H_'"~""'","""'-.J_.""."'''''''~'''" __ ~'_~''-'''''_~~_'_''''-'''.''''''~~_'''''''"''",.~'';''_;'>'"'''''_J';''''''''''''~,_~.''''p.,",,).'''~''''''"''~''"''~~~_'':''''''''' _ _''_''",'_''''''',,""-'_,_",....,"'''.~''..,;.,...·,'''v).''~''''...,;,.. ,~\>-! ••"..'..,.~''''>,''.....,.,k........'',<HoI<"'~,..,.""_J.O,',"'. . ,"'~.~ ,..l'.'.,....""'A __ ~,.,_.........,..,,><'.,.-;.'_"""h.....

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Kant, Herder, and Psychology 191

was materialist or empiricist, derived from various sources in France and

England, among them Bacon, Locke, La Mcttrie, Albrecht von Haller,
Helvetius, Condillac, and Leibniz. These werc commonly known in Ger­
Kant, Herder, and Psychology many, particularly the descriptions of the nervous systems from Haller's
physiology, his "mechanistic materialism." Perhaps the exemplary
KATHERINE ARENS mechanistic psychology was La Mettrie's L'Homme Machine (Man a
Machine) of 1747/8, cxemplary for materialism, if not the most influential
text. Despite their limitations as physiology, work like La Mettrie's and
Herder is known for integrating the physiology and psychology of sense Haller's opened a nCw model of mind in the world. Herder begins where
perception into his historicism, probably under the influence of La Mettrie earlier empiricists ended, since he takes over a strong account of nerve
and Albrecht von Haller. The results of this integration are most familiar in action in explaining the motion and life of the body and mind. Yet Herder
the 1778 Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele (On shifts the model decisively in moving from physiology in the narrow sense
Cognition and Sensibility of the Human Soul; drafts back to 1774) and to a psychology which will be associated with anthropology. Herder's
Plastik (The Plastic Arts, reaching back in draft form to 1768). Later, in his work on psychology takes over programs from these sources that were
Ideen zur Philosophie del' Geschichte del' Menschheit (Ideas on the Philoso­ neither rationalist, nor strictly derivable from mechanism or vitalism.
phy of the History of Mankind; 1784-1891), a form of psychology was In the 1769 notes for his Plastik of 1778, Herder speaks expressly of
crucial to his delineations of humans in the cosmos. This was by no means psychology; "6. On Sensing the Beautiful, and on Psychology." Adhering
the only psychology of the period. Herder's contemporary, Kant, also to an equation of muscles and nerve energy, he stresses that movement in

addressed psychology - in his Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht nature causes sensations in the individual mind: "In Nature, all must
(Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View; 1789, drafts back to 1772). possess life for it to move and for me to feel it" (99). These sensations, as
Despite Herder's disagreements with Kant, both share certain perspectives transmitted energy, are then brough t together by the mind through associa­
which set them apart from their sources and which initiate an approach to tion (100). This is a transfer of life energy between two living objects
the human sciences influential throughout the nineteenth century. through the mediation of the senses, a transfer which vouches for the
In order to clarify these innovations, the conceptual psychology that connection of body and soul asserted most eloquently by La Mettrie. For
initiated will be examined as a scientific discourse. This is a model for Herder, motion of life is itself an indication of the soul of an object ("Leben
procedures and terminology representing a synthesis of empiricism and die Ankiindigung del' See/e,» 100), showing its connection with material
idealism, a paradigm initiated but not consciously fulfilled by Herder, Kant, creation which will ground cognitions. This restatement linking body and
and their contemporaries. Nonetheless, Kant and Herder opened the soul opens the way to a more integrated model of materialism and mind
discourse space for a paradigm which was to influence the development of than La Mettrie offered, while still relying on his account.
the human sciences through the nineteenth century - they redefined the This comes to fruition in Herder's 1778 On Cognition and Sensibility of
central terms on which a modern, more relativistic model of mind was to be the Human Soul, the notes for which reach back to 1774 and 1775. Only in
built bv their students and followers. these later texts is eighteenth-century rationalism decisively overcome with
a move towards individualism. Here, Herder states that his psychology is a
"striking parable" about humanity (170). His metaphor, this theory, draws
Herder's Psychology on Haller to begin with a stimulus (Reiz). The stimuli from entities in the
world transmit affects to the fibers of the organic being via nerves and
The psychology of the eighteenth century was polarized, On the one hand, muscles (again virtually equated); these affects are differentiated by degree,
it focused on the individual, as a form of rationalism familiar from Wolff's not type, of transmitted stimulus. But at this point a great difference in
work, stressing the faculties of the mind. A second focus for psychology approach from the empiricists emerges. Herder construes a group of muscle
·-'''''_''',""''_~W''''''''''':'_4''"'.t:.-IoIr,.¥''''''''·4''''''''''''M+'<' _ _ '''''''';''',":Mb''''';',,w,i_,[~ ':"~~"""""""""';\~;""""~""""'~)"'" ,,' ........,. . . . ._'''''_'''''~>{.!.·''"''''''''i'''"'..."'''''',~.......J;;Ij\.w......_~>:<~{_,~............~'_u:Ul:-.>-..wj>'''''''''~.;.._'''''''....t-.."~''_~,>o~''<......~,~''""'.:......,,...w""~"',~, __ .,_"
..·. ."""-.:tk....okI~~_,.....,,,'''',''&''''''''~'''''' ... _I~_·', ",_""",C""'_·'_~_~

