(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Hans Adler, Wulf Koepke - A Companion To The Works of Johann Gottfried Herder-Boydell & Brewer (2009)

A Companion to the Works of Johann Gottfried Herder
Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture
Camden House Companion Volumes
The Camden House Companions provide well-informed and up-

to-date critical commentary on the most significant aspects of
major works, periods, or literary figures. The Companions may be
read profitably by the reader with a general interest in the subject.
For the benefit of student and scholar, quotations are provided in
the original language.
A Companion to the Works of
Johann Gottfried Herder
Edited by
Hans Adler and Wulf Koepke
Rochester, New York

Copyright © 2009 by the Editors and Contributors
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation,

no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,
recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
First published 2009

by Camden House
Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc.

668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
www.camden-house.com
and of Boydell & Brewer Limited
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.boydellandbrewer.com
ISBN-13: 978–1–57113–395–3
ISBN-10: 1–57113–395–X
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A companion to the works of Johann Gottfried Herder / edited by Hans

Adler and Wulf Koepke.
p. cm. — (Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture)
(Camden House companion volumes)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1–57113–395–3 (acid-free paper)
ISBN-10: 1–57113–395–X (acid-free paper)
1. Herder, Johann Gottfried, 1744–1803—Criticism and interpretation.
I. Adler, Hans. II. Köpke, Wulf, 1928– III. Title. IV. Series.
PT2354.C66 2009
838'.609—dc22
2008055469
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
This publication is printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
List of Abbreviations ix
Introduction 1
1: Herder’s Life and Works 15

Steven D. Martinson
2: Herder’s Epistemology 43
Marion Heinz and Heinrich Clairmont
3: Herder and Historical Metanarrative: What’s

Philosophical about History? 65
John Zammito
4: Herder’s Concept of Humanität 93

Hans Adler
5: Herder and Language 117

Jürgen Trabant
6: Herder’s Aesthetics and Poetics 141

Stefan Greif
7: Myth, Mythology, New Mythology 165

Ulrich Gaier
8: Particular Universals: Herder on National Literature,

Popular Literature, and World Literature 189
Karl Menges
9: Herder’s Views on the Germans and Their Future Literature 215

Wulf Koepke
vi ♦ CONTENTS
10: Herder’s Biblical Studies 233

Christoph Bultmann
11: Herder’s Theology 247

Martin Kessler
12: Herder and Politics 277

Arnd Bohm
13: Herder’s Poetic Works, His Translations, and His

Views on Poetry 305
Gerhard Sauder
14: Herder’s Style 331

Hans Adler
15: Herder as Critical Contemporary 351

Robert E. Norton
16: Herder in Office: His Duties as Superintendent of Schools 373

Harro Müller-Michaels
17: Herder’s Reception and Influence 391

Günter Arnold, Kurt Kloocke, and Ernest A. Menze
Bibliography 421
Notes on the Contributors 459
Index 463
Acknowledgments
A BOOK AS LARGE AND AS DIVERSE in its contents as this cannot get done
without the assistance and collaboration of a considerable number of
persons. We wish first of all to thank our contributors from Germany and
North America for their dedication, their work, and not least for their pa-
tience, as this project took much longer to its completion than anticipated.
More than half of the contributions had to be translated from the German.
We want to express our gratitude to the translators and all those who were
instrumental to produce a clear, idiomatic, and easily readable text, in par-
ticular Sabine Groß (Madison, WI), Jennifer L. Jenkins (Portland, OR),
Ernest A. Menze (Rhinebeck, NY), Michael Palma (New Rochelle, NY), and
Michael Swisher (Chicago). Our Camden House editor Jim Walker worked
hard to make the texts accessible to American readers and clarify the less
than precise points that Herder seems to transfer to his interpreters. In ad-
dition to that we want to thank Stella Isenbügel, Benjamin Parrot (both
Madison, WI), and Lynn L. Wolff (Madison/Berlin) for their help to set up
the index.
It was quite an undertaking to present an oeuvre as profound and as di-
verse as Johann Gottfried Herder’s to an American audience of our day. We
are confident that the reader will find a comprehensive and useful intro-
duction to Herder’s life, his style, and his ideas, for the first time in academic
history in America, and we are thankful to everybody whose work and advice
has contributed to this remarkable result.
Abbreviations
Editions of Herder’s Works, including

Translations into English
APR Johann Gottfried Herder. Against Pure Reason: Writings on
Religion, Language, and History. Translated, edited, and with an
introduction by Marcia Bunge. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993.
BBH Johann Gottfried Herder. Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität.

2 vols. Ed. Heinz Stolpe with Hans-Joachim Kruse and Dietrich
Simon. Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1971.
FA Johann Gottfried Herder. Werke in zehn Bänden. 10 vols. in 11

books. Ed. Günter Arnold et al. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher
Klassiker Verlag, 1985–2000.
HB Johann Gotttfried Herder. Briefe. Gesamtausgabe 1763–1803. Ed.

Nationale Forschungs- und Gedenkstätten der klassischen Literatur
in Weimar [later: Stiftung Weimarer Klassik.] (Goethe- und Schiller-
Archiv). 11 vols. to date. Ed. Wilhelm Dobbek † and Günter
Arnold. [From vol. 9 on Günter Arnold only.] Weimar: Hermann
Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1984–2001. [Vols. 1-9: Briefe; vol. 10: Index;
vol. 11: Commentary to vols. 1–3.]
HN Der handschriftliche Nachlass Johann Gottfried Herders. Katalog im

Auftrag und mit Unterstützung der Akademie der Wissenschaften in
Göttigen bearbeitet von Hans Dietrich Irmscher und Emil Adler.
(Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz. Kataloge der
Handschriftenabteilung. Ed. Tilo Brandis. Zweite Reihe: Nachlässe.
Vol. 1.) Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1979.
HW Johann Gottfried Herder. Werke. 3 vols. in 4 books. Ed. Wolfgang

Pross. Munich: Hanser, 1984–2002.
OWH Johann Gottfried Herder. On World History: An Anthology. Ed.

Hans Adler and Ernest A. Menze. Trans. Ernest A. Menze with
Michael Palma. Armonk, NY/London: M. E. Sharpe, 1997.
PhW Johann Gottfried Herder. Philosophical Writings. Trans. and ed.

Michael N. Forster. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2002.
x ♦ LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
SEW Johann Gottfried Herder. Selected Early Works, 1764–1767.

Addresses, Essays, and Drafts; Fragments on Recent German
Literature. Ed. Ernest A. Menze and Karl Menges. Trans. Ernest A.
Menze with Michael Palma. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania
State UP, 1991.
SWS Johann Gottfried Herder. Sämmtliche Werke. 33 vols. Ed. Bernhard

Suphan, Carl Redlich, and Reinhold Steig. Berlin: Weidmann’sche
Buchhandlung, 1877–1913. (3rd reprint as Sämtliche Werke,
Hildesheim: Olms, 1994–95.)
Single Works by Herder

AePh Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit
AkB Ahndung künftiger Bestimmung
ÄU Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts
BD Von Baumgartens Denkart
BDF Über Bild, Dichtung und Fabel
BdV Blätter der Vorzeit
DAK Von deutscher Art und Kunst
DR Dithyrambische Rhapsodie über die Rhapsodie in kabbalistischer Prose
EE Vom Erkennen und Empfinden
EP Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie
F1 [Fragmente 1] Über die neuere deutsche Literatur. Erste Sammlung

von Fragmenten
2
F1 [Fragmente 1, 2nd ed.] Über die neuere deutsche Literatur.
Fragmente. Erste Sammlung. Zweite, völlig umgearbeitete Ausgabe
F2 [Fragmente 2] Über die neuere deutsche Literatur. Zwote Sammlung

von Fragmenten
F3 [Fragmente 3] Über die neuere deutsche Literatur. Dritte Sammlung
Hum Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität
Ideen Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit
Journal Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ♦ xi
K Kalligone
KW Kritische Wälder
LL Lieder der Liebe
Ode [Von der Ode]
P Paramythien. Dichtungen aus der griechischen Fabel
PhBV [Wie die Philosophie zum Besten des Volkes allgemeiner und nützlicher
werden kann]
STh Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend
US Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache
VüS Versuch über das Sein
Other Editions
AA Immanuel Kant. Kant’s gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Königlich
Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften [later: Akademie der
Wissenschaften der DDR/Akademie der Wissenschaften zu
Göttingen]. Vol. 1–. Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1900–.
DW Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Dichtung und Wahrheit.
DWb Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. Deutsches Wörterbuch. 33 vols. [1854–

1971]. Reprint Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1984.
KrV Immanuel Kant. Kritik der reinen Vernunft.
KU Immanuel Kant. Kritik der Urteilskraft.
WA Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Werke. Im Auftrage der Grossherzogin

Sophie von Sachsen. 143 vols. Weimar: Böhlau, 1887–1919.
Other Abbreviations
GSA Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv, Weimar
Haym Rudolf Haym. Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken.
JGM Johann Georg Müller Nachlass, Schaffhausen
MB Ministerialbibliothek
SBS Stadtbibliothek Schaffhausen

Introduction
Herder, the Famous Nobody
T HE PRESENT VOLUME TRIES TO CONVEY a comprehensive picture of the

life and works of Johann Gottfried Herder. The nineteen authors of the
following seventeen articles provide an overview of the diverse aspects of
Herder’s contributions to eighteenth-century culture and beyond. It is no
coincidence that this volume is the first collaborative attempt ever to compile
a Companion to Herder’s works. Today it is possible and timely to do justice
to Herder’s work and ideas as an achievement in their own right, to view his
work as an independent historical-philosophical approach to almost all im-
portant problems of the Enlightenment and beyond. Today, we can read this
author in a different, more open way and, indeed, he “speaks” to us in a way
that lets us discover a partner in discourse bridging more than two centuries.
This Companion is, furthermore, the result of a collaborative effort because
the diversity of Herder’s work defies a single-authored approach. The only
attempt to provide a presentation of the “whole” Herder was that of Rudolf
1
Haym in his Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken. Emil Adler’s
2
Herder und die deutsche Aufklärung and Robert T. Clark’s Herder: His Life
3
and Thought have merits of their own but do not match Haym’s monumen-
tal work. One of the hallmarks of Haym’s still dominating, all-encompassing
biography is the impressive figure of four complete reprints of the two
volumes with their more than 1500 pages in the original edition. Haym’s
work constitutes, however, a liability as well as a legacy, because his book
determined posterity’s reception of Herder in a decisive but unfortunately
misleading way. He depicted Herder as a thinker of the second order, one
who, already at the age of twenty-one, had lost contact with the avant-garde
of the early 1770s, Kant above all. Herder as the pre-critical Kantian, the
“poetic” philosopher, as Kant claimed in a malicious review of the first two
volumes of Herder’s opus maximum, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der
Menschheit (Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Humankind, 1784–
4
91), Herder as a discursive chimera, merging poetry and philosophy in — as
Kant saw it — an illegitimate way. Haym also reinforced the notion that
2 ♦ HANS ADLER AND WULF KOEPKE
while the young Herder had a decisive impact on the Sturm und Drang
generation, his later works, especially those written after the French Revo-
lution, showed a retrograde mind whose jealousy of Goethe and Schiller
blinded him to their merits and made him irrelevant to the cultural develop-
ment of Germany.
During the first decades of the twentieth century the dominant trend of
scholarship favored wholesale notions and generalizations, often allied with a
political agenda that did not do justice to Herder’s ideas and texts. The most
salient example is the misuse and abuse of Herder’s concepts of Nation and
Volk to justify all forms of aggressive nationalism. Today, research is much
more open and better prepared to focus on the independent quality of
Herder’s work instead of condemning it on the shaky ground of unques-
tioned epistemological standards. Herder’s difficult position resulted in his
being present but not known, exercising a considerable influence without
being named, one of the famous unknowns in the history of ideas.
Most recent research, however, has dramatically shifted the perspective
on Herder and allows for a new and fresh view on this exciting and chal-
lenging author. Having been muffled for almost two centuries, abused by
one-eyed as well as highly ideological misappropriations, and, time and
again, distorted in a viciously reductionist way by biased readings from a
certain ideological point of view, it has taken a considerable effort to clear
the path to Herder’s work. Further, a more precise reading of Herder’s texts
reveals that Herder’s allegedly obscure terminology is indeed clear and con-
sistent, and that his ideas are surprisingly relevant, once decoded in an ap-
propriate manner. Herder is now on his way to being rediscovered, not only
in the Western world, but also in non-Western languages and cultures, par-
ticularly in Japan. The attempt to do justice to Herder in order to unveil the
wealth of his ideas and his own paradigmatic way of thought — from lin-
guistics to theology, comparative literature to cultural studies, aesthetics to
political science and history — is a synergetic endeavor. This volume tries to
contribute to and encourage these efforts so that Herder’s work may become
an integral part of teaching and understanding in today’s humanities.
Herder the Perennial Forerunner

vs. Herder the Innovator
Johann Gottfried Herder was born into very modest circumstances. Born in
1744 in the small town of Mohrungen in East Prussia (today Morąg,
Poland) as the third of five children of a poor Protestant family, Herder re-
ceived a stipend to study theology at the university of Königsberg, a stipend
that he had to supplement by tutoring. During his student years from 1762
to 1764, his main interest was the lectures of the young philosopher
INTRODUCTION ♦ 3
Immanuel Kant. He was an outstanding student of Kant; at the same time

he became a friend of Kant’s friend Johann Georg Hamann, a deeply reli-
gious critic of rationalist Enlightenment.
After graduating in theology, Herder accepted an offer from the Dom-
schule in Riga, where he became a successful teacher and preacher. The port
city of Riga was then part of the Russian empire. With his three collections
of fragments under the title Über die neuere deutsche Literatur (On Recent
German Literature, 1766–1767), Herder became well known in Germany as
a literary critic.
In 1769, Herder left Riga abruptly, and went on a sea voyage to France,
first to Nantes and then to Paris. His Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769
(Journal of My Voyage in the Year 1769) was first published posthumously
in 1846. Herder continued to make his name with the Kritische Wälder
(Critical Forests, 1769) and his prize-essay, the Abhandlung über die
Ursprung der Sprache (Treatise on the Origin of Language, written 1770,
published 1772). During a stay in Strasbourg in 1770 for the cure of an eye
ailment, Herder met the young student Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the
beginning of a lifelong relationship. In 1771 Herder was appointed preacher
and church administrator in the small principality of Schaumburg-Lippe.
Foremost among the works Herder produced during his five years there
were the controversial Bible commentary Älteste Urkunde des Menschen-
geschlechts (The Oldest Document of the Human Race, 1774/1776) and the
polemic treatise Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Mensch-
heit (Another Philosophy of History for the Education of Humankind,
1774). In 1773, Herder married Caroline Flachsland from Darmstadt. They
had eight children, born between 1774 and 1790. Caroline became Herder’s
foremost confidante and collaborator.
In 1776, with the help of Goethe, Herder was appointed as court
preacher and general superintendent for the duchy of Sachsen-Weimar,
where he lived for the rest of his life. As leader of the church and the school
system of the duchy, Herder made many efforts to reform both institutions.
He was active and successful as a preacher, although the secularized court
society did not share his religious views. In Weimar, Herder entered an
extraordinary personal, intellectual, and artistic constellation, where he
communicated intensely with the leading figures of German cultural life at
that time: Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Christoph Martin
Wieland, Karl Ludwig von Knebel, Johann August von Einsiedel, Prince
August von Gotha, not to talk about the duke’s mother Anna Amalia and
the duchess Luise. Herder entertained contact with leading representatives
of the rising bourgeois culture all over the Holy Roman Empire of the
German Nation.
In spite of heavy and time-consuming duties as a church and school ad-
ministrator, Herder continued his literary production in various fields, such
as philosophy of history, bible studies, literary criticism, aesthetics, and prac-

tical theology. Among his major publications of the earlier Weimar years are
Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele (On the Cognition and
Sensation of the Human Soul, 1778), Plastik (Sculpture, 1778), Briefe, das
Studium der Theologie betreffend (Letters Concerning the Study of Theology,
1780/81), Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie (On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry,
1782/83), Gott. Einige Gespräche (God, Some Conversations, 1787) and his
most important work, the aforementioned Ideen zur Philosophie der Ge-
schichte der Menschheit. One should also not forget Herder’s seminal collec-
tion of folk songs, entitled simply Volkslieder (1778/79). Herder reedited
shorter essays and translations of poetry from various languages in six col-
lections called Zerstreute Blätter (1785–97).
A journey to Italy in 1788/89 proved to be rather a disappointment.
The French Revolution of 1789 affected Weimar in various ways. Herder
initially had high hopes that the revolution would have beneficial conse-
quences for Germany, which caused tensions in the Weimar society. As a
response to the events, Herder published his collections Briefe zu Beförde-
rung der Humanität (Letters for the Advancement of Humanity, 1793–
1797). He regarded the growing friendship between Goethe and Schiller
and their non-political, “classical” ideal of literature, as presented in their
journal Die Horen (1795–97), with growing skepticism.
In his last years before his death in 1803 Herder was increasingly iso-
lated in Weimar. He was dissatisfied with the cultural developments, particu-
larly the upcoming of German Romanticism, the impact of Kant’s critical
philosophy, and the idealism of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Herder’s polemics
against the Kantian philosophy in his Metakritik (1799) and Kalligone (1800)
were not well received at the time, but are finding more receptive readers
today. Herder’s writings on the New Testament and religion are usually
called Christliche Schriften (Christian Writings, 1794–98). In his last years
Herder published the periodical Adrastea (1801–4), to assess the cultural
and political heritage of the eighteenth century. Herder died on December
18, 1803. He was buried in “his” church in Weimar on December 21.
It is not easy to trace and appropriately assess the achievements of this
extremely active and influential thinker of the German eighteenth century.
In the tenth book of Dichtung und Wahrheit, Goethe provided a blueprint
for the assessment of Herder as critic, but not creator, motivating others, but
not being their leader: “. . . he [Herder] was more inclined to test and
5
stimulate than to lead and direct.” Forerunners in the history of ideas share
the unfortunate fate of serving as an intellectual spark for later developments
that go far beyond the initiator’s original intention and then being forgotten
or fading into obscurity. In this sense, forerunners are never fully aware of
their own achievements, catalysts not fully conscious of the consequences of
their thoughts and actions. Indeed, Herder was the forerunner of the
INTRODUCTION ♦ 5
German version of protest against a narrow understanding of Enlighten-

ment. Not only did he share the assumption of many of his contemporaries
that the human being has to be conceived of as a complex entity consisting
of mind and body, with a clear and challenging anti-Cartesian emphasis on
the body and the senses, but Herder also thought that the surreptitious
reduction of the human being to the faculties of intellect and reason — a
mobile (and nimble) head without a body, a cephalopod — was fundamen-
tally wrong. But Herder did not promote the idea that human thinking and
action is irrational. He was neither a mystic nor an irrationalist. His essential
message on this point was to always be conscious of the fact that the “crown
of creation” is firmly rooted in its animal past. This idea came close to
evolutionary thinking, although Herder was no Darwinist avant la lettre, nor
was he a psychoanalyst before Freud. But by conceiving of the human being
as an animal rationale, he initiated the German Sturm und Drang move-
ment. With his emphasis on the Promethean character of the human being
— the “genius” — on the one hand, and his transformation of history from
a mere description of the past into a system and an argument, on the other,
and, finally, with his discovery of the “simple folk” as the origin of poetry,
fiction, and culture in general, Herder belonged to the avant-garde of
eighteenth-century thinking. He is typically remembered in his role as a
mentor to others, above all Goethe. The frequently used formula “Herder
and . . .” (Herder and Hamann, Herder and Kant, Herder and Goethe) has
been overused with the effect that his own originality has been minimized.
Herder was also the largely unacknowledged forerunner of German
Romanticism, although he did not share the religious views of most Ro-
mantics or their glorification of the Middle Ages. Herder did not share
Goethe’s and Schiller’s ideas of German (or “Weimar”) Classicism because
he deemed the idea of installing a realm of “pure” art and literature as elitist,
esoteric, and ignorant about the role of the people (Volk). Herder expected a
renewal of a truly national literature to come from “below,” from the folk,
the common people, and not from “above.” His philosophical emphasis on
history as a system and constant historical change as a pragmatic argument in
its own right, on extra-rational cognitive forces, and on language as a form
of cognition determined by time, region, and climate made him attractive for
the early German Romanticists, and they acted as so many did after them:
they erased his name or even criticized him harshly after taking their share of
ideas and knowledge from him.
No serious history of historiography can ignore Herder’s contributions
to the fields of the philosophy of history (for which he developed a non-
teleological concept), to memory, and to the discourse of history. Moreover,
no history of the concepts of the people or folk, of the nation, of cosmo-
politanism — which differs from the primarily economic phenomenon of
globalization — and humanity can do without reference to Herder. Herder
is one of the leading philosophers of history and the inventor of a highly

modern but utterly misunderstood concept of Humanität, humanity: that
which makes human beings human throughout the course of history.
Another innovative development triggered and elaborated by Herder in
cooperation with some of his contemporaries was the conception of philo-
sophical anthropology. Arnold Gehlen credited Herder with fundamental
and innovative ideas in this field that have not been superseded in the past
200 years. Furthermore, core elements of Herder’s theory of the origin of
language are still being discussed and rediscovered today. Herder’s treatise
goes far beyond the question of the origin of language. He developed a
theory of language that exercised a considerable influence on the develop-
ment of linguistics. Herder’s approach to religion and theology from a prag-
matic point of view consisted not only in taking care of a mediation between
church, community, and government, but also in emphasizing the human
dimension of the bible. In his attempts to turn his reformist ideas about
pedagogy and the church liturgy into reality, Herder encountered stiff resis-
tance in the duchy of Sachsen-Weimar, leading to a constant and cumber-
some struggle that wearied and embittered him toward the end of his life.
Still, the concept of Bildung (education in the broadest sense) favored by
Herder as well as his emphasis on the mother tongue and realia in the class-
room were some of the “seeds” that Herder planted and that sprouted later.
Herder’s contributions to the field of literature and aesthetics were cer-
tainly among his most important. It is clear from the outset that the writings
of the younger Herder focus on a new understanding of literature. He also
had a very broad understanding of aesthetics as it had been developed by the
German Enlightenment philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–
62), who coined the term “aesthetics” for the new philosophical discipline
and defined it as the “science of sensory cognition” in his groundbreaking
6
Aesthetica of 1750. Baumgarten chose the term “aesthetics” with the Greek
etymology in mind, referring to “sense perception,” and he did not narrow
aesthetics down to a theory of beauty or art as was done later by Kant,
Schiller, and Hegel. There is, on the one hand, Herder’s understanding of
aesthetics as aisthetics (with an iota, from Greek aisthánesthai, to perceive
[through the senses]) that is, the logic of the body and the senses. This is the
anthropological dimension of the field of aesthetics. On the other hand,
Herder dealt thoroughly with aesthetics in the traditional sense of a theory
of art and the beautiful, but he treated it as only one prominent part of aes-
thetics in the broad — anthropological and Baumgartenian — sense. Herder’s
reflections on painting, music, and, prominently, sculpture constituted an
integral part of his work throughout his life. In contrast to the classicist
position of Goethe and Schiller from 1795 on, Herder insisted that literature
and life, poetry and reality are intimately connected, whereas Schiller plainly
denied it. Schiller wrote in a letter of November 4, 1795 that the “poetic
INTRODUCTION ♦ 7
genius” was in danger of being oppressed by the “prosaic” contemporary

cultural conditions and that, as a consequence, the “poetic genius” had to
“withdraw from the realm of the real world.” And Schiller concluded:
“Therefore, it seems to me precisely a gain for the poetic genius that he form
a world of his own and remain via the Greek myths a relative of a distant,
7
alien, and ideal era, whereas reality would only tarnish him.” This letter
marked the end of their cooperation; Schiller’s idea of poetic “purity” was
alien to Herder. Beauty for him was genuinely tied to truth, art was genu-
inely tied to reality, from which it originated and on which it exerted influ-
ence. For him, there is no art without feedback from reality, the concrete,
historical reality, that is, and art always has to provide a feedback to reality.
In the light of Kant’s aesthetic credo of art’s purposeless purposiveness in his
Critique of the Faculty of Judgment (1790) and Schiller’s idea, put forth in
his Ästhetische Briefe (Letters Concerning the Aesthetic Advancement of
Humankind, 1795) and based on the then-new Kantian aesthetic paradigm,
of art as play without any external purpose, Herder appeared as a grumpy old
man, hopelessly biased by the outdated ideas of the orthodox rationalist
Enlightenment. This too was one of the many fights in the history of the
ideas of culture and aesthetics between representatives of littérature engagée
(Herder) and l’art pour l’art (Schiller).
A frequently debated question is whether Herder remained the same
throughout his life and always adhered to his fundamental ideas or whether
he changed substantially in his later years. Traditional Herder scholarship has
emphasized the work of the young Herder, with the central concept of
Kraft (power), whereas Herder, in later years, began to emphasize das Maß
— balance, moderation — and placed the idea of Nemesis, of retribution, in
the center of his thinking on history, castigating the hubris of the European
civilization that wanted to remake God’s creation in its own image. This
brought Herder back in some ways closer to some representatives of En-
lightenment such as Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, and Berkeley. Herder broad-
ened his view beyond the confines of Europe and became more and more
interested in Asian and Native American traditions.
Parallel to Herder’s growing concerns about Europeans’ attempts to
impose their standards on other cultures, going as far as colonizing them,
Herder’s religious concerns shifted to a preoccupation with the future, the
afterlife, questions of reincarnation, spiritual survival, and the true legacy that
individuals and civilizations as well as nations leave behind. He expressed
these ideas and feelings not only in a number of essays, but equally in his
own creative works, especially in his poetry.
It has been debated time and again whether Herder, as a defender of
German literature and culture, was promoting the idea of German national
superiority. The answer from an unbiased point of view is a simple “No.”
Herder’s role as a literary critic and his idea of a German literature (and
oftentimes, he reveals that he means Germanic literature, encompassing

English and “Nordic” or Scandinavian literature) did not find its goal in an
aggressive nationalist dream, but aspired to fight the oppressive fashion of
the German nobility of imitating the (extravagant and expensive!) French
court culture. On the other hand, his ideas on national literature never
tended toward an aggressive nationalistic German literature. “Germany” as
a nation did not exist at the time of Herder, it was a patchwork of an al-
most unimaginable number of sovereign states held together by the inter-
nationally oriented “family” of nobility under the umbrella of the Holy
Roman Empire of the German Nation. The concept of nation, and the Ger-
man nation in particular, were at that time seen as opposing the ancien
régime, and Herder was definitely not a supporter of the European nobility
and its absolutist rule.
Herder the Enlightened,

Enlightening Enlightener
Some currents in the stream of reception of Herder’s ideas indulge in classi-
fying him as an “irrationalist,” and at first glance there seem to be good
reasons for doing so. Did not Herder forcefully try to re-invigorate mythol-
ogy, of all discourses? Was not Herder the one who put such a strong em-
phasis on “feeling” instead of rational reflection? Did he not insist on the
course of history as a complex movement in time that follows its own
discernable laws instead of thinking of history as a teleological process? And,
as strange as it may sound, didn’t he defend prejudice against rational
arguments? All this, expressed in Herder’s language that barely seemed to
meet any philosophical standard at all? What kind of a discourse was that
anyway? Poetry? Philosophy? Mysticism? All those “irrational” attitudes not-
withstanding, they do not justify labeling Herder an irrationalist, because he
never forsook the fundamental ideas of Enlightenment. On the contrary,
Herder critically applied the main principles of Enlightenment — abolition
of authority as an argument in itself; freedom and responsibility of the indi-
vidual in thinking and acting; equality among all those who join the com-
munity based on the aforementioned principles — to the contemporary
discourse of Enlightenment itself. One of the results was that Herder worked
toward an idea of a philosophical discourse that could do without those lofty
metaphysical speculations that were beyond any human understanding.
Herder’s lifelong credo was that philosophy has to be human philosophy:
Philosophy must become anthropology in the etymological sense of the term:
the science of the human being within the reach of the human being. All of
Herder’s endeavors can be grasped as the attempt to understand the world
within the realm of what is accessible to human beings. The origin of lan-
guage is a human (not a divine) origin; the language of the bible is human
INTRODUCTION ♦ 9
language, conveying a divine message in a historically explicable form of lan-

guage; history is a process that is accessible to human understanding insofar
as it follows rules that are accessible to human reason; and history changes
the capacity of understanding of human beings so that human understand-
ing itself is an historical entity.
It is due to this radical historicization of anthropology and humanity
that Herder found himself in a constant battle with other thinkers and the
contemporary mainstream. He criticized the rationalism of Christian Wolff
(1679–1754), who was the most influential German philosopher during the
first half of the eighteenth century and developed an encyclopedic system of
rationalist philosophy. Wolff’s reductionist understanding of philosophy did
not allow for the idea of a history of reason and hence was not an acceptable
model for Herder. He also started a feud with his former teacher Kant
because it seemed absolutely erroneous to him to found a philosophy on “a
determination of all pure cognitions a priori [that is, before any experi-
8
ence]” For Herder, this was an epistemological approach to the fundament
of human knowledge based on assumptions that were impossible to prove.
Reason itself was an historical entity for Herder and thus had its roots in
experience, hence: human history. The transcendental as well as rationalist
approach seemed to Herder based on an illegitimate “abstraction,” a move
that “rips” concepts out of reality (from the Latin abstrahere, literally: to rip
9
out of). For Herder, Wolff’s and Kant’s philosophical systems were a mere
play on words, never providing any insight into the reality of the human
sphere.
With such ideas, Herder was in disagreement with many of his contem-
poraries, disagreements of different kinds and in different areas. A good part
of his early writings are polemical in tone, occasionally aggressive, clearing
the ground for his own word in the theory of language, in the reading of the
bible, in the concept of a philosophy of history, aesthetics, the understanding
of the role of a preacher and minister, and as a philosopher in general. In
later years, Herder turned to even harsher polemics in order to combat what
he considered wrong trends of his age, in religious matters, literature,
philosophy, political attitudes (especially after the French Revolution), and
in the realm of education.
The fact that Herder was in fundamental disagreement with many of his
contemporaries and did not give in was not just due to personal stubborn-
ness (although he apparently was not an easy-going person at all). Herder
fought for a rationalism or, perhaps better, a logic of his own: It was his idea
of an anthropological, human logic that he deemed to represent a more valid
and appropriate, holistic (without the mystical overtones the word some-
times takes on today) foundation for a more human community in the
broadest sense of the word. Herder’s contributions to historiography, phil-
osophy, anthropology, pedagogy, literary criticism, aesthetics, politics,
theology, and so on were meant as serious counter-offers to reductionist

rationalism, transcendentalism, and idealism, hence they have to be studied
as such. This volume will provide access to the most important areas of
Herder’s thinking and writing.
Herder Today
It is by no means easy to study Herder today, in times that are becoming
more and more hostile to the realm of the humanities. It would not be wise,
though, to give in to what is alleged to be necessity and relegate Herder to
sit in the corner, where the reception of his work wedged him until approxi-
mately thirty years ago. The fascination of Herder’s work consists precisely in
his reading the mainstream ideas of his time against the grain. His prob-
lematization of the concept of reason alone is worth the attention in times
when the sciences are dreaming of genetically manipulating the human being
and gaining control over reproduction in laboratories. This development
represents one aspect of the radical historicization of the concept of reason
and humanity, although it is not likely that it would have found Herder’s
approval. It is also worth studying Herder’s work as a corrective to reduc-
tionist criticism of the Enlightenment, and this might lead not only to a
necessary revision of Horkheimer and Adorno’s reduction of Enlightenment
to a movement based on “instrumental reason,” but also to the refutation of
too-easy postmodern criticism of Enlightenment, only to rapidly justify its
own agenda despite the obvious historical facts.
There is still much work to be done to rectify prejudices against Herder.
Modern research on Herder’s work and position within history provides the
tools for new insights. The most important insight is that Herder had
developed a philosophical position of his own that must be taken as seriously
as those of other philosophers such as Wolff and Kant. One of the pre-
requisites for such a task is a clearer understanding of Herder’s key concepts,
such as Nation, Volk, Bildung, Humanität, Evolution, Revolution, Geschichte,
Nemesis, and Kraft, and of Herder’s methodology. The major task now is to
disseminate the results of recent Herder scholarship to a wider audience, so
that a better understanding of this seminal thinker can be shared by non-
specialists and a broader public.
Some of the reasons that make Herder’s thinking attractive for the
present are his openness and his skepticism concerning abstract systems and
purely rationalistic argumentation. Herder leads us back to a concrete fun-
dament of human reasoning, anchored in the body and the senses, and he
also reminds us of the limitations of the human mind and human capabili-
ties. This anthropological foundation of his thinking may at first sight run
counter to present trends, but could also be a healthy antidote against fun-
damentalist fanaticism and prejudices of a religious, racial, and political kind.
INTRODUCTION ♦ 11
Herder invites Selbstdenken, a genuine core concept of Enlightenment.

He leaves it to the reader to form an opinion. Religion and dogma were two
different matters for Herder the church administrator. Herder’s work needs
to be approached with an independent mind. It was Herder’s program in the
Fragmente to start with clearing the way of false notions, prejudices, and
dead conventions. Herder scholarship has tried to do just that for the last
three decades: clearing the way of prejudices about Herder in philosophical,
political, and theological terms. This has brought us closer to him, perhaps
closer than ever in the past two centuries.
The contributions to the present volume aim at a comprehensive
though not exhaustive picture of Herder’s work. Steven Martinson gives a
contextualized overview of Herder’s life and works that will help to locate
him within the historical constellation of the second half of the eighteenth
and the beginning of the nineteenth century. Marion Heinz and Heinrich
Clairmont provide basic insights into Herder’s ideas about human percep-
tion and cognition as a starting point for the understanding of Herder’s
particularly differentiated way of linking the human mind and body. John
Zammito introduces Herder’s historical thinking and his reflections on the
structures of world history, thematizing Herder’s position as a philosopher
of history in particular. Hans Adler presents an introduction to Herder’s
sophisticated concept of Humanität (humanity) that has been misinter-
preted for so long. Jürgen Trabant approaches Herder as a philosopher of
language and locates his writings on language and its origin within the his-
tory of philosophy of language. Stefan Greif introduces the reader into the
world of Herder’s ideas on aesthetics and poetics, ideas that were overlooked
or misread until about thirty years ago. Ulrich Gaier focuses on Herder’s
ideas about myth and mythology, showing that the idea of a New Mythol-
ogy is closely connected to a broader understanding of Enlightenment.
Herder’s concepts of national, popular, and world literature are Karl Menges’s
focus. Wulf Koepke’s contribution deals with a topic that has been intensely
debated in the past and was oftentimes misused in order to turn Herder into
a representative of the type of nationalism that developed only later in the
nineteenth century. It becomes clear both from Menges’s and Koepke’s
essays that Herder was by no means a nationalist. Christoph Bultmann and
Martin Kessler provide the reader with an assessment of Herder as a theo-
logian, that part of Herder’s life that occupied the lion’s share of his activi-
ties from early on and influenced all his thinking and acting. Arnd Bohm
delves into a field that has rarely been touched in connection with Herder’s
works: politics. Bohm does so within a meticulously elaborated framework of
historical and modern theories of politics. Herder was not only a famous
philosopher and critic of his time, but also an author of poems and a prolific
translator from several languages. Gerhard Sauder covers this relatively ne-
glected aspect of Herder’s work. It is almost a topos in the history of Herder
reception to complain about the style of his writing and infer from it his
allegedly “confused” way of thinking. Hans Adler provides the reader with
insights into the particularity of Herder’s style in conjunction with his ideas
of human cognition and perception. Robert Norton locates Herder as a
critic of his time, giving insight into the function of polemic and the pro-
duction of ideas as a reaction to contemporary debates. The historian of the
German school system, Harro Müller-Michaels, informs the reader about
Herder as a pedagogue and top administrator in Weimar, responsible for the
entire school system, and his attempts at school reform and the introduction
of a new type of teachers’ training that responded to the requirements of the
rising nineteenth century. Günter Arnold, Kurt Kloocke, and Ernest A.
Menze open a window on the field of the reception of Herder’s ideas and
works in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and in different regions of
the world — an endeavor that has long been neglected and has its own
specific difficulties in the fact that Herder’s ideas were broadly received with-
out those ideas being credited to their source. The select bibliography at the
end of this volume will help the reader to find his and her own way into
deeper layers of Herder’s life, work, and thought.
The editors are hopeful that this Companion will help readers to find
their way into — or further along in — Herder’s world of ideas in all their
modernity and historicity, and so to make their own steps in this surprisingly
modern field of thinking.
Notes
1
Rudolf Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken, 2 vols. (Berlin: Rudolph
Gaertner, 1877, 1885).
2
Emil Adler, Herder und die deutsche Aufklärung (Vienna: Europa Verlag, 1968; Po-
lish original 1965).
3
Robert T. Clark, Herder: His Life and Thought (Berkeley, Los Angeles: U of Califor-
nia Press, 1955).
4
Kant’s review was published in the Allgemeine Litteratur Zeitung (Jena) on January 6
and November 15, 1785.
5
J. W. von Goethe, From My Life: Poetry and Truth, trans. Robert H. Heitner, ed.
Thomas P. Saine and Jeffrey L. Sammons (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1994), 303.
6
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Aesthetica (Frankfurt/Oder: Johannes Christian
Kleyb, 1750; reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1961).
7
Letter to Herder, November 4, 1795. Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe, vol. 28, ed.
Norbert Oellers (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1969), 97–98. The decisive
passage that marks the end of the cooperation between Schiller and Herder reads as
follows: “Gibt man Ihnen die Voraussetzung zu, dass die Poesie aus dem Leben, aus der
Zeit, aus dem Wirklichen hervorgehen, damit eins ausmachen und darein zurückfließen
muß und (in unseren Umständen) kann, so haben Sie gewonnen; denn da ist alsdann
INTRODUCTION ♦ 13
nicht zu läugnen, dass die Verwandschaft dieser Nordischen Gebilde mit unserm
Germanischen Geiste für jene entscheiden muß. Aber gerade jene Voraussetzung
läugne ich. Es läßt sich, wie ich denke, beweisen, dass unser Denken und Treiben,
unser bürgerliches, politisches, religiöses, wissenschaftliches Leben und Wirken wie die
Prosa der Poesie entgegengesetzt ist. Diese Uebermacht der Prosa in dem Ganzen
unsres Zustandes ist, meines Bedünkens, so groß und so entschieden, dass der
poetische Geist, anstatt darüber Meister zu werden, nothwendig davon angesteckt und
also zu Grunde gerichtet werden müßte. Daher weiß ich für den poetischen Genius
kein Heil, als dass er sich aus dem Gebiet der wirklichen Welt zurückzieht und anstatt
jener Coalition, die ihm gefährlich sein würde, auf die strengste Separation sein
Bestreben richtet. Daher scheint es mir gerade ein Gewinn für ihn zu sein, dass er seine
eigne Welt formiret und durch die Griechischen Mythen der Verwandte eines fernen,
fremden und idealischen Zeitalters bleibt, da ihn die Wirklichkeit nur beschmutzen
würde.” (If one grants you the precondition that poetry comes out of life, out of the
time, out of the real, so that it makes a whole and must — and can [in our circum-
stances] — flow back into it, then you have won; for there it is not to be denied that
the relationship of this Nordic formation with our Germanic spirit has to be decisive for
the latter. But it is just that precondition that I do deny. It can be proven, I think, that
our thinking and acting, our bourgeois, political, religious, scientific life and work
stands in opposition like prose does to poetry. This dominance of prose in the whole of
our circumstance is in my view so great and so decisive, that the poetic spirit, instead of
becoming master over it, is necessarily infected by it and therefore brought to ruin.
Therefore I know of no salvation for the poetic genius other than withdrawing from the
realm of the real world and instead of that coalition that would be dangerous to him,
concentrating his efforts toward the most strict separation. Therefore it seems to me
that it is profitable for him to form his own world and remain, through the Greek
myths, the relative of a distant, foreign, and idealist epoch, since reality would only
corrupt him.)
8
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000), 102; introduction to the first edition of the
Critique, A XV. (“A” stands for the first edition.)
9
Herder uses the terms “abstract” and “abstraction” in a polemical sense from his very
early writings on, for instance in the “Versuch über das Sein” (Essay on Being): “Der
elende Trost zur Deutlichkeit . . .” (The miserable consolation to distinctness . . .); “I
rip them [the concepts] out of reality . . .” FA 1:11.
1: Herder’s Life and Works
Steven D. Martinson
“Licht, Liebe, Leben”

