or biologically transmitted” (107). Rose notes Herder’s oft-cited

lines from the Ideen that look forward to a future when one no longer asks
whether someone is a Jew or a Christian;26 but he sees this as little more than “an
empty utopian gesture bearing no practical significance” (100). One of the
reasons he regards it as an empty gesture is because, on Herder’s view, the Jewish
character is permanent and virtually, if not actually, racial. Why, indeed, await
such a future if Jewish character cannot be altered and therefore reformed?
There is, however, something unsympathetic and deeply problematic about
Rose’s account of Herder’s views on Jewish national character. Herder not only
expressly accepts Montesquieu’s theory that Jewish character is due to oppres-
sion, the result of their compulsory confinement to the profession of trade, but he
also explicitly maintains that it is now the duty of Christians to recompense for
the sins of their fathers by opening the doors of opportunity for Jews (X, 637).
Improvement of the Jews must begin, he writes, with reforming dishonorable
Christians who have abused the Jews. Herder then goes on to make specific
proposals about how the character of the Jews can be improved. Specifically, he
proposes 1) blocking the sources of deception and exploitation in Jewish trade, 2)
removing barbaric legislation, and 3) a common education system for Jews and
Christians. The point of such proposals is to allow the Jews to practice other
professions than trade and usury, and to encourage them to develop their
intellectual talents for “the growth of science” and “the general culture of
humanity” (641). If Herder truly held that Jewish character is permanently
incorrigible, it is hard to see why he made these proposals, which would have
no efficacy or value at all. For these reasons it is also hard to understand why
Herder’s picture of a more enlightened future is nothing more than “an empty
gesture.” He has given very specific proposals about how this future is to be
achieved, even if they cannot be immediately realized in the near future.

5 Herder and Zionism

On no point are the philo-Semitic and anti-Semitic readings of Herder further
apart than with regard to Herder’s alleged “proto-Zionism.” Barnard finds
Herder to be a spokesman for Zionism avant la lettre because he seems to
advocate the return of the Jews to Palestine.27 Such an ideal follows straightfor-
wardly from Herder’s concept of a Volk, Barnard argues, according to which each
nation should have its own state. Herder recommended such a return not because

26
Herder, Ideen IV.16, 5, Werke V, 702.
27
“Herder and Israel,” Jewish Social Studies 28 (1966), 26–33.
 HERDER AND THE JEWISH QUESTION

he wanted to be rid of the Jews, as the anti-Semites did, but because he believed
that only through their own state would they finally achieve their political
maturity and realize their identity as a Volk. The source of the decline in Jewish
culture came with the diaspora, Herder thought, because the Jews lost their
cohesion and culture, which they once had in Palestine. Barnard points out the
striking affinities between Herder and Herzl in their arguments for a renewed
Jewish state; 28 but, remarkably, he thinks that Herder was more prescient than
Herzl insofar as he insisted that Palestine alone could be the suitable homeland
for the Jews; poor Herzl was so desperate for the Jews to leave Germany that at
one point he even recommended Argentina.29
Rose has the very opposite opinion of Barnard. He maintains that Herder was
skeptical that any return to Palestine would work for the Jews. He points out how
Herder, in Bekehrung der Juden, mocks the proto-Zionist proposals of David
Hartley, an English writer. Herder wrote with evident scorn:
Good luck to them, if a Messiah-Bonaparte victoriously leads them there, good luck to
them in Palestine! But it will be difficult for a rich, industrious nation to be pleased with
the narrow confines of Palestine unless all the general commerce of the old and new world
is conceded to them. Their land will be very convenient for the old world. Fine, sharp-
witted nation, wonder of the ages! According to the genial glosses of one of their Rabbis,
Esau and Israel are entwined in tears; both are in pain from the kiss, but they cannot
separate. (X, 635–6)

Rose finds it incredible that this very passage has been interpreted as a proto-
Zionist declaration (105). For him, the underlying message of Herder’s com-
ments seems to be: the Jews themselves will not be happy to live in Palestine, now
that they have proved so successful in trade and finance in Europe. Rose then
remarks: “In reality, it [this passage] is scarcely warmer towards the Jews than
were those SS circles which in the 1930s thought that the solution to the Jewish
question might consist in removing Germany’s Jews to Palestine” (105). This is a
remarkable statement given that Rose then states categorically in the very same
paragraph that Herder holds the Zionist solution to be really no solution at all.
The whole point about the Esau and Israel allegory, Rose tells us, is that Israel
(Judaism) cannot be so easily separated from Esau (European culture). The Jews
and Christians have grown so closely together that, despite all their differences,
they cannot be separated; Jews need Christians as much as Christians need Jews.
But if this is so, Herder is hardly like those SS circles who want to get rid of the

28
Ibid., pp. 30–1.
29
Theodor Herzl, Der Juden Staat (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1920), pp. 24–5.
 FREDERICK C . BEISER 

Jews by shipping them off to Palestine. He is saying precisely that no such policy
will work.
Apart from his off-the-wall comment about the SS, Rose is correct to stress
Herder’s skepticism about the Palestine solution to the Jewish problem. The
passage above speaks for itself; but Herder also states in the Ideen that the Jews,
despite their oppression, do not long anymore for their honor and homeland (VI,
492). In this respect Herder could not be more different from Herzl. Unlike the
father of Zionism, Herder did not think that the solution to the Jewish problem
rested with emigration, with a return to Palestine or anywhere else. Herzl argued
for emigration precisely because he did not think that prejudices against the Jews
would disappear in Germany.30 Herder, however, thinks that those prejudices
can be combated and that the Jewish problem has to be resolved within Europe.
More optimistic than Herzl, Herder believes that prejudices against the Jews will
disappear if and when his proposals regarding better legislation and better
education are followed. It is as if he were arguing against Herzl when Herder
writes at the close of Die Bekehrung der Juden:
Not on the naked mountains of Palestine, that narrow, devastated land, will their temple
arise spiritually from its ruins; all nations honor with them, and they honor with all
nations, the creator of the world, insofar as they form and raise his image—reason and
wisdom, beneficence and magnanimity—in humanity. Not by conceding them mercantile
advantages will one lead them to honor and morality; they will raise themselves to honor
and morality through their own purely humane, scientific and civil efforts. Their Palestine
is there where they live and nobly work: everywhere. (X, 641)