192 Katherine Arens Kant, Herder, and Psychology 193

and nerve fibers as an ego (feb), a unity or unified entity driven by desire, rationalist or early idealist psychology). The "dear and distinct ideas"
love, and needs to move beyond its isolation in feeling: «An entity seeks traditionally favored as scientific criteria could make psychology a science
unification, dissolution, joining" (173). The ego is a differentiated center to of principles, but they do not tie the mind into the body physiologically and
this organic receptivity, to its pain and passion, stretching out towards or so ignore a crux in the constitution of humanity they cannot define a
recoiling from another entity. Thus Herder asserts the unity of the organ­ psychology (180). Instead, Herder traces the constitution of the "ego" as a
ism as a mediator between stimulus and world - between the memory of the regional ontology with specified strengths and weaknesses (Miingel, 181),
individual and the newness of the outside world. with an individual life history and reaction patterns, not only cognitions.
This is decisively different from the older model of the physiologists, Herder thus moves beyond empirical physiology in stressing the coherency
which was not concerned with the individual except as a product or echo of and individuality of a person, not a generic or typical human. Herder
the environment. Instead, Herder's individual acts to reach out towards that presents a "Pathology of the Soul," tying a life history to a specific
environment and contribute to its own formation. An individual's move­ constitution (182). Here physiognomical character types such as poets are
ment and sensations originate out of a life rationale, not from an overarch­ tied to experience (Erfabrung, 184).
ing plan of organic nature. Thus while a being may be motivated at first Herder's model also allows for change and regional dependencies. New
its reactions to the environment, Herder stresses an individual's developing to a mind ("waves of sensation and feeling") from outside will affect
life history. Each individual affect (pain, terror, love) represents stimuli the soul ("a structure ofnemes," 185). Divine nature has provided a panoply
transmitting energy to the organism (Kraft, 173). This life energy, like of experience, but we remain relative ontologies, relying on our senses,
kinetic energy, ties us together and builds our individual life histories. which may betray us. Nonetheless, these senses are necessary to the
Herder assumed the most powerful facets of the older model, yet he stresses development of knowledge and personality innate ideas are sterile:
that nature's cosmic energy places the individual in a reciprocity with a "Internally, we know nothing other than ourselves; without senses, the
whole universal life without controlling him or her (174). This life force world would be to us a knotted tangle of dark sensations; for and in us, the
penetrates all aspects of life without controlling it, through the agency of Creator would bave to distinguish, designate, and spell everything out"
the nerves and other Usensitive fibers" (176). (188). Thus Herder's individuals are historically contingent in a way that
An individual does not only experience, s/he is also the center of a set of neither idealists nor empiricists can be.
cognitions, as the individual body unifies stimuli into representations Herder's individuals will differ, as nations and groups do. The panoply
(Vorstellung, 177). Each unified set is not a result of a direct correspondence of experience unifies in each individual differently, according to the sensa­
between inner represenation and outer presentation, as pure Empiricism tions from different senses, resulting in different systems of thought:
assumed. In Herder's model, an individual mediates as a unified entity
Thus we continue; no matter how different the contributions of various
registering and editing this transfer: "The inner human, with all its dark senses to thinking and feeling may be, everything flows together in our
powers, sensations, and drives, is nothing more than a unity" (178). The interior humanity. We shall mostly call the depth of this integration
motor center of an individual is life guided by this set of representations imagination. It does not, however, consist only of images, but also of
one spirit, one unity with a drive towards fulfillment (and probably to words, signs, and sensations - often those for which
perfection), known as character as well as mind. If this inner unity is, for have no name ... Out of all this, the soul weaves its raiment,
sensuous universe. (189)
example, characterized by a tendency to rage, the personality will be like
Achilles, characterized by a certain intensity and strategy for processing This is neither empiricism nor pure idealism in Leibniz's sense. Herder's
stimuli. Its shape will skew future cognition and affects. Thus, unlike his individual soul requires tbe sense data it can absorb from the universe; it can
predecessors, Herder's individual is a regional ontology, not merely a filter even be idiosyncratic. His psychology is not a study of mind, but rather
to be progressively refined for clear perception of the universe. soul - Herder extends the idealist definition of mind towards the modern
Herder's psychology is thus the science of the inner unity of individuals notion of psyche, including more than conscious potentials wbicb can be
and their interface with the world (explicitly distinguished from other revealed in dreams or visions (189).
194 Katherine Arens
In Herder's model, the imagination (Einbildungskraft) is the staging
area in the mind for stimuli from our senses, together with what is
preserved by memory in us. The nervous system enables this, while at the
same time functioning as the source of passions recalling historical
experience and transferring intellectual energy back into physiological
(190). The body affects \he soul, and vice versa (in a "divine play of
harmony," 191). Yet the individual's soul or mind is a mixture of dark and
clear energies which constitute feeling, thinking, and the soul itself. The
soul is thus neither material nor immaterial in the strict sense (192).
Herder exploits this model of the mind as system to refute the idea of
"faculties of mind." For example, knowing and volition (Erkennen und
Wollen), fall together as reactions to sensations (193). The individual unifies
experience under the aegis of the ego or the individual (" das Selbst"), but
not as a "pure" function or "abstract egoism" (194). The individual defines a
