THE REVIEW OF POLITICS humanist would perceive as perilous theology rather than merely legal provocation. The impact of Curtright’ study extends beyond the history of an individual ‘man. Particularly striking, for example, is his observation that the classical thetoric books used to train poets were the same books used to train lawyers— demonstrating the union of legal and liberal study in carly ‘modem education. For Curtright, revisionist scholarship that distinguishes between More's roles as humanist and lawyer imposes anachronistic div- ‘ons between the disciplines (95). In the same way, Curtright argues for a humanist marriage between faith and the liberal arts. He notes that the revi- sionists with whom he spars often have political stakes in arguing that the “arbane, witty advocate of social justice” is not compatible with the “har- dened hammer of heretics” (3). Unlike Curtright, their approaches seem tunable or unwilling to see how the secular ancl the religious could comp- ement each other in a historical context. Yet The One Thomas More is neither reactionary nor hagiographic. If Curtright does, as it were, put the historical More “back together again, More's character is not the same as before, As Curtright reiterates in his cor cluding analysis of More's prison letters, More remains a complex zind ‘whose moral conscience synthesizes his training as scholar and lawyer. ‘More’ final refusal to take the Oath of Supremacy is rooted in an understand- ing of both “the legality of the oath and an individual obligation to seek and find right judgment through study” (200). In the end, Curtright’s new More ‘embodies an interdependent philosophical network of Christianity, human- ism, and statecraft Kathleen Bossert ‘Notre Dame of Maryland University, Baltimore HUMANITAT Vicki A. Spencer: Herder’s Political Thought: A Stuly of Language, Culture, and Community. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Pp. xi, 354.) eno or7sposerasstan727 Vicki A. Spencer's Herer’s Potitioal Thought: A Study on Language, Culture, and Community is an excellent survey of the political ideas of Johann Gottfried Herder, a late-eighteenth-century historian, translator, educator, and clergy- man, whose background influence on long-standing philosophical debates over pluralism, community, nationalism, language, and identity has only lately come to be widely accepted. To have Spencer's readings of Herder col- lected together into one sustained| interpretive argument should come as apleasant surprise for long-time scholars of Herder; those who have seriously pursued the secondary scholarship on the political implications of his philos- ophy will no doubt recollect numerous essays (published in both English- and German-language journals and collections) from Spencer, dating, back ‘rough the 1990s. To see her grasp of Herder’s ideas and their significance laid out in full at long last is a true delight. Spencer does not approach Herder as a philosopher, and so while she is familiar with and makes reference to much recent work on Herder’s philos- ophy of mind, history, and God, resolving all the perplexities and inconsisten- cies of Herder’s often synthesis-resistant arguments is not her primary goal. In this she is, perhaps, a more faithful student of Herder and his first great English-language proponent, Isaiah Berlin—who emphasized above all Herder’s plaralism and his denial of uniform standards of happiness across time and space—than may be the case for many of us who became fascinated with his ideas through Charles Taylor and others of a less pluralistic bent. Itis certainly true that one can look at Herder’s writings and find in them a consistent thread: namely, the common ability human beings have to articu- late through language and culture the ethical principle of Humanitit, and by 0 doing broadly contribute to its realization. The question is how to make sense of Hiomanitit as a standard with a universal moral (even Christian) content—a claim which Spencer rightly notes sets Herder in opposition to Berlin’ preferred label of him as a “relativist” (see 100-101, 168)—while also taking seriously Herder’s famous insistence that, as Spencer quotes hhim, “each nation has its center of happiness in itself” (72). Doing so requires making various, use of Herder’s many writings on historical development, organic anthropology, and religion, and even then one would be hard presséd to call the result a rigorous whole. Spencer's preference (which is perhaps unintentional) is to downplay these larger questions, situate Humenitét in more individual than cultural or national terms~as she puts it, “individual self-realization and authenticity of the self” (115)— and thus enable us to set aside some of Herder’s more ambitious and ‘ontological claims about human sociality and reasoning, and get on to his ‘contributions about important political questions. Those who want to better understand Herder as a whole, particularly as one for whom theology was a major and abiding concem, this interpretive move by Spencer is perhaps somewhat disappointing. The resulting chapters, though, when Spencer digs deep into Herder’s scattered comments about government and its relationship to culture, may make even the most ‘hedgelog-inclined of us pleased that Spencer set the deeper philosophical matters aside. Spencer's primary lens for evaluating Herder’s thoughts on polities are the liberal-communitarian debates of the 1950s and 1990s. She defines Herder asa kind of “Iiberal-communitarian,” for whom the moral priority of community attachments is, above all, 2 function of the interpenetrative ‘operation of language and reason in the construction of human identity‘THE REVIEW OF POLITICS “Society [according to Herder] is not the motive force for the origin of language, but the