Barnard thinks that Herder offered a double solution to the Jewish question. One
prong was emancipation in Germany, so that Jews who chose to stay in Europe
would have a secure future free from prejudice and inequality; the other prong
was emigration to Palestine, so that the Jews could finally become a nation of
their own. Rose maintains that Herder advocated neither solution. Herder had
ruled out emancipation because he did not really give the Jews equal civil and
political rights; and he had excluded emigration as unfeasible for European Jews.
All that Herder had to offer the Jews, then, was “a partial toleration that would
consist in their remaining Jews, but reforming their greedy, trade-oriented
character” (104).
Rose also thinks, however, that Herder had a more utopian and revolutionary
solution to the Jewish problem. This lay with complete assimilation, so that the
Jews lose their distinct identity, surrender their culture, language, and religion,

30
Ibid., pp. 20–2.
 HERDER AND THE JEWISH QUESTION

and become like everyone else (107–9). According to this more radical solution,
the Jews would be completely humanized when their characters were reformed
according to Herder’s legislative and educational proposals. So now Herder
confronts the Jews with a dilemma: retain your identity and culture but be barely
tolerated; or become free and equal but lose your identity and culture. There is no
middle path, therefore, where Jews could keep their identity and culture yet still
enjoy freedom and equality with their Christian brethren.
There is little evidence, however, that Herder ever advocated anything like
assimilation. We have already seen that he disapproved of efforts at conversion,
and that he believed that Jewish identity, religion, and culture were perfectly
legitimate. The only textual passage that seems to come close to advocacy of
assimilation is the lines at the end of the chapter 16 of the Ideen: “The time will
come when one will no longer ask who is a Jew or Christian; for the Jew too will
live according to European laws and contribute for the best of the state” (VI, 702).
But this is hardly the demand that the Jew abandon his culture and identity; it is
really only the demand that they be treated equally and that all discrimination end.

6 Conclusion
If we are to draw a moral from our examination of Rose, it would have to be that
there is still good reason to keep the old liberal, pluralistic image of Herder. That
image is perhaps simplistic and naïve; but it is not false; and it demands more
refinement than rejection. The critique of that image has shown Herder to be a
more complicated figure, someone prone to negative utterances about the Jews
and someone who was not sympathetic to all aspects of their character. But we
should be wary of inferring from these utterances that they reflect his general
attitude toward the Jews. These remarks are precisely what we should expect for
someone who believed in the importance of reforming the Jewish character. In
calling for its reform Herder was simply following the reformist tradition of
Dohm and Humboldt; but, more importantly, that demand was made by many
Jews themselves, who disapproved of usury and who conceded the bad effect on
their character from legislation confining them to commerce. Like Dohm and
Humboldt, Herder believed that the negative aspects of Jewish character were
the product—not the cause—of benighted anti-Jewish legislation, which had to
be repealed for the sake of the Jews and the nation as a whole. Every negative
characteristic Herder attributed to the Jews—parasitism, egoism, materialism—
he saw as the inevitable result of their centuries-old oppression. In other words,
there was not a single negative Jewish trait that he did not think could be removed
by timely and effective reform.
 FREDERICK C . BEISER 

Not the least reason for keeping the old pluralistic image of Herder is that, it
turns out, he did accept the value of diversity within a nation. Although the
one state-one nation rule seems to have been Herder’s ideal, he never questioned
the importance of toleration and the value of diversity within a single state. If
Herder’s attitude toward the Jews is a test case for his feelings regarding diversity,
as Rose proposes, then he passes that test. Herder’s rejection of assimilation, his
willingness to tolerate the distinct identity and culture of the Jews, shows him to
be a progressive figure, one ahead of the emancipation arguments of the 1870s,
which always made assimilation the price of emancipation. Though no Zionist,
Herder offered the Jews the best of both worlds: emancipation without assimila-
tion. It was an ideal that lived—precariously—in Germany for only sixty years.
But we cannot and should not blame Herder for its collapse, no matter how much
his name has been enlisted in that cause.
Name Index