locus to amalgamate impressions stemming from any category of sense data.
Yet this organization does not stem totally from that individual: prior
experience of the world conditions later ones. Herder avoids solipcism to
tred between rationalism and empiricism. In so doing, Herder has redefined
the idea of faculties (Vermogen) as names for the affects or abilities that arise
out of this dark area of the whole soul - as life energies, not topographical
locations:
One is accustomed to attribute a number of secondary powers to the soul:
imagination and prescience, creativity, and memory ... One will never
understand these powers if they are considered abstractly from above, as
ideas residing in the soul, or if one divides them up into compartments
and considers them individually. Even in imagination and memory,
recollection and prescience, a single divine power of our soul must reveal
itself: "inner, self-reflexive activity, consciousness, apperception." To this
degree, a human has understanding, conscience, will, freedom - the rest is
only arriving waves on the great world sea (195).
All of these supposedly different powers of the soul are for Herder
one: "Understanding, apperception with an inner consciousness" - a radical
break with eighteenth-century psychology to stress inner unity of process
(196).
The medium through which this unification is effected is language, its
capacity for making signs or images (Bezeichnung, 197). Supposedly pure
thought is thus restricted since it only exits through signs, through contact
with the outside world. A psyche thus becomes what it is, it is not born a
particular way: its development depends not only on its experiences, but
Kant, Herder, .no Psychology 195
even on the symbols available it is individual, even idiosyncratic (198).
Similarly, its knowledge cannot be a priori; it ties into the "sensing, loving
and feeling" of the individual, dependant on a particular age and state.
(Unfortunately, Herder generalized this into universal harmony and
humanistic love; 200.)
With this, Herder enters the realm of historicity in thought and begins
to tie psychology to anthropology. Like individuals, families and nations
have thought-styles particular to them because of the group's shared
sensibility (Denkart, 210). In more modern terms, a style of thought results
from a similarity in input, yet Herder's sensus communis refers to a general
style of thought, not a levelled type of person (allgemeine Denkart, 213)­
he is avoiding the reductionism of which pure empiricism is suspect.
Herder's model also accounts for situations where progress is blocked.
Since thought can affect feeling and the individual's equilibrium, one can be
trained into stupidity. Similarly, dead customs maintained by the group can
affect (or retard) the forms of its thinking and feeling; even education can
contribute to intellectual idiosyncrasy. Cultural inheritance crucially deter­
mines the newer members of a group, for reason, sensation, and language
must all work together if thought and minds exist in commerce (218).
Herder was beyond both strict empiricists or idealists, amalgamating
their tenets into a cultural-historical model. At the end of his manuscript, he
reiterates that thinking and feeling belong together, that "pure thought" is a
fiction, that symbolic acts of mind belong together (feelings and dreams),
that thinking is a situation of this world, and that thought must be based on
human life. His drafts show other fonnulations stressing that man is
constrained by the body, but not determined: "He receives sensations
within the constant horizon of his body"
Herder's model is carried over into the first book of the Ideen zur
Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit of 1784/5. Commensurate with
his principles for psychology, Herder begins with the physical organization
of the world and then proceeds to the physical organization of bodies - first
animals, then mankind. Humans are equipped physically and in brain
structure to use tools and develop a civilization in the way that individuals
cannot; the body contributes to knowledge in significant fashion under the
participation of reason (Book4, § 1; 115). Yet, as Herder's earlier model
stressed, only through speech (and the physical organization necessary for
it) can reason awake from «slumber" and become a tool, a "living energy"
that effects the development of reason (138). Language in turns allows
freedom to develop, since with it, humans can suppress instincts (§ 4, 14Z).
196 Katherine Arens
Most importantly, language facilitates acttvltles and accommodates the
division of labor that society presupposes, including religion and utopistic
thought (159 ff.).
Herder even expands the core notions of his earlier model. In the Fifth
Book of the Ideen, Herder describes a living force (Kraft), which resides in
the organs but which is not the organ itself - a too vitalistic formulation for
modern science (174 ff.). Still, Herder again describes the internal integrity
of perception. Within an individual, the perception of a thing is greatly
different from that thing itself, since any perception is assimilated using
symbols stemming from the education of the mind/soul since childhood:
"In short, an inner spiritual human is formed in uS ... which has its own
nature and which uses the body only as a tool according to its own nature
... " (184). Ideas are preserved and used by this inner person through the
physical person. Ultimately, this is a facilitation for man's future perfection
and development. The peoples of the eanh evolve their organization as a
result of their geographic traditions - they internalize the inheritance, habit,
tradition and interaction patterns that those climates require. The great
ponion of the I deen is devoted to a characterization of various human
groups on this basis.
Despite the distance he has come from his sources, Herder is not
completely "modern" or "scientific" in the Ideen, no matter how modern
his model has begun to be. The shift between his earlier essays on
psychology and the I deen is towards the teleological, towards the older
utopistic diction of rationalism (a possible explanation for Kant's hostile
1775 review in the Allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung; Clark, 317). However, at
the core of Herder's work was a new, very modern conception of the
psyche, including not only reason but also sensations. Unfortunately, this
model of psychology was not what Herder was most famous (or infamous)
for. Herder's borrowings from rationalism and empiricism still affect our
readings of his works.