— a favorite saying of Herder’s1
Jmodest Gmeans in theHGerman-speaking

OHANN OTTFRIED (1744–1803) was born into a family of
ERDER
town of Mohrungen in East
Prussia (today Morąg in Poland) on 25 August 1744. Both his grandfather,
Christoph (1681–1750), and his father, Gottfried (1706–63), were master
weavers. His father was forced to supplement his trade by working as a
sexton, choirmaster, and instructor for girls at the local Lutheran congrega-
tion. Jakob Peltz, Anna Elisabeth’s father, was quite successful as a master
shoemaker. Herder recalled that his father was strict and just but equally
good-natured, and he was good to his children. Johann Gottfried and
Catharina Dorothea (1748–93) wrote that their mother was sensitive and
tender, a characteristic that mellowed their father’s serious disposition.
Mohrungen
Johann Gottfried’s early education was shaped largely by the weak economic
position of his hometown, his father’s mentoring, Lutheran worship services,
and, also, his mother’s, Anna Elisabeth Herder’s (Peltz’s) (1717–72), reli-
gious instruction in pietism. Herder’s early thinking was impacted by Johann
Arndt’s (1555–1621) influential work of mysticism, Vier Bücher vom wahren
Christentum (Four Books on True Christianity, 1606–10), his father’s fa-
vorite book. Late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century German Pietists,
who were well familiar with Arndt’s book, cultivated their spirituality in a
personal relationship to God rather than the institution and religion of the
church as such. For his part, however, Herder would incorporate the exercise
of sound reason into his spiritual experience, thus avoiding the irrational
extremes of pietism. By virtue of his upbringing and early formal education,
Herder began to develop a keen sense of the potential and future develop-
ment of humanity, which he then cultivated in his occupations as admin-
istrator, writer, preacher, traveler, and family man. His primary calling,
2
however, was to the ministry.
16 ♦ STEVEN D. MARTINSON
The entrance to the St. Peter and Paul Church in Mohrungen with its
mysterious gothic vault caused the boy to shudder at times. He was over-
powered by a feeling of sublimity that Wilhelm Dobbek believes sparked
Herder’s spiritual Wendung, a turn that strengthened his faith and sense of
purpose in life. In this pietistic congregation there was a sense of equality
among the “brothers” and “sisters” of the faith that carried over to Herder’s
3
later understanding of the nature of community life.
At the Latin school in Mohrungen that had been built into the wall be-
hind the church Herder was exposed to a strict, highly disciplined study of a
wide range of academic fields. Rector Grimm knew only one kind of disci-
pline. With a switch in his hand, he would evoke fear and was not averse to
inflicting corporal punishment. For all of his criticism of the principal, Herder
came to appreciate the value of rigorous scholarship and a dedication to
one’s studies. He also came to respect the man. Numbering among Grimm’s
favorite pupils, and joining him on walks, Herder learned the essential role
4
of the senses in a nature-filled life.
Young Herder’s education advanced quickly when he was given free
access to the private library of Sebastian Friedrich Trescho (1733–1804), a
deacon, theologian, and author of Briefe über die neueste Theologie (Letters
Concerning the Most Recent Theology). Trescho’s rich library holdings in-
cluded works by both ancient and modern authors, and it provided the teen-
5
ager with a panoramic overview of contemporary literature. The one person
in Mohrungen who left the strongest imprint on Herder’s understanding
was the Reverend Christian Reinhold Willamovius (1701–63). This quiet
and wise individual appealed to Herder’s imagination. The boy was especially
taken by the moving and persuasive power of the pastor’s speech and, in
particular, his depictions of Christ on the cross. Willamovius was also fond of
the arts, particularly of poetry and painting. Later, Herder praised his hymns.
In addition to genuine Herzensfrömmigkeit (piety of heart), Herder also be-
gan to appreciate the values of Gotterfülltheit (being filled with God) and
6
Gottverbundenheit (being united with God) in life.
Herder’s first published work was the “Gesang an den Cyrus” (Song to
Cyrus) which appeared in 1762 in St. Petersburg to commemorate the
crowning of Tsar Peter III. The material for the poem is based on the bib-
lical account of Cyrus, King of Persia, who was stirred to rebuild the temple
of Jerusalem. A decisive result of Cyrus’s decision was that the Israelites were
released from captivity and allowed to return to their homeland. The Old
Testament records that, for Cyrus, the God of Israel was “the God who is in
Jerusalem” (Ezra 1:3b). Jewish religion and culture would become an in-
tegral part of Herder’s work.
HERDER’S LIFE AND WORKS ♦ 17
Königsberg, 1762–64
In 1762 Herder began his advanced studies at the Herzog Albrecht Univer-
sity in Königsberg. There was a period of adjustment to the hustle and bustle
of a city that had had sixty times (60,000) the population of Mohrungen.
Königsberg (today Kaliningrad) was a major city with a proud political,
religious and economic tradition. As a Hansestadt it was a major gateway of
trade to Eastern Europe even during the time of the Seven Years’ War when,
from 1758 to 1762, it was occupied by Russian troops. The city was well
known for its diversity of languages and cross-cultural community life.
Although he had been encouraged to study medicine, Herder fainted
during the first anatomy session. He turned to the study of theology. Among
the theologians at the university Herder admired Christoph Lilienthal, a
professor who held lectures on the Reformation and its aftermath as well as
on dogmatics. Although critical of Lilienthal, he was grateful to him for the
instruction he received in biblical textual criticism. The lectures of the
Orientalist professor David Kypke, specifically his linguistic-scientific treat-
ment of texts, left an indelible impression on Herder’s thinking. But far and
away, it was the thinking of the young philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–
1804), at the time a Privatdozent (non-tenured lecturer) who was just be-
ginning to make a name for himself, that had the greatest impact on him.
He studied most closely Kant’s Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des
Himmels (General Natural History and Theory of the Universe, 1755) and
Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes
(The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God, 1763).
Whereas the former work encouraged Herder to give more attention to the
natural sciences, the latter sparked criticism of his instructor’s concept of
God as the ground of all possibility. The student’s notes on Kant’s lectures
have provided scholarship with valuable insights into the nature of Kant’s
7
procedure and Herder’s independence of mind. One of his first Ausein-
andersetzungen with the philosopher was the fragmentary essay, Versuch über
das Sein (Essay on Being, 1763), which was a response to Kant’s Der einzig
mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes. Herder was
Kant’s favorite student, probably in part because Kant had spent several years
in the village of Altdorf near the town of Mohrungen. Clearly, Kant also
recognized Herder’s exceptional aptitude.
It was also in Königsberg that Herder befriended Johann Georg
Hamann (1730–88), who became a mentor to him. Among other things, he
helped Herder to learn English and recommended him for a position at the
cathedral church in Riga. Intellectually, Hamann influenced Herder’s think-
8
ing primarily through the power of his language. He was struck especially by
Hamann’s definition of poetry as the mother tongue of the human race in
the essay Aesthetica in nuce (Aesthetics in a Nutshell) which was part of his
Kreuzzüge eines Philologen (Crusades of a Philologist, 1762). Hamann’s key

insight that knowledge and happiness emanate from images left a lasting im-
pression on Herder. In Ueber Thomas Abbts Schriften (Thomas Abbt’s
Writings, 1768), Herder underscored the fragmentary and incomplete nature
of things that personal experience allowed him to identify. Through the pro-
cesses of reading and writing, he believed, reality can be formed and trans-
formed. As Michael Zaremba has formulated it, “Gedanken gerannen ihm
zu mitreissender Sprache und blutvollen Bildern” (71; Thoughts coagulated
for him into an inspiring language and vivid images). An essential part of
Herder’s epistemology consists in his recognition of the power of images to
create ideas. “Das schöpferische Vergnügen, unter seiner Feder Gedanken
werden, Bilder entstehen zu sehen, paaret sich selten mit der sparsamen Gen-
auigkeit, Bilder zu ordnen, Gedanken zu feilen” (SWS 2:280; quoted by
Zaremba, 71; The creative pleasure of seeing under his pen the evolution of
thoughts, the generation of images, is rarely coupled with parsimonious
precision in ordering the images and polishing the thoughts). The writer
sustained this conviction throughout his career. For example, in his highly
influential Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas on the
Philosophy of the History of Humanity, 1784–91), he would advance the
idea that the human race depends on images because they give the impres-
sion of things. The origins of images are located in sensation and feeling,
which are prior to and therefore stronger than the rational-logical capacities
of human beings.
Riga, 1764–69
Through Hamann’s negotiations, Herder received a call to serve as an in-
structor at the “Domschule” in the Hanseatic port city of Riga. Even though
he had a quiet voice, the teacher captured his audiences’ attention by his use
of language and style of presentation, both of which formed a hallmark of his
later ministry. Herder was impressed by the republican self-government of
the merchants of Riga, and he would recall this experience throughout his
life. Here, too, he became aware of cultural differences, primarily through
his contact with the Latvian community.
Herder’s Antrittspredigt, his inaugural sermon in the Jesuskirche (1767),
is remarkable for the creative license the new pastor took with the traditional
form of this type of sermon. His style draws the listener (and reader) into
the discussion and personalizes the message. Herder declared his intentions
for the content of future sermons. He would seek to impress upon his par-
ishioners “die Religion des Herzens, die Rechtschaffenheit der Seele vor dem
Herrn und das Aufstreben nach Vollkommenheit Gottes” (SWS 31:29; the
religion of the heart, the righteousness of the soul before the Lord and the
9
striving toward the perfection of God). Unlike the Pharisees, Herder added,
Jesus “drang ins besondre: er sprach ins Herz: er sprach für seine Zeit; er
sprach für seine Zuhörer, und dies halte ich für ein Nachahmenswerthes
Muster eines Evangelischen Lehrers” (30; penetrated in particular: he spoke
to one’s heart: he spoke for his time; he spoke for his audience, and this I
hold to be a model worthy of imitation for an evangelical teacher). The ex-
ample of Jesus would serve Herder as a model, including his commitment to
serving society.
Because Herder believed that it was most important to translate biblical
language into the flowing language of the time and of life, he was reluctant
to publish his sermons, though he sometimes did so for official reasons. He
believed that the printed word is incapable of conveying the dynamic spirit
and immediacy of an oral presentation. But judging from the evidence, even
the printed versions of his sermons convey the liveliness of Herder’s presen-
tation. For example, having read three of Herder’s sermons from the time,
Herder’s first major biographer, Rudolf Haym, wrote:
Alle drei Predigten in ihrer gemeinverständlichen und doch gehobenen,
bald einfach entwickelnden, bald andringenden, immer fesselnden,
zuweilen packenden Sprache, beredt ohne alle Effecthascherei, klar und
übersichtlich ohne alles schematische Eintheilungswesen, erscheinen als
praktische Exemplificationen zu der homiletischen Theorie des Red-
ners. (Herder, 1:92).
[All three sermons, in their commonly comprehensible and yet elevated
language, appear as practical exemplifications of the homiletic theory of
the speaker. Now developing simply, now forward-surging, [they are]
always captivating, at times gripping, eloquent without any empty effects,
clear and distinct without any tendency toward pedantic structuring.]
Herder wrote that his sermons were intended to express sublime and
valuable concepts of God and to show human beings’ dependence upon
Him and His providence, and to reveal His grace for all.
Like many of his contemporaries, Herder was concerned with the mind-
body problem and with the nature of sensory perceptions. His aesthetics first
took form in the essay, “Ist die Schönheit des Körpers ein Bote von der
10
Schönheit der Seele?” (Is a Beautiful Body a Sign of a Beautiful Soul?). The
essay was published anonymously in the “Gelehrten Beyträgen zu den Ri-
gischen Anzeigen aufs Jahr 1766” (Scholarly Contributions to the Rigische
Anzeigen for 1766). Following a lengthy critical analysis of a myriad of view-
points concerning the relationship between spiritual and corporeal beauty,
Herder determined that “der geistige Reiz, die Anmut, und Gratie” (intel-
lectual appeal, charm, and grace) comprise the highest level of beauty, which
enlivens all other levels and forms of beauty (FA 1:145). Unlike the phre-
nologist Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) and his followers, Herder
recognized that one cannot infer on the basis of external features of the body
greatness of spirit. True beauty reveals and reflects the health, cheerfulness,
and passion that are characteristic of right thinking and the result of “ein
empfindliches und gefühlvolles Herz” (a sensitive heart full of feeling) which
reveals moral goodness (FA 1:145). In Von der Veränderung des Geschmacks
(On the Changes of Taste, 1766), young Herder wrote that the senses are
the door to all of our concepts. They are, as he expresses it, the optical me-
dium through which the idea falls like a ray of sunlight (FA 1:153). At the
same time, people are differentiated not only on the basis of the variables of
taste but also on account of their way of living (“Lebensart”) and way of
thinking (“Denkart”) (FA 1:159–60). While human beings share a great
deal in common, such as their true humanity, each individual expresses him
or herself in a unique and defining manner.
In all his practical and scholarly pursuits, Herder strove to enact the
principles upon which he was basing his own unique pedagogy. A charac-
teristic and distinguishing feature of Herder’s lifelong mission as a minister
was that he not only provided his parishioners and fellow Christians with the
word of God but also worked to improve humanity. For example, in one of
his first speeches in Riga Herder addressed a pedagogical problem. On the
question of school reform, he advanced the idea that instead of turning
schools into prisons through the then-common practice of rigid discipline
and sternness, instructors must exercise grace so that students’ curiosity and
interest in the material is awakened (Von der Grazie in der Schule; Concern-
ing Grace in School, 1765).
Although there was some talk of his serving the congregation of the evan-
gelical Lutheran church in St. Petersburg as director and inspector of the
Institute for Languages, Arts, and Sciences, it is doubtful that he would have
accepted the position. In any case, it was an opportunity for his parishioners
to reaffirm their love and respect for him. Herder himself began to appre-
ciate the possibility that he had received a calling from heaven to a unique
and special sphere of activity (letter to Trescho, June 21, 1767; HB 1: 80).
Herder’s first major publication was inspired by the widely read period-
ical Briefe, die neueste Litteratur betreffend (Letters Concerning the Most
Recent Literature, 1759–65), initiated by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, later
co-edited by Moses Mendelssohn (1749–86) and Thomas Abbt (1738–66).
Herder envisioned his Über die neuere deutsche Literatur. Fragmente (Frag-
ments on the Most Recent German Literature, 1766–67) as an ongoing
critical dialogue with the Literaturbriefe. As installments appeared, they built
on and complemented each other. Nonetheless, a crucial distinction re-
garding the nature of poetry remained. Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach
drives home the point that while Lessing, Abbt, and Mendelssohn saw in
poetry a product of education and understanding informed by principles of
good taste, Herder stressed the genius of language and the centrality of
textual interpretation based on Einfühlung (30), as well as serious study and

reasoned judgment.
While he here focused on the literary-cultural landscapes of his day, Her-
der also engaged indirectly in a scathing critique of the rugged political
topography of the German provinces.
Wir arbeiten in Deutschland wie in jener Verwirrung Babels; Sekten im
Geschmack, Parteien in der Dichtkunst, Schulen in der Weltweisheit
streiten gegeneinander: keine Hauptstadt, und kein allgemeines Interesse:
kein grosser allgemeiner Beförderer und allgemeines gesetzgeberisches
Genie. (FA 1:171)
[We work in Germany like in the chaos of Babel; sects in matters of taste,
opposing parties in matters of poetic art, schools of philosophy vie with
one another: no capital city, no common interest, no great overall leader
and no general legislative genius.]
Herder’s indictment complemented Lessing’s criticism at the end of his
Hamburgische Dramaturgie (Hamburg Dramaturgy, 1766–67) of the failed
attempt to found a German national theater. Both writers sounded an alarm
that was shared by numerous intellectuals in the divided Germany of their
day, namely the rift between politics and culture. At best, writers could en-
gage in a politics of culture. Nevertheless, the practical effects toward the re-
formation of Germany as a unified state were sorely limited. For even in the
most enlightened of political communities of the day, Frederick the Great’s
Berlin, the work of intellectuals stood under the careful watch of the censors.
In the absence of political unity, writers strove to construct a distinct Ger-
man cultural identity.
It is important to note that Herder shared with the editors of the Briefe,
die neueste Literatur betreffend an expansive concept of literature. Herder
praised the work of a number of different writers, such as Abbt, Johann
Joachim Spalding (1714–1804), and Friedrich Carl Ludwig Freiherr von
Moser (1723–94) for their writing styles. For Herder, literature is never un-
differentiated. In fact, he identifies no fewer than four provinces (“Lände-
reien”) of literature: language, taste, history, and philosophy, each of which
serves to strengthen the other. According to Hans Dietrich Irmscher, Herder’s
Fragmente form a historical interpretation of literature that was intended to
liberate the productive forces of the present from the burden of the past and
to liberate writers and artists from the compulsion to imitate ancient classical
models (2001, 17). It was at this time that Herder came to the important
realization that human beings think in language (FA 1:558).
Herder’s next major work, Kritische Wälder. Oder Betrachtungen, die
Wissenschaft und Kunst des Schönen betreffend, nach Maasgabe neuerer Schrif-
ten (Critical Forests. Or Considerations Concerning the Science and Art of the
Beautiful, in Reference to Recent Writings, 1768), exhibits a new and urgent

tone. Herder now employs polemics not only to criticize the work of those
with whom he disagrees, such as Lessing’s adversary Christian Adolf Klotz
(1738–71), professor of philosophy in Halle, the seat of German pietism,
Friedrich Justus Riedel (1742–85), professor of philosophy in Erfurt and a
follower of Klotz, or even Lessing himself, but for the sake of expanding
knowledge. The first part, or volume, of the work is a critical commentary
on Lessing’s Laokoon (1766). The second and third parts are polemics
against Klotz’s work, as Lessing had already provided. The last part of the
Kritische Wälder is an Auseinandersetzung with Riedel and contains a new
theory of literature and the arts.
In the first volume of the Kritische Wälder, Herder developed a new
idea of poetry as a force that energizes individual human beings and, by ex-
tension, the human race. In the fourth volume of the same work, which did
not appear until 1846, Herder took issue with Alexander Baumgarten’s
(1714–62) influential Aesthetica (2 volumes, 1750 and 1758). Herder denied
the value of prescriptive aesthetics. The work of art is a unique form that
stands on its own merits.
For Herder, music, unlike the plastic arts, originates from an “inneres
Wesen” (inner essence), “die Energische Kraft” (the energetic force), the na-
ture of which effects “das Tiefdringende auf die Seele: Die Welt eines neuen
Gefühls” (KW 4, FA 2:406; what penetrates deep into the soul: The world
of a new feeling). Our own sensations are like a musical instrument (“Saiten-
spiel,” 406), the strings of which not only make music but reverberate music
from the outside and move the soul. As a writer and a churchman, Herder
knew the power of music to move souls and transform thinking.
Having spent five years in Riga, Herder asked to be dismissed from his
office. On 17 May 1769 he held his farewell sermon in the St. Gertruden-
kirche. Surveying the age in which he was living, which he viewed as cor-
rupted and degenerate, he preached that the true office of the pastor was to
plant a word in human souls that can make individuals happy, but also blessed
11
(FA 9/1:50). Expressing his hope that Christian love would offset what-
ever shortcomings and mistakes he had made during his years in Riga,
Herder used a metaphor of nature to indicate the foundation of his spiritual
and humanistic aspirations. Once the Word has been planted in the soul of
the believer, he wrote, it grows together with the component parts of his or
her being. “Das ist der einzige und eigentliche Weg, wahrer Menschlicher
Bildung zur Glückseligkeit” (51; That is the only and the true way of human
development toward happiness). Herder ended his lengthy sermon with a
promise: “Diese Hoffnung, diese Gefaßtheit auf den guten Willen meines
Gottes nehme ich mit mir, und sie ist mir statt Unterstützung und Reich-
tum, den ich auf meiner Reise freilich entbehre” (66; This hope, this com-
posure about the good will of my God I take with me, and it serves me in
lieu of support and riches, which I freely do without on my journey).
In retrospect, Herder endeavored to persuade the congregation of a
practical Christianity, the necessity of living out one’s faith for the sake of
the future of humanity. Tadeusz Namowicz has captured well the essence of
young Herder’s work:
In dem Gleichgewicht zwischen Religion und menschlicher tätiger Sitt-
lichkeit sah der junge Herder den Weg zu der geahnten und ersehnten
Lebensweise, die sich nicht in abstrakten Sittenlehren, sondern in guten
Handlungen äußern sollte und die er später Humanität nannte. (25)
[In the balance between religion and practical human morality the young
Herder saw the path to the way of life he sensed and longed for, which
should find expression not in abstract moral lessons but instead in good
works, and which he later called Humanität.]
Time and again, Herder’s spiritual-theological convictions register a com-
mitment to the improvement of humanity via a Christian ethic grounded in
love and virtue, justice and mercy.
The Journey from Riga to France, 1769

On 5 June 1769, Herder left Riga by ship to unknown destinations. His
poem, “Als ich von Liefland aus zu Schiffe ging” (As I Disembarked from
Latvia, SWS 29:319–21), suggests that he had been driven by “Ahnungs-
donner” (a thunderous foreboding). Originally intending to visit Scandinavia,
the seafarer headed for France. While still aboard ship, he began to write his
reflections down in a daily journal. One of the first entries includes a general
philosophical statement: “Ein großer Theil unsrer Lebensbegebenheiten hängt
würklich vom Wurf von Zufällen ab” (AkB, 60; A great part of the circum-
stances of life really depend on the throw of chance). Although he felt he
was in God’s hands, Herder was unsure of where he was being led. The fact
that he did not know French did not help.
During the four months he spent in the port city of Nantes, France,
Herder wrote the largest part of his revealing Journal meiner Reise im Jahr
1769 (Journal of My Voyage in the Year 1769). In Nantes, Herder had plen-
ty of time for himself and the development of his thoughts: for reading and
writing, that is. Here he worked out the first version of the fourth volume of
12
Kritisches Wäldchen in private debate with Lessing, Mendelssohn, and
Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68), out of which his essay Plastik
(Sculpture, 1778) originated. The work registers Herder’s keen aesthetic
sensibility for “schöne, fühlbare Form” (SWS 8:149; quoted by Zaremba,
94; beautiful, perceptible form). While granting more space to ugliness in con-
trast to beauty than did his contemporaries, such as Lessing in his Laokoon
(1766), Herder began to develop a deeper appreciation of diversity, not only

on the basis of his study of literature and theology but also in light of scien-
tific discoveries, especially in the area of comparative anthropology. Christian
Juranek suggests in a 1994 essay that the significance of this moment for
Herder’s intellectual development rests in the realization that organic evolu-
tion in the sense of a world plan and universal history arises out of the mul-
tiplicity of phenomena and world events in which individual nations are to
attain their own, unique individuality (63).
During his stay in Nantes, Herder accepted an offer from the Prince
Bishop of Lübeck, who resided in Eutin, to accompany his son on his grand
tour. On his way from Belgium and Holland to Eutin in early spring 1770,
he first visited Hamburg. Here he was delighted to be able to spend two
weeks with Lessing, whose work he had admired for quite some time. Given
his position as a Lutheran minister, he paid the obligatory visit to the senior
pastor of the St. Katharinenkirche, Lessing’s fundamentalist adversary,
Johann Melchior Goeze (1717–86). While still in Hamburg, Herder also
met the poet and popular journalist Matthias Claudius (1740–1815), whose
13
kindness and gentleness impressed him greatly. As a tribute to Claudius,
Herder included the poet’s “Abendlied” in his collection of folk poetry,
which he began to assemble in 1774 and published in 1778 under the title
Volkslieder.
Herder soon learned that it was not easy to be a member of the entour-
age of a prince from a petty German state. After time spent in Darmstadt,
Heidelberg, Mannheim, and Karlsruhe, on the way to Strasbourg, Herder
grew tired of the quarrels in the entourage and gave up his post. Passing
through Darmstadt on his way to Strasbourg, Herder met his future wife
Maria Carolina (“Lina”) Flachsland (1750–1809) for the first time and was
struck by her beauty. Flachsland wrote of having been moved by the angelic
nature of Herder’s sermon of August 19 in the castle church. Herder’s and
Flachsland’s passionate common interest in literature, especially the odes and
elegies of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724–1803), drew them close to-
gether. Like many of their contemporaries, they too were enamored of
Laurence Sterne’s (1713–68) A Sentimental Journey (1768). Sentimen-
talism’s revelatory emphasis on the life of the soul brought new expressions
and word combinations into the language, which had a formative effect on
Herder’s style. The discoveries in the literature of other countries and the
experiences he gathered in foreign lands were a rich source of inspiration and
insight for his subsequent work. One of the most important convictions he
gained from his experience of the cultural differences between the nations of
Western Europe was the value of enlightened freedom of expression.
While in Strasbourg Herder sought the expertise of Dr. Johann Friedrich
Lobstein (1736–84) in the hope of finding a cure for an acute problem he
had been having with his tear ducts, but it was to no avail. During these dif-
ficult times, the young Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who was studying law at
the university at the time, came to see Herder in his Gasthof, a scene he later
described in his Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth). Goethe hap-
pened to be attending Lobstein’s lectures on surgery. He was allowed to
observe Lobstein’s operation on Herder and stood by him day and night
during the recuperation period, growing ever closer to the man. In particu-
lar, he admired Herder’s perseverance and patience and his expert knowl-
edge of a wealth of subjects. Herder pointed Goethe to the work of Pindar,
Homer, Shakespeare, and folk poetry. Like so many of their contemporaries,
both men were inspired by James Macpherson’s (1736–96) Ossian frag-
ments (Fragments of Ancient Poetry, 1760 and The Works of Ossian, 1765–
72) which were highly inspirational and imaginative adaptations of original
Gaelic documents.
In Strasbourg Herder completed his pioneering treatise on the origin of
language, Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache (Treatise on the Ori-
gin of Language, 1772) for which he would later win a prize-essay competi-
tion held by the Berlin Academy of Sciences. In this treatise Herder rejected
the two leading theories of his time, namely the mutually exclusive ideas that
language was divinely inspired or that it developed naturally. For Herder,
human beings began to speak and think because they were endowed with
reason, specifically Besonnenheit, which involves memory and fosters critical
and self-critical reflection. Musical sounds precipitated the acquisition of
language as well as the perception of sounds through hearing, both of which
impact and further develop feeling. Thereafter, the formation of social groups
advanced the communication and learning of language. Wulf Koepke makes
the important point that Herder’s treatise should not be understood only as
a contribution to language theory but as an integral part of his philosophy
and Gesamtwerk (1987, 26). To recap: for Herder, to think is to think in
and through language.
The essay Über den Fleiss in mehreren gelehrten Sprachen (On Diligence
in Several Scholarly Languages, 1764), which appeared in 1764, anticipates
some of the fundamental propositions of the treatise on the origins of lan-
guage and Herder’s later writings. Herder here observes that each language
has its own peculiar quality and power. In the light of the historical develop-
ment of languages, Herder submits that every language from the time of the
ancients on has become a link in a chain of languages. He turns to natural
science for an analogy. Each language develops as a tree grows: from a seed
to its branches; and under its shade each nation plants the “Samenkörner der
Literatur” (the seeds of literature, FA 1:25). Herder employed the metaphor
of seeds frequently in his writings. Seeds constitute a world in themselves,
each of which develops in accordance with laws of nature to become what
they are. For Herder, they form the foundation of every culture. Herder
argues that without a common thread the multiplicity of languages would
result in meaningless babble. Cohesion and coherence are engendered by

one’s native tongue. By studying and learning other languages, we gain ac-
cess to additional sources of knowledge. “Wie wenig Fortschritte würden wir
getan haben, wenn jede Nation in die enge Sphäre ihrer Sprache ein-
geschlossen, vor die Gelehrsamkeit allein arbeitete?” (FA 1:24; How little
progress would we have made if every nation worked toward learnedness
alone, isolated in the narrow sphere of its language?).
In sum, for Herder every language is a treasure chest of discovery,
knowledge of which cultivates clear thinking and eloquence of expression.
Even though few individuals are true geniuses, every educated individual
should be diligent in observing nature, because doing so not only expands
one’s own knowledge but, by virtue of the interrelatedness of all languages,
knowledge in general (FA 1:23).
Herder decided to accept an offer from Count Friedrich Ernst Wilhelm
zu Schaumburg-Lippe to serve as a senior pastor and advisor to the court in
Bückeburg, Westphalia. He received a subsidy to finance his trip to Bücke-
burg, but first he returned to Darmstadt. His second meeting with Caroline
Flachsland was less amorous than he had hoped. Disappointed, Herder set
out for Bückeburg, trying to convince himself that marriage would be an
unwanted burden. Nevertheless, Herder and Caroline continued their
relationship.
Bückeburg, 1771–76
Herder arrived in Bückeburg on 28 April 1771. Even though he occupied a
prominent and influential position as Hofprediger and Konsistorialrat, he
would experience a great deal of emotional turmoil. He felt like a pastor
without a congregation and was disenchanted with the distance that the
Count Wilhelm von Schaumburg-Lippe maintained. Not even his close friend-
ship with the count’s wife, Barbara Eleonore, Countess of Lippe-Biesterfeld,
could appease him.
As time passed, however, Herder continued his correspondence with
Caroline Flachsland, and his love for her increased, as did her love for him.
They were married on 2 May 1773. During the first months of marriage,
Herder directed enormous energy toward his work and became a prolific
writer. His productivity secured for him considerable fame. Among other
things, he wrote an essay on Shakespeare; the Auszug aus einem Briefwechsel
über Ossian und die Lieder alter Völker (Excerpt from a Correspondence
about Ossian and the Songs of Ancient Peoples); edited and contributed to
what was to become a manifesto of the Storm-and-Stress movement, Von
deutscher Art und Kunst (Of German Kind and Art, 1773); wrote a critical
examination titled the Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts (The Oldest
Document of the Human Race, 1774–76); continued to theorize on the
plastic arts; and finished one of his first major works, Auch eine Philosophie
der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit. Beytrag zu vielen Beyträgen des
Jahrhunderts (Another Philosophy of History for the Education of Human-
kind: A Contribution to Many Contributions of the Century, 1774). Michael
Zaremba has suggested that the latter work marks a final break with phi-
lology and that Herder’s thinking now turned in the direction of history and
theology (133). All of nature and the human race develop over time in
accordance with a greater plan of God for the whole (FA 4:82). The Älteste
Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts is Herder’s extensive commentary on
Genesis 1:1–2:3, based on his “discovery” of the “Schöpfungshieroglyphe”
(hieroglyphic of creation), which he took to be the universal blueprint of the
whole micro- and macrocosm. Consistent with the Old Testament account,
Herder believed that man was created in God’s own image. In the Älteste
Urkunde he assailed all those philosophers, such as Rousseau and Voltaire,
who do not place man over all other creatures. In this work Herder also
developed an epistemology of imagistic thinking according to which the
generation of images (Bilder) is based in things (“Sachen”) that we recog-
nize and can feel (“nachfühlen,” FA 5:238) or intuit in the simplest images
we behold in the world. He assures the reader of the presence of God in
everything that one does. In each individual human being there resides an
“edles Bild Gottes” (256–57; noble image of God). In effect, Herder creates
a kind of genealogy of the creation of the world, for “überall wo Kraft strebt,
wo Würkung erscheinet — da der allebende Gott” (253; everywhere power
strives, where effects appear — there the all-living God). This point antici-
pates Herder’s later defense of Benedictus (Baruch) Spinoza (1632–77).
The year 1774 marks a pivotal period in Herder’s work as a writer. As
the partial list of publications above indicates, Herder had gained a wide
purview over a myriad of different, yet interrelated fields of study. In particu-
lar, he explored interpretations of the biblical history of creation and consid-
ered the question of the beginnings of the history of humankind (as pointed
out by Irmscher, 30). In short, the act of creation had set forces of nature
into motion that drive and inform the course of human history.
During these years, Herder underwent momentous changes in his spiri-
tual life. But, as Michael Möller has pointed out, it did not constitute the
kind of profound turn that scholarship has ascribed to Herder’s experiences
at that time; rather, it was a “klares Programm, das dazu diente, den theo-
logischen und pädagogischen Anspruch, den Herder an sein Leben stellte,
zu verwirklichen” (53; a clear program serving to realize the theological and
pedagogical claims that Herder made on his life).
Herder felt isolated in Bückeburg, but he made some important ac-
quaintances there that were important for his further life and career. For
example, he met Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86), for whom he developed
14
undying respect. He also began his friendship with Christian Gottlob
Heyne (1729–1812), professor for classical philology at the university of

Göttingen.
In the winter of 1774 Herder composed the first version of another
prize essay for the Berlin Academy, “Uebers Erkennen und Empfinden in
der menschlichen Seele” (Concerning Cognition and Sensation in the Hu-
man Soul), one of his most polished and significant works, with second and
third versions in 1775 and 1778, published in 1778 as Vom Erkennen und
15
Empfinden der menschlichen Seele. The essay constitutes a theory of knowl-
edge that undergirds Herder’s subsequent work. Herder submitted the essay
for a competition hosted by the Berlin Academy, but he did not receive the
16
prize. In this work, Herder argues that the inner state of the powers of sen-
sation sparks cognition. Sensation and thinking are intimately and inex-
tricably bound. Whereas sensation first sets thinking into motion, thinking
gives shape to sensation. Vom Erkennen und Empfinden shares a number of
points in common with Herder’s essay Plastik, where we find one of his
most incisive pronouncements:
Gefühl ist der erste, profondste und fast einzige Sinn der Menschen: die
Quelle der meisten unsrer Begriffe und Empfindungen, das wahre und
erste Organum der Seele, Vorstellungen von außen zu sammlen: der
Sinn, der die Seele gleichsam ganz umgibt, und die andren Sinnen als
Arten, Teile oder Verkürzungen in sich enthält: die Maße unsrer Sinn-
lichkeit: der wahre Ursprung des Wahren, Guten, Schönen! (Studien
und Entwürfe zur Plastik, SWS 8:104).
[Feeling is the first, most profound, and almost the only human sense:
the source of most of our concepts and sensations, the true and first
organ by which the soul collects ideas from the outside: the sense that
at the same time surrounds the soul and holds the other senses in itself
as kinds, parts, or abbreviations: the true source of the true, the good,
the beautiful!]
Herder’s work An Prediger (To Preachers, 1774) is comprised of fifteen
Provinzialblätter (Provincial Messages). The theologian Thomas Zippert
draws attention especially to the fourth sheet, titled “Lehrer der Offenba-
rung” (Teacher of Revelation), wherein Herder defines his thoughts on the
nature of revelation. Revelation is the historical reality of God’s work of crea-
tion as well as the potential for development that is contained in it (226).
For Herder, divine revelations are “Samenkörner,” seeds that are strewn
along the path of history and are sown at specific moments through the
auspices of particular individuals. The words of preachers are or should be
like seeds that grow and bring forth fruits. Herder favors such organic meta-
phors and comparisons. Divine revelation is a process that works itself out
over the span of human history as well as in nature, and it involves the
Bildungsprozess (process of development) that has been defined by Thomas
Zippert as the “Ausbildung aller Kräfte aller Menschen zu einer bestimmten

Zeit” (226; formation of all forces of all people at a certain time) and the
presence of God in Christ. Clearly, then, and of necessity, Herder’s concept
of revelation is multidimensional in character, bearing on poetry, philosophy,
and the history of nature. Herder’s discussions of revelation deserve greater
attention from scholars, since they form a connecting link to the numerous
fields of study in which he was engaged.
Herder did his best to maintain the dignity and integrity of the pastoral
office. On the one hand, against influential enemies, he refused to support
the appointment of Carl Friedrich Stock as pastor, which caused much con-
troversy in Schaumburg-Lippe (see SWS 31:741–50). On the other hand,
Herder’s orthodoxy was questioned by conservative theologians. When Her-
der’s name was put forward for appointment to a professorship in Göttingen
in 1775, it was vetoed by a group of professors of theology. Fortunately, at
the same time, Goethe was able to procure his former mentor a prominent
position in Weimar. Apparently it was at the suggestion of Christoph Martin
Wieland (1733–1813) that Goethe, who had become a famous author with
the publication of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, and who had come to
Weimar at the invitation of Duke Carl August in 1775, proposed to bring
Herder to Weimar as well.
Before leaving Bückeburg, Herder conducted the funeral service for his
closest ally, the countess Maria Barbara. His Leichenpredigt, or formal funeral
oration, was followed eight days later by his Abschiedspredigt, on 15 Septem-
ber 1776. This farewell address was not really a sermon. It contains con-
siderable critical self-analysis and an indictment of the deplorable educational
and economic conditions in a town that Herder could no longer tolerate
(SWS 31:422–32).
Weimar I: 1776–1789
Herder arrived in Weimar with his family on October 1, 1776 where he as-
sumed a new, multifaceted position as senior pastor to the court, general su-
perintendent, councilor of churches, and Ephorus (professor and supervisor)
of all Gymnasien and schools in the region. Herder’s Antrittspredigt (in-
augural sermon) in Weimar is remarkable for its positive tone and sense of
purpose and commitment. Before Herder delivered his first sermon, Goethe
had alerted his mentor to the fact that the common people in Weimar feared
him: “Das gemeine Volk fürchtet sich vor Dir, es werde Dich nicht ver-
stehen: darum sei einfach in Deiner ersten Predigt. Sag ihnen alles in Deiner
Art, so hast Du auch die” (quoted by von Hintzenstern, 20; The common
people are afraid of you, they won’t understand you: therefore be simple in
your first sermon. Say everything in your own way, if you do you’ll have
them too). Perhaps they had heard of his farewell speech in Bückeburg. In
any event, the sermon registers Herder’s humility and reliance on God:
“Liebe und Zutrauen begleite, stärke und segne meine Handlungen, daß
ich, o Erlöser, dich nicht nur preise, sondern auch darstelle, zeige” (SWS
31:436; May love and trust accompany, strengthen, and bless my actions, so
that I do not only praise you, Savior, but also represent you, show you).
Here lies one of Herder’s central tenets: since Christ is “das Urbild der
menschlichen Natur” (440; the original image of human nature) one is able
to cultivate noble humanity (“edle Menschheit,” 447).
In spite of his workload, Herder continued his creative work. In addi-
tion to the above-mentioned publication of Vom Erkennen und Empfinden
der menschlichen Seele and Plastik, Herder returned to his collection of folk
songs (Volkslieder), which he finally published in 1778. In the Volkslied he
sensed a primal poetic energy, the appropriation of which could yield a new
form of poetry and thereby enliven culture. It is significant that Herder’s
17
collection was “international angelegt.” Herder’s collection of folk songs
from various countries and continents was based on a broad concept of
Volkslied that even included songs from Shakespeare’s plays. This collection
proved highly influential on the poetry of Romanticism and beyond. In the
first edition of Herder’s collected works after his death, it was given the title
Stimmen der Völker in Liedern (The Voices of the Peoples in Song), and
since that time it has been known by that title.
Herder’s duties were far more time consuming and demanding than he
had envisioned. He worked hard to reform the liturgy and fought to im-
prove the school system and the status of teachers (for more on this, see the
contribution by Müller-Michaels in the present volume). He gradually grew
weary of his responsibilities, as had also been the case in Riga and Bückeburg.
By 1785 he was expressing his frustrations, characterizing Weimar as an
“unseliges Mittelding zwischen Hofstadt und Dorf” (letter of 28 August
1785; also cited by Zaremba, 163; an unholy middle thing between court
city and village). By 1785, Herder’s relationship with Duke Carl August
(1757–1828) had become problematic. His relationship with Carl August
had never been very close, and Herder struggled to defend the church and
the schools against encroachments by the duke and his government. Al-
though Goethe was part of that government, Herder and Goethe remained
close friends until the 1790s. Herder was also able to cultivate close ties with
Wieland and later in life with Jean Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter,
1763–1825).
Although Michael Zaremba goes too far when he claims that Herder
was never happy in Weimar (163), Herder’s restless soul was indeed the pri-
mary source of his dissatisfaction with what he felt was the restrictive envi-
ronments of the courtly society and town of Weimar. Furthermore, even as a
Lutheran pastor, he was not content with the disparity between the material,
temporal world and the divine, eternal world (according to Augustine’s and
Luther’s doctrine of the two realms) and, as a writer, he was impatient with
18
the progress he was making. Herder’s relentless writing had a great deal to
do with his wife, Caroline. As the bookkeeper in the household and out of
concern for her family’s tight financial situation, she put increasing pressure
on her husband to produce so that they could receive the royalties and ad-
vances they needed in order to survive. Caroline was also her husband’s sec-
retary, the first editor of his works, his closest confidante and, as Herder later
wrote to Hamann, “die eigentlich Autor autoris meiner Schriften” (10 May
1784, AkB, 167; the real author’s author of my writings).
Throughout his life, Herder had a special affinity for mentoring women.
For instance, he provided lessons in English and Latin to the princess Luise
of Hessen-Darmstadt, the wife of Duke Carl August, whose acquaintance
Herder had made in Darmstadt, which inspired her to study ancient litera-
ture. He also instructed Friederike Eleonore Sophie von Schardt (1755–
1819), Charlotte von Stein’s sister-in-law, in ancient Greek. It is indicative
of Herder’s personality that in order to gladden the heart of this lonely and
unhappily married woman he sent her a first copy of his Lieder der Liebe
(Songs of Love, 1778), a translation of Solomon’s Song of Songs, and modern
versions of medieval love songs.
While in Weimar, Herder’s writings found repeated acclaim. He re-
ceived the prize of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences for his essay Ueber die
Würckung der Dichtkunst auf die Sitten der Völker in alten und neuen Zeiten
(On the Effect of Poetry on the Customs of Peoples in Ancient and Recent
Times, 1778). His essay Vom Einfluss der Regierung auf die Wissenschaften,
und der Wissenschaften auf die Regierung (On the Influence of the Gov-
ernment on the Sciences and the Sciences on the Government, 1780) re-
ceived an award from the Berlin Academy of Sciences, of which he was named
an honorary member. Once again, he was recognized by the Bavarian Acad-
emy of Sciences for his essay Ueber den Einfluss der schönen Künste in die
höhern Wissenschaften (On the Influence of the Beautiful Arts on the Higher
Sciences, 1779). Writings such as these not only provided needed income,
but also created a public forum for the dissemination of his ideas on society
and culture.
Although Herder’s theological writings, such as the four-part work Briefe,
das Studium der Theologie betreffend (Letters Concerning the Study of The-
ology, 2 volumes, 1780–81), have received some attention in the secondary
literature, they deserve much closer analysis. Future scholarship may wish to
take greater interest in Wulf Koepke’s suggestions that the theological
writings are at the heart of Herder’s epistemology (1982). In fact, Herder’s
concepts of Humanität and Bildung cannot be fully comprehended without
19
taking his theology seriously.
Consistent with the principles he had been following since the time of
his studies in Königsberg, Herder began his Briefe, das Studium der Theologie
betreffend by insisting that the Bible must be read humanely. “Die Bibel ist
[. . .] gewissermassen das menschlichste von allen Büchern, denn sie ist ihrem
größten Teil und Grunde nach, beinahe das älteste” (STh, FA 9/1:146; The
Bible is . . . as it were the most human of all books, for it is for the most part
and fundamentally almost the oldest). In fact, the very origins of history are
found in the language and poetry of the Bible. The Briefe, das Studium der
Theologie betreffend soon became an indispensable guide for students of
theology and rural ministers who lacked advanced formal training. In this
way, too, Herder remained true to his public declaration that the proper
office of a pastor is to educate humanity, irrespective of social standing.
After completing his letters on the study of theology, Herder began to
work intensively on one of his most distinguished writings, Vom Geist der
Ebräischen Poesie. Eine Anleitung für die Liebhaber derselben und der ältesten
Geschichte des menschlichen Geistes (On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry: An In-
troduction for Lovers of the Same and the Most Ancient History of the
Human Spirit, 1782/83). Of these and related writings by Herder during
this period, Goethe would write the following in his autobiographical work,
Dichtung und Wahrheit:
Die hebräische Dichtkunst, welche er [Herder] nach seinem Vorgänger
Lowth geistreich behandelte, die Volkspoesie, deren Überlieferungen im
Elsaß aufzusuchen er uns antrieb, die ältesten Urkunden als Poesie gaben
das Zeugnis, daß die Dichtkunst überhaupt eine Welt- und Völkergabe
sei, nicht ein Privatteil einiger feinen, gebildeten Menschen. (DW 2:455)
[Hebrew poetry, which he [Herder], following his predecessor Lowth,
treated in an ingenious way, folk poetry, whose manifestations in Alsace
he drove us to seek out, the oldest documents of poetry bear witness that
the art of poetry as a whole is an attribute of the world and its peoples,
not a private matter of a few fine, educated men.]
The work does not just register sensitivity to the Judeo-Christian tradi-
tion but also a deep understanding and appreciation of Jewish culture in its
own right. Herder later followed up his work on Hebrew poetry with the
publication of his Christliche Schriften (Christian Writings, 1794–98) in which
20
he drew out the relevance of the New Testament.
In the early 1780s a controversy arose when Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
claimed that Gotthold Ephraim Lessing had referred to himself in a con-
versation with Jacobi as a “Spinozist.” Benedict de Spinoza (1632–77), the
Dutch philosopher, was considered an atheist because of his pantheistic be-
lief system. Lessing had died in 1781, but his friend Moses Mendelssohn
objected categorically that Lessing could not have been a Spinozist. In 1785
Jacobi published the documents of this “Spinoza-Streit” as Über die Lehre
des Spinoza (Concerning Spinoza’s Teaching), in which he reiterated his view
that Spinoza’s beliefs were atheistic and fatalist. Herder, however, found
Spinoza’s pantheistic worldview compatible with his own understanding of

Christianity. In Gott. Einige Gespräche (God. Several Conversations, 1787),
which takes the form of a debate between the fictional characters Theophron
(pro) and Philolaus (contra), he came to Spinoza’s defense. By virtue of his
own conception of God as the unity of spirit and matter, Herder could em-
brace Spinoza’s idea of “Eins und Alles.” However, unlike Spinoza, Herder
did not see God manifesting himself in the world, but only God’s spirit.
Perhaps it is the character Theano in the Gott essay that reveals Herder’s true
position: “Mir . . . ists genug, daß jede Organisation die Erscheinung eines
Systems innerer lebendigen Kräfte sei, die nach Gesetzen der Weisheit und
Güte eine Art kleiner Welt, ein Ganzes bilden” (FA 4:777; For me it is
enough that every organization is the manifestation of a system of inner,
living forces, which form according to the laws of wisdom and goodness a
kind of small world, a whole).
The most important work of Herder’s during this period was un-
doubtedly the Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas on
the Philosophy of the History of Mankind, 1784–91). It was also one of his
most influential writings. He had already begun to think about the project
while in Riga. In fact, his Journal meiner Reise auf das Jahr 1769 contains
seeds of the ideas that germinated in the Ideen. As Hans Dietrich Irmscher
sees it, Herder comprehended the biblical history of creation as an “Ur-
kunde über den Ursprung der Menschheit” (document of the origin of man-
21
kind). Irmscher’s understanding of the Ideen points to the larger picture.
Herder was such a prolific writer that his Gesamtwerk is often regarded as no
more than a series of “zerstreute Gedanken” (scattered thoughts). However,
Herder’s work is remarkable for its continuity and consistency in thought. In
22
Ideen Herder aligns the history of the human race with the development of
nature while subsuming both under the higher concepts of Bildung and
Humanität. Concerning the question of style and form, in the “Vorrede” to
this lengthy undertaking Herder states that “der schönste Wert der Schrift-
stellerei” (the most beautiful word of the literati) consists not so much in
what is written, that is, in the content per se, but in what it evokes and
encourages in the reader (FA 6:13). As so often in his works Herder creates
lively images (Bilder) to present his understanding of the world. Herder’s
imagistic thinking also facilitates the reading process, since the reader is in-
vited to determine, in view of his or her own conceptualization of the world,
to what extent Herder’s views are accurate. The frequent digressions in the
Ideen should not disturb us, since Herder was convinced that following his
train of thought wherever it might lead would yield new discoveries. Time
and again, he re-connects the concrete details of his digressions, with his
main narrative. It is significant that Herder’s freedom of expression also
encourages the reader to think freely.
In the Ideen, Herder attended to the advancement of culture and art in

many different world communities. He held that historical laws drive the
course of world history in the direction of Humanität, that is, truly en-
lightened reason and benevolent government. In his view, the concept of
Humanität applies to all human beings. The idea of true humanity en-
courages and gives ever greater form to the “edlen Bildung” of the human
being “zu feinern Sinnen und Triebe, zur zartesten und stärksten Gesund-
heit, zur Erfüllung und Beherrschung der Erde” (quoted by Kantzenbach,
98; noble formation . . . to finer senses and drives, to the tenderest and
strongest healthiness, to fulfillment and governance over the earth). Herder’s
chief discussion partner at this time was Goethe, who recognized the
significance of his work and remained interested in the project as Herder
23
worked toward completing it. But it remained unfinished.
The six collections of the Zerstreute Blätter (Scattered Leaves, 1785–97),
which Herder wrote during the time he was working on the Ideen, are com-
posed of reflections over the course of more than a decade on topics dear to
Herder’s heart. There are analyses of ancient Greek parables and fables, and
of painting and music, discussions of the philosophical writings of Frans
Hemsterhuis (1721–90) and of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, original essays,
such as “Bilder und Träume” (Images and Dreams) and comments on sagas,
rediscoveries of the work of writers from the Middle Ages through the sev-
enteenth century, discussions of Middle and Near Eastern poetry and drama,
and numerous other contributions. Herder’s work is given coherence by the
prevalence of profound thematic continuities. For example, the idea that
“Gott ist Alles in seinen Werken” (FA 6:17; God is everything in His works)
conjoins Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit, the
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit and the essay, Gott. Einige
Gespräche. Since God is the Vorbild, nature cannot be the independent, wholly
autonomous entity it might appear to be. Herder’s Weltbild registers the
eternally active, always dynamic forces of nature, which are essentially divine.
While the human being is an embodiment of organic processes that cor-
respond to natural laws, given the nature of the universe, the individual is, in
part, also divine (göttlich).
Herder’s Italian Journey, 1789

Herder departed Weimar on 6 August 1788 for Italy, just two months after
Goethe’s return from there and at nearly the same time as the Duchess Anna
Amalia undertook her journey to Italy. He arrived in Rome, “die Hauptstadt
der Welt” (the capital of the world), seven weeks later, on 20 September.
Herder was traveling by invitation as a companion to the canon at the
cathedral in Trier, Johann Friedrich Hugo von Dalberg (1752–1812). Von
Dalberg was accompanied by his lover, Sophie Friederike von Seckendorff
(1755–1820), whom Herder found most irritating. Herder’s contact with

most women, however, was very different. For example, in the painter Maria
Anna Angelika von Kauffmann (1741–1807), whom Goethe had befriended
on his own Italian journey, Herder beheld “eine feine, zarte, reine Seele,
ganz Künstlerin” (fine, tender pure soul, wholly an artist) who, “ohne Reiz
des Körpers” (without physical attractiveness) possessed the qualities of sim-
plicity, purity, and freedom (87).
The correspondence between Johann Gottfried and Caroline Herder dur-
ing his Italian journey shows clearly that the couple had a solid and intimate
relationship, even though there were constant financial worries. Caroline be-
came suspicious and jealous of Herder’s friendship with Angelika Kauffmann.
It was in this context that Herder wrote to his wife on 8 October 1788. “Du
bist [. . .] meine Vernunft und mein treues, edles, reinstes Herz” (117; You
are . . . my reason and my true, noble, most pure heart). Caroline reported
frequently on the political and cultural state of affairs in Weimar. We learn
that Goethe checked on her and, yet, as she wrote to her husband, “Er
[Goethe] ist beinah wie ein Chamäleon; bald bin ich ihm gut, bald nur halb.
Er will sich auch nie zeigen . . .” (28; He is almost like a chameleon; now I
like him, now only halfway. He also never wants to appear in public). This was
a foreboding of the gradual estrangement between Goethe and the Herders.
Caroline also reported faithfully on the small-town gossip in Weimar.
Although Herder’s Italian trip was a disappointment and he suffered
throughout from financial woes, it was still a Bildungsreise that provided him
with at least some study time. In a letter to Karl Ludwig von Knebel (1744–
1834), he described spending three hours a day in Rome studying the forms
of the ancient world, which constituted a “Kodex der Humanität in den
reinsten, ausgesuchtsten, harmonischen Formen” (AkB, 147; codex of hu-
manity in the purest, most select, harmonious forms). Herder was able to
report how sustained effort (“Mühe”) had developed further his “innere
Elastizität des Geistes und Körpers” (inner elasticity of spirit and body), had
made him smarter (“klüger”), and allowed him to appreciate “den wahren
Wert des Lebens” (147; the true value of life). Rome had become “eine hohe
Schule” in which he had learned to treasure loyalty and love (147). The lat-
ter characterization referred primarily to his relationship with his wife.
Weimar II: 1789–1803