Abbt, Thomas 6, 170–1, 173, 174, 175, 181 Contiades, I. 207n

Ackerman, Bruce 20 Cordemann, Class 198, 199–200
Adamsen, Johannes 198n Cremer, Christoph Joseph 240n2
Adler, Emil 241, 249n17 Crusius, Christian August 31, 32, 34, 36
Adler, Hans 64n, 154n12, 194n12 and Herder 35
Adorno, Theodor 206n
Albani, Alessandro 100 d’Alembert, Jean le Rond 103
Aristotle 26, 64, 128n Dahnke, Hans-Dietrich 136n19
Arnold, Günter 197n Danton, Georges 207
Assmann, Aleida and Jan 204–5 Davidson, Donald 28, 29
Austin, J. L. 28 De Angelis, Simone 74n5, 75
Ayer, A. J. 13 Dennett, Daniel 26
Descartes, René 54, 59, 133, 217
Barnard, F. M. 241, 246, 251, 252, 253 Desmoulins, Camille 207
Barnouw, Jeffrey 142 DeSouza, Nigel 34n, 45n, 86n28, 128, 149n4,
Baumgarten, Alexander 30, 31, 32, 48, 99–100 180n40
Herder’s critique of 34 Diderot, Denis 103, 203
Baum, Manfred 32n5, 36 Dilthey, Wilhelm 5, 106–8, 121, 166, 167n2
Bein, Alex 249n17 Dixon, Roger 142
Beiser, Frederick C. 100, 101, 150–1, 156n15, Dohm, Christian Wilhelm von 244, 245n, 254
218n20 Driesch, Hans 120–1
Benenson, Peter 226 Dworkin, Ronald 20, 23
Berlin, Isaiah 15, 241
Biedrzynski, E. 209 Eisenmenger, Johann Andreas 249
Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich 111n, 119 Emsbach, Michael 128
Boas, Franz 101 Epicurus 129
Boerhaave, Herman 75, 77
Bohm, Arnd 195n13 Feiganbaum, Ryan 119n
Bonnet, Charles 81, 82 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 14, 240
Brandom, Robert 28 Finkielkraut, Alain 219–20
Breitenbach, Angela 122n26 Fischer, Joern 107n4
Brummack, Jürgen 208n Forster, Michael 1n4, 168n6, 169n10, 175n26
Buchenau, Stefanie 58n Frank, Manfred 180n41
Buffon, Comte de (Georges-Louis Franklin, Benjamin 208, 224
Leclerc) 87–8, 130, 173 Frantzen, Adam Wilhelm 81
Burns, Robbie 23 Frazer, Michael L. 173n18
Frederick the Great 81
Cabanis, Paul-Joseph 76n13 Frege, Gottlob 27
Camper, Petrus 119 Freud, Sigmund 42, 210
Casmann, Otto 75
Cassirer, Ernst 180n40 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 16, 166, 167n2, 220, 241
Chargaff, Erwin 203 Garber, Jörn 30
Chomsky, Noam 27 Gaukroger, Stephen 74n5, 110n15
Churchland, Patricia 26 Gesche, Astrid 128
Ciafardone, Raffaele 129n Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 14, 74, 107–8,
Cicero 43 113, 117–21, 178, 203, 206, 211, 217
Claudius, Matthias 208–9 Goodbody, Axel 108–9
Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de 27, 29, 95, 96n2, Gouges, Olympe de 235
97, 98, 103, 127–8, 131–2, 169 Grillparzer, Franz 206n
 NAME INDEX

Grossman, Jeffrey 243 Leddy, Nevan 130n6

Grotius, Hugo 232 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 30, 31, 45n, 53–5,
60–3, 65, 133, 217
Habermas, Jürgen 22 Leppin, Volker 198n
Haller, Albrecht von 5, 73–4, 75–81, 82–6, Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 101, 104, 191n,
88–9, 90, 110, 132n 211, 218
Hamann, Johann Georg 18, 169n10, 208n Leventhal, Robert S. 178nn29&34
Harloe, Katherine 162nn28&29 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 216n15
Hartknoch, Johann Friedrich 204 Lifschitz, Avi 97n, 130n6, 149n3
Hartley, David 252 Litt, Theodor 241
Haym, Rudolf 169n8, 214 Locke, John 18, 27, 29, 34, 229
Hébert, Jacques 207 Lucretius 129
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 14–15, 27, Luther, Martin 196, 217
208, 217 Lütkehaus, L. 214
Heidegger, Martin 26, 166, 167n2
Heinz, Marion 2n9, 52n3, 53n5, 59n, 83n22, Marat, Jean-Paul 207
173n17, 218 Marx, Karl 15, 231
Helvétius, Claude Adrien 157 Maupertuis, Pierre Louis 96, 130
Herzl, Theodor 252, 253 Mauthner, Fritz 213
Herz, Markus 72 Mayr, Ernst 131nn11&13
Hinkse, Norbert 129n3 Meier, G. F. 37n8, 128n2, 133n15
Hobbes, Thomas 27, 29 Meinecke, Friedrich 148n1, 174n21, 226, 227
Hofstadter, Douglas 213 Mendelssohn, Moses 24, 30–1, 57n, 81, 68,
Hölderlin, Friedrich 27, 101, 211 129n3, 134n17, 135–6, 141
Hollman, Samuel Christian 81 Menze, Ernest 198n
Horkheimer, Max 206n Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 15, 18
Hulliung, M. 157n18 Montaigne, Michel de 178n32
Humboldt, Alexander von 244, 254 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron
Hume, David 30, 31, 32, 35, 36, 48, 113n20, de 24, 25, 251
174, 175, 177, 228 Moritz, Karl Philipp 73
Hundt, Magnus 75 Mühlpfordt, Günter 129n3
Muller-Brettel, Marianne 142
Irmscher, Hans Dietrich 172n15, 177n27, 187,
194n12, 198n, 205 Napoleon Bonaparte 209
Iselin, Isaak 205 Nassar, Dalia 159n22
Newton, Isaac 38, 76, 110, 114
Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich 6, 36, 136n20, 138–9 Nietzsche, Friedrich 219
Jortin, Johann 195 Nisbet, H. B. 1n1, 86n28, 130n6
Novalis 109
Kant, Immanuel 14–15, 17, 18, 33, 48, 72, 74–5, Nowitzki, Hans-Peter 74n5
109, 111–14, 121–3, 128, 135, 140, 154n13,
158–60, 228, 240 Perrault, Caude 87
and Herder 32, 34, 35, 36, 38, 40, 54–56, Pinker, Steven 26, 27
58–61, 62, 159–60, 213, 216n15 Platner, Ernst 30, 72, 73n4
and Leibniz 62 Plato 64
and Newton 38 Plumwood, Val 107n6
critique of metaphysics 31 Proß, Wolfgang 30, 52n3
Kelletat, Andreas F. 175n23 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 231
Keßler, Martin 198n
Kielmeyer, Carl Friedrich 138 Rawls, John 19–21, 23
Kleist, Heinrich von 209 Réaumur, René Antoine Ferchault de 130
Koepke, Wulf 136n19, 154n12, 187n3 Redi, Francesco 130n7
Kojève, Alexandre 214 Reill, Peter H. 173
Reimarus, Hermann Samuel 5–6, 78, 86,
La Mettrie, Julien Offray de 73, 79–81, 84, 90, 128–36, 140–1, 191n
127, 129–30 Ricoeur, Paul 16
Larousse, Pierre 207 Riedel, Wolfgang 30, 74n5
 NAME INDEX 