Nonetheless, Herder's integration of mind and work in a reciprocal
relationship helped to establish a new psychology for the nineteenth
century. This psychology is by no means empiricist, despite borrowings
from eighteenth-century physiology. Neither is it idealist or rationalist,
despite Herder's prevailing hopes for the betterment of mankind. Instead,
Herder highlighted the experience and learning of the individual as they
affect mind. This is the conceptual psychology which was to be the
prevailing model for the nineteenth century, the model shared bv Kant
despite his overt disagreements with Herder.
Kant, Herder, and Psychology 197
Kant's Psychology
Just as Herder's rationalism obscures his psychology, Kant's reputation
from the Critiques obscures other facets of his work, particularly his
contribution to conceputal psychology in the Anthropology from a Prag­
matic Point of View. Yet he goes further in establishing the discourse of
conceptual psychology than Herder (even though the Ideen is a more
formal anthropology). Kant's Anthropology was a set of university lectures
first delivered in the academic year 1772-3, and on and off until 1795--6
(published in 1798, with a second edition in 1800). There is evidence that
they were Kant's own attempt at popularization - a demonstration applying
the principles of his Critiques to one panicular academic study. Today, they
represent an important facet of his continuing project which does not fit
contemporary philosophers' stereotypes.
Like Herder's work, Kant's text rests in an uneasy place with respect to
pure idealist philosophy on the one side and an empirical study of natural
history on the other. Despite Kant's rejection of Herder's empiricist
anthropology, there is still reason to suppose that Kant knew that they
were, in fact, opening another field: psychology, an empirical science of
mind based on the idealist model of pure mental processing. These lectures
are Kant's popularization of his theory of cognition, following the dicta
from the Critiques to show how anthropologists might clarify their
methodological premises and develop their discipline. A "secondary" result
of these efforts was an extended model for psychology.
Like Herder's work, Kant's psychology does not deal with first princi­
ples of mind, but rather with mind in the world. Like anthropology, it is a
historical discipline with a necessary empirical component. Consequently,
psychology and anthropology will be linked, but will not follow identical
procedures. To critique their premises, Kant first identifies their specific
direction of investigation. An anthropologist begins from a human's physi­
cal being, perhaps to conclude with statements on innate human nature. A
psychologist will start with mind or soul and end with behavior in the
world. These two disciplines are thus coherent applications of the epis­
temological achievements of Transcendental Idealism.
Kant's discussion of anthropology, then, stretches his cognitive
philosophy into the realm of the social sciences, and, as such, lays extended
groundwork for conceptual psychology. Kant's preface confirms his pro­
gram of drawing a systematic science of humanity, from either a physiologi­
calor a pragmatic perspective: "Physiological knowledge of humanity
198 Katherine Arens
encompasses that which Nature makes of humans; pragmatic knowledge of
humanity encompasses that which each freely-acting being makes of him­
self, or can and should make of himseW (3). More precisely, pragmatic
anthropology aids to expand memory - a discipline spanning the individual
and the historical. This program thus parallels the Critiques in delineating
the parameters of a new science focusing on the limits of human develop­
ment as regulated by social intercourse. As in Herder's case, this is not
merely physiology, but a science that recognizes historical thoughts and
experiences as limits on development, including nurturance and nature.
Kant breaks his Anthropology into two parts, an "Anthropological
Didactic" and an "Anthropological Characterization," of which the first is
crucial here. The "Didactic" discusses the interface between mankind and
the world, followed by a taxonomy of various historical or anthropological
groups (of lesser interest in the present context). Kant's psychology is
strictly differentiated from the idealist progam of the Critiques, since it
describes the activities of mind as part of existence in the world, not in the
abstract. Here is Kant's key break with the faculty psychology he has
inherited, the point of connection between his anthropological thought and
his epistemology and his particular advance over Herder.
The essence of Kant's somewhat more developed psychology is his
explanation of the cognitive capacity of man (Erkenntnisvermogen) as it
relates to appetition and aversion (Lust und Unlust) and to volition
(Begehrungsvermogen) - that is, how the categories in the individual
produce real, historical patterns of thought under the influence of experi­
ence and individual preference. This clearly parallels Herder's program,
while expanding a description of mind. Moreover, Kant provides a piece left
out of the Critiques, discussing not general knowledge, to which all beings
have access (that is metaphysical; 15), but utilitarian knowledge, extending
beyond the purview of the individual, supported by contact with the group
and with the individual. As already anticipated in Herder's work, this is the
point at which idealism necessarily affiliates itself with a restricted empiric­
ism. Utilitarian knowledge only emerges with our ability to take conscious
control of the products of our mental activity, the "representations~ or
"ideas" (Vorstellungen, 17 ff.). Yet as in the Critiques, Kant still stresses that
obscure representations derived out of the manifold of sensory experience
must be distinguished from each other to attain the clearness and distinct­
ness necessary for knowledge.
In general, the individual's path to knowledge leads through the three
mental activities of attention, abstraction, and reflection (attentio, abstratio,
Kant, Herder1 and P$ychology 199
and reflexio; 27). First, individuals focus on information through their
sensory abilities (Auffassungsvermogen), then they develop patterns
through differentiation (Absonderungsvermogen), and finally expand on
the properties of these patterns through reflection on them (Oberlegungs­
vermOgen). This model clarifies the intuitive consciousness of the indi­
vidual and leads to discursive consciousness - an internal and clear percep­
tion which may be communicated. In this way, sensuous intuition (the part