human infant in its weakness cannot survive without others. Our necessary social interaction therefore provides the stimulation for the development of a language of communication” (40). Spencer’s reading of Herder’s seminal study, Treatise om the Origin of Language, is superb, and the case she makes for seeing the balance which it posits between the innate powers of the individual and their collective, historical development into a language capable of culture building as crucial to Herder’s whole project is a persuasive one. By grounding her reading of Herder’s account of cultural development and attachment so thoroughly in what he presented as individual processes (however historically mediated) of linguistic realization, Spencer’s argument remains compelling as she moves into more audacious interpretive territory —namely, her downplaying of nationalism in Herder’s thought. It is, of course, widely recognized among Herder scholars that one cannot easily associate his many references lo “national character” and such to his daims about the Volk: that Herder’s cultural communities, which he thinks to be so sportant and 0 worthy of protection, are not the same as nation-states is ‘well understood. Still, given the way Hlerder’s own writings slide back and forth between these terms (something which Spencer forthrightly acknow!- edges, 129-31), it is often hard for those struggling to fully work out Herder’s insights not to tum to nations asa category with a certain historically essential, even metaphysical, significance for his philosophy of identity. This Spencer strongly argues against—and by so doing, she supplies a fuller case for that reading of Herder which presents him as an enemy not only of imperialism (143-49) but of most kinds of national centralization as well While other scholars have noted the similarities between Herder’s views and republican or even anarchic communitarian claims, Spencer's presen- tation is the strongest depiction of this reading yet: Following Montesquieu, and like modern libetal-communitarians, he places his faith in local communities as the basis for public participation, ie identifies the lack of public spirit in his own society as party due to the influence of those who believe that trae citizenship lies beyond local com~ munities, with cvil servants placing their faith in dynastic empires and philosophers supporting the notion of universal citizenship. ... In Herder’ political thought, the state is by no means a universal necessity for even a desirable unit of association. His form of republicanism does rot require the state in its modezn form, but he recognizes the need for some form of unifying association among the constituent parts of a ‘whole, Far from being absolute opposites, Herder envisages unity and diversity as two sides of the same interactive process: “In this law: to cffect many things in one, and to combine the greatest variety with an ‘unconstrained uniformity: consists the height of beauty.” (164-66), Spencer's account and defense of Herder’s argument for local communities is a strong one, but it admittedly depends upon the above-implied balancing,out ws sits act, Somehow, the public groupings capable of sustaining the natural and his- torical development of a language and culture had to allow for opportunities {for participation and discourse, while nonetheless remaining. in some associa- tional connection to one another, reflecting some kind of underlying “uni- formity” (though not, Spencer thinks, a “uniform constitutionalism,”" 202). This argument Jeads Spencer into speculations about the match between Herder’s ideas and the contemporary reality of immigration and multicultur- alism, speculations which seem strained at times. Stil, the case she makes for imagining the use Herder’s philosophy could be put to in morally validating even multilingual states—something that most readings of Herder have thought impossible; whatever else Herder wanted out of a community, it hhas been assumed, it was an essential connection between the Volk and their language!—is intriguing, and deserves further thought Early in her book, Spencer admits that Herder never produced “one major text to include in the philosophical canon’ (20), though she insists that isn’t a valid reason for his ideas to have been so rarely incorporated into the debates over the Wester tradition. This is something on which all Herder scholars can agree—we rarely actually need complete philosophical arguments to be persuaded of valuable ideas. Herder has many such ideas; Spencer very ably elucidates many of them here. Even if her explorations open up questions which require, if Herder is to be taken fully seriously, more philosophical sophistication than her book provides, she is to be commended for her insightful readings. This is a fine book, one which all scholars of the ‘eighteenth-century roots of contemporary debates over community and iden- tity ought to take seriously. Russell Arben Fox Friends University BEYOND RATIONALIST DOGMATISM Nicholas Tampio: Kantian Courage: Advancing the Bnlightenment in Contemporary Political Theory. (New Yorks Foréhham University Press, 2012. Pp. xiv, 255.) det 0r7SomstBOOT! Nicholas Tampio's Kantian Courage isa stellar example of what is best in the field of contemporary political theory. The book consists mainly in a series of ‘engagements with the moral-political thought of Kant and Kantians, yet it refuses to fall into the scholarly trap of a politically irrelevant Kantian “scho- lasticism” (195, 50). Its central thesis is that, precisely as true heirs of the Enlightenment (of which Kant is perhaps “the most profound and influential” representative}, we—that is, “Euro-American liberal-left political theorists and actors” —are compelled by Kant’s “critical ethos” to modify elements of