Roe, Shirley 110nn16&17 Süßmilch, J. P. 97, 128, 139–40, 168n6

Rose, Paul Lawrence 241–2, 244, 245, 247, 248, Swammerdam, Jan 130
249, 250–1, 252–3 Swedenborg, Emanuel 58
Rothacker, Erich 241
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 30, 31, 36, 42, 96, 97, Taylor, Charles 149n6, 179n35
98, 127, 140, 169 Tetens, Johann Nicolaus 6, 139–42
Thompson, Evan 16, 27
Said, Edward W. 218 Tissot, Samuel-Auguste 76
Sander, Emmanuel 213 Tocqueville, Alexis de 19–20, 21–2, 23
Sapir, Edward 169n9 Tralle, Ludwig 81
Sauder, Gerhard 136n19, 175n23 Trinius, Johann Anton 130n6
Saussure, Ferdinand de 27 Tyson, Edward 87
Schaffer, Elinor 106n3
Schaumburg Lippe, Wilhelm von 206 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) 203–4,
Schiller, Friedrich 13, 101 205–6, 208n, 216n15
Schings, Hans-Jürgen 30
Schlegel, Friedrich 101, 208n Waldow, Anik 68n28, 218n19
Schleiermacher, Friedrich 167n4, 171n13, Wells, G. A. 148n1
178n30, 179n37, 180nn39&41 Whytt, Robert 78
Schmidt, Johannes 55n14 Wieland, Christoph Martin 211
Schröder, Wilfried 128 Wiese, Benno von 241
Schrott, B. 42n Wilson, Catherine 130n6
Shaftesbury, Lord (Anthony Ashley Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 100–1, 102,
Cooper) 55, 56, 172n15 103–4, 211
Sikka, Sonia 155n15, 160, 194n11, 243 Winkler, Heinrich August 210–11
Simon, Richard 97n Wittgenstein, Ludwig 27–8
Sloterdijk, Peter 213, 214 Wolff, Christian 30, 31, 33, 40, 41n14, 53, 75n9,
Socrates 16, 22, 43 85, 94, 100, 111n, 133
Spalding, Johann Joachim 170 Herder’s critique of 34, 36, 38–39
Spencer, Tom 198n Wundt, Max 30
Spinoza, Baruch 14, 53–4, 188–9, 199, 215
Steinke, Hubert 76, 77 Zammito, John 1n1, 2n9, 3, 48n, 52n3, 86n28,
Stiening, Gideon 74n5 103, 113n21, 150n, 162nn30&31, 170n,
Stocking, George W. 101n4 189n, 198
Sulzer, Johann Georg 30, 81–2, 85–6 Zande, Johan van der 129n3
General Index

Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache Anthropology for Doctors and Philosophers
(Treatise on the Origin of Language (Platner) 30
Herder) 82, 97, 127, 148–9, 167, 169, antiquity 100–3
174n19, 181, 196, 226 anti–Semitism 240–1, 242, 246, 249, 251–2
abstraction 33, 39, 49, 56, 100, 117, 212, 216 Arcana cœlestia (Swedenborg) 58
and division 41, 43 assimilation 247, 253–4, 255
Adrastea (Herder) 189, 194–8, 200–1, 233–4, attention 96, 100
243–4 attraction and repulsion 57–8, 63, 64
aesthetics Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur
aesthetic rationalism 103–4 Bildung der Menschheit (Another
aesthetic sensibility 99–103 Philosophy of History for the Education of
and anthropology 94–104 Mankind Herder) 147, 153, 154, 174n20,
agency 150–1, 158–60 187, 190, 194, 204, 207, 208, 210, 211, 214,
Allgemeine Betrachtungen über die Triebe der 216–17, 218, 220
Thiere, hauptsächlich über ihre Kunsttriebe and human rights 227, 228, 232–4
(Reimarus) 128, 131, 135 Aufklärung, see Enlightenment
Älteste Urkunde (Herder) 179 autonomy 28–9, 47–8, 95, 103, 135, 197, 204,
American Bill of Rights 224, 226, 230 212, 234, 235
American Constitution 208, 212, 224,
226, 230 behaviour 5, 94, 110, 128, 130–7, 139, 142, 157,
American Declaration of Independence 224, 158, 171
225, 226, 230 Bekehrung der Juden (Herder) 243–4, 247,
American Revolution 210, 214, 224, 231 252–3
Amnesty International 226 Berlin Academy 81, 85–6, 97, 136, 138
analogy 107, 114–17, 118–19, 122n25, 141, Bern Academy 32, 36, 37
212–13, 215 Bern Patriots 37, 42
see also metaphor Besonnenheit 139n, 148, 149n4, 150, 153
animal–human boundary 127, 140, 142–3 Bible 188, 190
animal rights 235–6 Gospels 190, 191–3
animal souls 128, 131 Bildung 52, 69–70, 207n, 218, 219
animaux plus que machines, Les (La Mettrie) 81 Bildung (character formation) 100, 104
anthropography 75 Bildung (civilization) 100–4, 211
Anthropologium, de hominis dignitate, natura et Bildung (education) 43–7, 49–50, 179–82, 206, 211
proprietatibus (Hundt) 75 for women 45, 46
anthropology 2–3, 32, 42, 46, 48, 52, 85 oikeiosis 46n
and aesthetics 94–104 biography 172–3, 175n24, 178, 181, 192
anthropological turn 30, 72n2 biology 120–1, 143
ecological 136–8 Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend
environmental 147, 151–3, 155–6 (Herder) 249
ethnographic 16–17, 19 Briefe, die neueste Litteratur betreffend
historical 157–62, 168–9, 190 (journal) 135
history of 74–82 Briefe über die wichtigsten Wahrheiten der
and metaphysics 30–50 Offenbarung (Letters on the Most
and naturalism 23–6, 79–80, 168–70, 181 Important Truths of Revelation Haller) 77
philosophical 15, 17, 23–6, 72–90, 100 Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität (Letters for
physiological 72–90 the Advancement of Humanity Herder) 90,
rationalist 30–1 194, 200, 207n, 209, 216, 224–5, 227
religious 185–201 animal rights 236
theological 188, 189 human rights 230, 231–2, 237
 GENERAL INDEX 