affected by the outside world) is turned into internal knowledge.
Yet, as this process continues and a mass of clear and distinct knowledge
has been produced, this knowledge constitutes around a reference point, an
"ego," assumed to be at the base of all decisions (31). Kant is therefore
discussing more than a purely ideal ego here. He proceeds to psychology
and thus to the individual ego as it appears in the world of senses and
history - to the appearance of an ego as empirical evidence accrues through
history. Only through the continued contact of mind and world can a
concept of the self be developed, just as any other knowledge is. By
distinguishing between mind and the ego in this way, Kant began develop-
a psychology. His theory of mind remains idealist, focusing on the pure
activity of mind. Yet his psychology represents a compromise berween
idealism and empiricism: he tries to evolve a model mediating berween the
activity of mind and the constituted historical knowledge which is the ego
or self - virtually a modern psyche.
This ego is still tied to the primary mental agency of the categories.
However, in the context of Kant's psychology, the categories represent no
more than a set of first-order strategies for perception and conceptualiza­
tion perhaps for orientation in the world as in time and space, for
example. But higher-order knowledge and thought patterns distinctive of
man in culture evolve; they stem from a reciprocal interaction of the senses
and the world, anchored around the relative point of the individual ego. For
such historical and cultural knowledge to develop, an extended source of
data is required. In this case, the senses constitute the horizon for extended
interactions of world and mind and higher-order knowledge. The senses
and developed cultural knowledge, then, do not cause disorder, deception,
or errors, as they had in the realm of the categories of pure mind. Instead,
mind and world stand in a reciprocal relationship through the agency of the
senses not as regards the forms of knowledge, but definitely in terms of
the content of knowledge. While acting to expand knowledge, the senses do
impose horizons on knowledge, particularly as the group of individuals in
community grows and pragmatic knowledge is required. For example,
200 Katherine Arens
illusions can be generated in a misuse of the power of the senses, as when
one tries to use sense data to defeat the power of the understanding (41).
In psychology, however, the activities of mind to be analyzed are more
complex than they are in first philosophy. Psychology must account for
both outer and inner senses, or the ability to form representations based on
either external or internal data (Kant's "senses" are regions of data available
to the processing of the categories, to the fundamental activities of mind).
Aside from the traditional inner and outer worlds, psychology must also
account for an affective sense based on the history of an individual's
experience, termed by Kant an "interior sense" (sensus interior, 47). This
third "sense" represents an individual mind's susceptibility to repeat or
favor certain representations, due to memories and prior historical condi­
tripartite division of senses, more radical than Herder's, anticipates
the model used by Ernst Mach a century later: it recognizes that the
knowledge tied to each of these spheres may be of a fundamentally different
type, unified only in the activity of cognition itself. Kant also defines
personality vis-a-vis mind, as a product of the interactions among these
spheres of knowledge. This model is crucial for conceptual psychology.
Inner experience is constituted of two parts: cognitive processing (as pure
apperception through the categories), and the "play of thoughts" attributed
to "inner intuition," the data of all three senses as constituted in the ego:
"... what he undergoes, to what degree he is affected by his own play of
thoughts" (57). This inner sense is not anthropological; it is not like a soul,
part of the human persona. Instead, it is utterly individual, p$ychological; it
depends on the particular character (Gemut) of an individual who believes
he perceives an individuality within him- or herself. This "inner sense"
encompasses both reflection and the inner intuition of data from within and
without - the general ability to constitute sensations into inner experience
and a world view. The study of this inner sense is psychology (relating to
both mind and world), and not first philosophy.
With this discussion of "inner sense," Kant has evolved a psychological
model, encompassing not only the fundamental agencies of mind or
thought of first philosophy, but also the feedback effects of knowledge
acquired in history. The categories which were the subject of the first
Critique direct the fundamental activities of logical thought. Here in the
Anthropology, Kant adds the role of inner sense to the model, classifying
the senses' input into the mind. When such input accumulates, other
phenomena emerge: the individual ego, and the identity of a cultural group
Kant, Herder, and Psychology 201
in its thought patterns, both as larger combinations of sense knowledge
processed in the mind's interactions with the world. Once the individual
ego develops with established patterns of knowledge, larger mental con­
structs emerge sustained by groups of individuals in a culture. That is, Kant
extends his "Copernican revolution" from the Critique$ and discusses the
production of representation under the constraints of history.
The individual mind is able to construct ("invent") in three modes: in
space (imaginatio plastica); in time (imaginatio aS$Ociam); and with respect
to affinities, to "the common origin of representations from each other"
(affinitas) (76). Each of these capacities, tied to the activities of the
categories, represents a way in which the individual's imagination forms
representations. These representations can either remain confined to the
mind or be expressed in the outside world: they can be in the mind as a set
of associations or patterns of representations that fit together (personal
knowledge or theories); or they can be expressed in concrete form (as in the
case of an artist who generates figures).
This productive ability of mind is pragmatic, representing psychological
values; it is based on an individual's capacity to remember, which enables
the mind to form patterns. Through "ingenious memory" or "judicious
memory," the individual adapts patterns to particular needs. These needs
are communicated and will reflect both individual experience and a culture,