Upon his return from Italy, Herder had to decide whether to accept an offer
of a professorship at the University of Göttingen. Weary of the workload and
court intrigues, he was inclined to accept, but was persuaded by Caroline
and by Goethe to remain in Weimar, with the duke’s assurance of financial
aid. In particular, the duke promised to pay for the higher education and
professional training of Herder’s sons. This would later, in 1795, cause a rift
between Herder and the duke when Carl August was unable to keep his
promise to the extent expected by the Herders. It was also the cause of a
permanent estrangement from Goethe, who sided with the duke.
Herder returned to Weimar on 9 July 1789. The outbreak of the French
Revolution on 14 July caused immediate reactions in Weimar as in other
parts of Germany. Herder’s favorable view of the revolution caused resent-
ment in the court society. He also became upset that it was only the artisans
and peasants who knew church hymns, but his criticism of courtly life struck
a sour note. Frau von Stein wrote a curt letter that included the criticism:
“Sie sehen, daß er [Herder] seinen bösen Gewohnheiten treu bleibt . . .”
24
(you see that he remains true to his bad habits). Much of this had to do with
the pressures Herder was under — caused by, among other things, the failed
negotiations for the professorship at Göttingen — upon reassuming his
many duties. Upon Caroline’s intervention, Goethe came to the family’s aid
and convinced the duke to increase Herder’s salary, lessen his duties, and
provide for the higher education of his children. But because of his own fi-
nancial difficulties, Carl August was unable to keep his promise to care for
the children. Caroline was incensed, and her expressions of criticism jeop-
ardized her relations with members of the inner circles of Weimar society.
Herder’s hope that the French Revolution would also bring needed
changes in Germany was shared by many German intellectuals. He expressed
his views in his Briefe, die Fortschritte der Humanität betreffend (Letters
Concerning the Progress of Humanity, 1792). This unpublished draft is the
starting point of his famous Humanitätsbriefe, formally titled the Briefe zu
Beförderung der Humanität (Letters for the Advancement of Humanity,
1793–97). But with the beheading of Louis XVI and the Reign of Terror
(1793) the tide of opinion turned against the revolution. With few excep-
tions, Germans were repulsed by what they understood to be a violation of
humanity and a criminal miscarriage of justice. Although he had hoped for
the further development of a liberal-democratic spirit and greater political
unity on a national level and the adoption of a constitution, Herder turned
25
away from the French Revolution. In the voluminous Humanitätsbriefe
Herder followed up on and further expanded some of the major themes that
he had explored in his Ideen, such as the self-constitution and self-determi-
nation of the human being in the here and now as well as over the course of
history. Importantly, Herder makes it clear that the human being is a cul-
tural being who, should constantly work toward self-improvement. Since
human beings structure the world in and through language, they are also
poetic beings.
The Humanitätsbriefe were written nearly simultaneously with the origi-
nation of the Christliche Schriften. While Herder was a preacher of humanity,
he believed that the true source of humanity was the Christian religion. In
short, the origin of Herder’s concept of humanity is rooted in the man’s re-
ligious experience.
During this time Schiller and Goethe propagated in Schiller’s journal
Die Horen (1795–97) their concept of a Klassik, namely the idea of a “pure”
realm of artistic form that denied any pragmatic value to art and literature, an
idea with which Herder disagreed completely. Schiller broke harshly with
26
Herder in 1795, and Herder’s relationship with Goethe cooled off con-
27
siderably for years.
During the last decade of his life, Herder engaged in an intense confron-
tation with Kant’s critical philosophy, the seeds of which had been planted
much earlier, from the time of the Fragmente to that of Kritische Wälder and
Plastik. Herder responded sharply to Kant’s indictments of his Ideen in
Verstand und Erfahrung. Eine Metakritik der Kritik der reinen Vernunft
(Understanding and Experience. A Meta-Critique of the Critique of Pure
Reason, 1798) Although Herder fought mightily to combat Kant’s negative
review of his Ideen, his criticisms could not overcome the Kantianism that
had been shaping the minds of many German intellectuals since the early
28
1780s. The Metakritik suffered one negatively critical review after another.
Even today, some scholars, such as Zaremba, continue to downgrade the
work: “Bestenfalls könnte es als seine dilettantische Vorwegnahme der Kritik
Schellings und Hegels an Kants Dualismus verstanden werden” (222; At
best it can be understood as his dilettantish anticipation of Schelling’s and
Hegel’s critique of Kant’s dualism). But how does the confrontation with
Kant’s ideas connect to key aspects of Herder’s work as a writer? No matter
how unsuccessful the work may have been in convincing ardent Kantians of
the limitations of Kant’s metaphysics, Herder’s Metakritik is impressive for
its spirited use of language and its sophisticated style.
In the comparatively more successful art-theoretical work Kalligone
Herder challenged parts of Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of the
Power of Judgment, 1790), specifically his theory of beauty, the sublime, and
beauty as a symbol of morality. In the chapter “Von einer Regel des Schönen”
of his Kalligone, Herder points out, in contradistinction to Kant’s deductive
transcendental principles, that human beings are continually and actively
involved in a process of configuring both reality and self and that we are able
to think through our constructions (Gestaltungen) of the world.
The feud with Kant also included other areas of Herder’s writings. While
discussing his position with Jean Paul Richter (1763–1825), in his Christ-
liche Schriften, he lambasted Kant’s influential work Die Religion innerhalb
der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft (Religion Within the Bounds of Reason
29
Alone, 1793). One of the major reasons for Herder’s criticism was his deep
concern as a clergyman that laymen were reading more of Kant than they
were of the Bible.
Herder edited his own journal, Adrastea, for which he also wrote the
material, from 1801 to his death in 1803. The last issue appeared in 1804,
edited by one of his sons. Although the work was sharply criticized by Schiller
30
and other contemporaries — Jean Paul Richter being a notable exception —
it contains vital sections on the Bildung of European “Samenkörner” into
literary-artistic fruits (“Früchte”) in both modern and ancient times, as well
as remarkable characterizations of the strengths of Far Eastern cultures. To a
large extent, as Günter Arnold has noted in his afterword to the edition of
Adrastea, the journal presented itself as a kind of encyclopedia of the early
European Enlightenment in its panorama of formative historical events in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and of some of the leading contrib-
utors to enlightenment culture such as Bayle, Locke, Shaftesbury, Swift, and
Leibniz (FA 10:970). It also addresses a wide range of issues that are of
more fundamental, universal, and even timeless relevance, for example, war
and justice, emigration, politics, and the role of the church. The journal also
contains incisive discussions of various literary genres such as the fable and
didactic poetry.
One of the strongest indictments Herder made of the golden age of en-
lightenment culture in his journal is the statement: “[d]ie schädlichste Krank-
heit der Geschichte ist ein epidemischer Zeit- und Nationalwahnsinn, zu
dem in allen Zeitaltern die schwache Menschheit geneigt ist” (FA 10:204;
the most harmful disease of history is an epidemic temporal and national
madness, to which, in every epoch, mankind in its weakness is inclined). He
then assails “alte Vorurteile” (old prejudices), “Verachtung andrer Völker und
Zeiten” (contempt for other peoples and times), and “jene behagliche oder
vornehme Selbstgefälligkeit” (that smug or grand complacency) that places
oneself at the center of the world and at the summit of the perfection of
humankind (FA 10:204; old prejudices; contempt for other peoples and
times; that comfortable or distinguished smugness). Given the content and
tenor of Adrastea, it should not be surprising that Herder first developed the
idea for such a journal while working on his Humanitätsbriefe.
Herder’s Death
Herder died on 18 December 1803, after having suffered for two months
with neuralgia, gout, severe constipation, and several strokes. On 21 Decem-
ber he was laid to rest in the City Church of Peter and Paul (now also known
as the “Herderkirche”) in Weimar. The statue of Herder clothed as a clergy-
man that today stands to the right of the main entrance to the church bears
the words: “Licht, Liebe, Leben” (Light, Love, Life). It is a fitting epitaph for
a man with a restless soul who sought the light of truth, shared love, lived a
full and active life, and whose seminal contributions to German and world
culture deserve sustained study.
Notes
1
These words were engraved on Herder’s signet ring and on his gravestone.
2
Saine sees clearly that Herder was “first and foremost a churchman and theologian”
“Johann Gottfried Herder: The Weimar Classic Back of the (City) Church,” in The
Literature of Weimar Classicism (= Camden House History of German Literature,
vol. 7), ed. Simon Richter (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2005), 114.
3
For facts concerning Herder’s early life that are presented here I draw upon the
following works: Ludwig Bäte, Johann Gottfried Herder: Der Weg. Das Werk. Die
Zeit. (Stuttgart: S. Hirzel, 1948), Wilhelm Dobbek, Johann Gottfried Herders Jugend-
zeit in Mohrungen und Königsberg 1744–1764 (Würzburg: Holzner, 1961); Rudolf
Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1880–1885;
reprint, Osnabrück: Biblio, 1978); Herbert von Hintzenstern, Herder in Weimar:
Biographische Informationen über den Schriftsteller und Generalsuperintendenten mit
Auszügen aus seinen Werken (Weimar/Jena: Wartburg, 1994); Hans Dietrich Irmscher,
Johann Gottfried Herder (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2001); Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach,
Johann Gottfried Herder in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, 7th ed. (Reinbek:
Rowohlt, 1999); Wulf Koepke, Johann Gottfried Herder (Boston: Twayne, 1987);
Eugen Kühnemann, Herders Leben (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1895); and Michael
Zaremba, Johann Gottfried Herder: Prediger der Humanität: Eine Biographie
(Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 2002). Unless otherwise indicated, interpre-
tations of the facts are my own.
4
Dobbek, Herders Jugendzeit, 30.
5
Herder grew critical of Trescho’s pomposity and bigotry. It was no doubt at that
time that Herder grew concerned about the disparity between knowledge and action,
which lies at the heart of his later theology.
6
See Dobbek, Herders Jugendzeit, 25–26.
7
Herder’s notes on Kant’s lectures on ethics are available in English. See Immanuel
Kant: Lectures on Ethics, ed. Peter Heath and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge UP, 2001).
8
However, the older, more traditional scholarship overplayed the impact of Hamann
on Herder’s intellectual development. Koepke, for example, recognizes the sig-
nificant differences in their philosophical views in his Johann Gottfried Herder, 2.
9
References to Herder’s works in this essay are to Johann Gottfried Herder: Werke in
zehn Bänden, ed. Martin Bollacher et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker
Verlag, 1989–2000), referred to as the “Frankfurter Ausgabe” and abbreviated FA,
and Johann Gottfried Herder: Sämtliche Werke, ed. Bernhard Suphan. Facsimile re-
print of the Berlin edition of 1877–1913. 33 vols. (Hildesheim/New York: Olms,
1967), abbreviated as SWS.
10
For Irmscher’s definitive accounts of Herder’s aesthetics, see his articles “Die ge-
schichtsphilosophische Kontroverse zwischen Kant und Herder,” in Hamann-Kant-
Herder: Acta des vierten Internationalen Hamann-Kolloquiums 1985, ed. Bernhard
Gajek, 111–92 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1987) and “Grundzüge der Ästhetik
Herders,” in Ideen und Ideale: Johann Gottfried Herder in Ost und West, ed. Peter
Andraschke and Helmut Loos, 45–60 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 2002).
11
This expands on a point made by Rudolph Haym in Herder nach seinem Leben und
Werken, 1:94.
12
Although the title is Kritische Wälder in the plural, Herder used the form Kritisches
Wäldchen (small grove) when referring to the individual volumes.
13
Haym sees that Herder was struck by Claudius’s “zarte Sittlichkeit,” “reine Re-
ligiosität,” and “poetische[n] Hauch der Natürlichkeit” (Haym 1:362; tender moral-
ity, pure religiosity, poetic touch of naturalness). Over time, however, Herder would
grow to dislike Claudius’s personality traits.
14
See Bollacher for a highly informative account of Herder’s generally positive
reception among Jews. One of the reasons for this positive reception, according to
Bollacher, is that “Herder und Mendelssohn waren Repräsentanten der Aufklärung,
die die Menschen nicht nur auf Liberalität, Toleranz und Perfektibilität verpflichtete,
sondern sie auch — wie Theodor W. Adorno schreibt — der ‘eigenen Fehlbarkeit’ inne
werden lies, ‘und das eigentlich ist das Humane.’” (33; Herder and Mendelssohn
were representatives of the Enlightenment, who not only committed mankind to
liberality, toleranz, and perfectibility, but also — as Theodor W. Adorno writes —
made it aware of its ‘own fallibility’ and it is that that is humane.) Martin Bollacher,
“‘Feines, scharfsinniges Volk, ein Wunder der Zeiten!’ Herders Verhältnis zum Ju-
dentum und zur jüdischen Welt,” in Hebräische Poesie und jüdischer Volksgeist: Die
Wirkungsgeschichte von Johann Georg Herder im Judentum Mittel- und Osteuropas,
ed. Christoph Schulte, 17–33 (Hildesheim: Olms, 2003).
15
For a good treatment of the essay, see Andreas Herz’s frequent references to the
work in Dunkler Spiegel — helles Dasein: Natur, Geschichte, Kunst im Werk Johann
Gottfried Herders (Heidelberg: Winter, 1996).
16
See part two of the latter version of Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen
Seele; FA 4:346–54. For a good discussion of Herder’s epistemology, see Marion
Heinz, Sensualistischer Idealismus: Untersuchungen zur Erkenntnistheorie des jungen
Herder (1763–1778) (Hamburg: Meiner, 1994), 109–73.
17
Irmscher, Johann Gottfried Herder, 163–64.
18
Hans Dietrich Irmscher suggests that Herder was unable to bring his works to final
completion because he was forever in search of a new beginning. Irmscher calls it
“geradezu eine Grundfigur von Herders Lebensweg und Schaffensweise” (Irmscher,
Johann Gottfried Herder, 18; almost a basic feature of Herder’s way of living and
creating).
19
Concerning the contemporary relevance of Herder’s theology, see, for example,
Jürgen Moltmann, who, in his Theologie der Hoffnung: Untersuchungen zur Begrün-
dung und zu den Konsequenzen einer christlichen Eschatologie (Munich: Chr. Kaiser,
1965) refers to Herder, Kant, Schiller, and Hegel as thinkers on history with a sense
of mission (“Sendungsbewußtsein,” 240). Moltmann submits that, for Herder, es-
chatology designates “den inneren Drang und den Zukunftshorizont für einen
dynamisch offenen Kosmos alles Lebendigen” (41; the inner stress and future
horizon for a dynamically open cosmos of all living things). There are also significant
parallels between Herder’s theology and the theologies of Karl Barth and Wolfhart
Pannenberg. Further work on Herder’s relation to the theology and philosophy of
the German Enlightenment is needed. For a fine study in this direction, see Michael
F. Möller, Die ersten Freigelassenen der Schöpfung: Das Menschenbild Johann Gottfried
Herders im Kontext von Theologie und Philosophie der Aufklärung, ed. Ulrich Kühn
(Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1998).
20
Notably, in this series of writings, Herder was very much aware of Lessing’s pub-
lication of the Reimarus fragments, which had caused considerable unrest among
church leaders, as had the feuds about the “atheistic” nature of the philosophy of the
Jewish-Dutch intellectual Benedictus (Baruch) Spinoza.
21
Irmscher, Johann Gottfried Herder.
22
For a full account, see the proceedings of the conference of the International
Herder Society in Weimar in 2000, Vom Selbstdenken: Aufklärung und Aufklärungs-
kritik in Herders “Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit,” ed. Regine
Otto and John H. Zammito (Heidelberg, Synchron, 2001). See also Wilhelm-
Ludwig Federlin, “Das Problem der Bildung in Herders Humanitätsbriefen,” in
Johann Gottfried Herder 1744–1803, ed. Gerhard Sauder (Hamburg: Felix Meiner,
1987), 125–40.
23
It should be added that the Ideen also provided much of the impetus behind
Herder’s project of school reform, which, after considerable opposition, was finally
implemented.
24
Lutz Richter, ed., Johann Gottfried Herder im Spiegel seiner Zeitgenossen (Göttin-
gen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1978), 275.
25
Concerning Herder’s disposition toward the French Revolution, see Hans-Wolf
Jäger, “Herder und die Französische Revolution,” in Johann Gottfried Herder: 1744–
1803, ed. Gerhard Sauder, 299–307 (Hamburg: Meiner, 1984).
26
See Hans Adler, “Autonomie versus Anthropologie: Schiller und Herder,” Monats-
hefte, special issue: Begegnungen mit Schiller/Encounters with Schiller, 97.3 (2005):
408–16.
27
See Hans Dietrich Irmscher, “Goethe und Herder — eine schwierige Freund-
schaft,” in Johann Gottfried Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, ed. Martin Kessler
and Volker Leppin, 233–70 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005).
28
For a detailed analysis of Herder’s confrontation with Kant, see Adler, “Ästhetische
und anästhetische Wissenschaft. Kants Herder-Kritik als Dokument moderner Para-
digmenkonkurrenz,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistes-
geschichte 68 (1994): 66–76.
29
Regarding the differences between Kant’s and Herder’s historical-philosophical
presuppositions and the nature of their feud, see Irmscher (1987). “Die geschichts-
philosophische Kontroverse zwischen Kant und Herder.”
30
Against the charge of Herder’s contemporaries and nineteenth-century scholarship,
Robert T. Clark was the first to disclose inner connections between the diverse topics
treated in the journal.
2: Herder’s Epistemology
Marion Heinz and Heinrich Clairmont
I.
I N 1763, HERDER ATTENDED Immanuel Kant’s lectures on metaphysics,

which consisted of a critical commentary on Alexander Gottlieb Baum-
garten’s Metaphysica. Baumgarten’s book represented the most advanced
position of rationalistic gnoseology, where the marginal area of “confused
cognition” is circumscribed as an independent complex that was later devel-
oped by Baumgarten in his Aesthetica into a systematic complement of
distinct cognition. Kant’s lectures inspired Herder to write his first philo-
sophical text, Versuch über das Sein (Essay on Being, 1763), dedicated to Kant.
This essay, a critical discussion of the then-current theories of ontology and
epistemology, an analysis from which Herder developed the nucleus of his
1
own approach, was not published during Herder’s lifetime. But since the
Versuch über das Sein is foundational for Herder’s thought in this area, and
since essential elements of it — especially the doctrines of being and of space,
time, and force as the basic concepts of human cognition — remain constant
throughout the metamorphoses of his epistemological conception, it is im-
portant to trace the essay’s lines of argumentation.
Herder clears the path to a foundation of his own position by delin-
eating critical boundaries with respect to empiricism, on the one hand, and
idealism on the other. Herder agrees with Hume’s insight that empiricism
fails in the attempt to prove its own foundations. However, while it is im-
possible to demonstrate that perceptions are caused by external objects
resembling them, this does not justify the opposing idealistic view. That view
posits that the representations of the “inner sense” originate in the ego itself.
It is true that the idea of a knowing subject that possesses a creative inner
sense such that all its contents are emphatically its own representations, pro-
duced by itself, is by no means absurd; for this reason, idealism cannot be
theoretically refuted. But the human being is not God, that is, he does not
possess a creative inner sense or — as Herder also calls it — a consciousness
that creates out of itself. Human beings need to become conscious of repre-
sentations, a process realized through reflection and abstraction, which has
44 ♦ MARION HEINZ AND HEINRICH CLAIRMONT
as its basis the presence of representations to an external sense. For Herder,

human beings are hybrid beings: in contrast to animals, they possess not
only external senses, but also an inner sense, so that they are able to speak of
the representations they possess as their own. The contents of their con-
sciousness, however, are not produced by this consciousness; this is what dif-
ferentiates the finite human subject from the infinite, divine knowing subject.
The premises of this epistemological psychology, together with the rec-
ognition that empiricism cannot be proven, led Herder to the conclusion
that only one promising option is left for philosophy: to pursue further the
program of a subjective philosophy first outlined by Hume, and in fact, to
radicalize it. One has to describe the human mind without prejudice with
respect to its powers and the laws of their operation, as Herder wrote in a
kind of shorthand in 1764:
Erst muß m[an] z[er]stör[en], denn [au]fbauen, m[an] z[er]störe alle
Systeme d[urch] ei[ne] negat[ive] W[issenschaft] u[nd] führe alsdenn
[au]s dem subjekt[iven] Princip[ium] e[ine]s [au]f, w[a]z ganz wenig
behauptet, d[ie] Grade d[er] Gewißh[eit] bei jedem Satz bestimt: d[ie]
Art d[er] Demonstrat[ion], und ihre mögl[iche] und wirkl[iche] V[er]-
schied[en]h[eit] [au]s e[in]and[er]setze: — unt[er]suche, w[ie] d[ie]
Wißenschaft[en] alle V[er]sch[ie]d[ene] s[in]d nach Ihrer Entsteh[un]gs-
art: — subjekt[ive] Art des Denkens; — objekt[ive]. Besch[affenheit]
2
u[nd] Methode.
[One must first destroy, then construct. One may destroy all systems
through a negative science and then one may build one up from the sub-
jective principle which claims very little, which determines the degrees
of knowledge in every statement: one may analyze the manner of de-
monstration and its possible and real diversity, investigate how sciences
all differ according to their origins: the subjective nature of thinking,
objective condition and method.]
It is thus Herder’s intention to establish the finite human subject as the
origin of a type of concept befitting only it, or, in other words, to derive such
concepts from the unity of finite consciousness. In accordance with their hy-
brid nature — and in this Herder follows the traditional rationalistic model,
3
as he learned it from Baumgarten — the human being is first capable of two
kinds of representations: sensuous, obscure representations that cannot be
further analytically reduced, and representations that can be analytically re-
duced to their individual distinguishing marks and thus made structurally
distinct. These two classes of representations, defined according to Leibniz-
Wolffian philosophy, correspond to two kinds of certainty. Sensuous repre-
sentations are immediately convincing and therefore possess only subjective
certainty, while objective certainty is defined by rationalists with demonstra-
tive certainty. Analytic concepts, in contrast, are capable of objective certain-
HERDER’S EPISTEMOLOGY ♦ 45
ty; for it is possible to derive distinguishing marks from other distinguishing

marks, and thus to demonstrate that they belong to one concept; and it is
possible to demonstrate the non-contradictory connection of distinguishing
marks and thus to prove the truth of a complex representation. Herder’s
position follows that of Kant, who, in this case, argued along the lines of
Christian August Crusius’s Vernunftlehre (Doctrine of Reason) against Wolff’s
uncompromising rationalism, according to which philosophical knowledge
had to be based on the principle of non-contradiction. Human knowledge,
which is dependent on given content, cannot be fully analyzed rationally.
With representations received from outside, the essence of things is not fully
analyzable, and this means that human beings with their finite understanding
cannot do without unanalyzable concepts.
Hume’s program of an unbiased description and analysis of the nature of
the human mind — analogous in the psychological sphere to what Newton
did for the physical sphere — is now put in action by Herder through his
return to the doctrine of unanalyzable concepts. The fundamental idea can
be explicated as follows: if the human subject, with its finite consciousness, is
the basis for this type of concept, then it must be possible to establish an
order among such concepts through this basis. Being, space, time, and force
are the basic concepts necessary for finite, knowing subjects. They represent
concepts of non-logical connections of representations, analogous to Hume’s
principles of association. This can at least be hinted at with respect to the con-
cept of being (Sein), which is the highest of unanalyzable concepts. The non-
productivity of consciousness implies, together with the sensuousness of
human representations, the thought of being, that is, the idea that all our
given representations are and must be related to being (Seiendes). Either they
exist in the inner sense as given and are related to the self as its determina-
tions (ideal being) or they are given in the external sense and are related to a
being (Seiendes) outside consciousness (existential being).
Standing above the two concepts of ideal and existential being, the con-
cept of real being — whose copy Herder represents as logical being, using
Hume’s terminology — lies at the basis of the three other sensuous con-
necting concepts of space, time, and force, and is itself the most sensuous
concept. The objection that being, as the most abstract concept, could not
at the same time be the most sensuous concept does not hold water. Sen-
suousness for Herder is synonymous with unanalyzability, so that the con-
cept of being is the most abstract concept insofar as it is arrived at through
the analysis of complex representations, and at the same time the most sen-
suous insofar as it delineates, as the last unanalyzable element, the limit of all
analyzability and is considered to be, as the “erste, sinnliche Begriff, dessen
Gewißheit allem zu Grunde liegt,” “fast ein theoretischer Instinkt” (first,
sensuous concept, whose certainty is the basis of everything; almost a theo-
4
retical instinct). Whereas the laws of analysis, the principle of contradiction,
and the principle of identity are, for a productive understanding, laws of the
real connection of the things produced by it, a finite understanding must
consider things as standing in non-logical relations. Herder follows Kant:
5
“alle Verbindung (im realverstande): Raum, Zeit und Kraft.” All that exists
is in space, in time, and is caused by something else, thereby presupposing
the force for this causation in something else.
With the reflections presented in the Versuch über das Sein, Herder takes
a stand against the hybrid claim of philosophy to be a demonstrative science.
The subject of his condemnation is, of all things, a treatise by his teacher —
Kant’s proud attempt to supply the only possible reason advanced in proof
for a demonstration of God’s existence: Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu
einer Demonstration des Daseyns Gottes (The Only Possible Foundation of
6
Proof for the Demonstration of God’s Existence, 1763). Herder follows
Hume’s example in demanding that the limits of human cognition and their
skeptical consequences — however mitigated by a kind mother nature — be
faced up with disappointment, to be sure, but also with composure. Herder
develops Hume’s subjective philosophy subjective philosophy toward a view
of the natural human being as the counter-image to the “überstudierten
Philosophen” (over-educated philosopher). Once the ideals of knowledge
adopted from false, non-human examples are dismissed, insights into the
limits of human knowledge, which according to Hume agree with the facts,
are no longer considered to be scandalous:
Hume, der Pyrrho unserer Zeit, hat in seinem Metaphysischen Versuch
den Hauptzweifel von unserer Schlußart a posteriori eingenommen, daß
sie nicht a priori gewiß sein könnte: Um ihn zu wiederlegen wird man
also die subjektive Gewißheit bestimmen, und, die möglichen Schlußar-
ten in Absicht des Raums, der Zeit und der Kraft bevestigen müssen;
alsdenn hat man ihn ganz wiederlegt, da alles übrige blos eine Beklei-
7
dung dieses Skelets ist.
[Hume, the Pyrrho of our time, in his metaphysical experiment, took the
standpoint that the principal doubt of our way of reaching conclusions is
a posteriori, that it cannot be certain a priori: in order to refute him one
will have to therefore determine the subjective certainty and consolidate
the possible ways of concluding in regard to space, time, and force; then
one has refuted him, since all else is merely a dressing-up of this skeleton.]
The claim and the task of epistemology are now themselves to be re-
vised: instead of hyperbolic attempts to achieve a certainty reserved for God
and the skepticism that arises from their failure, Herder pleads for a self-
restraint based on sober enlightenment about the human condition. For the
natural human being, in contrast to the exaggerated philosopher, the sen-
suous certainty made possible by human nature is perfectly sufficient. Point-
less attempts to solve the problem of truth as the central task of classical
epistemology are to be renounced in favor of meta-reflection on which kind

of certainty is possible and necessary for which kind of subject. This position
differs from Hume’s skepticism in its perspective but not in its results: even if
Herder shares the view that objective knowledge of matters of fact is im-
possible, he is not primarily concerned with the proof of this impossibility,
but rather with reconciling the theorizing human being with the natural hu-
man being. The insight into the specific nature of the knowing human sub-
ject should entail consequences for the theory that treats it: Herder offers
primarily — and as a kind of Wittgenstein avant la lettre — a remedy for an
arrogant, misguided, and self-deluded philosophy.
This anthropocentric turn, however, which Herder rightfully compares
8
to the turn in the “Kopernikanische System,” has far-reaching consequen-
ces: “Sein” (being), the immediate certainty experienced as the epistemo-
logical point zero, “daß ich bin, daß ich mich fühle” (that I am, that I feel
9
myself), forms the starting point for Herder’s revision of the traditional
hierarchy of the “upper” — intellectual — and “lower” — sensuously pre-
formed — forces of the soul. The restructuring of the powers of knowledge
implied by the basis of the “obscure,” “unanalyzable being” transforms the
traditional organon of logic into an “ExperimentalSeelenlehre der obern
10
Kräfte” (experimental psychology of the higher faculties). Logic is thus
returned from being an autonomous “Instrumental=Wissenschaft” (instru-
mental science) of nominal definitions to its original status as, according to
11
Herder, “Theil der Psychologie” (a part of psychology). Integrated in this
manner into a continuum of forms of knowledge, abstract statements must
be analyzable in such a way that the psychic processes they are based on can
be reconstructed: according to Herder each “Analyse des Begriffs [soll]
gleichsam den Ursprung aller Wahrheit in meiner Seele aufsuchen” (analysis
12
of a concept should, as it were, seek the origin of all truth in my soul).
Here Herder implies that from the gnoseological foundation of being a con-
centration on “die weite Region der Empfindungen, Triebe, Affecten” (the
broad region of perceptions, drives, affects) must follow in order to develop
13
for this area — and therefore for the “Herz des Daseyns” (heart of being)
— functional determinations in the sense of a “Logik, die nie in Regeln
14
besteht” (logic that never consists in rules). This logic cannot be for-
malized, yet it would describe individual perceptivities on the basis of the
premises of aesthetics — aesthetics meaning for Herder a theory of per-
ception explaining the “Disposition unserer Leibes- und Seelenkräfte” (the
15
disposition of our corporeal and spiritual powers). Herder consistently
developed this foundational part of the “nötigste Anthropologie” (most
16
necessary anthropology) in a critical confrontation with the Aesthetica of
Baumgarten. His first objection to Baumgarten’s systematic model of an
“analogon rationis,” which was conceived as a structurally similar comple-
ment to logic, is that it is hampered, just as logic itself is, by the definitional
formalism. Furthermore, Baumgarten confuses “subjective” aesthetics —

which is in Herder’s words a “Fertigkeit, meine sinnliche Erkenntnis zu
brauchen” (skill of using my sensuous perceptions) — with the scientific,
“objective” one, in whose domain he had achieved such decisive advances in
17
the analysis of sensuous cognition. To be sure, both forms of lower gnose-
ology deal with the same region; methodologically, however, the analytical,
reductionist, objective aesthetics together with its goal, the “Deutlich-
machung” (clarification) of the beautiful as a “Phaenomenon der Wahrheit”
18
(phenomenon of truth) have to be strictly distinguished from habit based
subjective aesthetics. The latter has to be looked upon and investigated as
“ein eignes und wichtiges Naturphönomenon” (an important natural pheno-
menon in its own right); it has to grasp descriptively — “unmittelbar Psy-
chologie und Physiologie” (directly as psychology and physiology) — the
regularities resulting from the individual specifics of sense perceptions and
19
their transposition into sensations. The data of the “Physiologie der Sinne
und sinnlichen Begriffe” (physiology of the senses and sensuous concepts)
remain therefore the basis for all statements of this undertaking, which is no
less than the establishment of a new epistemology. They supply the material
for the project of an aesthetica naturalis that is to be considered as a cor-
rective to the traditional telos of “sinnlich vollkommenen Erkenntnis” (per-
fect sensuous cognition) for which Herder wanted to see “aus jedem Sinn
eine schöne Kunst entwickelt” (a beautiful art form developed from every
20
sense). He tried to realize this plan, his methodology guided in each case
21
by an “Untersuchungslogik” (logic of investigation) determined by the ob-
ject of that investigation in various ways: the Journal meiner Reise im Jahr
1769 (Journal of My Voyage in the Year 1769), the fourth of the Kritische
Wälder (Critical Forests), and most concisely the Plastik — which was con-
ceived with clear affinity for the guidelines of the Versuch über das Sein and
whose theory of sculpture was developed in relation to the sense of touch —
can be considered attempts to formulate a physiological aesthetics whose
object as the aesthetic nature of human beings forms the base of Herder’s
22
faculty of reason.
This is because sense perceptions, determined and selected by the spe-
cific manner of functioning of the sense organs, are already subjected during
the process of perception — as Herder argues on the basis of contemporary
physiological knowledge — to mental operations that are to be understood
as habitualized enthymematic reasoning processes with a “verschattete Zwi-
schenreihe” (overshadowed intermediate series) and thus are to be already
23
regarded as a “reflectirte Würkung der Seele” (reflected effect of the soul).
Given this, not only is the traditional intellectualistic dichotomy of “upper”
and “lower” powers of knowledge superseded by a continuum of mutual con-
ditionality of “knowing” and “feeling”; the assumption of immediately evi-
dent intuitive knowledge from a canon of irreducible “basic sensations” can
also be considered ruled out, as Herder argues against Friedrich Justus

24
Riedel’s theory of art, which refers to Crusius. Herder’s position is, there-
fore, thoroughly original; it proceeds from the assumption that human per-
ception supplies organically determined “schemata,” a “sinnliche Formel”
(sensory formula) that can in turn be “auf die möglich leichteste Art ent-
25
ziefert” (deciphered in the easiest possible way) and in such a way that
through the distinction and combination of distinguishing marks appercep-
tion can be seen as the “deutliches Resultat” (clear result) of these “Empfin-
dungszustände” (sensory conditions). Conversely, each process of cognition is
to be regarded as a result of bodily organization.
The essay Plato sagte (Plato Said, ca. 1767) connects for the first time, as
moments of a human-centered epistemology, two spheres that were com-
pletely separated in Herder’s Versuch über das Sein: first a divine idealism, ac-
cording to which all being (Seiende) is for God a thought of his being (Sein)
in an emphatic sense, and second a human sensualism, according to which
human beings must appropriate as their own representations given elsewhere
by means of the tetractys of basic sensory concepts, which means to conceive
of these representations as a form of being (Seiendes) in space, time, and
26
causality. This integrative conception is rendered possible through a critical
engagement with the philosophy of Leibniz, which in this very manuscript
follows the presentation of his doctrines by Mendelssohn. With this, the mo-
nistic idealism of the Versuch über das Sein, the one egoistic divine thought
27
world as a kind of Spinozism avant la lettre, becomes transformable into a
plural idealism that concedes to each individual human being the inclusion
of representations in their innate concept of being. The specific nature of
human knowledge is now characterized to be such that this obscure total
representation of the universe can only be developed by means of the senses.
The connection between idealism and sensualism conceived by Herder can
more precisely be presented as follows: the sensuousness of representations
necessary to finite-human subjects is not to be thought of, as in Schulphi-
losophie, as of a lower degree of distinctness; but rather the soul as a finite
force is dependent on the enlightening of its representation of being, “in der
alles liegt” (in which everything lies), by means of a specifically organized
body-soul constitution produced by itself. The four basic concepts from the
Versuch über das Sein now serve the differentiated description of the mental
and the physical contribution to the acquisition of knowledge: while the con-
cept of being grasps the obscure representation of the universe innate to the
soul, the concepts of space, time, and force are, starting with this manuscript,
assigned to the bodily sphere; they designate the modi recipientis specific to
the senses of seeing, hearing, and feeling: “Wenn das Seyn unsre Welt ist: so
ist Raum, Zeit, Kraft (die Grenze) das Feld unserer Sinne,” and as a modifi-
cation of a representation “das Nebeneinander” gives “den Sinn des Ge-
sichts[,] das Nacheinander [. . .] den Sinn des Gehörs [und] das Ineinander
[. . .] den Sinn des Gefühls” (Plato sagte, 177; If being is our world: thus are
space, time, force (the limits) the field of our senses,[. . .] juxtaposition [. . .]
the sense of sight[,], succession [. . .] the sense of hearing [and] the into-
one-another [. . .] the sense of touch).
The approach in the Versuch über das Sein is thus further developed —
and this is the epistemologically decisive step that moves beyond the psycho-
logical concept — in such a way that the making do with a merely sub-
jectively valid, finite human representational world is abandoned in favor of
an endeavor to ground the objectivity of human knowledge. Because the
world is not a product of the human mind, it cannot be known directly
through the analysis of the concepts of the inner sense in accordance with
the laws of logic, but only by means of external sensuousness in its external
relations. Herder wants to reconcile empiricism with Leibnizian idealism:
representations mediated through external sensory perception are considered
as consequences of inner thought occasioned by the perception of objects.
In this way — in the manner of Berkeleyan idealism — the representations of
external sensory perception are subordinate to the representations of the
inner sense which validate and modify them.
II.
Herder’s first figuration of sensualistic idealism, however, did not solve the
problem of the objective validity of human knowledge: the mere inner-
subjective agreement between representations arising from sensory per-
ceptions and those already contained in the experience of being does not
guarantee objectivity. A first attempt at resolving this issue is discernible in
the first version of the essay Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen
Seele (On the Cognition and Sensation of the Human Soul, 1774), conceived
as a response to the essay-prize question posed in 1773 by the Berlin Aca-
démie Royale des Sciences et Belles Lettres. This question on the relation of
the two forces of the soul, feeling and thinking (which are assumed to be of
the same origin), aimed at a reformulation of the traditional psychology of
faculties of the soul in light of a new valuation of the “lower” sensuous
forces of the soul. Herder combines here the subjective idealism of Plato
sagte with an objective idealism that connects with the Spinozism of the
Versuch über das Sein. The basic idea of this new conception of a system can
be explained in simplified form as follows: being (das Seiende) is the object-
ively realized thought of God. This being first becomes accessible through a
receptivity whose representations are defined as sensations. The human power
of representation works on this given material of perceptions in order to gain
knowledge of it. “Erkennen ist also nicht ohne Empfindung; Empfindung
nicht ohne ein gewisses erkennen” (EE, 1774, SWS 8:237; Cognition is thus
28
not without sensation: sensation not without a certain cognition). This
working through — within the limits of the body a priori of every single hu-
man cognition — is an elevation and sublimation of indistinct sensations to
clear and distinct thoughts, which makes it possible, first, for the force of the
soul, already on a higher level in comparison to sensuality, to recognize itself
in the sensuous, and second, for the soul to recognize, by identifying its own
image in the sensuous, that the sensuous is an image of God just like itself.
This provides the metaphysical foundation for the inner-subjective
agreement of the sensuous and the spiritual, so that the being-in-themselves
(Ansichsein) even of sensuously experienced objects is guaranteed. By means
of the understanding of itself in the sensuous, the soul recognizes the divine
foundation of the sensuously given being (Seienden) and of itself. The
ontological sameness of subject and object, based in God, permits the solu-
tion of the problem of truth: the objectively existing agreement of object
and understanding becomes a certainty for the subject in the act of cog-
nition. The skeptical attitude of the Versuch über das Sein is therefore revised
in favor of a metaphysically based epistemology, which distinguishes itself
from classical positions insofar as the knowledge of the being-in-themselves
of objects can be arrived at only through sensuous cognition. It is not the
laws of reason, which are in agreement with divine thinking and which,
detached from sensous knowledge, allow understanding of the true essence
of beings as necessary truths of reason, but rather
das Hauptgesetz, wornach die Natur beide Kräfte geordnet [hat]: nehm-
lich, daß Empfindung würke, wo noch kein Erkennen seyn kann: daß
diese Vieles auf Einmal dunkel in die Seele bringe, damit diese es sich
bis zu Einem Grad aufkläre und ein Resultat ihres Wesens darin finde
[. . .] in jedem Erkenntniß, wie in jeder Empfindung spiegelt sich das
Bild Gottes (EE, 1774, SWS 8:246).
[the principal law according to which nature orders both forces: name-
ly, that sensation operates where there can as yet be no cognition: that
this obscurely brings all at once a multiplicity into the soul in order that
the latter may enlighten it to a degree and find in it a result of its es-
sence: [. . .] in every cognition, as in every sensation, the image of God
is reflected.]
To this sensualistic idealism corresponds a philosophy of life, which
Herder tried out repeatedly after his review of Kant’s Träume eines Geister-
29
sehers (Dreams of a Ghost Seer) of 1766 and in which the living being, de-
fined as the unity of body and soul, figures as a paradigmatic being (Seiendes).
Only with the second version of Vom Erkennen und Empfinden, however,
did Herder succeed in bringing together and reconciling epistemology and
ontology. Cognition is now generally understood as a phenomenon of life.
Not only are certain lower operations of cognition tied to physiological sub-
30
strata and processes; the process of cognition is also generally interpreted in
analogy to the dynamics of the process of life, which is characterized by need

and the drive to self-preservation: driven by a longing in the direction of a
missing “other” needed for self-preservation, the efforts to satisfy this need
lead to a unification with the object, an assimilation of the foreign other.
From this perspective, the human being can be regarded as a microcosm
that contains in itself the hierarchy of lower and higher forces characteristic
of life as a whole. Even in the structure of the process of cognition, this or-
der presents itself as an unfolding living whole. Therefore, in an ontological
adaptation of Albrecht von Haller’s doctrine of irritability as the lowest level
of cognition, Herder posits the phenomenon of irritation as characteristic for
vegetative life, followed by the phenomenon of sensation that characterizes
the sensitive animal soul. The sensations are finally transformed into thoughts
by means of perceptions synthesized in the imagination, and these thoughts
are in turn transformed through language into communicable units. These
vital processes have a regularity that can be characterized by the key terms
31
polarity and gradation (Polarität and Steigerung). Life moves forward in the
tension between attraction of what is helpful to it and repulsion of what is
inimical to it, in order to bring forth the true spiritual nature of lower phe-
nomena through assimilation and thus generally to effect a progression in
the sense of an increasing spiritualization.
Herder’s philosophy of life thus also takes aim at the basic position of
modern epistemology, namely, at the starting point of analysis of the subject
as a means to grounding objectivity through the subject’s achievements.
“Erkennen ist Seyn in der Wahrheit, sie als Theil von sich erfassen und [. . .]
mit Eiseszacken an sich reissen; bin ich nicht in ihr, so habe ich sie nie er-
kannt” (EE, 1775, SWS 8:294; Cognition is being in the truth, to grasp truth
as a part of oneself and [. . .] to pull at oneself with iron teeth; if I am not in
it, then I have not recognized it). Subject and object have to be understood
positively as parts of an organism in living interaction with each other, shar-
ing the nature of the whole and thus of the same kind.
This interpretation of the subject-object relation in terms of a philoso-
phy of life can be described as a two-sided metamorphosis: the object becomes
part of the soul, the soul assimilates the object; but the soul also feels itself in
the object, transforms itself into the object. If the first relation renders plaus-
ible Herder’s understanding of the process of cognition as spiritualization —
with regard to both its internal gradation (Steigerung) as well as the realiza-
tion of the spiritual essence of external objects — then the second relation
makes it clear that to this spiritualization of nature corresponds a naturaliza-
tion of spirit. Since the mind is irrevocably tied to the body and conditioned
by the perceptions received at the lower levels of the vital process, bodily and
environmental conditions become factors that mold the soul to each specific
shape. This imprint manifests itself in the appropriation of the world, that is,
in the way in which representations, concepts, languages are formed. Herder’s
stress on the plurality and individuality of knowing subjects (which have

been echoed by postmodern trends) as well as their participation in the
world thus turn out to be consequences of sensualistic idealism or of a
unified philosophy of life that combines metaphysics and epistemology.
Herder’s innovative conception— consistent in itself and rich in pros-
pects — of an epistemology underpinned by a philosophy of life could,
however, not escape the suspicion that it was nothing but an anachronistic
attempt to ground the objectivity of cognition through a dogmatically
assumed ontology, a suspicion made especially real after the publication of
Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Herder’s Metakritik in particular, seen
32
even by contemporary thinkers as remaining behind the critical revolution
in a hopelessly anachronistic position, turns out on closer inspection to be
Herder’s response to this reproach. He tries to take into account such criti-
cism through a modification of the original conception. The next generation
of German Idealist philosophy, incidentally, made as much use of these
innovations from a philosophy of identity as of Kant’s critical philosophy.
III.
Tracing the basic lines of Herder’s auto-critical revision also makes it possible
to demonstrate the continuity in his thinking. The Metakritik’s point of de-
parture is the arsenal of basic concepts introduced in the Versuch über das Sein:
being, space, time, and force. Two interwoven lines of thinking are charac-
teristic of the further development of Herder’s position in the Metakritik:
1. The conception of a living subject-object unity is further advanced in
two respects. Being as a living entity is an activity that realizes and preserves
itself in space and time and which is given, as such, as constituting a space
33
and a time through its own force (Kraft). According to Herder’s concept
of living being (Dasein), each being (Seiendes) is an essence that realizes itself
through force (Kraft) in space and time, reveals itself in that realization, and
is conscious of itself as such. Being is always conscious, and consciousness is
always knowledge of being — this is a formula that captures the combination
of idealism and realism in Herder’s position. This relation of being and con-
sciousness is true not only for each being in relation to itself, but also
universally for all parts of the living whole in relation to each other. To each
being corresponds a homologous organ (as Herder argues, drawing on the
idea of the homology of objects and senses developed by Frans Hemsterhuis),
which means: for each being (Seiende) there is a corresponding manner of
34
reception, or each modus recipientis finds an objectively analogous being.
Seen in this manner, the whole is thought of as a living entity assimila-
ting (geniessen) to itself multiple self-representations. Already in his contribu-
tion to the debate on Spinoza, Herder had consistently developed these
outlines of a philosophy of life into an ontotheology of life. The whole is a
living individual that is defined as an organic force just like its parts. And this
means that God is the original force (Urkraft) which, on the one hand,
manifests itself in the subordinate forces as their effects and assimilates them
to itself, yet on the other hand, itself only lives through these forces. In
Herder’s interpretation, God is therefore causa sui, creating forces through
35
which he exists.
2. The relationship between sensuousness and understanding in the
psychology of knowledge is further developed. Herder tries to establish a
monistic version in opposition to Kant’s doctrine of the specific difference
between the cognitive faculties of perception and understanding or recep-
tivity and spontaneity. For Herder, the understanding and the senses form
the living but functionally differentiated unity: if “die Function des Ver-
standes ist: anerkennen, was da ist” (Metakritik, SWS 21:91; the function of
reason is: recognize what is there), then the activity of understanding is es-
sentially dependent on the givenness of the object. Herder assigns to the
senses the function of supplying something understandable to the under-
standing (cf. ibid.), already entrusting to the senses a preparation of the
object for its comprehension through the understanding. The senses isolate
from the material that they register distinguishing marks that become the
basis for the cognition of objects, and sensory perceptions ordered according
to space and time provide laws of connection of the manifold in the juxta-
position of space and the succession of time.
The senses and the understanding are also understood in terms of or-
ganic unity to represent different cognition-enabling functions; as laws of
the activity of different forces which together make up a living whole. On
the one hand, the understanding is the higher force, corresponding to the
soul in the organism, which is served by the senses, which correspond to its
organs. On the other hand, the senses are also the analogue of the under-
standing, in which the latter recognizes itself and which we apply to every-
thing outside of us, “weil wir nur durch und mit uns selbst sehen, hören,
verstehen, handeln” (Metakritik, SWS 21:100; because we only through and
with ourselves see, hear, understand, act). Taken genetically, the senses are
the basis for the understanding’s self-development: the understanding, in
recognizing itself as force and higher unity in the diversity of the senses
belonging to it as its organs, comes to itself, that is, it achieves what it can
achieve: knowledge of things in their inner principle of activity (Wirksamkeit),
as forces therefore, whereas the senses make things accessible in their exter-
nal determinations or attributes. Put differently, only when it reaches self-
cognition can the understanding continue its task of unifying the manifold
impressions, a task that began at the level of sensuousness, in its own manner
of logical acts of understanding. Herder describes this as a quadripartite act
of understanding, a permanent “Actus der Seele” (act of the soul) with the
goal of an “Anerkennung des Erkennbaren” (recognition of the knowable):
Ein Verständliches muß dem Verstande gegeben seyn, und er verstehet