Jews 250 divine law 225, 226, 227

and morality 228 divine reason 36, 188
toleration 247 Dreams of a Spirit Seer (Kant) 58–60
droits de la femme, Les (Gouges) 235
categorical imperative 228 dualism
causality 5, 33–4, 41, 54, 58, 62, 77, 79, 83, Cartesian, rejection of 57, 70, 85, 88–9, 177,
89–90, 106–8, 109–17, 120–3, 129, 131n12, 217–18
135, 147–8, 149n4, 151, 156–62 critique of 13–14
Christianity 186–8, 189, 192, 193, 199, 200, 241, see also soul–body interaction
243–4, 250 duties: and human rights 237
future of 194–8
Christliche Schriften (Christian Writings education
Herder) 190–2, 193–4, 200 Herder’s theory of 154, 157–8
Club of the Cordeliers 207, 208 see also Bildung (education)
comparative anatomy 86–8 elasticity of fibres 77, 83, 84
concepts emancipation 243–6, 253
acquisition of 64–8, 117, 133, 161 empiricism 39, 65, 101, 113n20, 117, 140, 162
of space, time, and force 58, 63, 65–6, 67–8 category of psychology 34
of human being 44–6, 49 vs. idealism 32–3, 34
of philosophy 38, 39–41, 44–5, 54 psychological 41, 73, 94, 103, 135, 141–2
as unanalyzable 35 and sensation 34, 139, 189
constitutions Encyclopédie (Diderot and d’Alembert) 75, 132n
American 208, 212, 226 ‘History’ (Voltaire) 204–5
French 208 English Bill of Rights 224, 226, 229–30
contingency 113, 121–2, 140, 141 English Revolution 231
cosmology 47n, 55, 56, 69, 85, 86–8, 90, 214 Enlightenment 30, 42, 78, 138, 219
cosmopolitanism 20, 232–3 Herder’s critique of culture of 203–11
creation: purposiveness of 129 Entstehung des Historismus, Die (Historism: The
Critical Forests (Herder) 176 Rise of a New Historical Outlook,
Critique of Judgment (Kant) 109, 111, 112, Meinecke) 226
121–2 environmental crisis 106–7
cultural relativism 101–2 Epicureanism 55, 129, 131
culture 3, 7, 16–17, 22–3, 25, 26, 28, 36, 41–2, epigenesis 111n
45–6, 49, 53, 99, 101, 102–4, 108, 154–5, epistemology 32, 34
170, 175, 181–2, 189, 214, 216, 221 and metaphysics 52–3, 65
Enlightenment, Herder’s critique of 203–11 and philosophy 66–7
Greek 210–11 Epitre à mon esprit (La Mettrie) 81
and history 68, 69, 140, 169 equality 22, 24, 28
and individuality 179, 180 equal rights 209, 229, 242, 244–5, 248–9,
Jewish 197, 240–1, 252, 253–4, 255 253–4
pluralism 242–3 Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations et sur
les principaux faits de l’histoire depuis
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen Charlemagne jusqu’à Louis XIII
(Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du (Voltaire) 204, 216n15
citoyen) 208, 224, 225, 226, 230 Essai sur l’origine des connoissances humaines
Défaite de la pensée, La (Finkielkraut) 219 (Condillac) 95
democracy 17, 20–2 Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Democracy in America (Tocqueville) 21 (Locke) 18
description vs. explanation 106–23 estatism 242, 243–6, 248
artistic description 114 ethics 15–16, 23, 46n, 102, 107, 206, 216, 224,
comparative description 114 228, 230
determinism 97 see also morality
Dialektik der Aufklärung (Horkheimer and Ethics (Spinoza) 215
Adorno) 206n experience 32–3, 36, 38, 40, 54, 56, 66, 119,
Dichtung und Wahrheit (Goethe) 206 131–2, 161–2
divination 167, 173, 176, 178nn29&30 non–conceptual 109
and sympathy 173–4 of soul–body interaction 58–60, 133–4
 GENERAL INDEX