because each ego will be habituated to the historical experience of the group
as well (78 ff., 86 ff.). Habituation will affect the mental processing of the
categories, explaining psychological activities such as foresight and volition.
These phenomena of individual mind arise when a historical depth of
experience is added through memory to the capacities of pure mind. They
can skew understanding, in its production of rules; reason, in favoring
particular patterns of relations; and judgment, in idiosyncratically weighted
assessments of rule applications (108).
This is an anthropological description of the mind as it develops over
historical time, a three-part model assessing not only intellectual growth,
but also psychological growth. To a greater degree than Herder, then, Kant
relativizes and limits horizons on cognition by considering historical
experience as productive of idiosyncratic affects or volition in an individual
or group. In this way, his model of the transcendental mind is adapted to
accommodate those individual activities of mind which may block develop­
ment and keep an individual or an entire culture from achieving the
intellectual growth commensurate with Weltburger (citizens of the world,
enlightened individuals). Thus the first part of his Anthropology had to be
 202 Katherine Arens
devoted to psychology, because Kant's mind model from the Critiques was
not intended to be pragmatic - it did not accommodate the variances
from the contact of individual minds with unique historical environments.
What has Kant achieved in his pragmatic psychology that would be
crucial to the discourse of conceptual psychology through the nineteenth
century, perhaps not even consciously? First, Kant redefined mental facul­
ties in a more modem scientific fashion, in terms of a restricted number of
activities of the mind instead of regional agencies (rejecting eighteenth­
century faculty psychology more decisively than Herder did). Second, he
redefined the relationship of mind and world in the context of real history,
outside the realm of first philosophy. In these redefinitions, he delineates
principles for new human sciences, evoking a model giving neither the mind
nor the world absolute primacy in determining the course of history.
In the Anthropology, as a complement to the Critiques, Kant highlights
the interactions between mind and world in historical time, explicitly
psychology as a science of mind in the world. Thus Kant's
" anthropology was not the description of humanity'S existence (a
&
empirical science), but rather a "Pragmatics," focusing on the factors that
limit humans intellectually and physically. Instead of an epistemology
based on "clearness and distinctness" criteria, Kant provides a psychology
accounting for acts of cognition as they tie into a physical organism and to
the volition and history of the individual. In this, Kant parallels Herder, but
goes much further in stressing the activities of mind as a dynamic underly­
ing the faculties. He has discarded Herder's model of a universal nature
force. However, as Herder fell back into utopistic rationalism, Kant fell
back into pure idealism. In the second part of the Anthropology, Kant was
unable to surrender the priority of the mind: ultimately, he saw both
individual bodies and ethnic groups as products of distinctive patterns of
mental activity. Nonetheless, his application of transcendental philosophy
to the mind in the world had allowed the beginnings of a scientific
psychology to emerge for the nineteenth century in a way that Herder
could not. Only Kant separated the question of pure knowledge from the
structure of the mind and from the constitution of the world (although his
world was strongly teleological).
The innovation presented here was perceived by some contemporaries
a confirmation of the emerging model presented here. Kant's student,
Johann Friedrich Herbart, took up the program left after the Anthropology,
the outline of the activities of mind as they interact with the empirical data
of the world, freed from a global and pre-established telos for world
Kant, Herder. and Psychology 203
development. To do so, Herbart used a physiological-mathematical
approach which required ten years and two large volumes to delineate: the
Lehrbuch der Psychologie (Textbook of Psychology, 1816/1834) and
Psychologic als Wissenschaft (Psychology as a Science, 1824). With his
consciousness of the shortcomings in Kant's progam as he inherited it,
Herbart was able to establish psychology as a science of the same type as
Kant's" Anthropological Didactic,· as an application of the epoch's new
epistemology; "the first of the three parts of applied metaphysics"
Conclusion
The definition of psychology initiated by the idealists is therefore much
broader than one might have assumed. Kant finished redefining the faculties
or fixed capacities of the mind as activities, following Herder and his
contemporaries, who emphasized mental energies. Herder initiated concep­
tual psychology in redefining the faculties of mind in terms of a reciprocal
relationship between the categories ~f the mind and the sensible data held in
it. Kant's Critiques extended this model when he discussed intuition,
understanding, reason, and judgment as mechanisms of mind affecting
perception. Kant's Anthropology added to this ahistorical model the addi­
tional dimension of affects, or personal habits of mind conditioned by
personal and historical experience. In his application of the fundamental
principles from the Critiques, Kant evolves a model for the human sciences
which Herder had only begun. Granting greater weight to empiricism and
thus moving beyond historicism into a fuller biological model, later scho­
lars such as Herbart were able to expand Kant's bases into a new model of
the energetic dynamics of the mind, completing also a redefinition of the
necessary relationship between science and psychology apart from a first
philosophy of mind.
These arguments show that none of these thinkers support the
stereotypical picture of idealism as the study of the primacy of mind. As
Herder began to see, dearness and distinctness remained the criteria for
evaluating pure knowledge, but a personal and historical dimension to
knowledge needed to be considered. A new science had to account for the
personal equilibrium and system of mind, inherited or defective experiential
norms, and the historical relativity of conceptualization. As a consequence,
the idealists reconceived the nature of science itself. They defined science in
terms of validity with respect to mental function, instead of reference and