es nur durch Unterscheidung. Das unterschiedene aber muß er verbin-
den, sonst kam er nicht zum Verstande des Ganzen. Ein Datum also
(Thesis), und in ihm Disjunction (Analyse) und Comprehension (Syn-
thesis) ordnen sich selbst in vier Glieder, deren letztes, indem es zum
ersten zurückkehrt, zugleich zu einer neuen Kategorie weiter schreitet.
(Metakritik, SWS 21:111–12)
[Something understandable must be given to the understanding, which
understands it only through differentiation. It must, however, connect
the differentiated; otherwise it will not arrive at the understanding of the
whole. A datum therefore (thesis), and the disjunction (analysis) and
comprehension (synthesis) in it, order themselves in four parts, of which
the last, in returning to the first, at the same time advances to a new
category.]
The quadripartite structure of the process of understanding becomes
comprehensible against the background of Herder’s concept of the living
being (Dasein) as a force that recognizes itself as determined by its effects
and knows itself as a totality of cause and effect. The objection mentioned
above to Herder’s uncritical insistence on a dogmatic metaphysics as the
basis for epistemology can now be confronted. It is not sufficient to point
out that Herder proceeds from an immediate indisputable certainty of being
that is given to the human being through the self-experience of his soul-
36
body existence. What are the grounds, it must be more precisely asked, for
attributing objective validity at all to the specific accomplishments of the un-
derstanding, which do not, like the senses, receptively and transformatively
produce representations of objects’ attributes, but rather are supposed to
enable the representation of its own inner essence as force?
In a negative sense this is clear: the claim of an agreement of structures
of subjective reason and objects cannot prove that the understanding is a
cognitive faculty; for this would render virulent the problem of what Kant
called the “Diallele”: that is, when the knowledge of objects that is supposed
to be the foundation of cognition is already assumed to be possible.
That the achievements of the understanding arrive at a knowledge of ob-
jects and how they in fact do so, can according to Herder only be demon-
strated on the basis of inner-subjective conditions. He thus avoids the
problem of the Diallele, and the key to his solution lies in the determination
of the relationship of sensuousness and understanding analyzed above: as the
understanding recognizes itself in the senses, it exercises its innate function
of recognition, as it were, for the first time, performing the first act of a self-
constitution whose specificity consists precisely in grasping itself as ines-
capably dependent on others, and this confirms on a higher level the initially
posited primitive certainty of the subject-object unity in its feeling. Herder
thereby takes up an issue of modern epistemology, in order, however, in the

end to describe a figure of self-validation by the subject (Selbstvergewisse-
rung) which demonstrates the opposite of those conceptions of Cartesian pro-
venience that are based on the separation of subject and object. If the un-
derstanding becomes transparent to itself only in an act of recognition, then
this means that through this act the understanding must also recognize itself
in the basic function of recognition. Otherwise there would be a kind of per-
formative contradiction: if the cognitive function of the understanding —
seen, incidentally, thoroughly in analogy to Kant — could only be guaranteed
with recourse to its self-understanding, and if this occurs in an act of recog-
nition, then the first item that is known, which is the understanding itself, owes
this to this cognitive function. Through this first act the understanding
identifies itself as that which it really is.
Herder’s position in the Metakritik approaches in principle the postulate
of modern epistemology of making certainty of being (Seinsgewissheit) attain-
able on the basis of self-certainty insofar as any form of self-reference is
posited as foundational for the legitimation of the cognitive achievements of
37
the understanding. However, Herder avoids every attempt — criticized es-
pecially in Kantian philosophy — to guarantee objectivity one-sidedly starting
from the achievements of the subject: this original act of self-validation
(Selbstvergewisserung) occurs as a recognition. This confirms the final validity
(Unhintergehbarkeit) of the subject-object unity — the understanding
(Verstand) is only understanding through the reference to something given
38
to it. With this step of overcoming the separation of subject and object is
combined the anti-dualism, already sketched above, of the theory of the
cognitive faculties of sensuousness and understanding. The certainty reached
in the original act of the understanding of the latter’s dependence on some-
thing previously given but not produced by it, in which it recognizes itself as
analogous to this something, presents itself in terms of faculty psychology as
an insight into the elementary unity of understanding and the organs as-
signed to it. From this relationship of the cognitive faculties to each other it
follows for Herder, furthermore, that the representations attaching to these
faculties, that is, the concepts of the understanding and of the sensory organs,
39
have to be combined for cognition to be possible. The thus-originating
“Erste Reihe der Verständigungen” (first level of understandings) — re-
placing the transcendental schematism in Kant, which synthesizes the repre-
sentations of the understanding and perception in a different manner — is
rightfully characterized by Herder as an “Analogie unsrer selbst” (analogy of
our self), whose suitability for the cognition of objects is maintained:
Diese Analogie unsrer selbst können wir nicht anders als auf Alles außer
uns anwenden, weil wir nur durch und mit uns selbst sehen, hören, ver-
stehen, handeln. Wir tragen sie aber nicht in die Objecte über: denn
wenn in diesen nichts Verständliches, Hör- und Sichtbares wäre; so

existierte an ihnen keine Kategorie, d.i. kein Sinn und kein Verstand.
[. . .] Organisation ist unsere Form, Wesen des Verstandes und des Ver-
standenen, ohne welche dieses ihm nichts, ohne welche er sich selbst
aber auch nichts bedeutet. (Metakritik, SWS 21:100–101)
[This analogy of our self we cannot but apply to everything outside us
because we see, hear, understand, act only through and with our self. We
do not carry it over into objects, however; for if there were nothing un-
derstandable, audible, or visible in these, then there would exist in them
no categories, that is, no sense and no understanding. [. . .] Organi-
zation is our form, the essence of understanding and of the understood,
without which the understood means nothing to the understanding,
without which the understanding also means nothing to itself.]
Herder is saying here that if the understanding recognizes itself in an
original act as being able to find itself only in something given, then it rec-
ognizes that it is only understandable to itself at all through something pre-
viously given, and this means that it cannot even be asked how one can pro-
ceed from it, as something comprehensible in itself, to the object as something
incomprehensible. From this it follows, subjectively, that for the under-
standing, which recognizes its dependence on something given, each attempt
at a grounding of knowledge in autarkic reason is obsolete from the outset. It
is replaced by the idea, which is aware of its own conditionality, of the need
to mediate the achievements of the understanding with those of sensuous-
ness. Only from such unities can knowledge of objects be expected.
It arises for the external relation of the understanding to objects of
knowledge that the understanding, as a consequence of its original self-
certainty, must presuppose that the objects are comprehensible, that is, that
they offer something that the understanding qua understanding can recog-
nize or in which the understanding can find itself. This certainty of the
rationality of objects is also implied by the original self-knowledge: the con-
dition for the understanding being able to find itself in the given is that the
given be rational. The first successful act of knowledge by the understanding
qua recognition of itself thus verifies, as it were, the conditionality of the
understanding and the referentiality, posited with it, to something different
from it, like the principal sameness of recognizer and recognized.
Herder refers to the concept of organization as key to understanding
these connections between the internal relations: the subject is the unity of
relations — unity and multiplicity, force and effects, understanding and
senses. As an organism the subject structured in itself stands in an analogous
relation to external objects of the same organic constitution. The subject is
the organ of the objects, in it they become felt, experienced, conscious; but
the objects are also organs of the subject, through which it comes to know
itself. The world thus represents itself as a living whole whose parts in mani-
fold ways assimilate (geniessen), feel, and know themselves in the other.
Like each being (Seiendes), the whole is for Herder a unity of parts struc-
tured hierarchically. Characteristic for this philosophy of life embracing both
ontology and epistemology is the view that the ontological hierarchy of forces
corresponds to a scale of representations extending from sensualistic to ra-
tionalistic forms that can claim objectivity irrespective of their quantitative
and qualitative differences. Like Plato, Herder has to insist, therefore, on the
independence of the laws of logic as laws of a reason that “only” dwells in
God, and at the same time has to declare pure reason independent of ex-
perience a chimera.
However, Herder’s philosophy of life — as already known from Vom Erken-
nen und Empfinden — is not about fixed, immutable, or even pre-established
conditions of representation, but rather about the dynamic conditions of the
expression of the self in an “other” and of the appropriation of that other to
the self, in which the basic structure of a living unity of oneness and multi-
plicity, of force and organs, comes to the fore. Appropriation means the
transformation of the given in accordance with the assimilating force, that is,
spiritualization of the sensuous self-expression in another as self-representa-
tion of the force in its organic effects: sensualization of the spiritual. Since,
however, in each case the entire organism is at work, there are mixtures of the
40
spiritual and the sensuous in its product: form, shape, type, image, schema.
Arguing against Kant’s (thoroughly related) doctrine of schematism,
Herder interprets in the Metakritik the unity of thinking and speaking, cor-
responding to these polar modes of operation (Wirkungsweisen) of all being,
as moments of a two-sided meta-schematism. By meta-schematism Herder
means the translation from an already produced schema or image into the
shape (Gestalt) suitable to the organ dealing with it on another level — a
metamorphosis, therefore, that transforms the object in accordance with the
mode of operation of the organs dealing with it.
A meta-schematization from below, so to speak, departing from bodily
impressions, is described by Herder as follows: “Eindruck des Gegenstandes
wird dem Organ, und dadurch dem anerkennenden Sinn sofort ein geistiger
Typus. Durch eine Metastasis, die wir nicht begreifen, ist uns der Gegenstand
ein Gedanke.” (Metakritik, SWS 21:117; The impression of the object im-
mediately becomes a spiritual type to the organ and in this way to the rec-
ognizing sense. Through a metastasis that we do not grasp, the object is a
thought to us.)
Impressions (Ektypen) of these types of senses originate for the inner
sense, that is, the empirical consciousness, as mental images, which are sim-
ilar to bodily ones. Language is a product of typifying operations of the mind.
These operations concern the relationship of seeing and hearing. Because of
their media of space and time, these senses supply purer, that is, more spiri-
tual images of things; they also allow the emergence of a counter-striving in

the knowing subject.
The understanding, which engages in recognition and at the same time
expression of itself (that is, of its concepts), succeeds in combining the per-
formances of both senses (seeing and hearing), in accordance with the law of
its operation of extending the one (understanding) into two (schemata of see-
ing and hearing) for the purpose of a higher unity (language), in such a man-
ner that one compensates for the deficits of the other in favor of a “hellere
Ordnung” (clearer order) suitable for the understanding. More precisely, to
the extent that the understanding expresses itself at all in the regularity of its
operation in the senses of seeing and hearing, we are speaking creatures; and
each concept as a product of the activity of the understanding expresses itself
in its own manner in language. In Herder’s philosophy, language ability is an
integral moment of cognition, and spiritualizing appropriation of the sensuous
corresponds to sensualizing utterance, that is, turning a functionally equiva-
lent moment of specifically human spiritual life into language.
Unser Verstand kann auch nicht anders als in beiderlei Kunstformen
seine Begriffe unverrückt und zu gleicher Zeit gestalten. Durchs Nach-
einander wird von ihm das Nebeneinander, dies durch Jenes zu einer
helleren Ordnung bestimmt; entfernte Gegenstände drücken sich durch
Töne successiv in uns; dunkle mit Augenblicken verschwundene Laute
bleiben vor uns durch Gestalten. So typisiert der Verstand, und so ward
[. . .] aus Verbindung zweier dem Schein nach einander entgegen-
gesetzter, einander aber unentbehrlicher Sinne, unter Leitung des Ver-
standes — Sprache. (Metakritik, SWS 21:119)
[Our understanding also cannot but unwaveringly and simultaneously
produce its concepts in two art forms. Through succession it makes jux-
taposition, the latter through the former determined to a clearer order;
distant objects leave their impressions in us through tones; obscure
sounds that have disappeared in an instant remain before us through
shapes. Thus does the understanding typify, and thus became [. . .] out
of the joining of two apparently opposing but mutually indispensable
senses, under the direction of the understanding, language.]
If the origin of the external shape of language, its forms of sounds, gestures,
and writing, is the theme here, then another genesis is proclaimed for the
“Wort als lautbares Merkmal” or “tönendes Gedankenbild” (word as articu-
lable distinguishing mark or resounding thought-image) as the inner essence
of language:
Articulationen der Sprache wurden dem Menschen, der sich vermittelst
Auge und Ohrs im Besitz so vieler innern lebendigen Typen fand, gleich-
sam Nothgedrungen ein Abbild derselben. Er mußte, er wollte äußern,
was er in sich sah und fühlte; so ward, unterstützt von Stimme und
Gebehrden, den innern Abdrücken seiner Seele ein lautbares Merkmahl,

das Wort. Zwischen beiden Sinnen, dem Ohr und dem Auge und den
verschiednen Eindrücken, die beide gewährten, drängte es sich hervor;
es ward der empfangenen Eindrücke typisierender Ausdruck. (Meta-
kritik, SWS 21:119)
[The articulations of language became for the human being, who found
himself via his eyes and ears in possession of so many inner living types,
of necessity an image of these, as it were. He had to, he wanted to
express what he saw and felt in himself; thus did the inner impression of
the soul, supported by the voice and gestures, become an articulable
distinguishing mark, the word. Between both senses, the ear and the
eye and the various impressions, the two allowed, pushed it out; it be-
came the typifying expression of the received impression.]
Interpreting the metaphors of conception and birth-giving in this de-
scription, the word is the articulating utterance of the typified sense im-
pressions of the understanding available to man in the same media through
which they were received. The products of this utterance bear not only the
imprint of their origin, that is, the uttered, but equally that of the media of
their utterance, that is to say, the soul expressing itself in gestures and
sounds as an image of the impressions of the eyes and ears produces in a new
meta-schematism a manifold amalgam whose complexity can only be hinted
at with the title “Metaschematismus tönender Gedankenbilder” (Metaschema-
tism of resounding thought-images, Metakritik, SWS 21:119).
The Metakritik is of philosophical interest insofar as Herder here — ob-
viously challenged by Kant — is trying to ground the previously worked-out
life-philosophical foundation of cognition and the doctrine of the specific
unity of being and cognition that follows from it in a form of self-validation,
not dissimilar to the basic figure of Kant, as a starting point for philosophy.
Herder’s philosophy of life is a philosophy of identity that has its center
in the concept of organic force or, put another way, in the concept of the
living as a unity of a higher force of the soul and of lower forces appearing as
bodies. The objectively existing spirit nature (Geistnatur) of things must be
appropriated subjectively, starting from the lower levels of life such as stimu-
lus and perception. This is possible because an analogous identity exists be-
tween understanding and sensuousness just as between the knowing subject
and the known object: as the higher-level spiritual force recognizes itself in
the representations of the senses it is working on, it recognizes their spiritual
nature. In Vom Erkennen und Empfinden, Herder had arrived at this level of
sensualistic idealism — that is, an ontological idealism à la Leibniz, allied to an
epistemological sensualism — in order in this way to satisfy the desideratum
of an exchange of spiritual forces that had forfeited their windowlessness
(Fensterlosigkeit).
Ever since, epistemology and ontology have been inseparable: cognition

has to be interpreted as a performance of the living according to the laws of its
operation. Knowing is life, and life is knowing in the widest sense: a dynamic
whole assimilating (geniessend) and representing itself in its parts and through
its parts. But only Herder’s transformation through his philosophy of life of
Spinozistic ontotheology ensures the universal homology between the rela-
tions within a being (Seienden), the external relations between different beings
(Seienden), and the relation of God and world: in each case it is the relation of
a higher-level force that recognizes itself in the lower force assigned to it and
assimilates it to itself. The specific nature of human cognition consists in its re-
sults being brought together into culturally and historically specific worlds, so
that the human spirit turns out to be a second maker that produces itself in the
further working-out of these secondary worlds — even in its respective identity.
In Gott, there is a decisive advance for the connection of ontology and
epistemology grounded in a philosophy of life: here, neo-Spinozism with a
philosophy of life superimposed onto it offers sensualistic idealism a suffi-
cient ontotheological foundation for the first time. At the time of Vom Er-
kennen und Empfinden, however, the foundation for this philosophy of life
— the ontological sameness of all finite being as God’s realized thought —
could only be postulated, but not justified.
Yet, the level of justification attained in Gott is insufficient as well: the
attempt to give an ontological foundation for knowledge can justifiably be
accused of a petitio principii: an ontology that is the foundation of knowl-
edge already presupposes, qua object of knowledge, that which is to be
proven in the first place.
Herder only confronts this deficit in his counter-treatise to Kant’s Kritik
der reinen Vernunft, and in fact with a figure of thought similar to Kant’s
doctrine of the original synthetic unity of apperception as the climax: the
manner in which the understanding thinks itself provides the most basic (un-
hintergehbaren) starting point for any foundation of knowledge. The result
of this analysis of the first cognition of the understanding is, however, dia-
metrically opposed to the Kantian approach: without a presupposed being,
not even an understanding that recognizes itself, a communication of self
with self, is possible. Rejecting the Kantian separation of thinking and per-
ception, and with his insight into the functioning of the understanding,
Herder arrives at the principle of the cognition of objects.
As much as the proof of the presupposition of being — a presupposition
that seems to be subjectively necessary — seems to bring us back to the be-
ginning, to the Versuch über das Sein, the fundamental difference consists in
the fact that the first certainty of the understanding in the Metakritik is seen
as an objective principle, so that this foundation can not only be said to pro-
vide a basis for a modest, subjective philosophy of the finite subject and the
fundamental concepts grounded in it, a philosophy that is aware of its own
limits. On the contrary, this first fundamentum inconcussum is the founda-

tion of a system combining ontology and epistemology through a philoso-
phy of life. Human rationality in its finiteness is on this basis no longer set
apart from the ideal of an infinite, divine thought-world; on the contrary,
Herder achieves, on the basis of a process of “finitization” (Verendlichung)
that also includes God and is achieved with the interpretation of being
(Seienden) as something living, the foundation of a system of philosophy. In-
finity manifests itself now in the fullness and the richness of general as-
similation and representation of the living whole: this is Herder’s sensualistic
reception of the Spinozist doctrine of amor dei intellectualis.
Translated by Wulf Koepke
Notes
1
Cf. the transcription of Kant’s “Metaphysik Herder,” AA 28.1:1–53 and 153–66
and AA 28.2,1:839–931; on the dating of these lecture notes cf. Gerhard Lehmann
in AA 28.2,2:1338–72. Cf. the edition of the drafts of the VüS from Herder’s “blue
book of lecture notes” in AA 28.2,1:933–46.
2
Johann Gottfried Herder, “Negative Philosophie” (ca. 1764), quoted from Ralph
Häfner, Johann Gottfried Herders Kulturentstehungslehre: Studien zu den Quellen und
zur Methode seines Geschichtsdenkens (Hamburg: Meiner, 1995), 267.
3
Cf. especially Hans Adler, Die Prägnanz des Dunklen: Gnoseologie, Ästhetik, Geschichts-
philosophie bei J. G. Herder. Hamburg: Meiner, 1990.
4
VüS, FA 1:19 and 12.
5
“all connection (in the real understanding): space, time, and force.” Immanuel Kant,
Reflexionen aus der Zeit zwischen 1753 und 1776, AA 17:260, # 3717.
6
Kant, AA 2:3–205.
7
Johann Gottfried Herder, “Über David Hume,” HN 26:5, lecture notes A2, 73 (ca.
1762) in the transcription of Hans Dietrich Irmscher and with kind permission of the
Staatsbibliothek Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbesitz.
8
PhBV, SWS 32:61.
9
KW 4, SWS 4:7.
10
Johann Gottfried Herder, Journal, SWS 4:384.
11
PhBV, SWS 32:41.
12
PhBV, SWS, 39.
13
EE 1775, SWS 8:265.
14
PhBV, SWS 32:41.
15
BD, FA 1:693 and the plan for an aesthetics connected by Ulrich Gaier to this text
(HN 25:57), FA 1:661.
16
“Plan zu einer Ästhetik,” FA 1:665. In KW 4, the corresponding formulation “ein
schwerer Theil der Anthropologie, der Menschenkänntniß”; SWS 4:25.
17
Herder, “Plan zu einer Ästhetik,” FA 1:659; cf. KW 4, SWS 4:12ff. and 21ff. This
text also — conceived at the same time as the “Plan zu einer Ästhetik” — documents
the attempt to apply Baumgarten’s analytical techniques and concepts to the theory
of the arts to supplement the “Evidenz in Sachen des Schönen” (Evidence in Matters
of the Beautiful, SWS 4:24) that measures the aesthetica naturalis according to an-
thropological criteria individually and sense-specifically.
18
SWS 4:20.
19
“Plan zu einer Ästhetik,” FA 1:660 and 664.
20
KW 4, SWS 4:56, and Journal, SWS 4:368.
21
“Plan zu einer Ästhetik,” FA 1:667.
22
KW 4, SWS 4:34.
23
KW 4, SWS 4:8. Cf. also Kant’s notes on Baumgarten’s Metaphysica, in Kant, AA
28.2,1:929–30.
24
KW 4, SWS 4:12. Herder’s argument against Crusius’s “Grundempfindungen,”
derived “aus der inneren Empfindung” and used automatically is prefigured in Kant’s
“Metaphysik Herder,” in Kant, AA 28.2,1:10–11.
25
EE 1774, SWS 8:239. Ulrich Gaier has shown that this procedure of dialogizing
the already verbalizing subject of cognition is developed in Herder’s theories of the
origin of language; in this sense acts of cognition already have a semiotic character
that must be described “in der Beziehung zwischen konstituierender Reflexion,
anerkanntem Zeichen und dem durch es Repräsentierten” (in the connection be-
tween constituting reflection, recognized sign, and what is represented by it). Ulrich
Gaier, Herders Sprachphilosophie und Erkenntniskritik (Stuttgart–Bad Cannstatt:
Frommann-Holzboog, 1988), 106.
26
Johann Gottfried Herder, “Plato sagte, daß unser Lernen bloß Erinnerung sei,” in
Marion Heinz, Sensualistischer Idealismus: Untersuchungen zur Erkenntnistheorie und
Metaphysik des jungen Herder (1763–1778) (Hamburg: Meiner, 1994), 175–82.
27
Cf. Manfred Baum, “Herder’s Essay on Being,” in Herder Today: Contributions
from the International Herder Conference Nov. 5–8, 1987, Stanford, California, ed.
Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (New York/Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990), 126–37.
28
This is more pointedly formulated in the second version of the prize essay: “Erkennen
und Empfinden ist bei uns vermischten Geschöpfen in einander verschlungen; wir
erkennen nur durch Empfindung, unsre Empfindung ist immer mit einer Art Er-
kenntnis begleitet.” (EE, 1775, SWS 8:263; Cognition and sensation are in us mixed
creatures bound up with one another; we know only through sensation, our
sensation is always accompanied by a kind of knowledge).
29
Cf. John H. Zammito, Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology (Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 2002.
30
Cf. Hans Dietrich Irmscher, “Aneignung und Kritik naturwissenschaftlicher Vor-
stellungen bei Herder,” in Texte, Motive und Gestalten der Goethezeit: Festschrift für
Hans Reiss, ed. John L. Hibberd and Hugh Barr Nisbet (Tübingen: Niemeyer,
1989), 33–63.
31
Cf. Über die dem Menschen angeborne Lüge, SWS 9:536–40.
32
On the contemporary reception of Herder’s metacritical writings, cf. Heinrich
Clairmont, “‘Metaphysik ist Metaphysik.’ Aspekte der Herderschen Kant-Kritik,” in
Idealismus und Aufklärung: Kontinuität und Kritik der Aufklärung in Philosophie
und Poesie um 1800, ed. Christoph Jamme and Gerhard Kurz (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta,
1988), 179–200.
33
Cf. Marion Heinz, “Herders Metakritik,” in Herder und die Philosophie des deutschen
Idealismus, ed. Marion Heinz (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), 89–106.
34
On Herder’s reception of Hemsterhuis, cf. Marion Heinz, “Genuß, Liebe und
Erkenntnis. Zur frühen Hemsterhuis-Rezeption Herders,” in Frans Hemsterhuis
(1721–1790): Quellen, Philosophie und Rezeption, ed. Marcel F. Fresco et al. (Münster
u. Hamburg: Lit, 1995), 433–44.
35
Cf. Marion Heinz, “Existenz und Individualität. Untersuchungen zu Herders Gott,”
in Kategorien der Existenz: Festschrift für Wolfgang Janke, ed. Klaus Held (Würzburg:
Königshausen & Neumann, 1993), 159–78. Further, Myriam Bienenstock, “Herder
und Spinoza. Einige Bemerkungen zum heutigen Herder-Bild,” in Humanität in
einer pluralistischen Welt? Themengeschichtliche und formanalytische Studien zur deutsch-
sprachigen Literatur: Festschrift für Martin Bollacher, ed. Christian Kluwe and Jost
Schneider (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2000), 57–71. Heinrich Clairmont
argues from the perspective of Herder’s epistemological psychology in his article,
“‘Die Leute wollen keinen Gott, als in ihrer Uniform, ein menschliches Fabelthier.’
Herders anthropologisch fundierte Gnoseologie und seine Spinozadeutung in Gott,”
in Spinoza im Deutschland des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts: Zur Erinnerung an Hans-
Christian Lucas, ed. Eva Schürmann, Norbert Waszek, and Frank Weinreich (Stuttgart–
Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2002), 329–55.
36
Gunter Scholz, “Herder und die Metaphysik,” in Zwischen Wissenschaftsanspruch
und Orientierungsbedürfnis: Zu Grundlage und Wandel der Geisteswissenschaften, ed.
Gunter Scholz (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991), 87–101, esp. 94–95.
37
In the course of the development of the Metakritik the necessity of this step of self-
validation (Selbstvergewisserung) has to be explained more precisely: the senses supply
only the attributes of things; the understanding, however, is supposed to recognize
the essence of things, that is, the things as forces; this category comes only from it-
self. This means that, according to the Metakritik, one cannot refer to something
given from the outside of the understanding for its (the understanding’s) legitima-
tion, which proceeds genetically on every level as a mediation of the subjective and
the objective.
38
Cf. Metakritik, SWS 21:316: “Statt daß man die kritische Philosophie die zermal-
mende genannt hat (sie hat bisher nichts zermalmet), hätte man sie also eher die
zerspaltende (philosophia schismatica) nennen sollen, denn wohin sie blickt werden
Antinomien und Spalten.” (Instead of calling critical philosophy the crushing one [it
has up til now not crushed anything], one should have rather called it the splitting
one, since wherever it proceeds there are antinomies and fissures.)
39
Cf. Metakritik, SWS 21:100. If the understanding can exercise its function only in
connection with the senses, then its specific notions can also qualify as objective only
in connection with the notions of the senses, which are directed to what is necessarily
given to them. The Kantian attempt to deduce the objectivity of pure concepts of
reason as such is for Herder wrongheaded from the outset.
40
Cf. Hans Dietrich Irmscher, Johann Gottfried Herder (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2001),
34ff., and Johann Gottfried Herder, Kalligone, SWS 32:115ff.
3: Herder and Historical Metanarrative:
What’s Philosophical about History?
John Zammito
T HERE IS SOME TRUTH in Goethe’s pronouncement that Johann Gottfried

Herder’s ideas had been both absorbed and forgotten by the conven-
1
tional wisdom of German culture after 1800. He was absorbed either into
the project of the Jena Romantiker and their literary hermeneutics or into
the project of Hegel and his philosophy of history. But after the rise of
historicism in the school of Ranke and Droysen, a retrospective redemption
seemed possible. Thus, in the classic formulations of Meinecke and Stadel-
2
mann, Herder was resurrected as the “father of historicism.” He was credited
with pioneering the stress on individuality, development, and the “historical
sense” of Einfühlung (or Verstehen [empathy]) that became the core of the
disciplinary matrix of history in the nineteenth century.
What are we to make of this claim? I propose to affirm and to reject it in
equal measures. On the one hand, a case can be made that Herder was a
pioneer of hermeneutic historicism, though he was a philologist and a phi-
losopher of history more than he was a historian. There is a case to be made
that everything Herder wrote expressed a historical point of view, whether
he discussed philosophy, literature, or language. From a methodological van-
tage point, then, Herder was “historicist” in everything he did. On the other
hand, he was not a member of the academic guild of historians; indeed, in
his famous controversy with the eminent Göttingen professor of history
3
August von Schlözer, he antagonized them irretrievably. Current historians
of the rise of the discipline in the eighteenth century, accordingly, minimize
4
his role. Yet there is merit to the retrospective acknowledgment by historical
theorists, starting with Wilhelm Dilthey, that Herder was a progenitor of
5
their practice. But, finally, the notion of “historicism” developed by Stadel-
mann and Meinecke is deeply flawed by a German nationalism, an “irration-
alism,” and a radical relativism that must not be projected uncritically back
6
onto Herder.
In this essay I wish to explore what it means to call Herder a philosopher
of history, and I shall accordingly focus on his two great works in that genre:
Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit (Another
Philosophy of History for the Education of Humankind, 1774), and Ideen zur
66 ♦ JOHN ZAMMITO
Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas on the Philosophy of the His-
tory of Humankind, 1784ff.). To begin with, we can invoke the widely used
7
distinction between “critical” and “speculative” philosophy of history. Critical
philosophy of history has to do with the methodology and epistemology of
writing history: with how to do it and whether it is done well. In the late
eighteenth century, as the endeavor to found a disciplinary history came to
8
fruition, this set of concerns was of great significance. Yet simultaneously,
and certainly not coincidentally, came the most famous burst of speculative
9
philosophy of history of all time (e.g. Turgot, Condorcet, Kant, Hegel).
Speculative philosophy of history seeks to establish a meaning for the entire
sweep of history, from its origin to its end, to provide what Jean-François
10
Lyotard taught us to call a “metanarrative.”
Disciplinary history arose in the late eighteenth century with the conver-
gence of methodological influence from three other, more established disci-
plines: first, classical philology, especially Johann Winckelmann’s recovery of
Greek sculpture and Christian Heyne’s archaeological concept of the Total-
habitus (complete characteristics); second, biblical criticism, especially the
historicization of the Bible from Richard Simon and Spinoza to Johann
David Michaelis; and, finally, developmental linguistics, the recognition of
11
language “families” and genealogical theories of their relation. Allen Megill
has made a powerful case for the primacy of the new concern with aesthetics
as the driving force behind the emergence of distinctively eighteenth-century
12
historicism. This was also the moment, as Reinhart Koselleck has conten-
ded, of the emergence of the “historical singular,” the idea that there is one
“history” (Geschichte) of which many partial “accounts” (Historien) have been
13
formulated. The notion of the past and the notion of its construal collapsed
into the same, indiscriminate locution: Geschichte has henceforth always meant
both. But the singular suggested at the same time a totality, a whole past,
and more than just the past: it could only be understood if it encompassed
the present and especially the future. The moment of history’s disciplinary
inauguration was thus galvanized by two deep anxieties: first, where might
the future be taking mankind, especially since the sense of acceleration
(“progress”) was simultaneously a sense of rupture from the past; and hence,
second, how could all the past be packaged into a meaningful whole, es-
pecially when it seemed no longer to offer the continuity with the present
out of which had been spun its traditional moral lessons (historia magistra
14
vitae)? Philosophy of history and the concomitant craze for Universal-
15
geschichte were responses to just this quandary. At the same time, historians
asked themselves how they could construct particular histories in the absence
of a general principle of historical method, and they saw this implicating
them in some grander theory of history as a whole from which they could
16
deduce the parameters of their more specific inquiries.
HERDER AND HISTORICAL METANARRATIVE ♦ 67
The term “philosophy of history” was coined by Voltaire in the years

1756 to 1765, between his Essai sur les mœurs (Essay on Customs, 1756)
and his Philosophie de l’histoire (Philosophy of History, 1765). He explicitly
identified it with escaping the impression of irrationality in history, of its
meaninglessness. In Germany, this concern for meaning in history — en-
tailing totality, teleology, and theology — could not be extricated from the
negative challenge posed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau to the idea of moral pro-
gress, or from the idealistic postulations of the theologian Johann Spalding
in Betrachtung über die Bestimmung des Menschen (Observation on the Des-
17
tiny of Man, 1748). These formed the backdrop of Isaak Iselin’s Geschichte
der Menschheit (History of Mankind, 1764) and also of a controversy be-
tween Moses Mendelssohn and Thomas Abbt over Spalding, human destiny,
18
and history. In turn these German episodes instigated Herder’s first and
most influential text in the philosophy of history, Auch eine Philosophie der
Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit. But even earlier Herder had taken up
the critical philosophy of history — in discussions of Winckelmann, of Abbt,
of David Hume and the other Scots, and of course in his controversy with
Schlözer in 1773.
How did Herder’s philosophy of history relate to the others that pro-
liferated in the second half of the eighteenth century? The main provocation
for Herder’s intervention was the so-called “philosophical history” articu-
lated by Voltaire. Herder disdained the latter’s complacent Eurocentric
presentism, the beginning of what we know as “Whig history,” practiced in
significant measure as well by Montesquieu and even Hume, and in Switzer-
land by Iselin. As early as 1769 Herder could write: “Unser Jahrhundert ist
zu fein, zu Politisch, und Philosophisch” (our century is too fine, too politi-
19
cal, and philosophical) to appreciate earlier epochs. By 1774 his outrage
with smug presentism, with European despotism and imperialism cloaked in
glorious “philosophical” rationalizations, erupted into the scathing ironies of
Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte.
At the same time, however, the Scottish Enlightenment proved a major
20
stimulus for Herder’s historical thinking. Herder read avidly Ferguson’s
Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), translated into German only a
year after its English publication, and it proved decisive for his reception of
21
the wider Scottish Enlightenment theory of history and culture. In an im-
portant review in 1772 of a work by John Millar, Observations on the Differ-
ences in Rank in Civil Society, Herder clearly identified what held the Scottish
Enlightenment together: “Philosophie der Gestalten und Veränderungen des
menschlichen Geschlechts nach Maasgabe der Geschichte und Erfahrungen —
ein großes, großes Feld!” (Philosophy of forms and changes of the human
species according to the measures of history and experience — a great, great
22
field!). The specific thrust of the Scottish school was to develop the “four
stages” theory of historical development, which put primary stress on the
68 ♦ JOHN ZAMMITO
23
economic institutions of each stage of society and on the laws of property.
Far from subscribing to this Scottish theory of human “improvement” culmin-
ating in contemporary European social order, Herder had reservations about
the commercialization of modern society strongly resembling Rousseau’s. In
Letter 122 of his Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität (Letters for the Ad-
vancement of Humanity, 1797), Herder put it succinctly: “Zu einer Ge-
schichte unsres Geschlechts gehören kaufmännich-politische Konsidera-
tionen nur als Bruchstück; ihr Geist ist sensus humanitatis, Sinn und Mitgefühl
für die gesamte Menschheit” (Business-political considerations belong to a
history of our species only as a fragment; its spirit is sensus humanitatis, sense
24
and sympathy for the whole of humanity). Thus in his 1772 review he faulted
Millar for having too presentist a bias, offering “immer nur eine einseitige
Geschichte des menschlichen Geschlechts” (always only a one-sided history of
the human species) which failed to recognize that every epoch was an end in
itself — the only view, he asserted, that would befit “die wahre Würde der
25
Philosophie” (the true dignity of philosophy). On the other hand, Herder
was profoundly influenced by the historical bent in the development of
aesthetic theory among the Scots — the dissertations of Hugh Blair revolv-
ing around “Ossian” but devolving decisively on Shakespeare and folk poetry,
the whole linguistic-literary evocation of “primitive” cultures when poetry
26
was the “mother-tongue of peoples,” in Hamann’s memorable phrase.
“Philosophers of history” in the eighteenth century aimed to articulate
the significance of the whole sweep of the past most pointedly for the sake of
the future. That is, they were committed to a notion of progress whose signal
warrant appeared to be the advance of knowledge through the critical appli-
cation of reason, through which the moderns could at long last affirm their
superiority over the ancients. And they conceived history in a eudaimonistic
frame; happiness, they were sure, was the purpose of (individual) human life,
and humans as a species were happier than they had been in the past.
Moreover, since humanity now understood the principle by which to secure
it, the prospect of an even better future seemed assured.
Herder, too, wanted a sense of the whole, but resisted identifying the
whole with the end or telos. Rather, he argued, both for theoretical and for
ethical reasons, that each historical formation had its own intrinsic perfec-
tion, and thus each human culture had its own internal principle of happi-
ness. Herder saw as the real project of a “history of mankind” not to trace
the trajectory of “progress” but to discriminate among the varieties of human
excellence. Totality, for Herder, could only signify a historical ensemble: all
the distinctive actualizations of the multifarious possibilities of humanity which
the course of human history set out, not in hermetic isolation, not without
partial cumulation and mutual influence, but adamantly without a singular,
27
linear, progressive telos. In Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte Herder put it
in its most memorable form: “jede Nation hat ihren Mittelpunkt der Glück-
seligkeit in sich, wie jede Kugel ihren Schwerpunkt!” (every nation has its
middle point of happiness in itself, just as every sphere its center of grav-
28
ity!). He held that the uniqueness of each people is more striking in its
spiritual form than in its material, and accordingly he sought to reconstruct
each distinctive spirit of a people (Volksgeist). It was this uniqueness above all
that Herder believed history should capture. “[R]ede jedes Denkmal für sich,
und erkläre sich selbst, wo möglich, auf seiner Stelle, ohne daß wir irgend aus
einer Lieblingsgegend die Erklärung holen” (Let every monument speak for
itself, and explain itself, where possible in its own place, instead of us extracting
29
the explanation from a location of our preference).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau played a massive role in the thought of Herder
because he disputed some or all of the conventions of eighteenth-century
philosophy of history, above all by directing attention to the problem of
human nature, which was presuppositional to them, and by proposing to
conceive this as a problem of origin, not end. Rousseau set out with the ac-
knowledgment that “it is no light undertaking to separate what is original
30
from what is artificial in the present nature of man.” His challenge, he
wrote, was to establish how man could succeed “in seeing himself as nature
formed him, through all the changes that the succession of time and things
must have produced in his original constitution . . .” (10). Indeed Rousseau
asserted that conjectures about the “state of nature” involved understand-
ings of “a state which no longer exists, which perhaps never existed, which
probably never will exist,” and so, famously, he proclaimed: “Let us there-
fore begin by putting aside all facts, for they have no bearing on the ques-
tion” (12, 17). He proposed boldly “to form conjectures, drawn solely from
the nature of man and the beings that surround him, concerning what the
human race could have become, if it had been left to itself.” He affirmed
that this undertaking entailed “hypothetical and conditional reasonings,
better suited to shedding light on the nature of things than as pointing out
their true origin . . .” (17). Yet Rousseau always imagined original man as
social, not biological. Accordingly, Rousseau disowned the naturalist, physio-
logical approach that Herder would embrace:
I will not stop to investigate in the animal kingdom what [man] might
have been at the beginning so as eventually to become what he is . . . On
this subject I could form only vague and almost imaginary conjectures.
Comparative anatomy has as yet made too little progress; the observa-
tions of the naturalists are as yet too uncertain for me to be able to
establish the basis of solid reasonings on such foundations . . . I will sup-
pose him to have been formed from all time as I see him today. . . . (18)
Rousseau was also clearly uncomfortable with a theological redemption of
history. He proposed a secular philosophy of history whose outcome was
social complexity, however problematic. By contrast, philosophy of history
70 ♦ JOHN ZAMMITO
was for Herder always also theodicy, the recognition and celebration of Di-
vine Providence in the created world and in the history of man.
Herder and “Critical” Philosophy of History:

Hermeneutic Historicism
While reflecting in 1767 or 1768 on the historical achievement of Winckel-
mann, Herder set down his earliest methodological views on historical inter-
31
pretation. Like all Germans of his epoch, Herder came away from reading
Winckelmann with a vision of Greek aesthetic creativity that became the
model for culture. Yet Herder at the same time challenged Winckelmann’s
representation. First, he found it ahistorical in its refusal to see any connec-
32
tion between the prior art of Egypt and the cultural efflorescence of Greece.
But even more, while Herder admired Greece and wished that his culture
could have a similar naturalness and wholeness, he nevertheless rejected the
33
idea that contemporary Germans could simply ape Greek forms. In disput-
ing Winckelmann’s effort to make Greece the eternal standard for cultural
achievement, Herder emphasized the situatedness of cultural forms. This
resulted in a historicism far more hermeneutically radical than any of his day.
Herder thought enough of his own critical philosophy of history by
1768 to compose a letter for publication in the most important academic
journal of history of the day, the newly established Allgemeine historische
34
Bibliothek of Göttingen. He never sent the letter, but it remains a clear and
imposing statement, whose main thrust was to stress the perspectival nature
of human understanding: “Jedes menschliche Auge hat immer schon seinen
eignen Blickwinkel: jedes wirft den vorstehenden Gegenstand auf seine Art
in Projektion hin . . .” (685; Every human eye has always had its own point
of view: every one throws forth the object before it in a projection, in its
own way . . .). Accordingly, each cultural object would have to be situated in
its historical moment to be appreciated. No one exemplar, even if it was the
best for its moment, could then serve “für alle Nationen, für alle Zeiten, für
uns” (689; for all nations, for all times, for us). Herder used the example of
35
Herodotus, the “inventor” of history. Having no model and facing a public
attuned to the epic, Herodotus developed a historical style in emulation of
Homer; he became a “historical Homerist.” But he could not thereby be-
come a model for all times. Not even Thucydides, who studied Herodotus
assiduously, cared to adopt his model. That superb fitness for his own mo-
ment made Herodotus all the more problematic for imitators in later times.
Moreover, Herder claimed that there was a different concept of truth
operative in history than in philosophy, that “der Geschichtsschreiber und
der Philosoph der Geschichte nicht völlig auf einem und gleich festen Boden
stehe” (that the writer of history and the philosopher of history do not stand
on the same and equally firm ground). Two historical observers might, every-
thing being equal, offer very similar descriptions of an evident matter, but
their judgments about it would be far from uniform, “jeder nach der Lage
seines Kopfs und nach dem Lieblingsgängen seines Reflexionsgeistes” (each
36
according to his mindset and according to his habits of reflective spirit).
In Dingen der Geschichte nämlich, wiefern ist da noch der sensus com-
munis des Urteils, bei Menschen von verschiedenen Ständen und Le-
bensarten, bei Leuten von verschiedner Mischung der Seelenkräfte und
am meisten von verschiedner Erziehung und Ausbildung derselben noch
einerlei? (687)
[In matters of history in particular, in what measure is the sensus com-
munis of judgment consistent among people of different classes and ways
of living, among people of varying mixtures of mental powers and above
all of varying education and development?]
Herder made it plain that he thought it could not be consistent. For Herder,
historical writing was a form of art, not a science: the “wahre historische
Künstler” was the “Schöpfer einer Welt von Begebenheiten” as a “schönen
Ganzen” (true historical artist; creator of a world of events; a beautiful
37
whole). Accordingly, “Muster der Geschichte sind eher gewesen als Regeln
einer historischen Kunst” (For an art of history it has always been more a
38
matter of exemplars than of rules).
Herder sought to bring this richer sense of situatedness to philosophy of
history itself. “Jeder Philosoph siehet nach seinem Gesichtspunkt. Wie er-
niedrigend, demonstriren zu müßen, daß die historische Känntniß einem
Philosophen keine Schande bringe” (Every philosopher sees according to his
point of view. How humiliating to have to demonstrate that historical knowl-
39
edge brings a philosopher no disgrace). The crucial innovation in Herder’s
hermeneutics was recognizing the problem of the subject, not simply of the
40
object, of interpretation. Herder’s hermeneutics commenced in uncer-
41
tainty, both about the object and about the subject of the interpretive act.
This uncertainty was, however, epistemological, not ontological. Herder was
not questioning the actuality of the past or of the self, but only our assurance
42
that we could render these in a theoretically adequate formulation. He was
both aware of the situatedness of the historian as subject and intensely com-
mitted to the possibility of transcending this situation:
sich von diesem angebornen und eingeflößten Eigensinn zu entwöhnen,
sich von den Unregelmäßigkeiten einer zu singulären Lage loszuwickeln
und endlich ohne National- Zeit- und Personalgeschmack das Schöne zu
kosten, wo es sich findet, in allen Zeiten und allen Völkern und allen
Künsten und allen Arten des Geschmacks; überall von allen fremden
Teilen losgetrennt, es rein zu schmecken und zu empfinden. Glücklich,
wer es so kostet! Er ist der Eingeweihete in die Geheimnisse aller Musen
72 ♦ JOHN ZAMMITO
und aller Zeiten und aller Gedächtnisse und aller Werke: die Sphäre
seines Geschmacks ist unendlich, wie die Geschichte der Menschheit
43
...
[to wean oneself from this inborn and learned obstinacy, to extricate one-
self from the irregularities of a too-singular situation, and to ultimately
appreciate the beautiful where one finds it, in all times and all peoples
and all art forms and all kinds of taste, without national, temporal, or
personal prejudices; to taste it and perceive it purely everywhere regard-
less of all foreign elements. Happy is he who tastes it so! He is the initiate
in the secrets of all muses and all times and all memories and all works:
the sphere of taste is unending, like the history of mankind . . .]
There is, unquestionably, an element of utopianism about Herder’s herme-
neutics. Yet it was tempered and in his best work controlled, while still giv-
ing him the energy and inspiration to dare to enter the hermeneutic circle
and bring back to historical consideration treasures of the cultural past.
Herder’s ambition as a philologist was to retrieve the spirit of his author.
“Ich soll zuerst die eigene Manier meines Schriftstellers zeigen, und die
Originalstriche seiner Denkart bemerken: ein schweres aber zugleich nütz-
liches Geschäfte.” (I should first show the particular manner of my writer and
point out the originality of his way of thinking: a difficult but at the same
44
time useful business.) For Herder, the uniqueness of an author was always a
function of his historicity. He explained more concretely what this meant:
Am meisten ists nötig, daß man von einem Autor abzieht, was seiner Zeit
oder der Vorwelt zugehört, und was er der Nachwelt übrig läßt. Er trägt
die Fesseln seines Zeitalters, dem er sein Buch zum Geschenke darbeut:
er steht in seinem Jahrhundert, wie ein Baum in dem Erdreich, in das er
sich gewurzelt, aus welchem er Säfte ziehet, mit welchem er seine Glied-
maßen der Entstehung decket. Je mehr er sich um seine Welt verdient
machen will, desto mehr muß er sich nach ihr bequemen, und in ihre
Denkart dringen, um sie zu bilden. Ja da er selbst nach diesem Ge-
schmacke geformt ist: und sich die erste Form nie ganz zurückbilden
läßt: so muß ein jeder großer Schriftsteller die Muttermale seiner Zeit an
45
sich tragen.
[The most necessary thing is that one gleans from an author what be-
longs to his time or the time that preceded him and what he left for
posterity. He bears the chains of his epoch, to which he presents his book
as a gift: he stands in his own century like a tree in the earth in which he
is rooted, out of which he draws sap, with which he dresses the limbs of
his emergence. The more he wants to serve his world, the more he must
adapt to it and penetrate its way of thinking, in order to contribute to its
formation. Indeed, because he himself is formed by this taste, and one’s
first formation is never fully undone, so must every great writer bear the
birthmarks of his time.]
This methodological insight was clearly articulated in Herder’s 1767 essay

on Abbt:
Aber der Erklärer ist mein Mann, der der Vorwelt, und der Zeit, und der
Nachwelt eines Autors ihre Grenzen ziehet: was ihm die erste geliefert,
die zweite geholfen oder geschadet, die dritte nachgearbeitet. Eine Ge-
schichte der Schriftsteller, die nach dieser Idee ausgeführt, welch ein
Werk wäre sie! Die Grundlage zu einer Geschichte der Wissenschaften,
46
und des menschlichen Verstandes.
[But that interpreter is my man who delineates the outlines of the era
before, and the era of, and the era following an author: what the first
gave to him, how the second helped or hurt him, what the third
reworked. A story of a writer that follows this idea, what a work it would
be! The foundation of a history of the sciences and of human reason.]
Herder was first and foremost a philologist, concerned with the proper
approach to reading:
so lese man[:] . . . nehme jedes Bild nicht weiter, als es die Einkleidung
des Ganzen fordert, als es zum Poetischen Sinn, in seinem Fortflusse, in
seiner Verbindung beiträgt: verpflanze die figürlichen Ausdrücke nicht
auf den Boden der strengen Demonstration, oder beweisender Ge-
47
schichte: gebe sein Ohr in den Ton der Stücke — so lieset man würdig.
[one should read this way: take every image no further than the fashion
of the whole requires, than it contributes to the poetic sense in its flow-
ing forth, in its connection: do not plant figurative expressions in the
ground of strict demonstration or history as proof: one should give one’s
ear to the tone of the piece — thus one reads properly.]
In Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte Herder extended his approach from
48
texts to general objects of culture. He observed, “was es für eine unaus-
sprechliche Sache mit der Eigenheit eines Menschen sei” (what an unspeakable
thing the peculiarity of one human being is) only in order to make all the
49
more vivid the problem of grasping the whole of an epoch or an event.
Historical generalization, Herder recognized, always made as much meaning
as it found: “Niemand in der Welt fühlt die Schwäche des allgemeinen Cha-
rakterisierens mehr als ich” (32; No one in the world feels the weakness of the
general characterization more than I). A historian seeking to grasp this whole
had to impose order in a creative coordination (35). Yet Herder insisted that
insight and understanding were attainable, and particularity itself — under-
stood contextually — gave the historian purchase: nothing emerged in his-
tory “als wozu Zeit, Klima, Bedürfnis, Welt, Schicksal, Anlaß gibt (35; other
than that to which time, climate, need, world, fate, gives cause). To intuit the
“Ganze Natur der Seele, die durch alles herrscht [whole nature of the soul
that governs all],” he counseled, “antworte nicht aus dem Worte, sondern
74 ♦ JOHN ZAMMITO
gehe in das Zeitalter, in die Himmelsgegend, die ganze Geschichte, fühle

dich in alles hinein . . . [do not be literal but enter into the epoch, the clime,
the whole history, feel your way into it all . . .]” (33).
To embrace concrete individual forms as the proper object of historical
inquiry meant for Herder that they could not be read off simply as stages on
the way to some later, higher order. Yet this did not mean that he aban-
doned any endeavor to integrate accounts across cultures and times, to
achieve a “metanarrative.”
Wenns mir gelänge, die disparatsten Szenen zu binden, ohne sie zu ver-
wirren — zu zeigen wie sie sich aufeinander beziehen, aus einander er-
wachsen, sich in einander verlieren, alle im Einzelnen nur Momente,
durch den Fortgang allein Mittel zu Zwecken — welch ein Anblick! welch
edle Anwendung der menschlichen Geschichte! welche Aufmunterung zu
hoffen, zu handeln, zu glauben, selbst wo man nichts, oder nicht alles
sieht. (42)
[If I succeeded in binding together the most disparate scenes without con-
fusing them — to show how they relate to each other, grow out of one
another, lose themselves in each other, all individually only moments,
through the process alone means to ends — what a sight! what a noble use
of human history! what encouragement to hope, to act, to believe, even
where one sees nothing, or not everything.]
Given the situatedness of every historian, contingency and fallibility — parti-
ality, in all its senses — was inevitable. Herder was certain that the “Schöpfer
allein ists, der die ganze Einheit, einer, aller Nationen, in alle ihrer Mannig-
faltigkeit denkt, ohne daß ihm dadurch die Einheit schwinde” (35; it is the
creator alone who conceives of the whole unity, one, all nations, in all of
their manifoldness, without in the process losing sight of the unity).
Still, Herder clung to a hunch: “Menschheit bleibt immer nur Mensch-
heit und doch wird ein Plan des Fortstrebens sichtbar — mein großes Thema!”
(40; Mankind remains always only mankind and yet a plan for striving forth
becomes visible — my great topic!). He proposed that “in der Menschheit
ein unsichtbarer Keim der Glücks- und Tugendempfänglichkeit auf der ganzen
Erde und in allen Zeitaltern liege, der verschiedlich ausgebildet, zwar in
verschiednen Formen erscheine, aber innerlich nur ein Maß und Mischung
von Kräften” (82; in mankind lies an invisible germ of receptivity for happiness
and virtue, all over the world and in all epochs, which is differently constituted
and appears in different forms, but is internally only one measure and mix-
ture of forces). Humanity, for Herder, was so plastic, its potential actuali-
zations so multifarious, that not only every individual but every community
instantiated this human potential in a distinct manner: “Weil eine Gestalt der
Menschheit und ein Erdstrich es nicht fassen konnte, wards verteilt in tau-
send Gestalten, wandelt — ein ewiger Proteus! — durch alle Weltteile und
Jahrhunderte hin” (40; Because it can’t be captured in one form of mankind

and one clime can’t capture it, it was divided into thousands of forms, [it]
evolves — an eternal process! — through all parts of the world and all cen-
turies). In believing that “laws” along these lines informed all of human his-
tory, Herder sought to compose a philosophy of history starkly different
from the others. Herder’s principle of historical understanding was to grasp
particularity, but to understand it always as situated.
Jede Begebenheit, jedes Faktum in der Welt ist auf seine Art ein Ganzes
. . . Jede Begebenheit, jedes Faktum in der Welt hat seine Gründe und
Ursachen, die sein Wesen gleichsam erzeugten . . . Jede Begebenheit
endlich ist bloß ein Glied einer Kette, sie ist in den Zusammenhang mit
andern eingeflochten, sie ist in dem Zusammentreffen der Weltdinge
50
durch Anziehung und Rückstoß würksam . . .
[Every happening, every fact in the world is in its way a whole . . . Every
happening, every fact in the world has its reasons and causes, which at the
same time gave rise to its character . . . Every happening finally is only a
link in a chain; it is woven into connection with others, it is effective in its
participation in the commerce of worldly things through attraction and
repulsion . . .]
Herder’s “Speculative” Philosophy of History:

A Different Metanarrative
In the preface to Ideen Herder made the following avowal:
von meiner Jugend an war jedes neue Buch, das über die Geschichte der
Menschheit erschien und worinn ich Beiträge zu meiner großen Aufgabe
hofte, wie ein gefundener Schatz. Ich freute mich, daß in den neuern
Jahren diese Philosophie mehr empor kam und nutzte jede Beihülfe, die
51
mir das Glück verschafte.
[from my youth onwards, every new book that appeared about the his-
tory of mankind and in which I hoped to find contributions to my great
project was like a found treasure. I was happy that in recent years this
philosophy was on the rise, and made use of every assistance that luck
provided.]
From the Riga period onward, Herder’s ambition was to create a philo-
sophical history of mankind. As he noted in his preface to the Ideen, “Alles
erinnert mich daran, Metaphysik und Moral, Physik und Naturgeschichte,
die Religion endlich am meisten” (7; Everything reminds me of it, meta-
physics and morality, physics and natural history, and in the end religion most
of all). In his 1786 essay “Nemesis” he elaborated further: “Reisebeschrei-
76 ♦ JOHN ZAMMITO
bungen, Schiffarten, die Muth nach Naturkenntnißen, die Bekanntschaft mit

der ganzen Welt halfen der allgemeinen Geschichte; fortgehend und wach-
send im Fortschritt konnten sie die Menschen am Ende doch nur Mensch-
lichkeit lehren” (Travel descriptions, voyages, the courage to learn about
nature, the acquaintance with the whole world all helped history in general;
going forward and growing in progress, it could in the end after all only
52
teach man humanity). Yet in the preface to the Ideen, Herder acknowl-
edged: “In den meisten Stücken zeigt mein Buch, daß man anjetzt noch
keine Philosophie der menschlichen Geschichte schreiben könne, daß man
sie aber vielleicht am Ende unsres Jahrhunderts oder Jahrtausends schreiben
werde” (10; For the most part my book shows that one cannot yet write a
philosophy of human history, but that one might be able to write one by the
end of our century or millenium). In his Zerstreute Blätter of 1792 Herder
explained this strange avowal: “Wer wollte diese auch jetzo schon wagen? da
so viele Denkmäler noch unentziffert, andre kaum angezeigt oder mangel-
haft beschrieben sind, andre, vielleicht nothwendige Zwischenglieder, uns
noch ganz fehlen” (Who would dare to do this even now? Since so many
monuments have yet to be deciphered, others hardly made known or insuf-
ficiently described, others, perhaps necessary connecting links, are still en-
53
tirely missing).
Herder keyed his own sense of the viability of a philosophical history of
mankind to his sense of the advancement of the natural sciences of his day.
As Elias Palti has noted, “the study of the natural sciences of his time clarifies
fundamental aspects of Herder’s historical view, and, conversely, the analysis
of Herder’s philosophy allows us to better understand [the developments in
54
natural science].” Palti believes that “Herder’s historicism emerged from a
breach opened in historical thought [which was] the result of a series of
uneven developments produced in the natural sciences of his time,” and that
Herder’s historical theory should be grasped as “congruent with the devel-
55
opment of a set of new biological doctrines.” While my reconstruction of
these “uneven developments” in the natural sciences of the late eighteenth-
century — and hence my reconstruction of Herder’s historicism — diverges
from Palti’s, I agree entirely with his view that this is the proper vantage on
Herder. He was a pioneer in the endeavor to weave together naturalism and
historicism, and his very inadequacies are instructive for continued endeavors
56
along such lines. As the instigator of much recent interest in Herder, Isaiah
Berlin, put it, “Herder was decisively influenced by the findings of natural
57
science; he gave them a vitalistic interpretation . . .”
For us it is crucial to recover Herder’s effort to apply a consistent natur-
alism to the origins of mankind: to practice precisely the “natural history”
whose cosmological dimension he had learned from Immanuel Kant and
whose biological idea he took from the Comte de Buffon and Caspar Friedrich
58
Wolff as well as Kant, but which Rousseau rejected out of hand. Herder
envisioned a kind of history that would combine “cultural history with geo-
59
graphy and natural history” to create a “natural history of peoples.” He
60
adopted Buffon’s strategy of a “natural history of man.” As Herder put it in
a fragmentary essay from 1769, “Gesetze der Welt: Gesetze der Körper:
Gesetze Menschlicher und Tierischer Naturen; euch will ich in der Dunkel-
heit meines Labyrinths zu Hülfe nehmen, wie Gesetze für Nationen zu
schaffen sind, daß sie so wie ihr, gelten, würksam werden, glücklich machen,
ihr Ziel erreichen!” (Laws of the world: laws of objects: laws of human and
animal natures; I want to make use of you in the darkness of my labyrinth for
how laws of nations are to be created, in order that they, like you, are valid,
61
become effective, bring happiness, attain their goal!). This is what “the great
62
analogy of nature” meant for Herder. Already in the Ursprung der Sprache
(1772) Herder adopted a theory of language that was, as Hans-Dietrich
63
Irmscher noted, at once genetic and organic. In the Ideen he extended this
combined notion to the history of peoples.
Herder’s grand project in the Ideen was to discover how man as a crea-
ture of nature figured in man as an artifice of culture, to read these two
64
dimensions of man in continuity. He wished to integrate into his Ideen as
much empirical evidence as was then available regarding not merely recorded
history but what we would call the biology and archaeology of the human
species. Hence the first volume of the Ideen was an effort to harvest from the
natural sciences of the day all the insight they could provide into the forma-
tion of mankind. Herder’s concrete procedure at the outset of the Ideen was
to situate man, that is, to construe his emergence in terms of his geophysical
placement. Hence, famously, Herder began his grand work with the line
“Unsre Erde ist ein Stern unter Sternen” (3; Our earth is a star among stars).
Herder built from this astronomical situation a characterization of the geo-
graphical and climatic conditions of human emergence. He sought a model
of the formation of this aspect of man that went beyond what he had articu-
lated in his earlier theory of the origin of language, one that, in accordance
with his larger concept, developed a continuity between the forces of nature
and the forces of spirit.
He found this continuity precisely in that notion of “forces” (Kräfte) that
65
they both shared. The result was a theory of the world as composed primar-
ily of forces organized hierarchically: “. . . daß die Natur bei der unendlichen
Varietät die sie liebet, alle Lebendigen unserer Erde nach Einem Hauptplasma
der Organisation gebildet zu haben scheine” (67; Nature, with the unending
variety that it loves, seems to have formed all the living things of our earth
according to a single master plasma of organization). The essential claim
Herder propounded was that in all the variety of life forms there was an
underlying unity: “[D]as Eine organische Principium der Natur, das wir jetzt
bildend, jetzt treibend, jetzt empfindend, jetzt künstlichbauend, nennen . . .
im Grunde nur Eine und dieselbe organische Kraft ist” (102; That one
78 ♦ JOHN ZAMMITO
organic principle of nature, which we now call forming, now driving, now
sensitive, now artificially constructing . . . is fundamentally only one and the
66
same organic force). Thus Herder proposed to discern morphological
universals:
überall eine gewisse Einförmigkeit des Baues und gleichsam Eine Haupt-
form zu herrschen scheine, die in der reichsten Verschiedenheit wechselt
. . . [I]n den Seegeschöpfen, Pflanzen, ja vielleicht gar in den todtge-
sagten Wesen Eine und dieselbe Anlage der Organisation, nur unendlich
roher und verworrener, herrschen möge. (66–67)
[everywhere a certain unity of form in construction and at the same time
a chief form seemed to reign, which varies in the richest differentiation
. . . The very same tendency of organization may even reign in the
creatures of the sea, plants, yes perhaps even in inanimate objects, only
infinitely more raw and entangled.]
The continuity from inorganic to organic was explicit: “Nur Ein Prin-
cipium des Lebens scheint in der Natur zu herrschen: dies ist der ätherische
oder elektrische Strom, der . . . immer feiner und feiner verarbeitet wird und
zuletzt alle die wunderbaren Triebe und Seelenkräfte anfacht . . .” (77; Only
One principle of life seems to reign in nature: this is the etherial or electrical
current, which . . . becomes more and more finely dispersed and in the end
triggers all the wonderful drives and powers of the soul). Herder saw new
developments in the physics of forces (electricity, magnetism, light, heat,
fermentation) as essential to the continuity of nature from the inorganic to
the organic. He picked up Leibniz’s famous phrase, “living force” (vis viva),
to articulate this grand “analogy of nature.” “Wirkende Kräfte der Natur
sind alle, jede in ihrer Art, lebendig: in ihrem Innern muß ein Etwas seyn,
das ihren Wirkungen von außen entspricht; wie es auch Leibnitz annahm
und uns die ganze Analogie zu lehren scheinet” (98; Acting forces of nature
are all in their own way alive: inside them must be a something that
corresponds to their outer effects; as Leibniz too accepted and as the whole
analogy seems to teach us).
Here Herder followed the line set by Locke in distinguishing the “no-
minal essences” of which human science was capable from the ultimate “real
essences” of things known only to God. The phrase “analogy of nature”
Herder took from Kant’s early work, Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie
des Himmels (General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, 1755), a
decisive model for his thinking about nature. One had to work with analogy
because direct cognition of inner forces or real causes was beyond human
67
ken. “[S]o müssen wir tiefer und weiter her anfangen und auf die ge-
sammte Analogie der Natur merken. Ins innere Reich ihrer Kräfte schauen
wir nicht; es ist also so vergebens, als unnoth, innere wesentliche Aufschlüße
von ihr, über welcher Zustand es auch sei, zu begehren. Aber die Wirkungen
und Formen ihrer Kräfte liegen vor uns . . .” (166; Therefore we must begin
deeper and farther back and notice the whole analogy of nature. We don’t
look into the inner realm of their powers; it is thus as pointless as it it is un-
necessary to desire fundamental inner inferences, no matter what circum-
stance it concerns. But the effects and forms of its powers lie before us . . .).
“Wir bemerken diese Gesetze und Formen; ihre innern Kräfte aber kennen
wir nicht und was man in einigen allgemeinen Worten z.E. Zusammenhang,
Ausdehnung, Affinität, Schwere dabei bezeichnet, soll uns nur mit äussern
Verhältnissen bekannt machen, ohne uns dem innern Wesen im mindesten
näher zu führen” (47; We notice these laws and forms; their inner powers
however we do not know, and what one describes in a few general terms, for
example connection, expansion, affinity, gravity, only makes us familiar with
outer relationships, without bringing us even slightly nearer to the inner
character).
Central to Herder was the conviction that there could be no categorical
divide between nature and (human) history. Man was, to be sure, a unique
emergence, but within nature. Herder systematically tried to bring compara-
tive anatomy and comparative physiology to bear, working from the specu-
lations of Rousseau and others on the orangutan, to insist that there were
morphological differences, not only sociocultural ones, that distinguished
68
humankind from all other animal forms. Drawing extensively from the
exploration of the analogy of botanical and zoological forms with those of
humanity, Herder worked toward the conception of man as a “Mittel-
geschöpf unter den Thieren der Erde” (intermediate creature among the
animals of the earth), that is, in man all animal properties found the
69
consummate integration and expression. From this physical character of
man as the “concrete universal” (to borrow Hegel’s coinage) of the animal
world, Herder then moved on to man’s decisive physiological difference
from the rest: erect posture. In what was the most imaginative segment of
the work, Herder sought to correlate all man’s distinctive cultural attributes
70
with this essential physical attribute of erect posture. Turning at last to
those aspects of humanity that were most authentically spiritual, Herder con-
tinued to uphold immanence of transition. Thus he proposed to read even
man’s reason as a natural emergent: reason “ist ihm nicht angeboren;
sondern er hat sie erlangt” (145; is not inborn in him; instead he attained it).
This was one of the most important arguments in Herder’s Ideen, a direct
affront to Kant and to all who held reason to be a transcendent differen-
tiation of man from all the rest of creation, a sign of his divine affinity.
Herder naturalized reason: “Theoretisch und praktisch ist Vernunft nichts
als etwas Vernommenes, eine gelernte Proportion und Richtung der Ideen
und Kräfte, zu welcher der Mensch nach seiner Organisation und Lebens-
weise gebildet worden . . . Von Kindheit auf lernt er diese und wird wie zum
künstlichen Gange, so auch zu ihr, zur Freiheit und menschlichen Sprache
80 ♦ JOHN ZAMMITO
durch Kunst gebildet” (144; Theoretically and practically, reason is nothing

but an acquisition, a learned proportion and direction of ideas and forces to
which the human being is educated according to his organization and way of
life . . . From childhood on he learns this, and is educated to it through art
as he is to [his] artificial gait [i.e., erect posture; bipedalism], to freedom and
human language).
Herder extended into a general interpretive principle the embryological
71
idea of epigenesis. He asserted the emergence of increasing complexity and
differentiation as an immanent principle of natural development, as an in-
trinsically historical tendency of the entire physical world. “Alles ist in der
Natur verbunden: ein Zustand strebt zum andern und bereitet ihn vor”
(194; In nature all is tied together: one condition strives toward another and
prepares it). “Nichts in ihr steht still” (177; Nothing in it stands still). “. . .
organische Kräfte im Geschöpf zur größesten Wirksamkeit aufblühten und
jetzt zu neuen Bildungen streben” (179; Organic forces blossom into maxi-
mal effectiveness and then strive for new formations). Not only was there
ceaseless variety, but there was advancement in complexity. “die niedern
Kräfte gehn in feinere Formen des Lebens über” (178; The lower forces are
transformed into finer forms of life). Of course, at the same time Herder
adamantly denied species transformation, and insisted explicitly “[w]ahrlich
Affe und Mensch sind nie Ein’ und dieselbe Gattung gewesen” (257; cer-
tainly ape and man were never one and the same genus). Herder embraced
“progressionism without transformism,” as Arthur Lovejoy put it, adding
that “how Herder would have explained the gradual appearance of pro-
72
gressively higher forms is, undeniably, somewhat incomprehensible.” It is
anachronistic, certainly, to regard Herder as “a forerunner of Darwin” if the
73
essence of Darwinism is its mechanism for species change. Herder, ulti-
mately though obscurely, had recourse to special creation — “every species
was brought into existence by a separate act of the Creator,” as Lovejoy
74
expresses it.
Conclusion
Herder tried to conceive this creation, through all its “catastrophist” phases,
75
as having always been “built in” to Nature. Yet this pathbreaking natural-
ism was complemented — indeed, compromised — by Herder’s religious
ambitions. His whole argument for epigenesis in Nature was orchestrated to
serve (by “analogy”) an argument for the immortality of the soul beyond
Nature — a contradiction upon which his fiercest critic, Immanuel Kant,
76
pounced mercilessly. Well might Herder profess, “Doch die Metaphysik
bleibe bei Seite; wir wollen Analogien der Natur betrachten” (177; Still meta-
physics must be put aside; we want to observe analogies in nature). Like Kant,
however, we must find him, at least in this endeavor, thoroughly driven by
77
(religious) metaphysics.
Herder wrestled under an enormous tension in all his thought between

his profound and seminal naturalism and an equally profound if eccentric re-
78
ligiosity. In 1774, the same year that he published Auch eine Philosophie der
Geschichte, Herder published one of his most flamboyant and difficult reli-
gious texts, Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts (Oldest Document of the
79
Human Race), a rhapsodic evocation of Genesis. There is no question that
with this work Herder veered toward Johann Georg Hamann in style (her-
metic illegibility) and substance (mystical Protestant theology), and Hamann
80
was virtually the only reader who found it appealing. Kant was appalled. He
wrote Hamann a striking letter about it, the crucial backdrop to his attack
81
more than a decade later on Herder’s Ideen. For Kant, Herder’s quintes-
sential syncretism extended from his texts of the 1770s to the Ideen of 1784
82
and after. In the preface to the Ideen Herder himself affirmed the dual
commitment: “Ueberall hat mich die große Analogie der Natur auf Wahr-
heiten der Religion geführt . . . Die Natur ist kein selbstständiges Wesen;
sondern Gott ist Alles in seinen Werken . . .” (Everywhere the great analogy
of nature led me to the truths of religion . . . for me the hidden presence of
the Creator was diffused everywhere in his works . . . Nature is no inde-
83
pendent entity, but instead God is in all his works.) Wolfgang Düsing puts
the problem bluntly: “The theological presuppositions of the text can only
be forced together with a philosophy of history that wishes to be understood
84
in a purely immanent manner . . .” Similarly, F. M. Barnard, one of
Herder’s greatest American interpreters, concludes that “Herder’s desire for
fusion led at times to confusion”; “his ‘scientific’ aspirations clashed with his
85
‘humanistic’ impulses.” Another American commentator, G. A. Wells, ob-
serves that “it is unfortunate that the poetic style of the Ideen has suggested
to so many of its readers, from Kant onwards, that the work contains ro-
mance rather than sober science,” going on to note “the inadequacy of the
86
analogy between a civilization and an organism.”
Kant’s criticism, apart from its personal animosity, noted aptly the strains
in the fabric of Herder’s composition. While Kant faulted Herder’s “lyri-
cism” altogether, it was not so much Herder’s “rhapsodic” approach to sci-
ence that occasioned the key difficulties, but rather his endeavor to preserve
the religious core of his Christian commitment within the new frame of a
naturalistic vitalism. As Martin Bollacher has noted, “the main thrust of Kant’s
critique of the Ideas was not aimed at Herder’s argument from concepts that
were no longer drawn from sensible experience, but at the pantheistically
grounded perspective of a genetic relation and natural-historical develop-
87
ment of the ‘species’ . . .” As Reinhard Brandt aptly notes, “Kant all through
his life rejected the effort in the sphere of natural history to discern a natural
88
transition from merely mechanical to organic nature.” Kant wished to disso-
ciate nature and culture to the highest degree possible without contradiction.
82 ♦ JOHN ZAMMITO
Kant argued that the only way to salvage the Christian tradition in an
enlightened age was to make it a matter beyond the scope of reason, and to
do so, not only speculative, metaphysical reason but also scientific reason
needed to be limited to make room for faith. Herder wanted, perhaps im-
possibly, to give science the freest rein within empirical constraints and to
find the results fully compatible with his modified religiosity. Accordingly,
Hamann was correct when he pointed out to a Herder irate at Kant’s attack
that “in your Ideas there are many places which appear to be like arrows aimed
89
at him and his system, even if you may not have been thinking of him.” It
seems, too, that Hamann was correct in his sense that Herder’s provocation
of Kant was unintended, or at least not self-conscious. Herder’s alienation
from Kantian philosophy by 1783 is well documented. But so is his belief
that he had not publicly uttered his opposition. The publisher Hartknoch
reported on the basis of what Herder told him in 1783 that “Kant’s works
were certainly not enjoyable for him and against his way of thinking, but at
the same time he had neither written nor occasioned to be written anything
90
against them.” Of course, Kant would disagree: Herder’s Vom Erkennen und
Empfinden der menschlichen Seele (On the Cognition and Sensation of the
Human Soul, 1778) seemed a direct attack on his philosophy. That Herder
sincerely believed himself innocent is indicated by the extent of his shock
and sense of betrayal over Kant’s reviews of his work. Kant indicted Herder
both for exceeding the bounds of reason and for religious deviation. This
combination — aptly captured in the pejorative epithet “Spinozism” —
formed the core of the notorious “Pantheism Controversy” in and through
which the enmity of Kant and Herder took on its widest resonance. Herder
defended his “Spinozism,” while Kant used his denunciation of it as part of
his strategy to build a school around himself, as the perpetrator of the Pan-
theism Controversy, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, astutely observed. Kant clearly
succeeded in becoming the dominant philosophical voice of the late En-
lightenment in Germany, and Herder’s status suffered.
When he took up the Ideen Herder was at the prime of his powers, and
in that project he addressed his most important concern. The result, without
question, was his greatest work. It remains one of the greatest works of the
German 1780s. Yet it is also, significantly, unfinished, a “monumental frag-
91
ment.” Immanuel Kant’s devastating reviews, intervening in the middle of
Herder’s great synthetic project, adversely affected the composition of the
92
balance of the Ideen, as Rudolf Haym has clearly established. Other factors
contributed to Herder’s abandonment of the project. It is unclear how the
sort of brachiating history Herder ultimately conceived for humankind could
be “completed,” either as actuality or as account. And one should not mini-
mize the epochal intervention of the French Revolution of 1789, which al-
tered the mindset of all its contemporaries. Herder went on to write in a
different vein, while remaining a philosopher of history, as is exemplified by

his Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität.
For good or ill, in any event, Herder’s status in the lineage of the discip-
line of history and of its philosophy has been tied to his two major books,
Ideen and Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte. Even there, a further difficulty
arises, for the two books have not always seemed consistent with one an-
other. From Friedrich Meinecke in the early twentieth century forward, the
suspicion has been raised that there were two philosophies of history in
93
Herder. The Ideen seemed to exceed the constraints of the radical his-
toricism ostensibly articulated in Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte. To be
sure, there is a patent motivational difference in his two books of philosophy
of history. Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte is as much — or more — a
critique of his own times (a bitingly political critique) as it is a concep-
94
tualization of all the ages in the history of mankind. The Ideen, by contrast,
has about it a very Leibnizian leitmotif of theodicy: it proposes a justification
of the ways of God to man. Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte is a work of
contestation, but Herder wove through the pages of the Ideen elements of
95
contemplation and indeed (religious) consolation. In the earlier work,
Herder’s polemical vendetta against Enlightenment “progress” seemed to
proscribe any grand synthesis. Lyotard might say Herder anticipated him in
denouncing metanarrative. Things were different by the time Herder com-
posed the Ideen. Düsing argues that Herder’s conception had evolved so
that, by situating his history of mankind into a history of nature, “the great
connections allowed for knowledge of the structures of order and lawfulness
. . . The early text, by contrast, shows no acquaintance with this cosmic
96
background and the situating of history into natural coherences.” Herder
had announced his historicism by 1774; his naturalism would take somewhat
longer to achieve mature articulation. The two philosophies of history show
that difference. In my view, Lyotard would have been wrong to see Herder
as his predecessor, for in both works Herder believed in the metanarrative of
Humanität. On the other hand, I agree with Düsing that what emerges in
the later work is a further synthesis of historicism with naturalism. Against
Kant and those who insist on consigning Herder to some putative “counter-
Enlightenment,” there is a coherence to Herder’s historical vision that neither
his hermeneutic subtlety nor his lyrical metaphoricity undermines. Indeed,
97
there is warrant to argue the opposite. The positivist mandate to isolate
98
science from imaginative thought has lost its authority. We need no longer
enlist in “that ancient quarrel of the philosophers with the poets,” even if we
are recruited by such titans as Plato and Kant.
84 ♦ JOHN ZAMMITO
Notes
1
Goethe wrote of Herder’s Ideen: “Ein vor funfzig [sic] Jahren in Deutschland ent-
sprunges Werk, welches unglaublich auf die Bildung der Nation eingewirkt hat und
nun, da es seine Schuldigkeit getan, so gut wie vergessen ist . . ” (Werke [Munich
edition] 18/2:129).
2
Friedrich Meinecke, Historism: The Rise of a New Historical Outlook (Orig. German
ed. 1936; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972); Rudolf Stadelmann, Der his-
torische Sinn bei Herder (Halle: Niemeyer, 1928).
3
Herder, “A. L. Von Schlözers Vorstellung seiner Universal-Historie” (1772), SWS
5:436–40.
4
Theoretiker der deutschen Aufklärungshistorie, 2 vols., ed. Horst Walter Blanke and
Dirk Fleischer.(Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1990); Aufklärung
und Geschichte: Studien zur deutschen Geschichtswissenschaft im 18. Jahrhundert, ed.
Hans Erich Bödeker, Georg Iggers, Jonathan Knudsen, and Peter Reill (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986); Peter Hanns Reill, The German Enlightenment
and the Rise of Historicism (Berkeley, etc.: U of California P, 1975).
5
Wilhelm Dilthey, Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften.
Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 7 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1968), 95.
6
Georg Iggers, The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Histor-
ical Thought from Herder to the Present (Rev. ed.; Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP,
1983).
7
William Dray, “Philosophy of History,” Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 5/6 (New
York/London: Macmillan, 1967), 247–54.
8
See especially Peter Hanns Reill, The German Enlightenment. See also Markus
Völkel, ‘Pyrrhonismus historicus’ und ‘fides historica’: Die Entwicklung der deutschen
historischen Methodologie unter dem Gesichtspunkt der historischen Skepsis (Frankfurt/
Main: P. Lang, 1987).
9
See, for instance, Karl Löwith, Meaning in History (Chicago/London: U of Chicago
P, 1949).
10
Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minne-
apolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984).
11
A short but very persuasive reconstruction along these lines is developed in Aviezer
Tucker, Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge UP, 2004), 46–93.
12
Allen Megill, “Aesthetic Theory and Historical Consciousness in the Eighteenth
Century,” History and Theory 17 (1978): 29–62.
13
Reinhard Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1985).
14
Koselleck, Futures Past, 21–58; Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History:
Timing History, Spacing Concepts (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002). See my “Koselleck’s
Philosophy of Historical Time(s) and the Practice of History: A Review Essay,” History
and Theory 43 (2004): 124–35.
15
J. Van der Zande, “Popular Philosophy of Mankind in Eighteenth-Century Ger-
many,” Storia della Storiografia 22 (1992): 37–56, suggests that by the end of the
century the project of “universal history” split from that of the “philosophy of history
of mankind,” the former seeking a grand metanarrative of events, the latter seeking a
fundamental human nature (53).
16
These concerns are manifest in A. L. Schlözer’s Vorstellung seiner Universal-His-
torie (1772), the target of Herder’s nasty review, cited above in note 3.
17
Jean Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, The Social Contract
and the Discourses, ed. G. D. H. Cole (New York: Dutton, 1973); Spaldings Bestim-
mung des Menschen, ed. Horst Stephan (Giessen: Töpelmann, 1908).
18
On the Mendelssohn-Abbt dispute, see my Kant, Herder and the Birth of Anthro-
pology (Chicago/London: U of Chicago P, 2002), 165–71.
19
Herder, “Über die ersten Urkunden des menschlichen Geschlechts: Einige Anmer-
kungen,” FA 5:16.
20
Roy Pascal, “Herder and the Scottish Historical School,” Publications of the English
Goethe Society, N.S. 14 (1939): 23–42; here, 35.
21
Adam Ferguson, Essay on the History of Civil Society (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1996).
22
Herder, Review of Millar, Frankfurter Zeitung, Sept. 25, 1772, SWS 5:452.
23
See Adam Smith, “The Four Stages of Society” (from Lectures in Jurisprudence), in
The Scottish Enlightenment: An Anthology, ed. Alexander Broadie, 475–87 (Edin-
burgh: Canongate Classics, 1997). See also: John Brewer, “Conjectural History,
Sociology and Social Change in Eighteenth-Century Scotland: Adam Ferguson and
the Division of Labour,” in The Making of Modern Scotland: Nation, Culture and
Social Change, ed. David McCrone, Stephen Kendrick, and Pat Straw, 13–30 (Edin-
burgh: Edinburgh UP, 1989); H. M. Höpfl, “From Savage to Scotsman: Conjectural
History in the Scottish Enlightenment,” Journal of British Studies 17 (1978): 19–40;
Roger Emerson, “American Indians, Frenchmen, and Scots Philosophers,” Studies in
Eighteenth-Century Culture 9 (1979): 211–36.
24
Herder, Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität, FA 7:742.
25
Herder, Review of Millar, SWS 5:455.
26
See my essay, “Die Rezeption der schottischen Aufklärung in Deutschland: Herders
entscheidende Einsicht,” in Europäischer Kulturtransfer im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. B.
Schmidt-Haberkamp, U. Steiner, and B. Wehinger, 113–38 (Berlin: Wissenschafts-
Verlag, 2003).
27
This is the essential feature of his concept of Humanität. In Ideen, Herder tried to
express the centrality of this concept for his thought: “Ich wünschte, daß ich in das
Wort Humanität alles fassen könnte, was ich bisher über des Menschen edle Bildung
zur Vernunft und Freiheit, zu seinern Sinnen und Trieben, zur zartesten und
stärksten Gesundheit, zur Erfüllung und Beherrschung der Erde gesagt habe: denn
der Mensch hat kein edleres Wort für seine Bestimmung als Er selbst ist . . .”
(Herder, Ideen, SWS 13:154; I wish that I could sum up in the word humanity all
that I have said up to now about man’s noble progress toward reason and freedom,
toward his senses and drives, toward his tenderest and strongest healthiness, toward
86 ♦ JOHN ZAMMITO
fulfillment and dominion over the earth: for man has no nobler word for his own
definition of himself . . .). In his Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität, he elaborated:
“Humanität ist der Charakter unsres Geschlechts; er is uns aber nur in Anlagen ange-
boren, und muß uns eigentlich angebildet werden.” (FA 7:148; Humanity is the
character of our species; it is born in us only as a predisposition, and has to be de-
veloped in us.) See also Adler on Humanität, as well as Menges’s and Norton’s
articles in this volume.
28
Herder, Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte, FA 4:39.
29
Herder, Zerstreute Blätter (1792), SWS 16:54.
30
J. J. Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992),
11.
31
As Rainer Wisbert notes, “[Winckelmann] taught him to see works of art in the
horizon of history, pointed out to him the importance of climate and nation for the
character of each particular work and emphasized for the historical writer the
necessity of working from his own observations and experience with art.” (Wisbert,
Commentary on Journal meiner Reise im Jahre 1769. FA 9.2:926.) See also M. Kay
Flavell, “Winckelmann and the German Enlightenment: On the Recovery and Uses
of the Past,” Modern Language Review 74 (1979): 79–96.
32
Herder, “Älteres Wäldchen,” in Herder, Ausgewählte Werke in Einzelausgaben:
Schriften zur Literatur 2/1: Kritische Wälder, ed. Regine Otto (Berlin/Weimar:
Aufbau Verlag, 1990), 641–83. See also Herder, Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte,
23.
33
This was the crux of Herder’s early and bitter disputes with Klotz in his Kritische
Wälder.
34
Herder, “An den Herrn Direktor der Historischen Gesellschaft in Göttingen,”
(1768) in Herder, Ausgewählte Werke in Einzelausgaben: Schriften zur Literatur 2/1:
Kritische Wälder, 684–91.
35
It can hardly be coincidental that this was also the endeavor of Johann Christoph
Gatterer (1727–99), one of the founders of the academic discipline of history in
Germany, in his inaugural essay, “Vom historischen Plan” (1767), which Herder
considered the clearest statement of the Göttingen historical method.
36
Herder, “An den Herrn Direktor,” 686.
37
Herder, “An den Herrn Direktor,” 688. See Hinrich C. Seeba, “Geschichte als
Dichtung. Herders Beitrag zur Ästhetisierung der Geschichtsschreibung,” Storia
della Storiografia 8 (1985): 50–72.
38
Herder, “An den Herrn Direktor,” 688. One might compare Kant’s distinction
along these lines, some twenty years later, in the Critique of Judgment (1790).
39
Herder, “Über Christian Wolffs Schriften,” SWS 32:158. Herder here explored the
crucial contrast between cognitio historica and cognitio mathematica, between em-
pirical, acquired knowledge and knowledge a priori, out of which arose his funda-
mental commitment to displace philosophy (as a priori discourse) with anthropology.
See my Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology for a systematic consideration of
this matter.
40
That is, Herder was a theorist of Standortgebundenheit, which would of course be
taken up by Karl Mannheim and by Hans-Georg Gadamer.
41
The literary historian Robert Leventhal has observed: “As a historically constituted
and constituting structure of various powers itself, the subject experiences the his-
toricity as non-identity, as becoming-other while remembering and taking up the
previous forms of its own multifarious being. The medium of this dialectic of identity
and difference is language . . .” Leventhal, The Disciplines of Interpretation: Lessing,
Herder, Schlegel and Hermeneutics in Germany, 1750–1800 (New York: de Gruyter,
1994), 182.
42
Leventhal goes too far in rendering history impossible for Herder (Disciplines of
Interpretation, 198). For a corrective, see Hans Dietrich Irmscher, “Grundzüge der
Hermeneutik Herders,” in Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder, 1971,
ed. Johann Maltusch, 17–57 (Bückeburg: Grimme, 1973).
43
Herder, Viertes Kritisches Wäldchen, FA 2:287.
44
Herder, “Über Thomas Abbts Schriften,” FA 2:576.
45
Herder, “Über Thomas Abbts Schriften,” 579.
46
Herder, “Über Thomas Abbts Schriften,” 580.
47
Herder, “Über die ersten Urkunden . . .,” FA 5:26–27.
48
Allen Megill makes this point aptly in his essay, “Aesthetic Theory,” 35, 45ff.
49
Herder, Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte, 32.
50
Herder, “Älteres Wäldchen,” 641–42.
51
Herder, preface to Ideen, SWS 13:5.
52
Herder, “Nemesis” (1786), SWS 24:332–33.
53
Herder, Zerstreute Blätter (1792), SWS 16:52.
54
Elias Palti, “The ‘Metaphor of Life’: Herder’s Philosophy of History and Uneven
Developments in Late Eighteenth-Century Natural Science,” History and Theory 38
(1999): 322–47; here, 323n.
55
Palti, “The Metaphor of Life,” 324, 323.
56
See my programmatic argument in “Reconstructing German Idealism and Roman-
ticism: Historicism and Presentism,” Modern Intellectual History 1 (2004): 427–38.
57
Isaiah Berlin, “Herder and the Enlightenment,” in Berlin, The Proper Study of
Mankind (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), 359–435; here, 364.
58
Kant, Allgemeine Naturgeschichte, in Kant (Prussian Academy edition; reprint
Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968) vol. 1, 215–368; Comte de Buffon, Histoire naturelle,
générale et particulière (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1812); Caspar Friedrich Wolff,
Theorie von der Generation (1764) (Reprint Stuttgart: Fischer, 1966).
59
Rainer Wisbert, Commentary on Journal meiner Reise im Jahre 1769, FA 9.2:879.
60
“Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle influenced essentially Herder’s conception of natural
history and his way of thinking in general” (Wisbert, Commentary, FA 9.2:898).
61
Herder, “Gesetze der Welt: Gesetze der Körper,” FA 9.2:222.
62
The phrase itself comes from Immanuel Kant’s Universal Natural History and
Theory of the Heavens, Herder’s favorite work by Kant, and in many ways the central
88 ♦ JOHN ZAMMITO
inspiration for his project in philosophy of history. As Frederick Beiser puts it:
“Herder approved of Kant’s radical naturalism and only wanted to extend it. Kant’s
suggestion in his treatise that humans too are subject to a natural history and
explicable in naturalistic terms proved to be especially fruitful for the young Herder.
This suggestion became the guiding assumption behind his Ideen zur Philosophie der
Geschichte der Menschheit. The aim of the Ideen is simply to apply Kant’s naturalism
to the sphere of history itself. The Ideen would be a natural history of humans as the
Allgemeine Naturgeschichte is a natural history of the heavens. Herder saw history as
subject to the same natural laws as the physical universe.” Beiser, Enlightenment,
Revolution, and Romanticism: The Genesis of Modern German Political Thought,
1790–1800 (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992), 194.
63
“Language is ‘genetic’ because historical connections constitute themselves in it and
thus it keeps the past present. Language is ‘organic’ because in every speech-act what
has been received transforms itself into a form of its own.” Hans Dietrich Irmscher,
“Grundfragen der Geschichtsphilosophie Herders bis 1774,” in Bückeburger Gespräche
über Johann Gottfried Herder 1783, ed. Brigitte Poschman (Rinteln: Bösendahl,
1984), 10–32; here, 31.
64
“It is striking that Herder makes absolutely no effort to bridge [the] gaps [between
nature and culture] with reference to the freedom of God and those made in his image.
Instead, he calls for a continuous, purely immanent historical transition and coher-
ence.” Irmscher, “Grundfragen,” 27.
65
Herder, Ideen, Book 5, 167–201. See R. Clark, “Herder’s Concept of ‘Kraft,’”
PMLA 57 (1942): 737–52; H. B. Nisbet, Herder and the Philosophy and History of
Science (Cambridge, UK: Modern Humanities Research Association, 1970), 8–16
and passim. With Clarke and Nisbet, F. M. Barnard follows Kant’s lead in charac-
terizing Herder’s notion of Kraft as “metaphysical.” (Barnard, “Herder’s Treatment
of Causation and Continuity in History,” Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963):
197–212; here, 202.) While it would be pointless to contest that, I do contest
whether the “metaphysical” is nearly so deleterious to scientific theorizing as Kant
and his followers maintain. Ulrich Gaier has made this point in a contextual as well as
a theoretical manner in his “Poesie oder Geschichtsphilosophie? Herders erkenntnis-
theoretische Antwort auf Kant,” in Johann Gottfried Herder: Geschichte und Kultur,
ed. Martin Bollacher (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1994), 1–17, esp. 8.
66
Herder amplified this view in other passages: “Es ist also anatomisch und phy-
siologisch wahr, daß durch die ganze belebte Schöpfung unsrer Erde das Analogon
Einer Organisation herrsche” (91; It is thus anatomically and physiologically true
that throughout the whole living creation of our earth the analog of One Organ-
ization reigns). And: “Bei jeden lebendigen Geschöpf scheint der Zirkel organischer
Kräfte ganz und vollkommen; nur er ist bei jeden anders modificirt und vertheilet”
(91; In every living creature the circle of organic forces appears complete and perfect;
only it is in every case differently modified and divided).
67
For a rich consideration of the role of analogy in Herder’s thought, see Hans
Dietrich Irmscher, “Beobachtungen zur Funktion der Analogie im Denken Herders,”
Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 55 (1981):
64–97.
68
On the comparison of man with the primates in the eighteenth century, see Robert
Wokler, “Tyson, Buffon, and the Orangutan,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth
Century 155 (1976): 2301–19, and “Apes and Races in the Scottish Enlightenment:
Mondboddo and Kames on the Nature of Man,” in Philosophy and Science in the
Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Peter Jones (Edinburgh: Donald, 1988), 145–68.
69
Herder, Ideen, 65.
70
Herder, Ideen, Book 3, ch. 6, 109–14; Book 4, passim. The issue of erect posture
had drawn Kant’s attention in an earlier review, “Recension von Moscatis Schrift . . .”
Kant, Werke. Akademie-Textausgabe, vol. 2, 423–25.
71
Herder refers explicitly to the work of Harvey and of Caspar Friedrich Wolff (Ideen,
278n). H. D. Irmscher notes Herder’s early and distinctive embrace of the idea of
epigenesis in “Grundfragen der Geschichtsphilosophie,” 18. For more on this, see
my “Epigenesis: Concept and Metaphor in Herder’s Ideen,” in Vom Selbstdenken:
Aufklärung und Aufklärungskritik in Herders Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte
der Menschheit, ed. Regine Otto and John H. Zammito (Heidelberg: Synchron,
2001), 129–44.
72
Arthur Lovejoy, “Herder: Progressionism without Transformism,” in Forerunners
of Darwin: 1745–1859, ed. Bentley Glass, et al. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP,
1959), 207–21; here, 220.
73
For a recent consideration of all these issues about Herder and Darwin, see W. Ch.
Zimmerli, “Evolution or Development? Questions Concerning the Systematic and
Historical Position of Herder,” in Herder Today. Contributions from the Interna-
tional Herder Conference, Nov. 5–8, 1987 Stanford, California, ed. Kurt Mueller-
Vollmer (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1990), 1–16.
74
Lovejoy, “Herder: Progressionism without Transformism,” 221.
75
“Noch ist also bei der gegenwärtigen Beschaffenheit unsrer Erde, keine Gattung
ausgegangen; ob ich gleich nicht zweifle, daß da diese anders war, auch andre Thier-
gattungen haben seyn können, und wenn sie sich einmal durch Kunst oder Natur
völlig ändern sollte, auch ein andres Verhältniß der lebendigen Geschlechter seyn
werde.” (Herder, Ideen, 61; There has accordingly not been any species extinction in
the current [geological] organization of the earth, though I do not doubt that it was
different [at an earlier time] and other species of animals might then have existed,
and should it [i.e, the geological organization of the earth] someday by artifice or
nature change entirely, then there would also be a different relation among living
species.) Here, Herder is coordinating his ideas with the most recent thinking in the
“theory of the earth” or emergent science of geology, as articulated, for instance, by
Buffon and Blumenbach.
76
Note the organization of the books of Herder’s Ideen: the natural progression from
the theory of forces to the organization of animal and human forms would have fol-
lowed more naturally from the exposition in the early books. Instead, he transposes it
to this later section in order to allow his flirtation with an analogical aspiration to
immortality of the soul.
77
Kant, “Recensionen von J. G. Herders Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der
Menschheit, Theil 1.2,” in Kant, Werke. Akademie-Textausgabe, vol. 8, 43–66. But
90 ♦ JOHN ZAMMITO
Kant brutally mangles the authentic naturalism in Herder’s account by magnifying