explanation 119–20 human 148–56, 157–62

and description 106–23 natural 131–2, 135
expression 178, 179, 181 and nature 155–6
and self–understanding 99 philosophy of 49, 189, 203–21
and thought 175 of philosophy 37, 41, 94
expressionism 15 and religion 187, 189, 200–1
expressivism 14, 15–16, 19 History of Art in Antiquity, The
(Winckelmann) 101
Farbenlehre (Goethe) 118 Homme–Machine, L’ (La Mettrie) 79–80, 81
feeling 175–6, 178, 179, 217–18 How Philosophy Can Become More Universal
Gefühl 57, 64, 65 and Useful for the Benefit of the People
reason and 13–14, 212 (Herder), see Wie die Philosophie zum
self–feeling (Selbstgefühl) 85–6, 177 Besten des Volks allgemeiner und nützlicher
forces (Kräfte) 61–2, 115, 188 werden kann
and form 110–11 human development: and geography 155
Herder’s ontology of 54–5, 56–8, 63–4 humanitarianism 241–2
and soul-body interaction 56–7, 79, 89, 135 humanity 7, 14, 37, 41–3, 45, 48–50, 88,
souls and 40, 41, 44, 56–7, 61–4 101, 152–3, 160, 162, 166, 169, 173,
and space and time 58, 63, 65–6, 68 175, 176, 180, 181, 198, 201, 204, 206n,
thought-force 56, 57, 63–4, 65 207, 209, 218, 220, 224, 229, 236, 238,
Fragments of a Treatise on the Ode 251, 253
(Herder) 167, 168 Humanität 87, 186–7, 189, 194, 199,
Fragments on Recent German Literature (Herder), 216, 227
see Über die neuere deutsche Literatur Menschenfreunde 37
freedom 14, 79–80, 81, 89, 142, 158–60, 181 Humanitätsbriefe (Herder), see Briefe zur
freedom of speech 230 Beförderung der Humanität
freemasons 207n human sciences 74–5, 166–82
French Constitution 208 human person: integrity of 13–14
French Revolution 207–9, 210, 214, 224, 231 human rights 15, 207–9, 210, 224–39, 245
and animal rights 235–6
geography: and human development 155 civil vs. political (passive vs. active) 243, 244,
Germania (newspaper) 240 245, 247–8, 253
German Metaphysics (Wolff) 85 and duties 237
German Question/Jewish Question (Rose) 240 and law 225–9
Geschichte des Westens (Winkler) 210–11 orientation of 231–5
God 77–8, 186, 187, 188–9 and property 229–31
and nature 56, 168, 215, 225 women and 235
and world 53–6, 57–8, 63, 129–31
Greek culture 210–11 Idea for a Universal History with a
Grundsätze der Philosophie (Principles of Cosmopolitan Aim (Kant) 154n13, 158–9
Philosophy Herder) 53 idealism
gypsies 247 category of psychology 34
vs. empiricism 32–3, 34
Haben wir jetzt noch das Publikum und vs. realism 34
Vaterland der Alten? (Do we Still Have the sensualistic 36
Public and the Homeland of the Ancients? Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der
Herder) 73–4 Menschheit (Ideas on the Philosophy of the
habit 133, 134, 197 History of Mankind Herder) 73, 82, 83, 84,
see also instinct 86, 109n14, 114, 147, 149, 151, 154,
happiness 74, 153–4, 212, 215 174n20, 187, 188, 192, 195, 211, 213, 214,
Hauptformen 116–17, 118–19 217, 219, 220
hermeneutics 16, 17, 166–82 animal rights 236
Histoire naturelle de l’âme, L’ (La Mettrie) 81 human rights 224–5, 227, 229, 230,
history 231, 235
of anthropology 74–82 Jews 249, 250, 251, 253, 254
and culture 68, 69 pluralism 246–7
 GENERAL INDEX 

imagination 66, 89, 96, 100, 132, 134, 136, life 3, 6, 16–17, 41, 43, 46, 57–8, 60, 65, 70,
149n6, 161, 175 79, 86, 90, 99, 122, 127n, 129, 130,
individuality 179–80 134, 137, 160n23, 166, 170, 212, 215,
and culture 180 219, 234
and plurality 211–19 philosophy of 32, 36, 41
instinct 6, 35, 96, 97, 98, 128, 130–8, 139, 141, life sciences or natural sciences 129–32, 138,
148–9, 151–2, 153, 157, 159, 181 142–3
see also habit Literaturbriefe (Herder), see Über die neuere
Institutions médicales (Boerhaave) 81 deutsche Literatur
intelligent design 97–8, 130 logic 39–41, 46
intention 79, 87, 98, 114, 117, 131, 150n
interpretation 99, 104, 170–1, 179, 180–1, Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion,
180n39 Der (Freud) 210
mark (Merkmal, nota) 38–9
Jesus of Nazareth 185–6, 187–8, 190, 191–4, mathematics: and philosophy 37–8
196, 198, 199, 249 Maximen und Reflexionen (Goethe) 211
Jewish question 240–55 meaning 15, 24, 27, 28
assimilation 247, 253–4, 255 production of 176
emancipation 243–6, 253 medicine 72
estatism 242, 243–6, 248 and philosophy 74–5, 87, 90
Jewish character 249–51 and theology 75, 76, 78
pluralism 240–3, 246–9 memory 96, 100
toleration 247–8, 253 metaphor 108n, 114, 166, 179n38, 212, 213, 238
Zionism 251–4 see also analogy
Journal meiner Reiser im Jahr 1769 (Diary of my metaphysics 40, 73
voyage in the year 1769, Herder) 52, 69, and anthropology 30–50
174n20, 204 of divine/human soul 35
justice 20–1, 22 and empiricism 33
and epistemology 52–3, 65
knowledge 34–5, 64–5, 66–7, 77–8, 100, and experience 40, 56
113–14 and idealism 33
human vs. divine 34, 77–8, 188, 217 Herder’s critique of 35
of representations 34 Kant’s critique of 31, 54
sensuous 34 and psychology 32–3, 38, 39, 48
souls and 66–7 theological 54, 131
monadology 61–2, 217
language 26–9, 49, 82, 94–5, 103, 137, 148–53, monotheism 210
196–7, 212–13, 216, 243 Moralists, The (Shaftesbury) 56
and aesthetics 94–5, 99–103 Moralität 22
development or origin of 96–9, 128, 133, morality 15–16, 24–5, 78, 231–4
138–40, 141, 142, 148–9, 155 history and culture and 68
and meaning or expression 15, 16–18, 22–3, and law 227–8
24–5, 27, 28, 175–6 see also ethics
philosophy of 167–71 morphology 113
and reason 148–53, 157 motion 55–6, 61–3, 77, 79–80, 83, 90, 110–11,
language games 2, 7–8 113, 120–1, 128n, 135, 139
Laokoon (Lessing) 101
law naming 152
and human rights 225–9 national religions 195–6
morality and 227–8 naturalism 55, 181
natural law 159–60, 225, 226–7 and the divine 56, 168, 226
positive law 225–6, 227 linguistic 97–8, 128, 168–70
Le Concept, le temps et le discours: Introduction au and philosophical anthropology 23–6,
système du savoir (Kojève) 214 79–80, 168–70, 181
Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man natural law 159–60, 225, 226–7
(Schiller) 13 natural or life sciences 129–32, 138, 142–3
 GENERAL INDEX