204 Katherine Arens
sense vis-ii-vis the data involved. After this work, questions about the
environment in which knowledge has been constituted would be central in
the study of systematic disciplines.
While Herder had offered the new metaphor for psychology as a
systematic science, Kant and Herbart had firmly established the key terms
in the new paradigm for the equilibrium of mental representations: analogy
and association, continua or chains, concept and mental equilibrium,
dynamic energy and inhibition. Moreover, they shared a reluctance to
discuss mind as an entity unto itself. They spoke of activities of mind rather
than capacities or faculties. These activities were grounded in sensibility;
they reflected both the organization of the outside world and logical
thought (understanding and reason). Now no longer "faculties," under­
standing and reason Were construed as complex, higher-order or compound
activities of mind differentiated according to Such activities of mind
were commensurate with observed organic function.
These thinkers thus fundamentally changed the definition of science and
truth. In working out the concepts for a new paradigm of psychology,
set the parameters for a new discourse. Following Herder's nascent formu­
lations, Kant (and later Herbart) amalgamated synchronic and diachronic
viewpoints to diminish decisively any search for "truth" in sciences, setting
a new focus on validity and consistency in historical contexts. However,
this merging of perspectives was not the norm for the discourse of their age:
until today, we in reading their work against the older paradigm of
rationalism as Kant had done to Herder, and as today's historians of
and psychiatry do in dismissing them as the older >!"Iner'anon
Nonetheless, these "Idealists' had become the first historical relativists,
and, as such, were not totally removed from empiricism. In fact, in an odd
reverse in the history of ideas, Kant and particularly Herbart turned into
major sources for the empiricists of the mid-nineteenth century. The
progam initiated by empiricism and adopted into idealism came full turn as
an amalgamated discipline. The paradigm of science revealed itself through
its discourse rather than its practices, evolving into a developed model for
the human sciences in the nineteenth century, based on psychology as well
as a model of pure mind.
Herder altered the empiricism he inherited by stressing not
receptivity of the organism, but also the system aspects of the mind ­
posited an ego standing berween memory and sense impressions. Following
the lead set by Herder and others, Kant refuted and redefined "faculty
psychology," the psychology of the capacities of the mind divided topo-
, "~,,,1""''''''''''''''
Kant, Herder, and Psychology 205
graphically. His new model stressed the activities of the mind, and thus the
interactions berween mind and environment, not the absolute primacy of
mind in all systematic studies. In the Anthropology, Kant was able to stress
mind as well as empiricism to account for the historicity of knowledge.
Their joint innovation leading to conceptual psychology was the notion
that humans were social, as well as mental, beings, influenced by the
cultural and social environment. Kant's categories from the Critiques were
only a model for absolute capacities Or fundamental processes of mind. In a
real historical situation, however, the experience of the group would
ultimately lead to distinct localized and habituated patterns of thought, the
result of the continued contact of the group with its environment. In this,
then, Kant's purportedly "idealistic' tum of mind is modulated away from
its philosophical stereotype. He did not focus only on eternal values - he
took the empiricism represented by work such as Herder's and Hume's
seriously. Once a mind has a history, the products of its operations are not
absolute. The fundamental operations of mind may well be transcendental,
shared by all, but higher-order operations (such as cultural thought pat­
terns) are not.
Kant's and Herder's innovations were fmally codified into a scientific
model for psychology by the middle of the nineteenth century, when
physiology was buttressed with mathematics and experimentation, as La
Mettrie, Haller, and Herder had suggested. In this new model, not only
social and historical restrictions would affect higher-order thought, but also
the physical restrictions of the individual - for example, the threshold of
light and sound intensity which a particular individual is able to perceive.
This later conceptual psychology turned into an overarching model for the
human sciences, amalgamating a relativistic historicism with a scientific
model of cognition. Herbart, Wilhelm Wundt, Dilthey, Ernst Mach, and
the Neogrammarian philologists were among those who developed new
disciplines using this psychology philology, science, history, and
anthropology, among others. Through this new psychology, "Idealists"
opened an avenue to discuss the structures of knowledge and historical
truth while preserving a picture of the individual's contribution to the
group's wisdom.
Works Cited
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206 Katherine Arens
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Wundt, Wilhelm. Volkerpsychologie: Eine Untersuchung der Entwicklungsgesetze
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Table of Contents
Preface ......... , .... , .. , , ... , .. , , ........... , , ..... , . .. V
Addresses of the Authors .. , , , . , , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . ..... ,. XXIII
WALTER CH.ZIMMERLl, Evolution or Development? Questions Con­
cerning the Systematic and Historical Position of Herder ., . . . . . . 1
GORDON CRAIG, Herder: The Legacy ........... , ....... ,..... 17
HANS ADLER, Herders Holismus , ............. , , , ., ......... 31
MICHAEL MAURER, Nemesis-Adrastea oder Was ist und wozu dient
Geschichte? ... , .. " ........ ,.,. ., .......... , ... , .. ,. 46
WILFRIED MALSCH, Herders ambivalente Zivilisationskritik an Aufkla­
rung und technischem Fortschritt , , ..... , .. , , , . . . . . . . . . . . .. 64
WULF KOEPKE, Nemesis und Geschichtsdialektik .. " ........ ,... 85
ERNEST A. MENZE, Konigsberg and Riga: The Genesis and Significance
of Herder's Historical Thought ", ........ " " , .... ,...... 97
JOSEF SIMON, Herder and the Problematization of Metaphysics .. , ... 108
MANFRED BAUM, Herder's Essay on Being ....... , . ,. . ......... 126
KARL MENGES, "Seyn" und "Daseyn", Sein und Zeit. Zu Herders
Theorie des Subjekts ... , ..... " ... , ..... , .... ",., ...... 138
MICHAEL MORTON, Changing the Subject: Herder and the Reorienta­
tion of Philosophy , .. , ......... , .................... , .. 158
ROBERT S, LEVENTHAL, Critique of Subjectivity: Herder's Foundation
of the Human Sciences ........ , , .. , ......... , . , ... , ..... 173
KATHERINE ARENS, Kant, Herder, and Psychology ....... , .. , .. ,. 190
RENATE KNOLL, Herder als Promoter Hamanns: Zu Herders friiher
Literaturkritik ...... , .. , .... , ............. , ....... ,., 207
HARRO MULLER-MICHAELS, Literatur und Abitur: Dber die Zusam­
menhange zwischen Literaturtheorie und Bildungspraxis in Her­
ders Schulreden .. ' . " , ......... ", ....... ,., .. "" .. ,. 228
ERNST BEHLER, "The Theory of Art is its own History": Herder and
the Schlegel Brothers ....... ', ................. , ........ 246
JOCHEN SCHULTE-SASSE, Herder's Concept of the Sublime, .... , .... 268
PIERRE PENISSON, Semiotik und Philosophie bei Herder ........ , .. 292
MARCIA BUNGE, Human Language of the Divine: Herder on Ways of
Speaking about God ... , ............... , , , , ....... , . , ... 304