Herder’s supernatural excess.
78
“So lange wir uns selbst heute nicht kennen: wie sollten wir den Tag wissen, da wir
wurden? Es bleibt also ein unmittelbarer Göttlicher Unterricht bei dieser, wie bei
tausend andern Sachen in der Kindheit des Menschlichen Geschlechts erforderlich
und unentbehrlich . . . Entweder verzeihe man sich, von Alle diesen nichts zu wissen,
und ewig in der Labyrinth unzähliger Mutmaßungen von Weltentstehung, Ursprung
des Menschen, der Erfindungen und Nationen unherzuirren — oder man suche, ob
ein Göttliche Stimme uns zu lernen gewürdigt hat.” (Herder, “Über die ersten
Urkunden . . .,” FA 5:17–18; As long as we don’t know ourselves today: how are we
supposed to know the day when we came to be? There remains necessary and in-
dispensable therefore, in this matter as in a thousand other matters in the childhood
of mankind, a direct lesson from God . . . Either one excuses oneself for not knowing
anything of all these, and eternally flails around in the labyrinth of countless sup-
positions about the creation of the world, the origin of man, the inventions and
nations — or one considers whether a godly voice has esteemed us worthy of
instruction.)
79
Herder, Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts, FA 5:179–660.
80
See Gerhard Sauder, “Zur Rezeption von Herders Schrift ‘Älteste Urkunde des
Menschengeschlechts,’” in Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder 1988,
ed. Brigitte Poschmann, 268–91 (Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1989).
81
For this historical connection between Herder’s two texts and Kant’s intervention,
see Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001), 299.
82
This is the argument I offer in my The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment
(Chicago & London: U of Chicago P, 1992).
83
Herder, preface to Ideen, SWS 13:9–10.
84
W. Düsing, “Die Gegenwart im Spiegel der Vergangenheit in Herders Auch eine
Philosophie der Geschichte,” Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder 1983,
33–49; here, 35.
85
F. M. Barnard, “Herder’s Treatment of Causation . . .,” 212, 210n.
86
G. A. Wells, “Herder’s Two Philosophies of History,” 532.
87
Bollacher, “‘Natur’ und ‘Vernunft’ in Herders Entwurf einer Philosophie der Ge-
schichte der Menschheit,” in Johann Gottfried Herder 1744–1803, ed. Gerhard Sauder
(Hamburg: Meiner, 1987), 123.
88
Brandt, “Kant — Herder — Kuhn,” Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie 5 (1980):
27–36; here, 29.
89
Hamann to Herder, May 8, 1785, Hamanns Briefwechsel, ed. A. Henkel, 8 vols.
(Frankfurt: Insel, 1955–1979), 5:432.
90
Cited by K. Vorländer, Immanuel Kant: Der Mann und das Werk, 2nd ed. (Ham-
burg: Meiner, 1977), 317n.
91
H. Adler and E. Menze, introduction to On World History: Johann Gottfried
Herder, An Anthology (Armonk, NY & London: Sharpe, 1997), 13.
92
Haym, Herder, 2:251.
93
Meinecke, Historism. See G. A. Wells, “Herder’s Two Philosophies of History,”
Journal of the History of Ideas 21 (1960): 527–37.
94
Here I am strongly in sympathy with the reconstruction of Herder offered by
Frederick Beiser in Enlightenment, Revolution and Romanticism, esp. 202–3.
95
Hans Dietrich Irmscher notes this in the last lines of his magisterial essay, “Die
geschichtsphilosophische Kontroverse zwischen Kant und Herder,” in Hamann —
Kant — Herder: Acta des 4. Internationalen Hamann-Kolloquiums im Herder-Institut
zu Marburg/Lahn 1985, ed. Bernhard Gajek (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1987), 111–92.
96
Düsing, “Die Gegenwart . . .,” 33.
97
Here, I stand with Ulrich Gaier, “Poesie oder Geschichtsphilosophie,” 17.
98
I try to make this case in Zammito, A Nice Derangement of Epistemes: Post-Positivism
in the Study of Science from Quine to Latour (Chicago & London: U of Chicago P,
2004).
4: Herder’s Concept of Humanität
Hans Adler
In memoriam Pierre Pénisson
The Reputation of Herder’s Term Humanität
Jgroundbreaking
OHANNG H
OTTFRIED long been known for having developed
ERDER HAS
concepts of thought as well as having modified those of
others decisively. Humanität is — along with concepts such as origin, history,
culture, Volk, and language — one of the core concepts of Herder’s works. As
a matter of fact, Humanität is Herder’s all-encompassing concept. All his
thinking, writing, and actions were centered around it. In short: Herder was
the philosopher of Humanität. Not only has Herder often been called “the
philosopher of humanity”; he has also been accused of being the proponent
1
of a vague “philanthropy.” The fact that scholars have conflated the con-
cepts of philanthropy and Humanität — an equation that Herder explicitly
was not aiming at — has resulted in a long history of misunderstanding in the
reception of Humanität. Herder himself indeed seems to provide reasons for
those confusions. In his book on Herder and the Enlightenment, Emil Adler
wrote at the beginning of his chapter on Humanität:
Einleitend sei hervorgehoben — was vielen Forschern auffiel —, daß die
Humanitätsidee, die führende Idee der deutschen Klassik und eine der
bedeutendsten Ideen des 18. Jahrhunderts, bei Herder keine exaktere
Definierung findet, obwohl es sich um den wichtigsten Begriff seiner
Philosophie handelte. Nicht präzisierte Definitionen und oftmals wider-
sprechende Äußerungen verschleierten den tatsächlich unbestrittenen
Sinn dieses Begriffes. (311)
[By way of introduction may it be emphasized — as has occurred to
many researchers — that the idea of humanity, the leading idea of Ger-
man Classicism and one of the most important ideas of the eighteenth
century, finds in Herder no more exact definition, although it was the
most important concept of his philosophy. Imprecise definitions and
often contradictory statements obscured the meaning of this concept,
which was in fact beyond dispute.]
94 ♦ HANS ADLER
In 1991, one of the most experienced Herder scholars, Hans Dietrich

Irmscher, stated in his edition of the Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität:
“Nicht nur die bisherige Forschung, auch Herder selbst hatte Schwierig-
keiten, ‘Humanität’ eindeutig zu bestimmen” (Hum, FA 7:817; Not only
the research thus far, but also Herder himself had difficulties defining “hu-
manity” clearly).
We are confronted with the paradox that Herder’s term Humanität en-
joys high esteem within the community of Herder scholars past and present,
although a definition of the term seems to be impossible. Robert Clark, the
author of the most comprehensive Herder biography in English to date, ap-
proaches Herder’s concept by differentiating between “mankind” (Menschheit)
and “humanity” (Humanität):
“Mankind” is the aggregate of all human individuals, past, present, and
future, considered as real, tangible, and physical. “Humanity” (Latin hu-
manitas, French humanité) is an abstract term referring to the ideal state
capable of attainment by mankind; secondarily it is the latent potentiality
which mankind has for the attainment of that ideal. Hence “humanity” is
both an ideal condition and a definable real quality [. . .] Like his system
of “forces” (Kräfte), this notion of “humanity” is clearly patterned on
Aristotle’s philosophy of becoming — the dynamis, energeia, and ente-
lechia [. . .], transferred to the field of eighteenth-century humanitarian
2
thought.
It may be clear from these few examples of attempts to understand the con-
cept of Humanität that Herder’s approach to the concept requires a specific
way of reading if one does not want to succumb to the prejudice that holds
Herder to be an undisciplined and obscure thinker.
3
The Status of the Word and Concept Humanität
Herder did not introduce or “invent” the word Humanität; it had been part
4
of the German language since the seventeenth century. However, Herder
himself hesitated to select it as the appropriate term for his intentions and he
extensively discussed the options that were at his disposal. In order to make
clear that his idea of Humanität was not just a modification of an already
existing concept but something paradigmatically new that had not yet been
covered by any of the already available German terms, Herder chose a word
that is clearly marked as a foreign word in German: Humanität shows demon-
5
stratively its Latin origin (related to homo, humanus, humanitas ) and it is
still in today’s German language part of the vocabulary only of the educated
classes. Herder did not choose it in order to display erudition, although he
introduces it to the fictitious elitist audience of his Humanitätsbriefe —
educated members of a global republic of letters. He intended the quasi-Latin
HERDER’S CONCEPT OF HUMANITÄT ♦ 95
signifier to be perceived as “foreign” and new, just as the signified was. It is

important to point out that Herder’s term Humanität is indeed a cognate of
the English term (of Latin origin) “humanity.” However, although the two
words look alike, they do not cover identical semantic fields. The Oxford
English Dictionary’s entry “humanity” includes this passage:
I. Connected with human. 1. The quality or condition of being human,
manhood; the human faculties or attributes collectively; human nature;
man in the abstract. [. . .] 2. The human race; mankind; human beings
collectively. [. . .] II. Connected with humane. 3. The character of being
6
humane . . .
A word is not the same as a concept. A word is a signifier serving as a lexical
entry that designates all the word’s semantic potential that can be activated
in use. Texts either selectively activate sectors of the word’s semantic po-
tential or generate new semantic possibilities. Lexical entries that have not
been activated for a certain (long) time drift into the realm of the obsolete.
7
The concept Humanität is defined by its value within the semantic uni-
verse of the texts of an author (“works”), a group of authors (for example,
“Weimar classicists”), an epoch (such as “German Enlightenment”), and so
on. Both words and concepts are subject to change. Thus, they have their
own history of form and content, signifier and signified. However, whereas
the history of a signifier can be traced morphologically and etymologically —
in our case, back to the Latin humanitas— the historical documentation of
the signified is much more difficult if not impossible, and usually gets lost in
an obscure past. That is not only due to a lack of linguistic or other docu-
mentation, but also because of the fact that “what is meant” or parts of it
may indeed exist as a value within the semantic universe of a distant past —
only without a linguistic representation: meaning without a signifier. The
Greeks, to cite an example, did not have a word for humanitas, but definitely
had semantic elements of it as constitutive parts of their culture. For the
German classicists, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Johann Wolfgang Goethe,
Friedrich Schiller, Karl Philipp Moritz, and others, Greek culture was the role
model for their ideas of Humanität. Philanthropy (φιλαvθρωπία), however,
8
is not the equivalent of humanitas because it presupposes inequality.
Humanität as an Axiom: Quality and Quantity
Humanität as a Qualitative Term

In his Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität (Letters for the Advancement of
Humanity, 1792–97), Herder discusses at length his choice of the term Hu-
manität, starting from a deliberation of the social function of Freemasonry.
In the twenty-sixth letter, Herder criticizes the secretiveness of Freemasonry,
96 ♦ HANS ADLER
stating that in the times of Enlightenment public discussion of all important

questions is necessary:
Ich. Für unsre Zeiten ist gerade das Gegentheil ihrer [der Frei-
maurer] Methode nötig, reine, helle, offenbare Wahrheit.
Er. Ich wünsche dir Glück. Glaubst du aber nicht, daß man auch
dem Wort Humanität einen Fleck anhängen werde?
Ich. Das wäre sehr inhuman. Wir sind nichts als Menschen . . .
(Hum, SWS 17:132)
[I. For our times exactly the opposite of their [the Freemasons’]
method is needed, pure, clear, obvious truth.
He. I wish you luck. But don’t you believe that someone will find
something wrong with the word humanity too?
I. That would be very inhumane. We are nothing but human
beings. . .]
This is Herder’s clear vote to relinquish the paradoxical idea that the
9
“freedom in secret [. . . is] the secret of freedom.” Letters 27 through 29 of
the Humanitätsbriefe are devoted to the explanation of the word and
clarification of the concept Humanität. With “Menschheit, Menschlichkeit,
Menschenrechte, Menschenpflichten, Menschenwürde, Menschenliebe” (Hum,
SWS 17:137) Herder discusses German terms related to the semantic field of
Humanität, only to meticulously explain why none of these German words
could serve his purpose.
Menschen sind wir allesammt, und tragen insofern die Menschheit an uns,
oder wir gehören zur Menschheit. Leider aber hat man in unserer Sprache
dem Wort Mensch und noch mehr dem barmherzigen Wort Menschlich-
keit so oft eine Nebenbedeutung von Niedrigkeit, Schwäche und
falschem Mitleid angehängt, daß man jenes nur mit einem Blick der
Verachtung, dies mit einem Achselzucken zu begleiten gewohnt ist. ‘Der
Mensch!’ sagen wir jammernd oder verachtend und glauben einen guten
Mann aufs lindeste mit dem Ausdruck zu entschuldigen: ‘es habe ihn die
Menschlichkeit übereilet.’ Wir wollen uns also hüten, daß wir zu Beförde-
rung solcher Menschlichkeit keine Briefe schreiben.
Der Name Menschenrechte kann ohne Menschenpflichten nicht ge-
nannt werden; beide beziehen sich auf einander, und für beide suchen
wir Ein Wort.
So auch Menschenwürde und Menschenliebe. Das Menschen-
geschlecht, wie es jetzt ist und wahrscheinlich lange noch seyn wird, hat
seinem größesten Theile nach keine Würde; man darf es eher bemit-
leiden, als verehren. Es soll aber zum Charakter seines Geschlechts, mithin
auch zu dessen Werth und Würde gebildet werden. Das schöne Wort
Menschenliebe ist so trivial worden, daß man meistens die Menschen liebt,
um keinen unter den Menschen wirksam zu lieben. Alle diese Worte ent-
halten Theilbegriffe unseres Zwecks, den wir gern mit Einem Ausdruck
bezeichnen möchten.
Also wollen wir bei dem Wort Humanität bleiben . . . (Hum, SWS
10
17:137)
[Humans we all are, and, to that extent, we carry with us the quality of
being human, or in other words, we are part of humankind. Unfor-
tunately, in our language [i.e., German], the term human being, and even
more so the compassionate word humaneness, have been given the
subsidiary connotation of lowness, weakness, and false pity, so much that
one has become accustomed to utter the former only with a glance of
contempt, the latter with a shrug. “That Human Being!” we exclaim,
with a tone of moaning and contempt, and we believe thereby to let off
lightly a good man with the expression, “that he might have been over-
come by humaneness.” [. . .] We, therefore, want to beware that we do
not write letters on the advancement of such kind humaneness.
The name of human rights cannot be used without reference to hu-
man duties; both relate to one another, and we seek for both just one
word.
The same is true for human dignity and love of humankind. The hu-
man species, as it now is and as it probably will remain for a long time, in
its largest part does not have any dignity; one may rather pity than
venerate it. However, in order to live up to the potential of its kind, and
for the sake of its worth and dignity, humankind is meant to be de-
veloped. The beautiful expression love of humanity has become so trivial
that one rather loves all in order not to love any human being among
them effectively. All of these words contain partial concepts pertaining to
our purpose, which we would like to express in one term.
Thus, we want to stay with the word humanity [Humanität] . . .
(OWH 105–6)]
These sentences show clearly that Herder’s idea of Humanität is not a
sentimental concept and does not equal philanthropy. Moreover, Herder’s
discussion of the term also makes clear that it has a strong critical component
that uncovers any inequality, lack of dignity, or lack of freedom. Herder’s
lexicological reflections are a good example of one of his methodological
maxims: “Das Unterscheidende unterscheidend sagen” (To express that which
differentiates in a differentiated way) (AePh, FA 4:32). In this case that means
forming a concept that on the one hand avoids the pitfall of the Aristotelian
method of concept formation — namely building a hierarchy of concepts by
reducing their semantic features, with the result that the top of that system
of concepts is void of features and thus fails to serve as a concept. The con-
cept must bring order into the great variety of reality. On the other hand,
Herder was opposed to “abstraction” as a method in general, and this was
one of his fundamental epistemological and methodological axioms from his
98 ♦ HANS ADLER
very early writings, such as Versuch über das Sein, through his Metakritiken.
To differentiate, for him, was to preserve the occurrence of individuality, va-
riety, diversity. All his polemics against worlds of empty words, taube Nüsse
11
(empty nuts), and Wortnebel hint in the same direction: toward the domin-
ance of experience over speculation:
Niemand in der Welt fühlt die Schwäche des allgemeinen Charakterisierens
mehr als ich. Man malet ein ganzes Volk, Zeitalter, Erdstrich — wen hat
man gemalt? Man fasset aufeinanderfolgende Völker und Zeitläufte, in
einer ewigen Abwechslung, wie Wogen des Meeres, zusammen — wen
hat man gemalt? wen hat das schildernde Wort getroffen? — Endlich,
man faßt sie doch in nichts als ein allgemeines Wort zusammen, wo jeder
vielleicht denkt und fühlt, was er will — unvollkommenes Mittel der
Schilderung! (AePh, FA 4:32)
[No one in the world feels the weakness of general characterization more
than I. One paints a whole nation, epoch, part of the world — whom has
one painted? One sweeps up successive peoples and periods of time in
eternal alternation, like waves on the sea — whom has one painted? whom
did the term of description fit? — In the end, one nevertheless sum-
marizes them in nothing but a single general word, whereby each thinks
and feels what he will — imperfect means of description!]
Herder starts chapter 6, book 1 of his Ideen, entitled “Zur Humanität
und Religion ist der Mensch gebildet” (The Human Being is Formed to-
ward Humanity and Religion) with the following sentence:
Ich wünschte, daß ich in das Wort Humanität alles fassen könnte, was
ich bisher über des Menschen edle Bildung zur Vernunft und Freiheit,
zu feinern Sinnen und Trieben, zur zartesten und stärksten Gesundheit,
zur Erfüllung und Beherrschung der Erde gesagt habe: denn der Mensch
hat kein edleres Wort für seine Bestimmung als Er selbst ist, in dem das
Bild des Schöpfers unsrer Erde, wie es hier sichtbar werden konnte,
abgedruckt lebet. (Ideen, FA 6:154)
[I wish I could encompass within the word humanity all that I have said
thus far about the noble formation of the human being to reason and
freedom, to the finer senses and appetites, to the most delicate and ro-
bust health, to the peopling of and dominion over the earth; for the
human being has no nobler word for its destiny than the one that desig-
nates itself, the word in which the image of the creator of our earth lives
imprinted, as visible as it could become here. (OWH 141)]
Here, he “defines” the specific qualities of the human being by way of a
12
tautology — which did not remain unnoticed — but a particular kind of a
tautology. He uses neither the rhetorical device nor the redundant double
characterization (pleonasm), but what we might call a “transfer tautology”
since the equivalence is established by bridging two different levels of reality

— when Herder “defines” the term Humanität as the human being him- or
herself making God visible on earth. The likeness to God is expressed in the
human body and Gestalt, and it is this godlike appearance that best repre-
sents the concept of Humanität. The human body is given a semiotic quali-
ty, with the body as the signifier and God’s existence and presence as the
signified: The human body is God’s “word” and God’s word exclusively is
the human being (as opposed to all other classes of living beings in nature).
This semiotic operation is characteristic for Herder in that it simultaneously
spiritualizes matter and gives spirituality material shape.
The human being is thus defined as a being in-between the divine and
matter. This In-betweenness is part of the foundation of Herder’s philosophy
of history and anthropology. “Unsre Erde ist einer der mittlern Planeten.”
(Ideen, SWS 13:16; Our earth is one of the middle planets.) “Der Mensch ist
ein Mittelgeschöpf unter den Thieren der Erde.” (Ibid., 65; The human
being is a middle creature among the earth’s animals.) “Der jetzige Zustand
der Menschen ist wahrscheinlich das verbindende Mittelglied zweener
Welten.” (Ibid., 194; The current condition of human beings is probably
that of the binding middle link between two worlds.) Herder positions
Humanität in the mesocosmic dimension and shows that this is the ap-
13
propriate position for the human being. At the same time, Herder, the
theologian and Protestant thinker, puts forth the idea of progress in human
history: it is moving toward a point where earthly existence will be tran-
scended. Not only does God’s existence become visible in the human body,
but for Herder God’s existence is also the necessary precondition for the
possibility of history at all.
Moreover, Humanität is not a limited set of features that, once they
have all become reality, will be saturated and terminate any progress and
development. The fulfillment of that type of teleological progress in “per-
fection” would mean the end of history. Instead, Humanität signifies the
“Bestimmung,” the destiny of the human being as such. This destiny was a
prime topic of the Enlightenment, having to do with the fundamental ques-
tions of the possibilities of (human) history, its anthropological conditions,
and its theological framework. Herder contributed to the debate on this
problem at a point in time when the question had already become popular,
above all through the theologian Johann Joachim Spalding’s treatise Die
Bestimmung des Menschen, first published in 1748 and in thirteen editions by
14
1794. Six years later, in 1800, another popular treatise on the topic,
Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s work bearing the same title as Spalding’s publica-
tion attracted the attention of the reading public.
The destiny of the human being in Herder’s understanding, however,
does not equal predestination or any teleologically driven development,
which would not allow for autonomy. On the contrary: “Der Mensch ist der
100 ♦ HANS ADLER
erste Freigelassene der Schöpfung.” (Ideen, SWS 13:146; The human is the
first freedman of creation: OWH 135.) The destiny of man is to obey the
same laws as every other creature or being in the universe have to, and for
the same purpose: the development of maximum diversity and variety. “Es
scheint, daß auf unrer Erde alles seyn sollte, was auf ihr möglich war . . .”
(Ibid., 148; “It seems that everything was meant to be on earth that was
possible to be”: OWH 136.) Time and again, Herder insists on the insoluble
interconnection of the physical and the “moral” or spiritual world. Both have
their constitutive laws and in both worlds these laws have to be observed.
Nothing will survive without submission to these laws, hence recognition of
necessity constitutes the framework of freedom.
When Herder emphasizes the freedom and autonomy of the human
being he always has in mind a conditioned autonomy.
Das Hauptgut [. . .] ist die Erkenntniß unsrer Kräfte und Anlagen, unsres
Berufes und unsrer Pflicht. Eben in dem, wodurch der Mensch von
Thieren sich unterscheidet, liegt sein Charakter, sein Adel, seine Bestim-
mung; er kann sich davon so wenig als von der Menschheit selbst
lossagen. [. . .]
Der Mensch hat einen Willen, er ist des Gesetzes fähig; seine Ver-
nunft ist ihm Gesetz. Ein heiliges, unverbrüchliches Gesetz, dem er sich
nie entziehen darf, dem er sich nie entziehen soll. Er ist nicht etwa nur
ein mechanisches Glied in einer Naturkette; sondern der Geist, der die
Natur beherrscht, ist Theilweise in ihm. Jener soll er folgen; die Dinge
um ihn her, insonderheit seine eigne Handlungen soll er dem allge-
meinen Principium der Welt gemäß anordnen. Hierinn ist er keinem
Zwange unterworfen, ja er ist keines Zwanges fähig. (Hum, SWS 17:143)
[The highest good . . . is the recognition of our powers and talents, our
calling, and our duty. Where the human being is distinguished from the
animals is in his character, his nobility, his destiny; he cannot renounce
these any more than he can renounce humanity.
The human being has a will; he is capable of law; his reason is his
law. A holy, inviolable law, which he may never evade, which he should
never evade. He is not just a mechanical link in the chain of nature, but
the spirit that governs nature is partially in him. He should follow nature;
the things around him, especially his own actions, he should manage ac-
cording to the general principle of the world. Herein he is subject to no
compulsion, indeed he cannot be compelled at all.]
In one single sentence Herder formulates a succinct declaration of human
independence:
Er [der Mensch] constituiret sich selbst; er constituirt mit andern ihm
Gleichgesinnten nach heiligen, unverbrüchlichen Gesetzen eine Gesell-
schaft. (Ibid.)
[He constitutes himself; he constitutes, with others who are of like mind,
and according to holy, inviolable laws, a society.]
It is the omnipresence of reason, shared by the material as well as spiri-
tual world in general, and by the human being in particular, that allows for
Herder’s optimistic philosophy of history. His project of a philosophy of
history is to understand the course of human history in order to learn about
the “laws” that govern the historical and cultural world.
Der Gott, der in der Natur Alles nach Maas, Zahl und Gewicht geordnet,
der darnach das Wesen der Dinge, ihre Gestalt und Verknüpfung, ihren
Lauf und ihre Erhaltung eingerichtet hat, so daß vom großen Welt-
gebäude bis zum Staubkorn, von der Kraft, die Erden und Sonnen hält,
bis zum Faden eines Spinnegewebes nur Eine Weisheit, Güte und Macht
herrschet, Er, der auch im menschlichen Körper und in den Kräften der
menschlichen Seele alles so wunderbar und göttlich überdacht hat, daß
wenn wir mit dem Allein-Weisen nur fernher nachzudenken wagen, wir
uns in einem Abgrunde seiner Gedanken verlieren; wie, sprach ich zu
mir, dieser Gott sollte in der Bestimmung und Einrichtung unsres Ge-
schlechts im Ganzen von seiner Weisheit und Güte ablassen und hier
15
keinen Plan haben? (Ideen, SWS 13:7)
[Shall the God who has ordered everything in nature by measure, num-
ber, and weight, who has so regulated according to these the essence of
things, their forms and their relations, their course and their subsistence,
that only one system, one goodness, and one power prevail, from the
grand edifice of the universe to the speck of dust, from the power that
holds the planets and suns together to the thread of the spider’s web,
shall He, who has conceived so sublimely and divinely of everything in
the human body and within the powers of the human soul, so that when
we dare if ever so distantly to emulate in thought this Singular Wisdom,
we lose ourselves in the abyss of His thought; how, I said to myself, shall
this God in the general destination and disposition of the totality of our
kind depart from His goodness and to that end not have a plan? (OWH
112)]
The “große Analogie der Natur” (great analogy of nature, Ideen, 9)
guides Herder in his project to uncover the “deep structure” of human
history in order to define a space for the development of the full potential of
the human being. The acquisition of knowledge is for Herder one of the
noblest duties of mankind and it is — simultaneously — the fundament of
human freedom and worship of God. Science and worship are the two sides
of the same coin for Herder, thus the “laws” are not understood as restric-
tions but as the necessary conditions of human freedom, in the Hobbesian
16
formula: “Liberty and necessity are consistent . . .” Herder emphasizes the
independence and responsibility of the individual human being much more
102 ♦ HANS ADLER
than Hobbes did. Humanität is the declaration of independence of the hu-

man being, and its constitutional cornerstone:
Humanität ist der Zweck der Menschen — Natur und Gott hat unserm
Geschlecht mit diesem Zweck sein eigenes Schicksal in die Hände gegeben.
(Ideen, SWS 14:207)
[Humanity is the purpose of mankind — with this purpose nature and
God placed into our species’ hands its own destiny.]
The contextualization of Herder’s concept of Humanität within the
framework of his philosophy of history shows that neither a goal of nor the
end of human history will be reached once a certain number of qualities have
been acquired. Herder ultimately defines Humanität in a tautological way,
using the kind of circular definition that is a nightmare for every logician. A
sentence such as “‘der Mensch sei Mensch!’” (Hum, SWS 14:209) is such a
circular definition disguised as a postulate, stating simply that the goal of the
nature of the human is human nature. Or, to take another example,
betrachten wir die Menschheit, wie wir sie kennen, nach den Gesetzen,
die in ihr liegen: so kennen wir nichts höheres, als Humanität im
Menschen: denn selbst wenn wir uns Engel oder Götter denken, denken
wir sie uns nur als idealische, höhere Menschen. (Ideen, SWS 14:208)
[let us observe mankind as we know it, according to the laws that are
embedded in it: we know of nothing higher in human beings than
humanity: for even when we think of angels or gods, we think of them
only as ideal, higher human beings.]
The declaration that circular and tautological definitions are “illegiti-
mate” does not apply to the fundamental operations that lay the basis for a
new paradigm. New paradigms are not simple modifications of existing ones
but instead annihilate tradition. Every paradigm shift starts with ground-
breaking, fundamental assumptions, called axioms. Axioms cannot be proven
within the discourse they are part of, and they serve as fundamental prin-
ciples to infer further propositions from and build systems on. In the case of
Herder, this process is quite complex because he was neither a rationalist,
nor a skeptic, nor a transcendentalist. Herder’s epistemological position may
be best characterized by calling him a theologico-empiricist. While, on the
one hand rationalists such as Christian Wolff access the fundamental problem
of philosophy — what is being? — by securing the axiomatic principles of
17
identity and sufficient reason, and then arrive at being (reality) through a
logical operation, the negation of nothingness, in Alexander Gottlieb Baum-
18
garten’s formulation “Non-nothing is something” (Nonnihil est aliquid).
On the other hand, the skeptics relativize any philosophical certainty; and,
finally, the transcendentalists, such as Herder’s former teacher Immanuel
Kant, try to lay an unshakable fundament for any future philosophy (and
19
knowledge) by uncovering the “possibility of a cognition a priori.” Herder
adopts an empiricist approach, based on the epistemological axiom that any
cognition be derived from experience. Herder’s particular epistemological
twist consists in his adoption of Leibniz’s idea of Kraft (force), meaning the
energy that generates phenomena, and only phenomena being accessible to
human perception, not the Kräfte themselves. Herder’s fundamental as-
sumptions about being and existence, that is, the foundation of his ontology,
necessarily had to start with a circular definition because Sein itself is acces-
sible to the human being only through derivative phenomena, hence Sein as
such has to be accepted as an axiom of reality: “Das Sein unerweislich [. . .]
gewiß und gar nicht zu erweisen [. . .] quidquid est, illud est. [. . .] So ist das
Sein: — unzergliederlich — unerweislich — der Mittelpunkt aller Gewiß-
heit.” (VüS, FA 1:19–20; Being unprovable . . . certain and totally not to be
proved . . . whatsoever is, is. So is being: — unanalyzable — unprovable —
the midpoint of all certainty.) Had Heidegger known this early text by Her-
20
der, his seminar on Herder in 1939 might have taken a different direction.
In analogy to Herder’s approach to ontology, his tautological definition
of the term Humanität can be considered his well-reflected decision to
approach the core quality of the human being, the “nature” of the human
being. Herder’s epistemological stance implies an important anti-Cartesian
decision in favor of the senses and the human body: The senses and the body
are the only “tools” or organs that provide access to reality as it appears, in
the form of phenomena. For Herder, the senses and the body are a major
part of what a human being is. In 1769, he wrote to Moses Mendelssohn,
responding to his Phaedon:
. . . woher, daß wir von einer ohne Körper bestehenden Menschlichen
Seele wißen? Wir kennen keine in solchem Zustande: sie ist uns hier ohne
Leib nicht denkbar in ihrer Würksamkeit: kann sie es, wird sie’s künftig
seyn?
[. . .]
Eine von Sinnlichkeit befreiete Seele ist [. . .] eine Mißbildung; diese
Befreyung u.[nd] Entkörperung kann hier nicht Zweck seyn, da sie nicht
Glückseligkeit ist. Es ist eine aufs disproportionirteste ausgebildete
Menschliche Natur, es ist seiner Bestimmung nach, ein Monstrum. (HB
1:138)
[. . .from where do we know of a human soul that exists without a body?
We don’t know one in such a state: it is for us here unthinkable that it
could be effective without a body: could it be, will it in the future?
...
A soul freed from sensuality is . . . a miscreation; this freeing and
disembodiment cannot be the purpose here, because it is not happiness.
104 ♦ HANS ADLER
It is a most disproportionately developed human nature, it is, by defini-

tion, a monster.]
Humanität as a Quantitative Term

So far, we tried to grasp the qualitative dimension of Herder’s concept of
Humanität. As far as the quantitative aspect of the concept is concerned,
the definition is much easier, although not facile. Humanität in the quanti-
21
tative sense comprises all human beings, they are all equally endowed with
it, as different as their respective development may have been so far. Her-
der’s quantitative concept of Humanität is a clear vote for global equality of
all human beings, leading him to fierce criticism of slavery, colonialism,
22
racism, and Eurocentrism.
Herder’s idea of equality, however, does not level all human beings to
one and the same standard. Herder is, as many of his contemporaries were, a
strong defender of variety and individual differences. Humanität has not
always been the same everywhere on earth; on the contrary, only the poten-
tial for Humanität is equal. Since Humanität is the purpose of history and
leads to the evolution of the greatest variety in the species, the individual
specificity of Humanität is what constitutes historical reality: “Kein Zweifel
aber, daß überhaupt, was auf der Erde noch nicht geschehen ist, künftig
geschehen werde” (Ideen, SWS 14:212; No doubt, though, that in general,
what hasn’t yet happened on earth will happen in the future).
Jeder Mensch [. . .] hat seine Kräfte, seine Anlagen, sein Maaß von Voll-
kommenheiten und Bestimmung in der Welt. [. . .] Wir sehen [. . .],
wohin also auch alle Einwirkung guter Beispiele und Vorbilder ab-
zwecken müsse, nämlich keinen, als uns selbst, zu uns selbst, auszubilden,
zu machen, daß jeder das ist, was Er und in der Welt kein andrer als Er
23
seyn soll. (Sermon of January 12, 1772; SWS 31;186)
[Every human being . . . has his powers, his tendencies, his measure of
perfections and destiny in the world. . . . We see . . ., where thus all
effects of good examples and models have to aim at, namely to develop
no one except ourselves, to ourselves, to make everyone that which he and no
one other than he should be in the world.]
Hence, Humanität is a quality of every human being, historically real-
ized in individual varieties — “individual” referring here to individual per-
sons, as well as ethnic groups, regional social organizations, nations, etc. The
foundation of Humanität is equality coming into being as variety, diversity,
and difference.
A methodological digression about the type of concept such as Herder’s
Humanität might be appropriate here:
So far, Herder’s concept of Humanität has been mainly approached from
the perspective of a Substanzbegriff in the sense of the philosopher Ernst
24
Cassirer, that is, a concept built by the accumulation of similar content fea-
tures. According to Cassirer, this type of conceptualization proceeds in line
with the following rules: the higher (the more “abstract”) the concept, the
fewer its determining features; the lower (less “abstract”) the concept, the
more determining features. The very top of the “pyramid of concepts” —
“something” — is empty, indeed a paradoxical result, as Cassirer notes (7).
The formation of the concept relies on “series of similarity” (19), hence
concept formation depends on “a certain form of series formation” (19), there
has to be an “identity of that generative relation, maintained despite all
variability of the individual elements of content that makes up the specific
form of a concept” (20). Traditional concept formation privileges the cri-
terion of similarity, but this is not the only possibility. Cassirer is interested
in a type of concept formation that does not eliminate the particular while it
proceeds in a degree of abstraction. “The true concept does not ignore the
characteristics and the peculiarities of the elements that it comprises, but
tries to prove the occurrence and interconnection of these peculiarities as
necessary” (25). Hence it is the “universal validity of the principle of the series”
(26) that constitutes a Funktionsbegriff.
Cassirer developed his idea of the Funktionsbegriff within the field of
mathematics and physics. There is no reason, however, not to transfer this
idea to the realm of the humanities. In the case of Herder and his concept of
Humanität, this shift of perspective is a powerful tool to escape misper-
ceptions that have held sway for a long time. It is important to keep
Herder’s idea of how concepts are formed in mind in order to grasp its
alleged “obscurity.” From the point of view of the traditional formation of a
Substanzbegriff, Herder’s concept of Humanität necessarily appears as an
insufficiently and, what is worse, inappropriately defined concept. Under-
standing Herder’s concept as a Funktionsbegriff requires a change of per-
spective. We will not understand Herder’s concept better by “just having a
closer look” at it. We have to step back and change our perspective. From this
perspective it is much easier to understand that Humanität is a well-defined,
far-reaching concept and an integral part of Herder’s philosophical and
theological universe. Herder’s Humanität is not a goal, but a problem (that
which is laid before, a task, from the Greek probállein, German: Vorwurf).
Humanität: “Vernunft und Billigkeit”

(Reason and Fairness)
Reason
This was Herder’s problem: he wanted to introduce a new concept into the
universe of ideas within the context of the German language and culture of
his time; he did not find an adequate German term for it; he chose a foreign
106 ♦ HANS ADLER
word and then made an effort to “redefine” it. Of course he took into ac-
25
count the history of humanitas/Humanität with its value in Roman ethics
26
and its Christian appropriation. Herder traced the etymology back to
antiquity in order to emphasize the difference between the old concept and
his own new one.
Definitions and re-definitions are powerful tools of the politics of lan-
guage that locate the values of a society or an epoch within its entire system
of values in order to regulate the flow of social energy. Herder realized that
— in order to install his concept of Humanität — it would be impossible to
just follow the Aristotelian model of concept formation (see below). He
formed the new concept not by accumulating semantic features represented
at the surface by a comprehensive term. Instead, he defined the concept of
Humanität as the product of a relation between reason and fairness “Ver-
27
nunft und Billigkeit.” The result is not only a new concept of Humanität,
but simultaneously a new type of concept. Herder moves away from the
traditional type of concept defined by its “substance” and conceives of his
new type of concept in terms of function and relationship.
Herder’s concept of Humanität is defined by the intricate inter-
connection between the all-encompassing principle of a universal Vernunft
(reason) — the human faculty of Vernunft being only a part of it — and its
pragmatic complement of Billigkeit (fairness). Human Vernunft, for Herder,
is the faculty that makes human beings godlike because it enables them to
participate in God’s reason, which is accessible to the human beings via rec-
ognition of the order that articulates the universe. Human Vernunft can
understand God’s language and is capable of uncovering its underlying
grammar, says Herder, referring to the Gospel according to John 1:1, which
reads, in the New Revised Standard Version, “In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It is through
reason that the human being can understand the word of God and read the
“book of nature”:
Vernunft heißt dieser Charakter der Menschheit: denn er vernimmt die
Sprache Gottes in der Schöpfung[,] d.i. er sucht die Regel der Ordnung,
nach welcher die Dinge zusammenhangend auf ihr Wesen gegründet
sind. Sein innerstes Gesetz ist also Erkenntniß der Exsistenz und Wahr-
heit; Zusammenhang der Geschöpfe nach ihren Beziehungen und Eigen-
schaften. Er ist ein Bild der Gottheit: denn er erforschet die Gesetze der
Natur, die Gedanken, nach denen der Schöpfer sie verband und die er
ihnen wesentlich machte. Die Vernunft kann also eben so wenig will-
kührlich handeln, als die Gottheit selbst willkührlich dachte. (Ideen, SWS
14:245)
[Reason is what we call this character of humankind: for it perceives the
word of God in creation, that is, it seeks the rules of the order according
to which things are created according to their nature in relation to each
other. Its most central law is recognition of existence and truth; the con-
nection of creatures according to their relationships and qualities. It [i.e.,
the character of humankind] is an image of the Divine, for it discovers
the laws of nature, the thoughts, according to which the Creator con-
nected and established them. Just as God did not think arbitrarily, reason
cannot act arbitrarily.]
Herder adopts here the old meaning of Vernunft, derived from the German
28
verb “vernehmen” (to hear, perceive, learn) which is consistent with his
empiricist position.
Theoretisch und praktisch ist Vernunft nichts als etwas Vernommenes,
eine gelernte Proportion und Richtung der Ideen und Kräfte, zu welcher
der Mensch nach seiner Organisation und Lebensweise gebildet worden.
Eine Vernunft der Engel kennen wir nicht. [. . .] die Vernunft des
Menschen ist menschlich [. . .] das ist seine Vernunft, das fortgehende
Werk der Bildung des menschlichen Lebens. Sie ist ihm nicht ange-
bohren . . . (Ideen, SWS 13:145)
[Theoretically and practically, reason is nothing but something received,
an acquired proportionality and direction of ideas and faculties, to which
the human being is formed by its organization and mode of life. We
know nothing of a reason of angels . . .; the reason of humans is hu-
man. . . . this is his reason, the progressive work of the formation of
human life. Reason is not innate. . . . (OWH 134)]
Two things have to be pointed out here. First, Herder does not define
human reason or Vernunft as consisting merely of a limited set of skills that
allow the human being to gain knowledge of the universe, including the hu-
man being himself. Instead — and this is crucial — Vernunft is not defined
as a set of ideas and forces but in their proportions and orientation, that is,
not in its content elements but in the relationship among them. According
to Herder, it is not the sum total of ideas and forces but their systemic ar-
rangement that defines their value. Thus Herder’s definition of Vernunft is a
structural one. Since Vernunft is the human quality that provides access to
truth, hence to reliable cognition of reality, Herder defines it according to its
function.
The other element of Herder’s definition of Vernunft that has to be
pointed out here is his assumption that human beings cannot develop an
idea of “angelic reason.” Assuming that angels within this context are taken
as mediators between the sphere of the humans on the one hand and the
divine on the other, Herder’s statement is startling at first glance. If it is only
human reason that is at the disposition of human beings, how would it be
possible for Herder himself as a human being to conceive of human beings
as “image of the Divine” as quoted above (Ideen, SWS 14:245) whose “des-
tiny” is to discover God’s laws in nature and history? If the human being
108 ♦ HANS ADLER
does not have access to an “angelic” reason, how can there be human insight
into God’s reason? This aporia — in large part characteristic of the German
Aufklärung — is indeed personified in Herder the philosopher and Herder
the theologian. Herder himself, however, did not perceive this as a contra-
diction. For Herder, there is no philosophy that is not grounded in theol-
ogy, no cognition without faith, with faith and religion paradigmatically
including philosophy and cognition: “. . . Religion [ist] die höchste Huma-
nität des Menschen” (Ideen, SWS 13:161; Religion is mankind’s highest
humanity).
He continues:
. . . den Menschen erhobst du [Gott], daß er selbst ohne daß ers weiß
und will, Ursachen der Dinge nachspähe, ihren Zusammenhang errathe
und Dich also finde, du großer Zusammenhang aller Dinge, Wesen der
Wesen. Das Innere deiner Natur erkennet er nicht, da er keine Kraft
Eines Dinges von innen einsieht; ja wenn er dich gestalten wollte, hat er
geirret und muß irren: denn du bist Gestaltlos, obwohl die Erste einzige
Ursache aller Gestalten. Indessen ist auch jeder falsche Schimmer von dir
dennoch Licht und jeder trügliche Altar, den er dir baute, ein untrüg-
liches Denkmal nicht nur deines Daseyns sondern auch der Macht des
Menschen dich zu erkennen und anzubeten. Religion ist also, auch schon
als Verstandesübung betrachtet, die höchste Humanität, die erhabenste
Blüthe der menschlichen Seele. (Ideen, SWS 13:162–63)
[. . . it was the human being who was raised by you, without knowing or
willing it, to search for the causes of things, to divine their connections,
and thus to find You, the great bond of all things, being of beings! The
human being does not know your innermost nature, for it does not see
the essence of any force on earth; yes, and if it were the human endeavor
to give you shape, it was in error and necessarily so, for you are without
shape, though the first and only cause of all shapes. Yet even each slight-
est false glimmer of you is still light, and each false altar erected by
humankind to you is an incontestable monument not only of your exist-
ence, but also of the human power to know and worship you. Thus re-
ligion, even considered merely as an exercise of the intellect, reflects the
highest humanity, is the most exalted blossom of the human soul. (OWH
146–47, translation modified)]
Vernunft, as one of the elements of Humanität, is the faculty of perceiving
the order and harmony of God’s creation.
Fairness
The other element that Herder introduces to define Humanität is Billigkeit
(fairness) a term that — except in some idiomatic phrases — is obsolete in
today’s German. The concept of Billigkeit has been an issue of both juridical
29
and ethical discourse since antiquity. In general, it applies to juridical situ-
ations where the general law fails or where the application of the general law
to the individual case causes problems. Aristotle thematized the concept
(Greek έπιεικεία) in his Nicomachean Ethics and in his Rhetoric, both from a
juridical and an ethical point of view. His question was how the general law
related to the individual case and he defined the role of fairness as a correc-
30
tion of the law insofar as the law, due to its universality, is inadequate. It is
in chapter 14 of book 5 that Aristotle deals with the aporetic relationship be-
tween law and fairness (έπιεικεία, in Latin: aequitas), and he concludes that
31
fairness is “a kind of justice.”
One major aspect of the definition of Billigkeit is the difference between
the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, or between law and justice.
Fairness mediates between them, following the encompassing spirit of the
law and taking account of individual circumstances of the case: “that which
is equitable seems to be just, and equity is justice that goes beyond the writ-
32 33
ten law.” Roman law adopted Aristotle’s concept of fairness (aequitas )
and its role of a mediator between strict law (ius strictum) and equitable law
34
(ius aequum).
Herder adopts the concept of Billigkeit from both antiquity and the
Germanic legal tradition, particularly the idea that it compensates for the
lack of universal applicability of laws to individual cases by mediating be-
tween the general law and the individual case. In order to apply this concept
to the concept of Humanität, however, Herder had to transfer Billigkeit
from the juridical discourse to the epistemological one and blend it with
ethical aspects of human cognition. His fundamental assumption that God’s
creation is cosmos (κόσµoς), or order, and that understanding of that order
leads to happiness is the cause of Herder’s optimism, which excludes the idea
of an ultimate destruction of the universe. That optimistic assumption,
however, is a theological one, a matter of faith. Human knowledge is limited
and the discrepancy between God’s wisdom and human knowledge is pro-
grammatically bridged by the ethical imperative to acquire knowledge in
order to act according to human insight. This process of acquiring knowl-
edge, by necessity, does not follow a completely rational plan but is based on
trial and error. Humanity learns by experience and thus discovers what Hu-
manität is. Billigkeit in this context is the pragmatic consideration of the
human imperfection that energizes human curiosity and exploration. This
imperfection allows for errors and mistakes — as long as human beings are
willing to learn from experience.
Die Regel der Billigkeit [. . .] ist nichts als die praktische Vernunft, das
Maas der Wirkung und Gegenwirkung zum gemeinschaftlichen Bestande
gleichartiger Wesen.
Auf dies Principium ist die menschliche Natur gebauet, so daß kein
Individuum eines andern oder der Nachkommenschaft wegen dazuseyn
110 ♦ HANS ADLER
glauben darf. Befolget der niedrigste in der Reihe der Menschen das
Gesetz der Vernunft und Billigkeit, das in ihm liegt: so hat er Consistenz,
d.i. er genießet Wohlseyn und Dauer: er ist vernünftig, billig, glücklich.
Dies ist er nicht vermöge der Willkühr andrer Geschöpfe oder des
Schöpfers, sondern nach den Gesetzen einer allgemeinen, in sich selbst
gegründeten Naturordnung. Weichet er von den Regeln des Rechts: so
muß sein strafender Fehler selbst ihm Unordnung zeigen und ihn
veranlassen, zur Vernunft und zur Billigkeit, als den Gesetzen seines
Daseyns und Glücks zurückzukehren. (Ideen, SWS 14:246)
[The rule of fairness [. . .] is nothing other than practical reason, the
measure of effect and countereffect toward the communal existence of
beings of the same kind.
On this principle human nature is built, so that no individual is al-
lowed to assume that they exist only for someone else or for posterity. If
the lowest in the ranks of men follows the law of reason and fairness that
lies in him, he will have stability, that is, he will enjoy well-being and lon-
gevity: he will be reasonable, equitable, happy. This he will not achieve
through the arbitrariness of other beings or of the Creator, but instead
through the laws of a general order of nature which is founded in itself. If
he strays from the rule of law, his punishing mistake itself must show him
disorder and cause him to return to reason and fairness as the laws of his
existence and happiness.]
Since Billigkeit takes into consideration the specific human nature, it
blends epistemology and ethics and requires strict equality of all human
beings:
. . . das große Gesetz der Billigkeit und des Gleichgewichts [wurde] des
Menschen Richtschnur: was du willt,[sic], daß andre dir nicht thun sollen,
thue ihnen auch nicht; was jene dir thun sollen, thue du auch ihnen. Diese
unwidersprechliche Regel ist auch in die Brust des Unmenschen ge-
schrieben: denn wenn Er andre frißt, erwartet er nichts als von ihnen
gefressen zu werden. [. . .] Das Gesetz der Billigkeit und Wahrheit macht
treue Gesellen und Brüder: ja wenn es Platz gewinnt, macht es aus
Feinden selbst Freunde. [. . .] Gleichförmigkeit der Gesinnungen also,
Einheit des Zwecks bei verschiedenen Menschen, gleichförmige Treue
bei Einem Bunde hat alles Menschen- Völker- und Thierrecht gestiftet:
denn auch Thiere, die in Gesellschaft leben, befolgen der Billigkeit
Gesetz und Menschen, die durch List und Stärke davon weichen, sind die
inhumansten Geschöpfe, wenn es auch Könige und Monarchen der Welt
wären. Ohne strenge Billigkeit und Wahrheit ist keine Vernunft, keine
Humanität denkbar. (Ideen, SWS 13:160–61)
[. . . the great law of equity and balance became also the standard of
humankind in regard to the internal: What you do not wish others to do
unto you, also do not do unto them; what you wish those to do unto you, do
also unto them. This incontestable rule is also written in the breast of the
savage, for, when he eats the flesh of others, he expects to be eaten in
turn. [. . .] The law of equity and truth makes faithful fellows and broth-
ers; yes, when it gains ground, it even makes out of enemies friends. [. . .]
The uniformity of attitudes, thus, the unity of purpose among different
persons, uniform loyalty in one covenant, has founded all human law, the
law of nations, and the law of animals — for even animals who live in
social organization observe the law of equity — and humans who divert
from it by cunning or force are the most inhuman creatures, even though
they be the kings and monarchs of the world. No reason, no humanity, is
conceivable without strict equity and truth.]
Humanität as a Historical Concept