nature of history 49, 189, 203–21

God and 215 of language 167–71
and history 153–6 materialism 129–31
necessitarianism 53 and mathematics 37–8
necessity 112, 113–14, 117, 119–20, 121–2 mechanical 87, 109–10, 129n5, 134, 136,
vs. contingency 113, 121–2, 140, 141 139, 166
mechanical 55–6 and medicine 74–5, 87, 90
Neveu de Rameau, Le (Diderot) 203 moral 41, 100, 102
New Essays on the Human Understanding and physics 37–9, 42–3, 46–7
(Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement and psychology 36, 38–9, 41, 44, 46–7, 48,
humain, Leibniz) 61, 217 133, 135
normativity 20, 47, 230 rationalist, Herder’s critique of 34–5
Novices at Sais, The (Novalis) 109 and representations 37
restriction to anthropology 32, 42, 45–6,
Observations sur quelques propriétés de l’âme 47–8
comparées à celles de la matière: as science 41–2, 44, 46
pour servir à l’examen du matérialisme subjective 34–5, 36
(Sulzer) 81–2 physical influx theory (see also soul–body
Only Possible Proof–Ground of the Existence of interaction) 45
God, The (Kant) 32, 55–6 physicotheology 86
On the Change of Taste (Herder) 157n19, 227 physics: and philosophy 37–9, 42–3, 46–7
On the Cognition and Sensation of the Human physiological psychology 82–90, 142
Soul (Herder), see Vom Erkennen und physiology: and philosophical
Empfinden der menschlichen Seele anthropology 72–90
On the Effect of Poetry on the Ethics of Peoples in Plato sagte, daß unser Lernen bloß Erinnerung
Ancient and Modern Times (Herder) 228 sei (Plato said that all our learning is merely
On the Influence of the Belles Lettres on the recollection Herder) 45, 53, 64–5
Higher Sciences (Herder) 176, 181 pluralism 240–3, 246–9
On the Jewish Question (Marx) 231n plurality: and individuality 211–19
On the Use of Teleological Principles in poetry 49, 108–9, 166, 167–8, 171,
Philosophy (Kant) 159–60 175n25, 228
On Thomas Abbt’s Writings (Herder) 171, 174 Political Liberalism (Rawls) 21
ontology 7, 35, 36, 39–40, 69, 213 politics 22–3, 37
Herder’s ontology of forces 54–5, 56–8, positive law 225–6, 227
63–4, 67, 68 prejudice 177, 207, 218, 232n11, 253
Orang–outan, sive Homo sylvestris, or The Principles of Nature and Grace, (Leibniz) 61
Anatomy of a Pygmic Compared with That Psychologia anthropologica, sive animae
of a Monkey (Tyson) 87 humanae doctrina (Casmann) 75
psychology 32–3, 34, 35, 40, 171–3, 181, 213
Palingénèse philosophique (Bonnet) 81 empirical 41, 73, 94, 103, 135, 141–2
perception 39, 62, 118–19 and metaphysics 32, 48
perfectibility 140–1 and philosophy 36, 38–9, 41, 44, 46–7, 48,
Phaedon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele 133, 135
(Mendelssohn) 81 physiological 82–90, 142
phenomenology 19 rational 94, 103
philology 108n purposiveness
Philosophischen Muthmaßungen über die of animal behaviour 132
Geschichte der Menschheit (Iselin) 205 of creation 129
Philosophische Versuche (Tetens) 139–40
philosophy race: Herder’s critique of concept of 216
of anthropology 15, 17, 23–6, 72–90, 100 Race et histoire (Lévi–Strauss) 216n15
concepts of 38, 39–40, 44–5, 54 rationalism 39, 73, 170
definition of 17–18 aesthetic 103–4
and epistemology 66–7 and anthropology 30–1
Herder’s critiques of 37–42 European 13
hermeneutical 166–82 Herder’s critique of 34–5, 36, 205
history of 37, 41, 94 and psychology 94, 103
 GENERAL INDEX 