__.__ ~ ___ ~ ___._ """ .... ,''''_,.. ",. ~"'-""I':I_I"'liSd" 'f'~)ffii'1i' -, .,:' ~~~"""""""""'-"'~"Y __ '~:"'''''_'~''''''''")'''''''",,,,,,,,,,_",'''''''''''_Y'~~~''''''''''''''''''''"'~'-_'~""I/\I~"i_,cwr,"'.,t''''~~'~''~'''''''~'''N''''''':"''~_.c........",:.."","",,'.i"""""'~"'~~'''_''''''''

HELMUT MULLER-SIEVERS, .Gott als Schriftsteller.« Herder and the

Henneneutic Tradition ..................................
DOROTHEA VON MUCKE, Language as the Mark of the Soul: Herder's
319 Herder Today
Narcissistic Subject .................................... 331
JURGEN TRABANT, Herder's Discovery of the Ear ................. 345
MARTHA B. HELFER, Herder, Fichte, and Humboldt's "Thinking and
Contributions from the International

Speaking" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . ....... 367 Herder Conference

EMIL ADLER, Johann Gottfried Herder und das Judentum ......... 382
INGEBORG SOLIIRIG, Herder and the "Harlem Renaissance" of Black
Culture in America: The Case of the nNcgcr-Idyllen" .......... 402
KURT MUELLER-VOLLMER, Herder and the Formation of an American Nov. 5-8, 1987

National Consciousness during the Early Republic .. . ........ 415

REGINE OTIo, Zur Herder-Forschung in der DDR ~ Resultate, Ten­
Stanford, California

denzen, Aufgaben - ............. . .. ..... . ............ 431

Index of Names .......................................... 447
Edited by

Kurt Mueller-Vollmer

Offprint

mJ

1990

Walter de Gruyter . Berlin' New York