reason 40, 57, 94–6, 103, 132–3, 141, slavery 209

147–63, 175 Society of Friends of the Rights of Man and
Anschauung 151, 173–4 Citizen 208
development or origin of 148–53 soul–body interaction 15, 44–5, 56–63, 64–5,
and emotion/feeling 13–14 67–8, 78–9, 83–5, 88–9, 100, 134–5
historical explanations 156–63 and Aristotle 57, 61, 64, 79, 83, 128n
human history, organic growth of 153–6 Cartesian, rejection of 57, 70, 85, 88–9, 177,
and language 148–53, 157 217–18
reflection 33, 96–7, 133–4, 140–1, 150, forces and 56–7, 79, 89, 135
152, 178 simplicity and ubiquity 78–9, 88–9
Reign of Terror 208–9 soul 40–1, 43, 66–9, 96, 171–2
relativism, cultural 101–2 after death 69
religion 77–8, 185–201 animal souls 128, 131
and anthropology 185–201 forces of 40, 41, 44, 56–7, 61–4, 89
Herder and 186–8, 189–94 and history and culture 68
and history 187, 189, 200–1 immateriality and freedom of 79–80, 81,
and language 192–3, 196–7 83–4, 89
monotheism 210, 250 immortality of 80, 81, 89–90
national religions 195–7 Kant on 58–60
universality of particular religions 198–201 and knowledge 66–7
Remarks on Ecclesial History (Jortin) 195 Leibniz on 60–1
representations 32–4, 37, 67, 99 metaphysics of 35, 131
soul and 57, 60, 61–3 origin of 83–4
as unanalyzable 34–5 psychology of 39
Rwanda 235 and representations 57, 60, 61–3, 67
and thought–force 56, 57, 63–4, 65
science see also soul–body interaction
biology 120–1, 142n, 143 space, time, and force (see concepts)
human sciences 74–5, 166–82 spherology 212–13, 214, 215
human vs. natural sciences 106–8, 112, Spinozism: Herder and 199–200
122–3 spirit 41
life sciences or natural sciences 129–32, 138, spiritualized materialism 53, 79–80
142–3 as immaterial substance 59–60
physics 37–9, 46–7 Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, The (Vom Geist der
Sein (being) 35, 65 hebräischen Poesie Herder) 171n12,
self–consciousness 78–9, 85, 87, 89, 100, 136, 175n24, 250
140–1, 148n1, 150, 217 Stimmen der Völker in Liedern (Herder) 216
self–criticism 42–3 Sturm und Drang movement 136, 204
self–feeling (Selbstgefühl) 85–6, 177 subjective philosophy 34–5, 36
self–thinking 46, 47 substance 39, 40, 46, 54, 57–61, 63, 70, 80, 89
self–understanding 85, 90, 99, 177–9, 181–2 Sur l’apperception et son influence sur nos
sensation 83, 132–3, 136, 137, 142, 174–5 jugements (Sulzer) 85–6
and cognition or reason 57, 84–5, 86, 89, Sur l’immortalité de l’âme, considérée
109, 139, 148–9, 151–2, 173n17, 189, physiquement (Sulzer) 81–2
212, 217–18 sympathy (Einfühlung) 160–2, 166–7, 173–5,
sense, inner/outer 33–4 174n21, 176, 177, 178
senses 65–6
hearing 58, 140n25 teleology 41, 112, 121–3, 129, 170, 212,
sight 58 213, 220
touch 58, 64 theology 756, 77–8, 186, 188, 189, 190, 200
sensibility 95, 100 Theory of Justice, A (Rawls) 19–21
aesthetic 99–103 theory/praxis 39, 43, 50
vs. irritability 73, 76–7, 83–4, 87, 88–9 This Too a Philosophy of History for the
sensuousness 35–6, 49, 56, 65, 212 Formation of Humanity (Herder), see Auch
as unanalyzable 34, 217 eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung
sentimentalism 173n18, 228, 234 der Menschheit
Siècle de Louis XIV, Le (Voltaire) 204 thought–force: souls and 56, 57, 63–4, 65
 GENERAL INDEX

toleration 247–8, 253 Versuch über das Sein (Essay on Being

Traité des animaux (Condillac) 131 Herder) 41, 65
translation 99, 104 metaphysics/anthropology relationship 31–2
Treatise on Man (Helvétius) 157n18 Volk (people) 37, 43, 241, 242, 246, 251–2
Treatise on Sensibility and Irritability Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen
(Haller) 79 Seele (On the Cognition and Sensation of
Treatise on the Origin of Language (Herder), see the Human Soul, Herder) 57, 73, 82–4,
Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache 156n, 171n13, 174n20, 175–6, 175n24,
Triebe der Thiere (Reimarus), see Allgemeine 177n28, 178n32, 180, 181, 218
Betrachtungen über die Triebe der Thiere, Vom Geist der hebräischen Poesie (The Spirit of
hauptsächlich über ihre Kunsttriebe Hebrew Poetry, Herder) 175n24, 250
Turks 247 Von den empfindlichen und reizbaren Theilen
two–world hypothesis, Kant 58–9 des menschlichen Körpers (Dissertation on
the Sensible and Irritable Parts of Animals
Über die neue Politik (Claudius) 208–9 Haller) 75–6
Über die neuere deutsche Literatur (Fragments Von den verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen
on Recent German Literature, Herder) 97, (Kant) 216n15
167, 168–9, 170, 176–7, 212, 235–6 Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der
Über Leibnitzens Grundsätze von der Natur und Weltgeschichte (Hegel) 208
Gnade (On Leibniz’s Principles of Nature vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natürlichen
and Grace Herder) 61–2 Religion, Die (The Noblest Truths of Natural
understanding 40, 49, 153, 170–1, 176–7, 179, Religion, Reimarus) 78, 86, 128, 132
180–1
and explanation 106–23 Wahrheit und Methode (Gadamer) 220
healthy/scholarly 36, 37, 41, 43–4, 47 Wie die Philosophie zum Besten des Volks
United Nations’ Universal Declaration of allgemeiner und nützlicher werden kann
Human Rights 225, 226 (How philosophy can become more
Universal Natural History and Theory of the universal and useful for the benefit of the
Heavens (Kant) 55, 226 people, Herder) 2, 32, 82, 171, 187
usefulness 41
Zionism 251–4
Verlobung in St. Domingo, Die (Kleist) 209 Zum Sinn des Gefühls (On the sense of touch,
Vernunftlehre (Reimarus) 128, 133n15 Herder) 64, 177n28