A third aspect of Herder’s concept of Humanität — besides the qualitative
and the quantitative one — has to be taken into consideration: his radical
historicization of the concept. There is no Humanität without history, and
human history is the history of Humanität; that is, Humanität is the pur-
pose of human history, and history is the series of appearances of Humanität
in time and space. Since human beings do not have access to the Kräfte
(forces) that generate and move nature and history, the effects (Wirkungen,
which can be grasped by the senses) are the only data human cognition can
rely on. The purpose of Kräfte is their maximum activity, documented in the
generation of a maximum of diversity and variety of phenomena. Herder’s
understanding of Vernunft as “Vernommenes” (see above, page 107) defines
human reason as an acquired faculty that changes with the changing world
35
of experiences. “Ich werde, was ich bin!” defines identity as a never-ending
process. This process encompasses all human beings who are equal in their
“destiny,” which is to be different from each other, in short: to be equally
privileged individuals. Whereas Spalding in his Bestimmung des Menschen had
to posit a transcendence that would compensate for all evil and injustice,
Herder insisted on the dignity of the immanent world where the “Fort-
bildung” of Humanität is possible without any miracles or any other help
from God because God provides only the potential for any action, not the
results: “. . . die Gottheit hilft uns nur durch unsern Fleiß, durch unsern
Verstand, durch unsre Kräfte” (Ideen, SWS 14:213: the Deity helps us only
through our own industriousness, through our reason, through our powers).
Therefore human beings are defined as dynamic beings that may fail and will
always be forced to correct any wrongdoing. “Irrten sie [die Menschen] oder
blieben sie auf dem halbem Wege einer ererbten Tradition stehen: so litten
sie die Folgen ihres Irrthums und büßeten ihre eigne Schuld” (Ideen, SWS
14:210: If they went wrong or became mired halfway in an inherited tradi-
tion, they suffered the consequences of these errors and atoned for their own
112 ♦ HANS ADLER
guilt). Finally, this dynamism is active throughout the entire universe and
time whereas destruction cannot be the founding principle of creation: “denn
was irgend geschehen kann, geschieht: was wirken kann, wirket. Vernunft
aber und Billigkeit allein dauren; da Unsinn und Thorheit sich und die Erde
verwüsten” (Ideen, SWS 14:250: for whatever can happen, happens; what-
ever can have an effect, does so. But reason and fairness alone persist, since
nonsense and foolishness devastate themselves and the earth).
For Herder, the necessary social complement to human autonomy and
dignity is responsibility. As human cognition is limited, so is human under-
standing of history; hence all human action suffers from a fundamental un-
certainty between the two poles of hope and fear. Herder rendered the fol-
lowing into German from the Anthologia Graeca:
Hoffnung und Furcht
Zwo Göttinnen verehr’ ich, die Hoffnung und Wiedervergeltung:

Jene beflügelt den Wunsch, diese beschränket ihn mir. (FA 3, 765)
[I venerate two goddesses, hope and retribution

This one gives my wishes wings, that one hems them in.]
36
In 1786, Herder published Nemesis: Ein lehrendes Sinnbild. In that
short essay, Herder rediscovers the goddess and reinterprets her role in
mythology: “Nemesis ist keine Rach- und Plagegöttin” (FA 4, 563: Nemesis
is no goddess of revenge and trouble), but “Bewahrerin vor dem Übermaße”
(ibid.: protectress against excess), “eine hohe Rechtverteilerin, eine Unbe-
trügliche, die in den Busen blickt, wenn sie nach dem eignen Betragen des
Menschen den Erfolg seiner Taten abwäget” (FA 4, 570: but instead a high
arbiter of justice, one who cannot be fooled, who looks into one’s heart
when she weighs the success of a person’s deeds according to his behavior).
It is the principle of moderation that Herder wants to make visible again in a
mythological figure who is a personification of the balance within all his-
torical events, that figure that represents the principle of retribution that
Herder also cites in the version of the Sermon of the Mount from Matthew
7:12: “was du willt [sic], daß andre dir nicht thun sollen, thue ihnen auch
nicht; was jene dir thun sollen, thue du auch ihnen.” This is the connecting
point between individual human responsibility for his or her actions and the
principle of human history. To acquire knowledge of the principles of history
is not only an ethical imperative, but also a necessity for the survival of
37
humanity. Nemesis, or Adrastea as Herder prefered to call this allegory later
assures the human being that he or she is part of the all-encompassing uni-
verse of world history. Nemesis provides the functional framework for the
concept of Humanität. The only points of reference for the concept, for
Herder, are Vernunft and Billigkeit, but both of these are also subject to
constant historical change through experience. They are dispositions for re-
sponsible human conduct and as empty of any historically specific determin-
ation as is Besonnenheit in the area of language-thought (see Jürgen Trabant’s
essay in this volume). As Rainer Wisbert aptly described Herder’s visionary
definition of Humanität:
Humanität ist die vor allem inhaltlich nie abschließend zu bestimmende
Formel für den Inbegriff erfüllten und verwirklichten Menschseins im
Ganzen der Menschheitsgeschichte. Humanität ist das unerschöpfliche
38
und unvollendbare Ziel der Selbstgestaltung der Menschheit.
[Humanity is above all in terms of content a never ultimately to be de-
termined formula for the epitome of fulfilled and realized human exist-
ence in the whole of human history. Humanity is the inexhaustible and
unfinishable goal of self-formation of mankind.]
The human being only constitutes him- or herself through consistently re-
sponsible activity. The idea of the self-constitution of the human being is
according to Hans Dietrich Irmscher “one of the constants in Herder’s
39
thinking.” There is no utopia in which the concept of Humanität can come
to full fruition because that utopia would be the end of history and of
Humanität. Herder’s concept of Humanität is an open concept. It is the
fundamental concept of his lifelong endeavor to constitute a philosophical
anthropology that is grounded in the experience of reality and would help to
form humanity, that is, all human beings on earth.
It is clear, though, that Herder’s concept of Humanität is presented with
a considerable amount of pathos, an indicator of the discrepancy between
what is wished for and reality. Herder’s insistence on the necessity of this
new concept, as well as his elaboration of it, is doubtless one of his major
contributions to the history of ideas. His pathos, however, may indicate the
futility of his attempt as well as the urgent need he felt to change his time.
The less the present complied with Humanität, the greater the desire for it.
The absence of Humanität did not go unnoticed, but it was experienced as
a void, as Theodor W. Adorno, the seismographically sensitive philosopher
of the Frankfurt School put it: “Humanität war das Bewußtsein von der
40
Gegenwart des Nichtgegenwärtigen . . .” (Humanität was present in the
consciousness of its absence). It is this intrinsic tension of Herder’s radically
historicized Funktionsbegriff of Humanität that has kept it vivid and
productive until our present day.
Notes
1
See for example Paul Hensel, “Herders Humanitätsbegriff in seinem Verhältnis zur
Methodenlehre der Geschichte” [1903] in Hensel, Kleine Schriften und Vorträge, ed.
Ernst Hoffmann and Heinrich Rickert (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1930), 41–50;
114 ♦ HANS ADLER
Fritz Ernst, “Herder und die Humanität: Aus einer Antrittsvorlesung [1944] an der
E[idgenössischen] T[echnischen] H[ochschule]” in Ernst, Essais (Zurich: Fretz und
Wasmuth, 1946), 3:287–306.
2
Robert T. Clark, Herder: His Life and Thought (Berkeley: U of California P, 1955),
314.
3
See also Karl Menges’ and Robert Norton’s essays in this volume
4
See Hans Dietrich Irmscher’s commentary on the Humanitätsbriefe in FA 6:910–12.
5
See K.[arl] B.[üchner], “Humanitas,” in Der Kleine Pauly: Lexikon der Antike [. . .],
ed. Konrat Ziegler and Walter Sontheimer (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag,
1979), 2:1241–44.
6
The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Complete text. Reproduced micrographically
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). The Webster’s basically follows the OED: Webster’s
Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (Avenel, NJ: Gramercy
Books, 1989), 691.
7
See Hans Adler, “Wert (linguistisch) II,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed.
Joachim Ritter, Karlfried Gründer, and Gottfried Gabriel (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 2004), 12:584–86.
8
See Hans Dietrich Irmscher’s commentary in FA 7:919.
9
This is Reinhart Koselleck’s famous formulation in his Kritik und Krise: Eine Studie
zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt. (1959; rpt. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1973), 60.
10
See for the function of the italicization as a specifically Herderian element of style
my essay on Herder’s style in this volume.
11
For Herder’s critique of a philosophy of empty words, in Herder’s polemical terms
“Wortnebel,” “Wortwelten,” see Hans Adler, Die Prägnanz des Dunklen: Gnoseologie
— Ästhetik — Geschichtsphilosophie bei Johann Gottfried Herder (Hamburg: Meiner,
1990), 49–63.
12
See Hans Adler, “Humanität — Autonomie — Souveränität. Bedingtheit und
Reichweite des Humanitätskonzepts J. G. Herders,” in Akten des VII. Internationalen
Germanisten-Kongresses Göttingen 1985 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1986), 8:161–66, here
8:162. See also Hans Dietrich Irmscher’s comment on the title etching of the first
edition of the Humanitätsbriefe, FA 6:844–85.
13
See Hans Adler, “Denker der Mitte. Johann Gottfried Herder,” Special issue: Johann
Gottfried Herder 1744–1803, Monatshefte 95.2 (2003): 161–70.
14
See Hans Adler, “‘Die Bestimmung des Menschen.’ Johann Joachim Spaldings
Schrift als Ausgangspunkt einer offenen Anthropologie,” Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert
18.2 (1994): 125–37.
15
See also Ideen, SWS 14:207:
“Ist [. . .] ein Gott in der Natur: so ist er auch in der Geschichte: denn auch der
Mensch ist ein Theil der Schöpfung und muß in seinen wildesten
Ausschweifungen und Leidenschaften Gesetze befolgen, die nicht minder
schön und vortreflich [sic] sind, als jene, nach welchen sich alle Himmels- und
Erdkörper bewegen. Da ich nun überzeugt bin, daß was der Mensch wissen
muß, auch wissen könne und dürfe: so gehe ich [in the following chapters of
his Ideen] aus dem Gewühl der Scenen, die wir bisher durchwandert haben,
zuversichtlich und frei den hohen und schönen Naturgesetzen entgegen, denen
auch sie folgen.”
[If . . . there is a God in Nature, there is also one in history: for also the human
being is a part of creation and must in his wildest dissipations and passions
follow laws that are no less beautiful and fitting than those according to which
the bodies of heaven and earth move. Now, since I am convinced that what the
human being must know, also can and may know: thus I leave the chaos of the
scenes that we have wandered through thus far, and, confident and free, go
toward the high and beautiful laws of nature, which they too follow.]
16
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan [1651], ed. J. G. A. Gaskin (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998),
140.
17
See Christian Wolff, Philosophia prima sive Ontologia [1728], in Gesammelte Werke,
ed. Jean Ecole, part 2, vol. 3, §§ 1–78 (reprint of the 1736 edition, Hildesheim, New
York: Olms, 1977). It takes 133 sections of preparatory reflections before Wolff
arrives at the definition of being.
18
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Metaphysica [1739] (reprint of the 7th edition,
1779, Hildesheim: Olms, 1963), § 8. Baumgarten was Wolff’s disciple. He developed
the first philosophical aesthetics (1750–58).
19
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason [2nd ed. 1787], trans. and ed. Paul Guyer
and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000), 111 (xix).
20
See Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, part 4, vol. 85: Vom Wesen der Sprache, ed.
Ingrid Schüssler (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1999).
21
In the eighteenth century, it was unclear what exactly separates the human being
from other species (the theory of evolution had not yet been developed and anthro-
pology had just come into being). See for this debate Carl Niekerk, “Man and Orang-
utan in 18th-Century Thinking: Retracing the Early History of Dutch and German
Anthropology,” Monatshefte 96.4 (2004): 477–502; see also John Zammito’s article in
this volume.
22
See Race and Enlightenment: A Reader, ed. Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1997) and Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment against Empire (Princeton and
Oxford: Princeton UP, 2003), esp. chapter 6, 210–58.
23
See Andrea Albrecht, Kosmopolitismus: Weltbürgerdiskurse in Literatur, Philosophie
und Publizistik um 1800 (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2005), 247.
24
Ernst Cassirer, Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff: Untersuchungen über die Grund-
fragen der Erkenntniskritik, Facsimile reprint of the 1st edition of 1910 (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980). Hans Erich Bödeker writes: “An die Stelle
des theologisch fundierten Substanzbegriffs ‘Mensch’ tritt der Funktionsbegriff
‘Mensch’” (The functional concept “Mensch” takes the place of the theologically based
substance concept “Mensch”). Bödeker does not explain the terms and does not refer
to Cassirer. Hans Erich Bödeker, “Menschheit, Humanität, Humanismus,” in
Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in
Deutschland, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck [1982].
Studienausgabe (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2004), 3:1063–1128, here: 1079.
25
See Karl Büchner, “Humanitas” (note 5 above), Der Kleine Pauly, 2:1241–44.
116 ♦ HANS ADLER
26
See R. Rieks, “Humanitas,” Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Joachim
Ritter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1974), 3:1231–32.
27
See especially book 15 of the Ideen, chapters 3 and 4, SWS 14:225–43.
28
DWb, vol. 25, 927: “die bedeutung [von “Vernunft”] ist ursprünglich: das richtige
auffassen, das aufnehmen.”
29
See G. Bien and K. H. Sladeczek, “Billigkeit,” Historisches Wörterbuch der Phi-
losophie, ed. Joachim Ritter, (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971),
1:939–43.
30
Aristoteles, Die Nikomachische Ethik: Griechisch-deutsch, trans. Olof Gigon, ed.
Rainer Nickel (Düsseldorf, Zurich: Artemis und Winkler, 2001), 1137b.
31
Aristoteles, Die Nikomachische Ethik, 1138a.
32
Aristotle, The ‘Art’ of Rhetoric, trans. John Henry Freese (Cambridge, MA, London:
Harvard UP, 2000), book 1, 1374a.
33
See Theo Mayer-Maly, “Aequitas,” Der Kleine Pauly: Lexikon der Antike, ed.
Konrat Ziegler and Walther Sontheimer (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag,
1979), 1:97–98.
34
Regarding ius strictum and aequum see Dietrich Simon, “Ius,” Der Kleine Pauly:
Lexikon der Antike, ed. Konrat Ziegler and Walther Sontheimer, (Munich: Deutscher
Taschenbuch Verlag, 1979), 3:11–18, here 18.
35
“I become what I am.” HB 1:139; Herder to Moses Mendelssohn, April 1769.
36
In FA 4:549–78.
37
See Herder’s periodical Adrastea in FA 10.
38
Rainer Wisbert in his commentary to “Von der Integrität und Scham einer Schule.
Schulrede Juli 1794,” FA 9.2:1337.
39
Hans Dietrich Irmscher in his commentary on the Humanitätsbriefe, FA 7:818.
40
Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben
[1951], in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1997), 4:290.
5: Herder and Language
Jürgen Trabant
I. Philosophy of Language
A FTER BACON’S DISCOVERY OF THE non-scientific semantics of natural

language as idola fori, “idols of the marketplace” and the most se-
rious obstacle to true knowledge, and after Locke’s attempt to integrate
language into a theory of human understanding in his Essay Concerning
Human Understanding (1690), and after his proposals for coming to terms
with the epistemological problem of language (which is “a mist before
our eyes”), language was on the agenda of the philosophy of the eigh-
teenth century — at least of its empiricist current. Rationalist philosophy
generally speaking has no problem with language, and, hence, nothing in-
teresting to say about it. The most important answers to Locke’s Essay,
Etienne Bonnot de Condillac’s Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines
(Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, 1746), Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz’s Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain (New Essays on Hu-
man Understanding, 1765), and, in a certain way, also Giambattista Vico’s
Scienza Nuova (The New Science, 1744), necessarily deal with language.
They all know that human “understanding,” “connaissances,” “entende-
ment,” “scienza” have infallibly something to do with language. The ques-
tion is to what extent and whether this is good or bad.
There is no other philosopher of the eighteenth century — but shall we
call him a philosopher anyway? — who is haunted by language in the same
passionate way as is Herder. And there is no other philosopher of the
eighteenth century for whom language is to the same extent and with the
same intensity the heart of a philosophy of knowledge — and hence of
philosophy tout court — and therefore the main object of philosophy. In
that sense, Herder is the creator of the “philosophy of language” as an
autonomous philosophical reflection on language, not only as a “linguis-
tic philosophy,” that is, a philosophy (of knowledge, of action, of beauty,
etc.) that deals with language because language comes along as an ob-
stacle to truth or to true philosophical or scientific discourse.
118 ♦ JÜRGEN TRABANT
Recent studies have fervently tried to show (why this strange pas-
sion?) that many of Herder’s ideas about language are shared by other
thinkers, and that he is only one link in the chain of European reflection
on language. Of course this is the case, as is generally the case with any
philosopher one can think of. But this is beside the point. Nobody claims
that Herder is the inventor of every single element of his language philos-
ophy. The claim is only that there is no other thinker or writer — before
Wilhelm von Humboldt and, later, Ludwig Wittgenstein — for whom lan-
guage is in the same depth and intensity the center and the subject of hu-
man thought and hence of the human being and of human culture, and
that, therefore, Herder initiated an autonomous philosophy of language.
Perhaps only Vico knows as much as Herder does about the linguistic
foundation of human thought and culture, but Vico’s deep insights into
“language” constitute rather a sign theory, a semiotics or “sematology,”
than a language theory or a language philosophy (in this respect Vico’s
philosophy is very similar, by the way, to Charles Sanders Peirce’s semi-
1
otic philosophy). Condillac’s systematic integration of Lockean intuitions
into a radically sensualist philosophy of knowledge was the most important
contribution to the philosophical language discussion in French-speaking
Europe, for what is called “les Lumières” (the Enlightenment) right
through to the “Idéologues” after the French Revolution. But this philos-
ophy is a philosophy of “human knowledge,” connaissances humaines, not
a philosophy of language. Leibniz’s contribution to the discussion, the first
direct answer to Locke’s Essay, also concerns mainly the “entendement
humain,” human understanding — and it comes too late to have any im-
portance for the French European context. The linguistic insights of Leib-
niz’s Nouveaux Essais, published only in 1765, long after Locke’s death in
1704, and long after the victory of Condillacian empiricism, were, however,
crucial for German developments, especially for Herder and Humboldt.
But none of these thinkers was as passionately involved with language
as Herder. His is a threefold passion for language. The first concerns the
philosophical problem of to what extent language is involved in “human
understanding” and whether this is good or bad. Herder’s first message
to the intellectual world was a very clear answer to that question, and in
his most ambitious and most philosophical book, at the end of his life, he
opposed Language to Philosophy itself, that is, to Kant — a kind of philo-
sophical suicide in the name of language and his most important message
to the future. Second: as a Christian theologian — we should not forget
that the Church was the field of his professional activity — he knew that
language is also the divine creative Word, the Logos that, according to
Saint John, was in the beginning and became flesh in Christ: this Word is
God. His was a religion of the Word, hence Herder always understood
Logos as the Word and not as the pure Spirit. And third, as a young Ger-
HERDER AND LANGUAGE ♦ 119
man of his generation, that is, as a German-speaking intellectual and writer

from the margin of the French-speaking center of Europe, he fought pas-
sionately for his own literature and language, which his Lutheran back-
ground told him was as good as — or better than — any “catholic” or
universal language, be it Latin or — in the second half of the eighteenth
century — French with its universal imperial aspirations.
Language, therefore, is not only one specific domain of Herder’s phi-
losophy (even if he is the inventor of an autonomous “philosophy of
language”), but his passion for language and the central position he attri-
butes to language in his conception of the human being permeates his
whole work. Whatever subject Herder is dealing with, language is an im-
portant dimension of his thought.
II. Fragmente
Herder’s first battle was for German literature and therefore for the Ger-
man language: “wer über die Literatur eines Landes schreibt, muß ihre
Sprache nicht aus der Acht lassen” (he who writes about the literature of a
country must not ignore its language; FA 1:177). Two hundred years
after Joachim Du Bellay’s Défense et illustration de la langue française
(1549), the model for similar apologies for national languages throughout
Europe, Herder wrote his “defense and illustration of the German lan-
guage,” his fragments Über die neuere deutsche Literatur (On the Recent
German Literature, 1766–67). The Fragmente not only made their young
author a celebrity in the German-speaking world, but also contain his lin-
guistic theory, which was inspired by Leibniz, and the outline of a vast
science of the languages of the world as a necessary consequence of that
conception of language (Herder further develops his linguistic ideas in the
second edition of the Fragmente, printed in 1768 but not distributed
during his lifetime, which I here take as a part of that first great book).
Similarly to the French poet Joachim Du Bellay before him (ca. 1522–
1560), Herder fought against the supremacy of a universal language — in
Du Bellay’s case Latin, in Herder’s Latin and French — which is at the
same time the successful model. He was convinced that his language was
as good as that model, but that that needed to be “illustrated” by original
literary works, or, to use a more German conception, that it needed to be
“gebildet”: “Bildung der Sprache” (formation of the language) is what all
this is about (FA 1:187). Herder bases his love and defense of his lan-
guage on that precious individuality that in his time was called the génie de
la langue or “Genius der Sprache”: the genius of the language (FA 1:177).
The humanists of the fifteenth century had discovered in Latin and
later in Greek a special quality of language, the reason for their defense of
those languages, which they called idíoma, “that which is proper” (Herder
would use other derivatives of the same Greek word, like “Idiotismus,”
“Idiot,” “idiotisch,” to refer to the “proper” and peculiar quality of an in-
dividual language). Du Bellay attributed a particular quality to this aspect
of language (which he mainly finds in the sounds of his beloved French
language), its “certain je ne sais quoi which is exclusively its own prop-
2
erty,” but the French Academy then called it the “génie de la langue.”
First, it is not yet very clear what that particular quality of a language is
and where one can find it, but it becomes evident that every language has
it and that it is the basis of the attachment of people to their languages.
Condillac, in his Essai of 1746, located the génie de la langue in semantic
qualities, in “accessory ideas,” in a special arrangement of semantic mark-
ers as well as in word order; that is, the individuality of a language be-
comes deeper, “cognitive,” it now concerns the content, not only the
material form. Leibniz knew already that language is “the best mirror of
the human mind” and that languages contain precious knowledge, both
3
of the world and of the operations of the human mind.
It is on this ground that Herder fought his battle for literary expres-
sion in his own language: Herder’s question is whether there is a connec-
tion between the (German) language and the “Denkungsart” or manner
of thinking, a question already discussed by Johann David Michaelis in his
De l’influence des opinions sur le langage et du langage sur les opinions (On
the Influence of Opinion on Language and Language on Opinion, 1762)
(whom Herder criticizes severely). From the beginning, Herder is con-
vinced that there is a very close connection between thought and language
and that, therefore, it makes a difference what language one writes in, and
whether one writes in a foreign language or in one’s mother tongue or
“Muttersprache,” the language one knows best (FA 1:407).
Words are not just arbitrary signs for universal concepts, and hence
only materially different instruments for communication and for the desig-
nation of non-linguistic thought. Rather, thought is created together with
words; words are the creators of thought: hence, concepts are creations of
language. Herder’s famous formulation for this conviction is that “Ge-
danke am Ausdrucke klebt” (thought clings to the expression; FA 1:556),
and, since languages differ, those thoughts also differ from language to lan-
guage. Thus every language provides a different perspective on the world:
Jede Nation spricht also, nach dem sie denkt, und denkt, nach dem sie
spricht. So verschieden der Gesichtspunkt war, in dem sie die Sache
nahm, bezeichnete sie dieselbe. (FA 1:558)
[Hence each nation speaks in accordance with its thoughts and thinks
in accordance with its speech. However different was the viewpoint
from which the nation took cognizance of a matter, the nation named
4
the matter. ]
Fighting for the rights of one’s native language is, therefore, a fight
for one’s own mental or cognitive form, for one’s own forma mentis:
“Nicht als Werkzeug der Literatur allein muß man die Sprache ansehen;
sondern auch als Behältnis und Inbegriff” (One must view language not
only as a tool of literature, but instead also as container and quintessence;
FA 1:548).
Different languages contain different semantics or — to use Wilhelm
von Humboldt’s later expression — different “worldviews.” As Herder for-
mulated it:
Wenn Wörter nicht bloß Zeichen, sondern gleichsam die Hüllen sind,
in welchen wir die Gedanken sehen: so betrachte ich eine ganze
Sprache als einen großen Umfang von sichtbar gewordenen Gedan-
ken, als ein unermäßliches Land von Begriffen. (FA 1:552)
[If words are not just signs but instead so to speak the shells in which
we see thoughts, I look at an entire language as a great range of
thoughts become visible, as an immeasurable country of concepts.]
Herder develops a whole range of metaphorical expressions for indivi-
dual languages as special cognitive forms: the “unermäßliches Land von
Begriffen” becomes a “Schatzkammer,” “ein unermäßlicher Garten voll
Pflanzen und Bäume,” “Vorratshaus solcher Gedanken,” “Gedankenvor-
rat eines Volkes,” “Feld von Gedanken” (treasure chamber; immeasurable
garden full of plants and trees; storehouse of such thoughts; store of
thoughts of a people; field of thought): “Jede Nation hat ein eignes Vor-
ratshaus solcher zu Zeichen gewordenen Gedanken, dies ist ihre National-
sprache” (Every nation has its own storehouse of such thoughts become
words: this is its national language; FA 1:553).
According to Herder, the study of the thought reservoir of one people
requires a linguist, someone who is not an “Idiot” (FA 1:554), that is,
only knows his own language, but one who knows many other languages
as well. And the comparative study of the languages of the world would
finally lead to the ideas that are common to the whole human race, to a
“Semiotik” (semiotics) that would be a “Entzieferung der menschlichen
Seele aus ihrer Sprache” (deciphering of the human mind through its
language; FA 1:553). Herder never lets his enthusiasm for the cognitive
individuality of languages forget that these individual cognitive forms be-
long to a common heritage, that there is a “eine große Schatzkammer, in
welcher die Känntnisse aufbewahrt liegen, die dem ganzen Menschen-
geschlechte gehören,” a “Symbolik, die allen Menschen gemein ist” (a
great treasure chamber in which knowledge that belongs to the whole
human family lays in store; symbolism that is common to all humans; FA
1:553). Herder never falls into the trap of relativism: the fact that each
language possesses a unique “Gesichtspunkt” or special perspective does

not mean that languages have no concepts or views in common.
Herder’s fight for the cultural legitimacy of his native language is com-
monly seen as his legacy to the history of linguistic ideas, but such a view
is a limited one. In nearly every history of linguistics, Herder’s name is
5
linked to the label “linguistic nationalism,” but constant repetition of that
prejudice does not make it true. It is true that Herder loved the German
language — just as Dante loved Italian and Du Bellay loved his native
French — and that he insists on the importance and legitimacy of ex-
pressing himself in that language. But what is more important is that he
concedes the same value and the same precious qualities to all other lan-
guages. Herder is a Leibnizian thinker, therefore he sees individual lan-
guages as precious entities whose multiplicity and variety is the wealth of
the human mind. This is his real message, this is what he fought for, not
for the primacy or superiority of one of those forms of the human mind
— which indeed would be linguistic nationalism. The aim of his Fragmente
is certainly a “defense” of German, but heading more to a “Bildung der
Sprache” into a literary and erudite form than to a patriotic “illustration”
à la Du Bellay (which indeed led to a primacy of the “defended” French
language).
An analogous prejudice misrepresents Herder’s political and historical
convictions: Herder was not a herald of (German) nationalism. In con-
trast to Voltaire’s philosophie de l’histoire and other teleological universalist
conceptions of the history of mankind as a history of the victory of one —
European, that is, French or enlightened rationalist — “progressive” cul-
tural model, Herder shows that all cultures, unique in time and space,
contribute to the common advancement of mankind. Hence, respect for
cultural differences within a belief of a common progress — beyond rela-
tivism and nationalism — is the message of his alternative philosophy of
history, Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte.
III. Ursprung
It comes as no surprise that a young author with these linguistic convic-
tions and whose passion is language would take part in the Berlin Acade-
my’s essay competition on the hottest language theme of the century. He
wrote the Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache (Treatise on the
Origin of Language, 1772) as a response to the academy’s assignment:
“Find an hypothesis of how human beings, reduced to their natural facul-
ties, can invent language,” a proposition with quite outspoken “enligh-
tened,” “aufklärerisch” presuppositions, namely that man invents language
himself (and that it is not given by God). In the Berlin Academy theo-
logical thinkers and partisans of the modern enlightened sensualistic phi-
losophy were opposed in a bitter fight over the question of language. At

stake was not only language but a whole system of beliefs (and its political
implications): what is created by God — or Nature — cannot be changed,
and what is invented by man and therefore subject to “Bildung” can and
must be changed. Condillac gave language a precise systematic place in his
history of the rise of the human mind from sensation to reason, namely
right in the middle, as an outcome of memory, and, in the second book
of the Essay on the Origin of Human Understanding, he wrote a history of
language or rather of human semiosis. He wanted to explain why lan-
guage is so irrational (as Bacon and Locke had already pointed out) and
what we can do in order to make it rational. Therefore, he imagines a
“wild” origin from which language (and other human semioses) rises to a
pre-enlightened stage which we find in modern languages (and their ge-
niuses) and which we have to enlighten further for scientific use. This view,
of course, goes against traditional religious doctrine, especially against what
the Bible says about the origin of language. Hence the Prussian Academy
6
posed the question to European thinkers, many of whom responded.
Even if Herder’s response depends in many respects on his predeces-
sors and the European tradition, it is a new answer and gives a new direc-
tion to European linguistic thought: Herder further develops Leibniz’s
cognitive conception of language, explains why ideas necessarily “cling to”
words, and he shows a way to deal with the diversity of languages within a
perspective that postulates the progress or advancement of mankind. In
his Fragmente, Herder had already written a piece on the “ages of lan-
guage,” and in the unpublished second edition (1768) of the Fragmente
(FA 1:600–615) there is an outline of some of his ideas on the origin of
language, which he now develops in his prize-winning essay, which is per-
haps Herder’s most beautiful and certainly his most influential work.
“Schon als Tier, hat der Mensch Sprache” (Already as an animal, the hu-
man being has language; FA 1:697). Herder’s Abhandlung über den Ur-
sprung der Sprache begins with this famous sentence, which has often been
discussed and misunderstood. Notwithstanding its positive statement it has
a primarily negative meaning: it implies that what the human being pos-
sesses by virtue of being an animal is not human, but rather something
animal: animal language. And as animal language, “language” has two
functions: first, the expression of passions and sensations; and second, com-
munication:
Alle heftigen und die heftigsten unter den heftigen, die schmerzhaften
Empfindungen seines Körpers, alle starken Leidenschaften seiner Seele
äußern sich unmittelbar in Geschrei, in Töne, in wilde, unartikulierte
Laute. (FA 1:697)
[All violent sensations of his body, and the most violent, the painful
ones, and all strong passions of his soul immediately express them-
selves in cries, in sounds, in wild, unarticulated noises. (Forster, 65)]
These wild sounds are always “auf andre Geschöpfe gerichtet,” direc-
ted at other creatures (FA 1:697–98). Therefore, “schon als Tier, hat der
Mensch Sprache” means above all that the human being communicates
with the other members of his species just like other animals do: by making
sounds. Animal life and “animal language” resound and communicate.
But these animal sounds are not human language. These natural sounds
are “freilich [. . .] nicht die Hauptfäden der menschlichen Sprache. Sie
sind nicht die eigentlichen Wurzeln, aber die Säfte, die die Wurzeln der
Sprache beleben” (FA 1:701; “of course not the main threads of human
language. They are not the actual roots, but the juices which enliven the
roots of language”; Forster 68).
The “actual roots” of human language are not to be found in the ani-
mal domain but in what differentiates the human being from animals. In
comparing human beings to animals there is a huge difference: humans’
lack of instincts. This deficiency is, however, compensated for by a unique
disposition of human nature, Besonnenheit. Herder deliberately uses this
new expression for what was called, in the philosophical terminology of
his time, “Reflexion” (reflection; for instance FA 1:722), a term that Her-
der still uses from time to time as an alternative to Besonnenheit. Ex-
pressed in modern terms, Herder used Besonnenheit to mean the cognitive
disposition of human beings, the need of human beings to gain knowl-
edge of the world. It is an innate disposition, inherent only to humans
and not derived from other, “lower” mental operations. To the gradual,
sensualist ascent of rational man out of the animal body Herder thus op-
poses a “rationalist” cogitatio that only human beings possess. And this
cognitive need — which is totally different from the animal need to com-
municate — creates thought that is simultaneously language. Language
originates as specifically human only out of the semantico-cognitive rela-
tionship to the world, and hence — and this is what is decisive and radi-
cally new in Herder — thought is the word. Thus, language is no longer
voice or the material sign for the designation and communication of
thought as in the traditional, Aristotelian view of language. Language is
primarily thought.
This conception of language runs against the grain of nearly the en-
tire European discourse on language: language as an inner cognitive event.
Noam Chomsky, writing in 1966, thinks that such a conception of lan-
7
guage is already present in Descartes’ Discourse on the Method (1637), but
it is actually in Herder that it first occurs. The extremely dualistic Descartes
very traditionally viewed thought as thought (res cogitans), not as lan-
guage; language was only its instrument and testimony in the res extensa,
in the “extended,” that is, material reality. Herder takes up the insights of
Bacon, Locke, Leibniz, and Condillac into the linguisticality of cognition
and radicalizes it as a cognitivity of language.
Although this appears to be utterly rationalistic — the innate ration-
ality of the human being instead of gradual ascent from earlier animal
forms, the cognitivity of the word — it becomes clear in the story of the
origin of language that the inner word does not emerge out of the subject
itself, but that it requires the world. Therefore, the word is not innate to
the human being. Only the disposition to create language — Besonnenheit
— is innate, but the word is created by the human being through his en-
counter with the world.
Herder develops this conception of language in the famous scene of
8
the origin of language in which a lamb plays the decisive role. The human
being, endowed with this disposition for Besonnenheit, with the “need to
know,” that is with Saint Augustine’s “cognitive desire” (appetitus no-
scendi), is confronted with the world, which is accessible to him through
his senses: his sense of touch, his eyes, and his ears. Now, in this world of
sensation, the lamb appears “weiß, sanft, wollicht” (FA 1:723; “white, soft,
woolly,” Forster 88). As the human cognitive desire is neither the voracity
of the wolf or lion nor the sexual drive of the “aroused ram,” man leaves
the object of his cognitive desire in peace, he “does not by instinct [. . .]
attack it” (FA 1:723; Forster 88) like the lion or the ram. Besonnenheit is
also the capability to distance oneself from the object. Among the tactile,
visual, and auditory impressions that the human being, endowed with Be-
sonnenheit, receives from the world, it is the auditory ones that detach
themselves most distinctly from the object and penetrate the human be-
ing most deeply. The second time the sheep appears, language-thought
appears:
Das Schaf kommt wieder. Weiß sanft, wollicht — sie [die Seele] sieht,
tastet, besinnet sich, sucht Merkmal — es blöckt, und nun erkennet
sies wieder! “Ha! du bist das Blöckende!” fühlt sie innerlich, sie hat es
menschlich erkannt, da sies deutlich, das ist mit einem Merkmal er-
kennet, und nennet. (FA 1:723)
[The sheep comes again. White, soft, woolly — the soul sees, feels,
takes awareness, seeks a characteristic mark — it bleats, and now the
soul recognizes it again! “Aha! You are the bleating one!” the soul
feels inwardly. The soul has recognized it in a human way, for it recog-
nizes and names it distinctly, that is, with a characteristic mark.
(Forster 88)]
This inner mark created by Besonnenheit, moved by and penetrated by
the acoustic stimulus, is language. Herder builds up to this conclusion —
that the inner mental event alone is language — in a highly dramatic way,
as the sequence of the key expressions in the next passage demonstrates:
mark, inner mark, name of the sheep, sign, word, human language:
Mit einem Merkmal also? und was war das anders, als ein innerliches
Merkwort? “Der Schall des Blöckens von einer menschlichen Seele,
als Kennzeichen des Schafs, wahrgenommen, ward, kraft dieser Be-
stimmung, Name des Schafs, und wenn ihn nie seine Zunge zu
stammeln versucht hätte.” Er erkannte das Schaf am Blöcken; es war
gefaßtes Zeichen, bei welchem sich die Seele an eine Idee deutlich besann
— Was ist das anders als Wort? Und was ist die ganze menschliche
Sprache, als eine Sammlung solcher Worte? (FA 1:724)
[With a characteristic mark therefore? And what else was that but an
inward characteristic word? “The sound of bleating, perceived by a hu-
man soul as the distinguishing sign of the sheep, became, thanks to
this determination to which it was destined, the name of the sheep,
even if the human being’s tongue had never tried to stammer it.” The
human being recognized the sheep by its bleating; this was a grasped
sign on the occasion of which the soul distinctly recalled to awareness an
idea. What else is that but a word? And what is the whole of human
language but a collection of such words? (Forster 89)]
“. . . even if the human being’s tongue had never tried to stammer it”:
one cannot state with greater clarity the purely mental, inner, non-vocal
character of language that Herder insists upon with particular emphasis.
Therefore, people who are unable to speak from birth also have language:
“denn auch der zeitlebens Stumme war er Mensch: besann er sich; so lag
Sprache in seiner Seele!” (the person who was dumb all his life, if he was a
human being, if he took awareness, had language in his soul!; FA 1:725).
The inwardness of language excludes communication as an essential char-
acteristic of language. This is clearly stated as the passage progresses and is
repeated in the conclusion, when Herder states that also “der Wilde, der
Einsame im Walde hätte Sprache für sich selbst erfinden müssen; hätte er
sie auch nie geredet” (FA 1:725; the savage, the solitary in the forest,
would necessarily have invented language for himself, even if he had never
spoken it; Forster 90).
Und was ist die ganze menschliche Sprache, als eine Sammlung solcher
Worte? Käme er also auch nie in den Fall, einem andern Geschöpf
diese Idee zu geben, und also dies Merkmal der Besinnung ihm mit
den Lippen vorblöcken zu wollen, oder zu können; seine Seele hat
gleichsam in ihrem Inwendigen geblöckt, da sie diesen Schall zum
Erinnerungszeichen wählte, und wiedergeblöckt, da sie ihn daran er-
kannte — die Sprache ist erfunden! (FA 1:724)
[And what is the whole of human language but a collection of such

words? So even if the human being never reached the situation of con-
veying this idea to another creature, and hence of wanting or being
able to bleat forth this characteristic mark of taking-awareness to it
with his lips, still his soul has, so to speak, bleated internally when it
chose this sound as a sign for remembering, and bleated again when it
recognized the sheep by it. Language is invented! (Forster 89)]
Herder summarizes what is excluded from this cognitive-semantic in-
ner core of language in the expression “Mund und Gesellschaft” (FA
1:725): the human soul has to invent language just for itself, “even in the
absence of a mouth and society.” He is fully aware of the radicalism and
novelty of his conclusion and attaches the utmost importance to speci-
fying the exact location of the source of language: Besonnenheit, the world
of sounds, the inner mark. He calls it the “einzigen Punkt” (sole place,
FA 1:724) where the origin of language can be found. Thus, like Vico be-
fore him, he affirms the identity of “Wort und Vernunft, Begriff und Wort,
Sprache und Ursache” (word and reason, concept and word, language and
originating cause; FA 1:733). Thought is language.
When Herder concludes his chapter on the radical internalization and
cognitivization of language in the following way, it sounds just as if Steven
Pinker, the present-day prophet of Chomskyan linguistics, was already
speaking in 1772:
Es wird so nach die Sprache ein natürliches Organ des Verstandes, ein
solcher Sinn der menschlichen Seele, wie sich die Sehekraft jener sensi-
tiven Seele der Alten das Auge und der Instinkt der Biene seine Zelle
bauet. (FA 1:733)
[In this way, language becomes a natural organ of the understanding,
a sense of the human soul, just as the force of vision of that sensitive soul
of the ancients builds for itself the eye, and the instinct of the bees
builds for itself its cell. (Forster 97)]
The Language Instinct is the title of Steven Pinker’s 1994 book in
which language is conceived of as a language organ. The parallels with Her-
der are striking. Without any doubt, among the classical linguistic theo-
rists, it is Herder — not Descartes — whose conception of the core of
language is closest to that of Chomsky: the function of language is cog-
nition; language is essentially internal; it has nothing to do with commu-
nication and society nor with the articulation of the voice; it is a “natural
organ,” a “sense” of the mind.
However, Herder differs in two instances from this modern rationalist
theory and from rationalism in general: Herder’s cognitive, inner lan-
guage is not innate, and it is essentially dialogical. The only thing that is
innate is the (in itself completely empty) disposition for language-thought:

Besonnenheit. In contrast, rationalism — the older variant as well as the
Chomskyan one — assumes innate ideas and therefore requires absolutely
no experience from the outside. The Chomskyan school assumes that the
human mind is naturally equipped with a universal grammar and (some-
times) a universal dictionary (Mentalese). In contrast, Herder’s Besonnen-
heit invents language through contact with the world; experience of the
world triggers the “sense” or the “organ” of language into operation.
Without the bleating sheep there would be no language. Herder’s inner
language is thus completely dependent on the senses.
This empirical moment is connected with an epistemological innova-
tion that is quite revolutionary and at the same time so characteristic of
Herder: knowing is no longer seeing, it is hearing, or put another way,
cognition is no longer visual but auditory. Herder’s fundamental cogni-
tive arrangement is an acroamatic one (from the Greek word akroáomai
“to hear, to listen”): the soul listens to the world. Cognitive desire, which
is derided by Saint Augustine as a form of concupiscentia oculorum, “con-
cupiscence of the eyes,” becomes a concupiscentia aurium, a “concupis-
cence of the ears.” Herder calls the ear the “Sinn der Sprache,” the sense
of language (FA 1:748). Since language is the sense of the human soul,
the ear is thus the sense of understanding. In contrast to the word “un-
derstanding” or the German Verstand, which refer to a visual-spatial ar-
rangement, the French word entendement (from entendre “to hear”) refers
to this acroamatic way of acquiring knowledge. Hence, Herder’s listening
to the world, as a fundamental epistemological constellation, takes us miles
away from Chomsky, despite their important common features.
Listening to the voices of the world connects language eventually to
the speaker’s voice, which Herder had initially excluded (“even if the human
being’s tongue had never tried to stammer it”) from the core of language,
from the “sole space” of its origin — and that is the second fundamental
difference with Chomsky. For the inner word (which is reminded voice) is
also an inner voice. For Chomsky, this connection between language and
the voice is a departure from language into contingency, into communi-
cation, into “external language,” into speech, which has little to do with
language. In Chomsky’s view, the material communicative manifestations
of language are only instances of pure language descending to earthly
contingency. Here Herder’s view differs profoundly: even if he reduces the
origin of language to that “einzigen Punkt,” to which part I, section 2 of
his Abhandlung is devoted with passionate stringency, language is none-
theless also intimately connected with “Mund und Gesellschaft.” Mouth
and society are, therefore, not the contingent, inferior and impure realms
into which “real” (that is, internal, pure) language descends, as it were,
from its beautiful mental heights; rather, they are the spheres in which lan-
guage is involved.
The structure of the first part of the Abhandlung illustrates the inter-
relationship of these spheres of language. Whereas the first section is de-
voted to rejecting the communicative and resounding “Tiersprache” as the
root of human language, the second section reveals the cognitive-semantic
core, and the third section deals again with sounds, with the sounds of
the world and with listening to the sounds of the world, ending with the
“Mund” that reproduces those sounds. A coda at the end of the second
section (the core chapter on the origin of language) not only opens the
section on sounds, listening, and the “Mund,” but it also — with the es-
tablishment of the dialogical nature of the inner word — refers to the
second part of the treatise, which primarily deals with “society.”
Vortrefflich daß dieser neue, selbst gemachte Sinn des Geistes gleich in
seinem Ursprunge wieder ein Mittel der Verbindung ist — Ich kann
nicht den ersten menschlichen Gedanken denken, nicht das erste be-
sonnene Urteil reihen, ohne daß ich in meiner Seele dialogiere, oder
zu dialogieren strebe; der erste menschliche Gedanke bereitet also[,]
seinem Wesen nach, mit andern dialogieren zu können! Das erste
Merkmal, was ich erfasse, ist Merkwort für mich, und Mitteilungswort
für andre! (FA 1:733)
[[It is] excellent that this new, self-made sense belonging to the mind
is immediately in its origin a means of connection in its turn. I cannot
think the first human thought, cannot set up the first aware judgement
in a sequence, without engaging in dialogue, or striving to engage in
dialogue, in my soul. Hence the first human thought by its very nature
prepares one to be able to engage in dialogue with others! The first
characteristic mark that I grasp is a characteristic word for me and a
communication word for others!]
The idea that the first thought, as an internal event, is always also dia-
logical, that is, possesses a communicative quality in itself, is connected to
its acroamatic origin. The “inner bleating” replies to the resounding world,
it “dialogues” with the voice of the world: “Ha, du bist das Blöckende!”
The human being hears inside himself his inner word, his “inner bleat-
ing,” his inner voice, and so dialogues with himself. The inner word con-
tains a dialogical potential that prepares the way for one to dialogue with
other people, for stepping outside into the externality of voice and society.
Inner language is thus not only involved in and surrounded by the sphere
of sound and the other, but it is also communicative and resounding in its
internal structure.
Part I, section 3 of the Abhandlung develops the idea that hearing is
the foundation of knowledge. This makes Herder a real innovator not just
in linguistic theory but also — since language and thought are identical —
in epistemology. What Leibniz suggested with his acoustic petites percep-
tions (little perceptions), now becomes the basis of a completely new cogni-
tive device: thinking becomes primarily auditory or acroamatic. Listening
to the world is the center of human cognition. In a short phenomenology
of hearing, Herder shows why the ear, poised between the senses of touch
and sight, has this central position as the “sense of language.” The world
that makes sounds, has a voice, and breathes is first and foremost not a
thing, an object, but a you, an alter ego: “you are the bleating one!” Such
a world is like me; it is a world that speaks and dialogues with me.
Of course, this acroamatic epistemology was in no way able to replace
the traditional Western conception of cognition as seeing and grasping
(perhaps also because the human being seems to be a predominantly vis-
ual being, as modern brain research shows). The eye that gazes forwards
and the hand with its firm grip on things constitute the bodily foundation
of our aggressive attitude toward the world. Herder’s softer acroamatic
epistemology is an appeal to let the world breathe and resound, and to
dialogue with it.
The end of part I, section 2 refers to “Mund und Gesellschaft,” to
which the second part of the Abhandlung is devoted. Within society, in-
ner language, due to its structural properties, necessarily becomes a “Mit-
teilungswort für andere” (FA 1:733). After the nature and origin of lan-
guage, Herder deals with its diversity within the sphere of the other.
The intertextuality of Herder’s story of the origin of language with
the Biblical story of Adam’s naming of the animals is evident; Herder ex-
plicitly establishes this relation himself. In the second part of the treatise,
his four “Naturgesetze” (laws of nature) of the linguistic development of
humanity correspond to the four Biblical episodes about language: the
first natural law deals with the lingua adamica; the second concerns talk-
ing to each other in society, that is, Adam and Eve; the third elaborates
on the Babel story; and the fourth on Pentecost. This sequence is also a
progression towards increasingly wider social relationships: from Adam,
the solitary inventor of language, via the couple and the family to the tribe
and the nation, and finally to humanity.
In the chapter on Adam’s language (“erstes Naturgesetz”), Herder
once again explicates the basic idea of his linguistic theory, that language
and thought are identical. The following history of language is thus also a
history of human thought. The “herds” or “societies” are first portrayed
as families. Language, as a “Vater- oder Muttersprache” (FA 1:791; father-
or mother-tongue; Forster 147) in its development, is identical to itself as
long as it is traditionally passed on via upbringing within the family group
and promotes the coherence of the “herd.” On the other hand, language
is also different in every individual, in both material and semantic aspects:
So wenig als es zween Menschen ganz von einerlei Gestalt und Ge-
sichtszügen: so wenig kann es zwo Sprachen, auch nur der Aussprache
nach, im Munde zweener Menschen geben, die doch nur eine Sprache
wären. [. . .] Das war nur Aussprache. Aber Worte selbst, Sinn, Seele
der Sprache — welch ein unendliches Feld von Verschiedenheiten.
(FA 1:792)
[As little as there can be two human beings who share exactly the same
form and facial traits, just as little can there be two languages in the
mouths of two human beings which would in fact still be only one
language, even merely in terms of pronunciation. [. . .] That was only
pronunciation. But words themselves, sense, the soul of language —
what an endless field of differences. (Forster 148)]
The human being is — as Dante says — a variabilissimum animal, a
“very variable animal.” Therefore, language is “ein Proteus auf der runden
Oberfläche der Erde” (a Proteus on the round surface of the earth; FA
1:794), a creature that, like the Greek sea god, constantly appears in ever-
changing forms. As a family member, or as a social being, the human being
not only strives — inwardly — toward “Eintracht” or harmony with his
herd, but also — outwardly, in relation with other groups — toward
“Zwietracht,” discord, which intensifies the individual differences that al-
ready exist:
Dieselbe Familienneigung, die[,] in sich selbst gekehret, Stärke der Ein-
tracht Eines Stammes gab, macht[,] außer sich gekehrt, gegen ein
andres Geschlecht, Stärke der Zwietracht, Familienhaß! dort zogs viele
zu Einem desto fester zusammen; hier machts aus zwei Parteien gleich
Feinde. (FA 1:796)
[The same liking for family which turned inward on itself, gave strength
to the harmony of a single tribe, turned outward from itself, against
another race, produces strength of dissension, familial hatred! In the
former case it drew many all the more firmly together into a single
whole; in the latter case it makes two parties immediately into enemies.
(Forster 152)]
This theory of discordance is Herder’s interpretation of the myth of
Babel, which he explicitly quotes with respect to this third “Naturgesetz.”
The idea of national hate that manifests itself in linguistic demarcation is, by
the way, reminiscent of the shibboleth story in the Old Testament (though
Herder does not refer to the story here).
Herder would not be Herder if he did not celebrate this diversity with
enthusiasm. Not just the influence of Leibniz’s heritage comes into play,
but also his cultural experience of diversity in the corner of Europe he
comes from. And we are also reminded here of the Fragmente, where he
enthusiastically considers the possibility of the study of all human lan-

guages. Linguistic research — his Semiotik — aims to document what Leib-
niz called the “wonderful variety of the operations of the human mind” in
the human languages (293).
But neither would Herder be Herder — and this last and decisive
thought is often omitted by his critics — if he did not also progress from
the families, the tribes, the nations to humanity, that is, from diversity to
universal and common features of mankind. In Auch eine Philosophie der
Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit (Another Philosophy of History for
the Education of Humankind, 1774) this is quite clearly stated in the title:
“for the Education of Humankind.” And in Herder’s treatise on language,
humanity is emphatically taken as “ein progressives Ganze” — a progres-
sive whole. The fourth “Naturgesetz” formulates a common human de-
velopment beyond national differences:
So wie nach aller Wahrscheinlichkeit das menschliche Geschlecht Ein
progressives Ganze von Einem Ursprunge in Einer großen Haus-
haltung ausmacht: so auch alle Sprachen, und mit ihnen die ganze
Kette der Bildung. (FA 1:799)
[Just as in all probability the human species constitutes a single pro-
gressive whole with a single origin in a single great household-econo-
my, likewise all languages too, and with them the whole chain of
civilization. (Forster 154)]
Herder is undeniably a thinker in the spirit of the Pentecost: one (Holy)
Spirit unites humanity in its different languages. All languages proceed
together in history from the same origin in a shared world. Despite all the
diversity among languages, humanity has also one and the same language:
Wie Ein Menschenvolk nur auf der Erde wohnet, so auch nur Eine
Menschensprache: wie aber diese große Gattung sich in so viele kleine
Landarten nationalisiert hat: so ihre Sprachen nicht anders. (FA
1:804)
[Just as there lives only a single human people on earth, likewise only a
single human language; but just as this great kind has nationalized
itself into so many types specific to a land, likewise their languages no
differently.]
Humboldt expresses the same idea with the paradoxical twist that one
could just as easily say that every human being has his own language as
9
that humanity possesses one common language. And Chomsky adheres
to this idea of the human species possessing one language beyond the dif-
ferent languages with his famous Martian perspective. He repeatedly writes
that an inhabitant from Mars who observed the behavior of Earth’s in-
habitants would certainly note that all human beings do the same thing:
10
they talk. In contrast to Chomsky, though, who primarily wants to de-
scribe what the Martian would note from his distant perspective, that is,
that which is unitary and universal, Herder and Humboldt are instead in-
terested in the diversity that appears when one looks a bit closer.
At the end of the Abhandlung, Herder addresses the overcoming of
national and linguistic differences; he welcomes the “Überlieferung von
Volk zu Volk” (tradition from people to people; FA 1:806) with enthu-
siasm. Hence, the suspicion that Herder is the inventor of nationalistic
relativism must be confronted with his conviction that human beings are
not “Nationaltiere” (which, like different animal species, would be unable
to communicate with each other); rather, they are one single species with
a common human history proceeding from a common origin toward a
common human society:
Wären die Menschen Nationaltiere, [. . .] so müßte diese [die Sprache]
gewiß eine Verschiedenartigkeit zeigen, als vielleicht die Einwohner des
Saturns und der Erde gegen einander haben mögen — und doch geht
bei uns offenbar alles auf Einem Grunde fort. Auf einem Grunde,
nicht bloß was die Form, sondern was würklich den Gang des mensch-
lichen Geistes betrifft: denn unter allen Völkern der Erde ist die Gram-
matik beinahe auf einerlei Art gebaut. (FA 1:803–4)
[If human beings were national animals [. . .] then this language
would certainly have to display “a difference in type,” such as the in-
habitants of Saturn and of the earth may perhaps have vis-à-vis each
other. And yet it is obvious] that with us everything develops on a single
basis. On a single basis concerning not only the form but also the ac-
tual course of the human spirit, for among all peoples of the earth
grammar is constructed in almost a single manner. (Forster 158)]
Like Chomsky — and the Port-Royal grammarians in the seventeenth
century — Herder thus even assumes that all languages are based on a
universal grammar. This quasi-Chomskyan conclusion (which nevertheless
rests upon sympathy for the cultural and linguistic diversity of nations)
should really suffice to refute the tenacious prejudice that Herder was the
11
inventor of linguistic — or another — nationalism.
IV. Ideen
Many years later, in his more elaborate work on universal history, Ideen
zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas on the Philosophy of
the History of Humankind, 1784–91), Herder resumes the conception of
language of his prior works, taking up as well the project of a complete
description of the languages of the world, which he calls “philosophische
Vergleichung der Sprachen” (philosophical comparison of languages; FA

6:353). He now seems to moderate that Promethean gesture of the Ab-
handlung that man himself, endowed with Besonnenheit, creates language,
“invents” language — the presupposition of the “enlightened” Prussian
Academy. Echoing perhaps Hamann’s more pious conception of lan-
guage, Herder now calls language a “Wunder einer göttlichen Ein-
setzung” (miracle of a divine establishment; FA 6:346) and “das größeste
[Wunder] der Erdeschöpfung” (the greatest miracle of earthly creation;
FA 6:346). But whether he sees language as a “miracle” or only as the
12
action of the first human being, the core of his conception of language
remains the same: language is the creation of thought, in a synthesis of
voice, hearing, and intelligent disposition: “Sprache ist der Charakter
unsrer Vernunft” (Language is the character of our reason; FA 6:348). In
other words, human rationality is necessarily linguistic. Therefore, Herder
wrote, “eine reine Vernunft ohne Sprache ist auf Erden ein utopisches
Land” (a pure reason without language is a utopian country on earth;
347). He would later elaborate this issue in his most ambitious philosoph-
ical work, the Metakritik.
However, in the Ideen, which is the sum of Herder’s anthropological
work, the philosophical critique is not the main intention. Therefore,
Herder stresses the contribution of language studies to the anthropo-
logical study of mankind. He again takes up his early idea of a Semiotik, a
study of all human languages as “treasures of thoughts.” And he outlines
a whole range of linguistic studies that are very similar to Humboldt’s
13
comparative study of languages of 1820. Herder conceives four kinds of
linguistic investigation: first, the aforementioned philosophical compari-
son of languages, which should yield an “allgemeine Physiognomik der Völ-
ker aus ihren Sprachen” (general physiognomy of the peoples according to
their languages; FA 6:354). Herder knew by this time that the “Genius
eines Volkes” (genius of a people) in its language is not only revealed by
the lexicon, but also by the sounds and the grammar, or what he calls
“der Bau der Sprache,” the structure of the language (FA 6:353). The
other three kinds of linguistic investigation are the “Geschichte der Sprache
einiger einzelnen Völker” (history of the language of some individual
peoples; FA 1:354), a “Gegeneinanderstellung verschiedner kultivierter
Sprachen” (comparison of different cultivated languages), and a study of
writing as the means of erudition (“gelehrte Bildung”; Ideen, FA 6:355).
V. Metakritik
Toward the end of his life Herder returned to the heart of his linguistic
theory (and hence to the center of his philosophy), which he only touched
upon in the Ideen: to his conviction of the identity of language and rea-
son, that “eine reine Vernunft ohne Sprache ist auf Erden ein utopisches
Land” (Ideen, FA 6:347). In a kind of suicidal act, Herder, driven by his
passion for language revolted against what seemed to many at the time to
be the ultimate truth, against the philosophy of Kant, the Giant of
Königsberg, and thus seemingly against philosophy itself. Philosophy has
never forgiven him this gesture; there has always been a kind of philo-
sophical ostracism of Herder since that heretical lapse. Yet in this coura-
geous act, the depth of his linguistic passion came to the fore. He could not
help it: he had to write a “metacritique” of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason,
which he titled Eine Metakritik zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1799).
Herder was the only important thinker of his time who dared such
open opposition to Kant’s chief work. Kant’s philosophy had an over-
whelming, sweeping effect on the German mind: “Alleszermalmer” —
omnidestructor — is the praising epithet with which readers hailed Kant.
And here was Herder, Kant’s own student in Königsberg, daring to con-
tradict him. Herder had maintained a critical and creative distance to his
teacher’s philosophy from the beginning, and Kant’s utterly negative re-
14
views of Herder’s Ideen certainly did not bring Herder closer to him. By
1784, Herder’s friend Hamann had already outlined a short “Metakritik”
(published later, after Hamann’s death in 1788). It seems that Hamann’s
treatise influenced Herder to eventually attack Kant’s philosophy directly.
In attacking and deconstructing the Critique, he attacked Germany’s “Sec-
ond Bible,” and hence brought against him the whole intelligentsia, who
admired and celebrated Kant. He did this in a way partially reminiscent of
Leibniz’s method of dealing with Locke’s Essay, that is, through a com-
mentary that follows closely the structure of the book being criticized,
but in a very polemical and antagonistic vein rather than in Leibniz’s
irenic, dialogical approach.
What made Herder contradict Kant was language. The starting point
of his critique of the Critique is the non-existence of language in the
Kantian system. Herder places language where it belongs: in the very heart
of the Kantian theory of knowledge, that is, as synthesis of sensibility and
intellect. Already as a young man Herder had written:
Wir haben durch die Sprache denken gelernt: sie ist also ein Schatz
von Begriffen, die sinnlich klar an den Worten kleben, und vom ge-
meinen Verstande nie getrennet werden. (Fragmente 3, FA 1:423)
[We learned to think through language: it is therefore a treasury of
concepts that cling close and with sensual clarity to the words and are
never separated from common reason.]
Or, more simply: “Wir denken in der Sprache” (We think in language),
as Herder wrote in the early Fragmente (FA 1:558). This conviction would
remain the foundation of his later work. Hence, in the words of Herder’s
Metakritik: “Die menschliche Seele denkt mit Worten” (The human soul
thinks with words; FA 7:320). This message, of course, is not to the liking
of philosophers, because it says: there is no such thing as pure reason,
reason comes as language, logos is language.
From that simple but deep conviction Herder goes on to show that
there are no “pure” forms of intuition or of the intellect: space and time
are not a priori forms of intuition but depend upon experiences of the
body: space comes first, then time is structured analogously. The same is
true for the “pure” forms of understanding, the categories, which are ac-
cording to Herder not a priori but depend upon language. Nearly two cen-
turies later, the French linguist Émile Benveniste would show how deeply
the presumably universal Kantian, that is, Aristotelian categories depend up-
15
on the Greek language.
Herder opposes both Kant’s transcendental aesthetics and his tran-
scendental logic with a sensualistic — explicitly pre-critical — philosophy
that finds the roots of human thought in the body and hence ascends
from physical sensations to more abstract ideas, thus grounding the most
general categories of the human mind in Erfahrung, or experience. Erfah-
rung is the basic term of Herder’s philosophy, and language is intimately
linked to it. The two parts of his Metakritik are titled Verstand und Erfah-
rung (Understanding and Experience) and Vernunft und Sprache (Reason
and Language). Herder brings the second term in each of the binary pairs
— experience and language, Erfahrung and Sprache — into opposition
with Kant’s main philosophical concepts, Verstand and Vernunft. As far as
language is concerned, Herder uses the critical axioms he had developed
in the Abhandlung: thought is inner speech, through which marks of the
perceived reality articulate themselves; speech then is an exterior realiza-
tion of inner speech, which is thought:
Was heißt Denken? Innerlich Sprechen, d.i. die innegewordnen Merk-
male sich selbst aussprechen; sprechen heißt laut denken. (Metakritik,
FA 7:389)
[What is it that we call thought? Inner speech, i.e. to articulate the in-
ternalized mark to oneself; to speak is to think aloud.]
There is no thought beyond experience and there is no thought be-
yond language. Herder makes his linguistico-empiricist alternative par-
ticularly clear in the deconstruction of Kant’s chapter on “schematism”
(Metakritik, FA 8:413–29). In this part of the Critique of Pure Reason,
Kant describes how intuition and intellect — the two stems of the human
mind — work together to create a concept by creating a “schema”:
Diese vermittelnde Vorstellung muß rein (ohne alles Empirische) und

doch einerseits intellektuell, andererseits sinnlich sein. Eine solche ist
das transzendentale Schema. (KrV: A 138)
[This mediating representation must be pure (without anything em-
pirical) and yet intellectual on the one hand and sensible on the other.
16
Such a representation is the transcendental schema. ]
Herder harshly criticizes this Kantian schematism as a kind of spectral
ghost that wanders around with no particular form. It is precisely here,
according to Herder, where language comes in. Instead of Kant’s spectral
schemata, the human mind creates words, giving thus distinctiveness to his
sensuous representations. Linguistic articulation is Herder’s alternative to
Kant’s schematism:
So typisiert der Verstand, und so ward [. . .] aus Verbindung zweier
dem Schein nach einander entgegengesetzter, einander aber unent-
behrlicher Sinne, unter der Leitung des Verstandes — Sprache. [. . .]
Und zwar eine Sprache durch Artikulation. Artikulationen der Sprache
wurden dem Menschen, der sich vermittelst Auge und Ohr im Besitz
so vieler innern lebendigen Typen fand, gleichsam Notgedrungen ein
Abbild derselben. (Metakritik, FA 8:419–20)
[In this way reason typifies, and thus there arose . . . out of the con-
nection of two apparently opposing but mutually indispensable senses,
under the direction of reason — language. . . . And indeed a language
of articulation. Articulations of language became for the human be-
ing, who by way of eye and ear found himself in possession of so many
inner living types, so to speak by necessity a reflection of them.]
It has often been observed that in the chapter on schematism, Kant has a
certain intuition of what the contribution of language to human knowl-
edge might be. He refrains, however, from attributing the schematic syn-
thesis of intellect and intuition to language. And he is right in doing so,
because this would have meant the intrusion of historical and particular
thought — the semantics of particular languages — into the heart of his
universalist conception of thought. This is precisely the effect of Herder’s
metacritical operation: to introduce language into the transcendental sche-
matism means to introduce history and culture — and contingency — in-
to that universal operation. Language comes as a particular language — and
hence as languages. But, as Herder had already shown — in a typically
Leibnizian manner — in the Fragmente (FA 1:423–24), this is not neces-
sarily a relativistic destruction of universal concepts. According to Herder,
concepts, even if they are created first in the particular semantics of a par-
ticular language, can become universal by the process of abstraction and
by a universal movement of philosophical and scientific advancement.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Wilhelm von Humboldt

would translate the “ghostly” Kantian schematism into the synthetical unit
of concept and sound in the word. Without Herder’s polemical negativity,
Humboldt would add his linguistic perspective to the Kantian theory of
knowledge. This had the same effect as Herder’s attack: it introduced his-
tory, culture, and individuality — the particular semantics of particular lan-
guages — into the transcendental process, which, therefore, ceased to be
transcendental. But, of course, this happened a whole generation later,
after Hegel’s historicization of reason. Hegel and Humboldt built on Her-
der’s anthropological insights, which the immediate contemporaries and
followers of Kant could not accept.
Herder did not win the metacritical battle, at least not immediately.
His Kantian opponents parried his attack very effectively, mainly by silen-
cing it. But if we consider what Humboldt later did to pure reason (nearly
the same as Herder, but calmly, en passant, not as a “critique” but as an
“addition” to Kant’s philosophy), what Nietzsche teaches us about the lin-
guistic roots of reason, what analytical philosophy would later deal with
(namely the semantics of natural language as a cognitive obstacle to scien-
tific truth), if we take into account Wittgenstein’s proliferation of language
17
games and Heidegger’s linguistic house of being, Herder’s Metakritik —
at least the gist of it — was not on the wrong philosophical road, in the
long run: “Die menschliche Seele denkt mit Worten.” The human mind
thinks with words.
Notes
1
See Jürgen Trabant, Vico’s New Science of Ancient Signs: A Study of Sematology
(London/New York: Routledge, 2004).
2
Du Bellay, La deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse (1549), ed. Henri
Chamard (Paris: Fontemoing, 1904), 87–88.
3
Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain (1765), ed. Jacques Brun-
schwig (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1966), 290, 293.
4
Translation from Johann Gottfried Herder, Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans.
Michael N. Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002), 50. In the following I
adopt Forster’s translations for quotations from the Fragments and the Treatise on
the Origin on Language, citing them as Forster plus page number.
5
E.g. in David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1987), 7.
6
Cordula Neis has studied the responses of all participants to the competition in her
Anthropologie im Sprachdenken des 18. Jahrhunderts: Die Berliner Preisfrage nach
dem Ursprung der Sprache (1771) (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2003).
7
Noam Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist
Thought (New York, London: Harper and Row, 1966).
8
See Trabant, “Inner Bleating. Cognition and Communication in the Language
Origin Discussion,” Herder Jahrbuch 2000 (Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 2000),
1–19.
9
Wilhelm von Humboldt, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 7, ed. Albert Leitzmann et al.
(Berlin: Behr, 1903–36), 51.
10
See Noam Chomsky, New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge UP, 2000).
11
See the essays by Zammito, Menges, and Bohm in this volume.
12
On this problem see Wolfgang Pross, Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke, vol. 3/2
(Munich: Hanser, 2002), 273, and Ulrich Gaier, Herders Sprachphilosophie und
Erkenntniskritik (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1988), 170–72.
13
See Humboldt, “Über das vergleichende Sprachstudium,” 4:1–34.
14
See Hans Adler, “Ästhetische und anästhetische Wissenschaft. Kants Herder-Kritik
als Dokument moderner Paradigmenkonkurrenz,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für
Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 68 (1994): 65–76.
15
See Émile Benveniste, “Catégories de pensée et catégories de langue,” in Prob-
lèmes de linguistique générale, 63–74 (1958; reprint, Paris: Gallimard, 1966).
16
Quoted after: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. Paul Guyer
and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000), 272.
17
See Jürgen Trabant, Mithridates im Paradies: Kleine Geschichte des Sprachdenkens
(Munich: Beck, 2003).
6: Herder’s Aesthetics and Poetics
Stefan Greif
H ERDER’S IMPORTANCE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT of thinking in the field

of aesthetics and poetics has always been recognized, but it has been
difficult to define the nature and extent of his contributions. They came
during a crucial time of evolution leading into what is generally termed as
European Romanticism. It seems to be necessary to define more precisely
where exactly to locate Herder in this momentous shift of worldviews. In the
second half of the eighteenth century, aesthetics established itself as a
discipline of philosophy. In contrast to earlier rule-based poetics, the ques-
tion of the nature of art now came into the foreground of scientific interest.
In general terms, philosophers now granted a wider-reaching meaning to the
senses and their influence on the rational perception of truth. Although the
early humanists had understood the human being as purely rational, the
senses were now no longer suspected of undermining the logical or discur-
sive perception of the world through a diversity of perspectives. This epis-
temological revaluation was, however, not without contradictions. To be
sure, philosophers now recognized sensory perception, on the one hand, for
its contributions to the discovery of eternal truths; but, on the other hand,
this contribution amounted to no more than furnishing the higher cognitive
powers with rationally pre-selected information. In Enlightenment discourse
the senses were equated in this respect with a rational interface between a
causal explanation of nature and empirical reality. The fact that the human
being experiences his surrounding reality in more than a merely reflective
manner was not taken into consideration in the aesthetic and anthropo-
logical discourse of the Enlightenment. This also includes the “trivial” fact
that everyday life abounds in unforeseen and irrational occurrences. It is
significant that in order to exclude these potential irregularities of existence,
the aesthetic theory of the eighteenth century based itself only on the
“hellsichtige” (clairvoyant) eye. In contrast to the “dumpferen” (duller)
powers of sensation, the eye was given the task of providing reason with pre-
objective images of reality. The human being, who is constantly threatened
by other sensations, is accordingly obligated to mistrust his lower organs of
perception.
142 ♦ STEFAN GREIF
At the end of the eighteenth century, anyone who expressed serious

doubts about this aesthetics — based as it was on epistemology and a theory
of perception — found himself outside the boundaries of Enlightenment
philosophy. It is still puzzling that Herder’s name was usually not mentioned
in contemporary treatises dealing with the history of modern aesthetics, for it
was Herder who, in a consistently modern fashion, distinguished between
aesthetic theory and aesthetic thinking and who invoked the experience of
contingency that the sensual human being is constantly faced with. He also
was reluctant to embrace a self-contained system of art, whose narrow genre
boundaries and aesthetic norms contributed decisively, according to him, to
the development of an art that addressed the whole human being and thus
also the senses. Consequently, Herder opposed any attempt to standardize
the cultural sphere: on the one hand, he regarded aesthetic thinking as a free
realm that makes it possible to challenge the laws of logic as arbitrary, and
on the other hand, he viewed it as a medium for criticism of the Enlighten-
ment and of science. This is the context within which his deliberations on
the mold-breaking creative powers of a genius such as Shakespeare, which
put a lasting stamp on the Sturm and Drang, must be seen. Herder’s re-
search on the folk song, which enjoyed great international prestige in the last
quarter of the eighteenth century, and his translations of European and
oriental authors presaged a modern concept of literature that was not guided
by a national canon or by “objective” expectations of beauty. The fact that
Herder sometimes contradicted himself in order to open up a modern
discourse on aesthetics has to this day harmed his reputation. The fact that
his criticism of aesthetics and scientific systems stood in open conflict with
Goethe and Schiller’s postulates of aesthetic autonomy has also been held
against him. Goethe and Schiller themselves, the “national poets,” viewed
his criticism with some disdain. But with the aid of historical hindsight, the
lack of a meaningful debate about his open and more widely conceived
understanding of art shows how his criticism of the period’s self-contained
and culturally elevated works of art exposed that normative view of art as
premodern.
Herder’s distinction between aesthetic theory and aesthetic thinking is
based on two central assumptions that inform all his works and are seminal
not only for his skepticism regarding theory but also for his urbane under-
standing of poetics. Both of these assumptions are closely related to his
philosophy of history and his anthropology and can only be analyzed sepa-
rately from this conditional structure as an ideal. First, Herder assumes that
every human being is originally an artist, who with all his organs of per-
ception and with the aid of his free reason “erfindet” (invents) his own
image of reality. This sensual perception is close to nature but — and this is
Herder’s second point — is gradually lost in the course of the civilization
process. The accumulation of knowledge, technological progress, and aes-
HERDER’S AESTHETICS AND POETICS ♦ 143
thetic differentiation within the various art forms not only shows the gradual
advancement of different cultures. It also demonstrates the degree to which
natural perception and an increasingly conformist worldview will drift apart.
Starting from these two suppositions, Herder develops for both the artist
and the recipient of art new possibilities for an individually active and critical
encounter with reality and the work of art. According to Herder, art, which
owes its existence to aesthetic thinking, achieves what the Enlightenment
and science failed to achieve: it enriches life with aesthetic possibilities and
contributes in the long run to the overcoming of a view of the world that at-
tributes all changes to one mechanical cause.
Herder justifies these premises regarding perception theory and the re-
sulting critique of civilization in detail in various writings, which can be
characterized as contributions to an aesthetics of aesthetic thinking. In his
works Kritische Wälder, Plastik, and Kalligone Herder differentiates between
aisthetic perception and aesthetic reflection. In contrast to the ancient use of
the concept, Herder uses aisthesis to signify the medial and ontological dif-
ference between the perceiving human being and the perceived object. The
two terms therefore cannot be equated because the senses aesthetically shape
the object of perception already during the act of perceiving. For example,
when a human being perceives on a sensual level a difference between some-
thing pleasant and something disgusting, and these are immediately imbued
in the memory with “Merkmale” (characteristic features), the foundational
impulses of perception are made aesthetically fruitful for the individual’s
apprehension of the world. Similarly to how it occurs in the acquisition of
speech, the sense data of the various organs must be coordinated with each
other:
das Gesicht ist so helle und überglänzend, es liefert eine solche Menge
von Merkmalen, daß die Seele unter der Mannigfaltigkeit erliegt und
etwa eins nur so schwach absondern kann, daß die Wiedererkennbarkeit
daran schwer wird. Das Gehör ist in der Mitte. Alle ineinanderfallende
dunkle Merkmale des Gefühls läßts liegen! Alle zu feinen Merkmale des
Gesichts auch! Aber da reißt sich vom betasteten, betrachteten Objekt
ein Ton los? In den sammlen sich die Merkmale jener beiden Sinne —
der wird Merkwort! (US, FA 1:58–59)
[the sense of sight is so bright and resplendent, it delivers such a mul-
titude of perceptions that the soul falls prey to this variegatedness and can
only very imperfectly single one out, so that it is hard to recognize them
another time. The sense of hearing is central. It surpasses all the dark,
mixed-up perceptions of the sense of touch! All the overly fine per-
ceptions of the sense of sight also! But does a sound wrest itself free from
the touched, seen object? In that [sound] the perceptions of those two
senses are combined — it becomes a fixed concept!]
Due to this “Entschleunigung” (deceleration) of rushing sense data a

few impulses of meaning are filtered out of the crowd of stimuli. From them
the human being shapes, as it were, “multi-medial” inner worlds, which are
put together out of sense-specific individual experiences. Without these ais-
thetically perceived and aesthetically reflected “dream images,” the individual
would not be able to develop an aesthetic identity. For on the one hand, he
is put into a creatively vivid relationship with the surrounding reality and, on
the other hand, into a subjectively distanced one. In allusion to Plato’s
allegory of the cave, Herder compares such individuation of a sensually per-
ceivable reality with the situation of the human being who is suddenly ex-
posed to bright light and must now learn to actively open himself to such
strong “Sensationen” with aisthetic and aesthetic interest: “Die Gottheit hat
sie uns auf einer großen Lichttafel vorgemalt; wir reißen sie von dieser ab
und malen sie uns durch einen feinern, als den Pinsel der Lichtstrahlen in die
Seele.” This inner “Traum-Bild” (dream image), continues Herder, “ist bloß
ein Werk deines innern Sinnes, ein Kunstgemälde der Bemerkungskraft
deiner Seele” (BDF, FA:635; The Divine painted it for us on a great canvas
of light; we them from it and paint them with a brush that is finer than the
brush of light rays into our souls . . . [the dream image] is only a work of
1
your inner sense, a painting of the power of discernment of your soul).
These anthropological pre-deliberations signaled that Herder’s aesthetic
thinking conformed neither to the aesthetics of the Enlightenment nor to
the aesthetics of the German Idealists and Romantics. Herder did not accept
the supposition that art persuades through a disinterested pleasing (Kant),
nor did he wish to subscribe to the idea that art reflects only “intellectual
thoughts” (Schelling) or broadens one’s spiritual knowledge of nature
2
(Novalis). For Herder, aesthetic thinking in interaction with nature turns
out to be more complicated since objects of perception cannot be acquired
directly, but only through an aisthetic and aesthetic agency. As basic media
the senses create immaterial impulses, which the human being cannot escape.
Due to these fundamental differences that one senses in things, it is neces-
sary to develop an aisthetic sensibility toward objects that attract and those
that repulse: “Interesse ist quod mea interest, was mich angeht. Betrifft eine
Sache mich nicht, wie könnte ich an ihr Wohlgefallen finden?” (Kalligone,
FA 8:730; Interest is what interests me, what concerns me. If something
doesn’t concern me, how could I find pleasure in it?). Consequently, a work
of art that engages all the senses as well as the thinking of the recipient de-
mands a basic reaction, that is, to feel and to reflect on to what extent some-
thing that engages us has to do with the perceiving subject itself. Art that, in
contrast, no longer touches the physical human being and only sends intel-
lectual signals would, according to Herder, neither be able to arouse excite-
ment nor to set critical reflection in motion. Instead of creating interest in
the individual, it shows itself as conformist and doctrinaire.
Herder’s critical reservations against the art process of the eighteenth

century, during which the arts became more and more separated along lines
of genre and reception, increased while he occupied himself with supposed
“kleinen Formen” (small forms) such as the folk song or the fable. Using
these as an example, he expounds extensively that all nations and peoples are
artistically active. Since the various peoples develop different ideals of taste,
the imitation of ancient aesthetic forms, which had become fashionable in
Germany since Winckelmann, could hardly be justified, at least from an an-
thropological perspective. Proceeding, then, from this insight, Herder poses
the question to what extent long differentiated art forms can make a con-
tribution toward making “unser ganzes Leben” once again “eine Poetik”
(our entire lives . . . poetic; see BDF, FA 4:635). As can be seen in the fol-
lowing, Herder’s aesthetic thought can be read as a fundamental redirection
of art back to its original purpose. At the same time he frees art from its
obligation to imitate outmoded doctrines of taste and eternal truths. On the
other hand, he encouraged contemporary poets, painters, and musicians to
renounce the categories of rational thought. In this manner the “Wort-
krämereien” (empty verbiage) of a crude rationalism could again be enriched
by more vivid and powerful experiences.
Ars Contra Ratio

The consolidation phase of modern aesthetics begins with Alexander Baum-
garten’s Aesthetica, which were published in two volumes in 1750 and 1758.
In them Baumgarten developed an aesthetic concept that reclaimed sensual
perception for the construction of aesthetic theory and at the same time was
to conceive of the essence of all art as a “scientia cognitionis sensitivae.”
Philosophical aesthetics should furthermore offer concrete, practical advice.
Such aid would furnish artists with clear criteria for the creation of individual
works of art while taking into consideration the demands of relevant genres.
Moreover, it would give critics and connoisseurs a precise orientation to use
in discerning the relationship between the individual work and the specific
genre to which it belongs. In this double sense Baumgarten’s aesthetics
combined traditional aspects of artistry (techné) with the question concern-
ing the value of art in the process of the development of eternal truths
through a rational process.
Baumgarten justifies this important function of art within Enlighten-
ment epistemology by attributing to the human senses the ability to provide
the faculty of reason with logically prestructured information. Since it is not
the task of aesthetics to deal with all manner of empirical facts but rather
with the phenomenon of perfection (“perfectio phaenomenon”), it must
therefore be capable of differentiating, in the chaos of the external world,
between the potentially beautiful and the aesthetically inferior. The all-too-
easily confused human organs of perception are simply not up to the task.
Only after they have been schooled in aesthetic guidelines are they able to
satisfy epistemological demands. Significantly, Baumgarten did not speak of
aisthetic perception but instead introduced the idea of the capacity of the
human senses as an “ars pulcre cogitandi,” an art of beautiful thinking, which
proves its value in an always chaotic everyday life as soon as the truthful is
distinguished from the untruthful. For Baumgarten beauty is therefore not
experienced sensually or in the flesh. On the contrary, only an orientation
toward transcendental ideals is capable of bringing beauty into view, which
implicitly confirms Baumgarten’s sometimes more and sometimes less clearly
pronounced assumption that empirical reality can in no way be aesthetically
perfected. The revaluation of the senses in Baumgarten’s aesthetics, often
praised by historians of philosophy, must be seen in this ambivalence. Only
where the senses are capable of selecting the pleasurable through precise
criteria of differentiation do they perform a causal contribution to an en-
lightened apprehension of the world. If the senses remain captivated by the
fascinatingly chaotic aspect of the everyday, or by the attraction of the ran-
dom or the inconsistent, however, they pose a danger to the primacy of pure
3
reason for the Enlightenment. As his Königsberg lecture notes indicate,
Herder first learned of Baumgarten’s Aesthetica through Kant. Kant himself
critically analyzed Baumgarten’s “ars analogi rationi” and alluded more
strongly to the role played by the subject in the process of recognizing and
shaping true beauty. This recognition of the potential for shaping by the
individual artist did not go far enough for the young Herder. He had already
distanced himself from Baumgarten’s and Kant’s determination of the
essence of the beautiful, both in his Versuch über das Sein, which he wrote in
Königsberg, and in his submission for the 1774 essay contest of the Prussian
Academy, published in a later version in 1778 as Vom Erkennen und Emp-
finden der menschlichen Seele. He also energetically rejects their attempt to
4
trace aesthetic reception back to generalizing principles. Herder maintains
that on the level of subject theory strict Rationalism does not take
sufficiently into account the crowding presence of the empirically irrational
and individual: “Vor solchem Abgrunde dunkler Empfindungen, Kräfte und
Reize graut nun unsrer hellen und klaren Philosophie am meisten” (EE, FA
4:340; Our bright and clear philosophy dreads more than anything such an
5
abyss of dark feelings, powers, and stimuli). With this reference to a sub-
jectively undeceivable diversity of experience Herder positions himself as a
philosopher who enlightens the Enlightenment, who holds onto an anthro-
pologically grounded concept in a radically modern way and who counts the
imponderables of empirical life among the essential engines of artistic crea-
6
tion. Accordingly, he rejects universalistic constructs of the self as well as
binding paradigms of the beautiful. Because both cases have to do only with
arbitrarily created ideals, it is, as a countermove to art, incumbent upon the
aesthetic and “interessegeleiteten” (interest-directed) self to discover new

areas of experience. Aesthetic individuality is measured accordingly for Herder,
according to willingness not to appeal to specific points of view and exclusive
moral concepts.
Alongside the aesthetic relevance of a prerational apprehension of reality
there is also an ontological one, which Herder developed in the writings of
his student years. He illustrates this through examples of those individually
created “Bilder,” “Töne,” or “Gefühle” (images, tones, or feelings) that arise
during a sensually creative encounter with reality. Although Herder says that
language often has no name for them, they cannot be empirically avoided
(see EE, FA 4:349). When measured by these prenomistic experiences of
reality, a priori premises are predicated as much on a generalizing stylization
of humans as rational beings as on the equally crude assertion that language
discovers the laws of thinking irrespective of the empirical conditions of
being. Behind such abstractions stands the scientific interest in insisting on
the plausibility of generally accepted truths irrespective of the aisthetic
individual. But according to Herder, “[was] wir wissen, wissen wir nur aus
Analogie” (EE, FA 4:330; what we know, we know only through analogy),
and because this also holds true in the final analysis for scholarly principles
and anthropological universals, these truths cannot be proved. Truths then
become matters of faith. Formulaic proclamations about nature can be
successively traced back to humans, who think and perceive in terms of
analogies, who learn to think, as it were, under certain climatic and geo-
graphic conditions. Due to this radical questioning of discursive think-
ing, Herder is not able to accept the supposition that the human being
discovers, without conceptions, a transcendental and non-temporal world
order:
Innig wissen wir außer uns nichts: ohne Sinne wäre uns das Weltgebäude
ein zusammen geflochtner Knäuel dunkler Reize [. . .], die Seele spin-
net, weiß, erkennet nichts aus sich [. . .]. Aber das weiß sie [. . .], daß
sie nur das erkenne, was dieser Platz ihr zeige, daß es mit dem aus sich
selbst schöpfenden Spiegel des Universum, mit dem unendlichen Auf-
fluge ihrer positiven Kraft in allmächtiger Selbstheit nichts sei. (EE, FA
4:348, 354–55)
[Deep inside, we know nothing but ourselves: without our senses the
world would be a woven-together tangle of dark stimuli [. . .], the soul
hatches ideas, knows, recognizes nothing from itself [. . .]. But what it
does know [. . .] is that it can only recognize that which is shown to it,
that a self-creating mirror of the universe, an unending flight of its pos-
itive force in an almighty selfhood, is impossible.]
The explosive power of such ideas cannot be measured by the reservations
that Herder has against the self-image of Enlightenment rationalists. In their
circle any conclusion that was responsible, due to its crude faith in science,
for the age of light gradually losing its perspective, was viewed as scandalous.
Applied to Herder’s reading of the works of Baumgarten it becomes clear
why he had to reject the putative revaluation of the senses within the context
of scientific theories of the beautiful: because enlightened philosophers such
as Baumgarten merely exploit the senses as tools of reason, they punish the
human being to a certain extent with abiding blindness. Instead of making
the senses and with them the undisciplinable presence of everyday life a start-
ing point for their aesthetic ideas, they begin with the notion of a heretofore
Christian transfigured hereafter, which is now associated with eternal truths
in order to remind the worthless empirical human of his subjective and
aesthetic meaninglessness. Herder, the Spinozan enlightener and theologian
of the Enlightenment, was not content with such defamation.
Why the Enlightenment punished the individual with this eternal “Sin-
nenentzug” (sense deprivation) was shown later by Herder in his Vom Er-
kennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele and Journal meiner Reise. In
both works aesthetic rules are made responsible for the stagnation of the
native art process. Models of perception and technical requirements, which
are beholden to the awareness of higher truths, remove from the artist the
task of independently shaping sensual experiences and “dream images.”
Herder uses the example of language to spell out his critical reservations
about the system. As soon as it has been codified in grammars and diction-
aries, the individual can no longer “seine Sprache . . . [selbst] erfinden” (in-
vent his own language) and “jeden Begrif in jedem Wort so verstehen, als
wenn er sie erfunden hätte” (Journal, 140; understand every concept in
7
every word as if he had invented it). Inasmuch as language enables the indi-
vidual on the one hand to explain the world through communication and
frees him from the pressure of his appetites, on the other hand, it exerts
force on the individual as a binding “Technik” (technology). Carried over to
the relationship between the subject and aesthetic perception, this means
that enlightened aesthetics in the tradition of Baumgarten can only maintain
its claim on the true and the beautiful by replacing the artistically gifted
individual with an institutionally “entlastetes” (unburdened) and therefore
also unimaginative ego, which can no longer assert itself in the moment of
aesthetic conception.
Herder’s critique of abstract generalizations had a farther reaching im-
pact on the aesthetics of reception. His assumption that the individual as a
rule avoids anything disgusting may at first glance hardly differ from those
rules that Baumgarten imposes on the perfectible organs of perception.
Baumgarten’s pragmatic enlistment of the senses aims at an overrefinement
of natural taste, whereas according to Herder neither aisthetic nor aesthetic
existence can be reduced to a compulsion to avoid unpleasant experiences
without further ado. The fact that nature must be discovered and realized as
an inexhaustible power in all its forms is an argument against this. Without

the disgusting, the beautiful could hardly be grasped. While Baumgarten
proposes conferring on the senses the task of ignoring the “inferior” in favor
of a rationalistic perfectibility, Herder makes the aesthetic history of mankind
dependent on the constructive acquisition of a dynamic and multiform
substance:
In einem verständig-empfindenden Wesen ist kein Gefühl ohne Begriff,
das Ja und Nein keines Urteils ohne Gefühl der Konvenienz oder Dis-
konvenienz, mithin ohn’ einiges Gefühl des Angenehmen und Unange-
nehmen auch nur denkbar. [. . .] Was seine Phantasie in sich trägt, ist
eine Beute aller Sinne und Eindrücke, in einander gemischt und ver-
worren; was er aus ihnen herausdenkt, sind Konfigurationen. Immer ist
er, gut oder schlecht, ein Künstler. (Kalligone, FA 8:734, 752)
[In an intelligent, feeling being, no feeling is ever conceivable without a
concept, no judgment yes or no without a feeling of convenience or
inconvenience, or for that matter without its own feeling of agreeable-
ness or disagreeableness. [. . .] What his imagination holds is a bounty
of all the senses and impressions, mixed up with one another and con-
fused; what he conceives out of them are configurations. He is always,
for better or worse, an artist.]
In his writings on sculpture, but especially in his works on the folk song,
Herder further developed this foundation of his aesthetic thinking as well as
the focus on a global development of the arts. Since humans originally com-
municated their aesthetic impressions without plot-driven stories, stylistic
artifice, or rhetorical attempts at persuasion, basal art distinguished itself
through a high measure of spontaneity: “Der Naturmensch schildert, was
und wie er es sieht, lebendig, mächtig, ungeheuer; in der Unordnung oder
Ordnung, als er es sah und hörte, gibt ers wieder” (Kalligone, FA 8:780;
The natural man portrays what he sees and how he sees it, living, powerful,
monstrous; in the chaos or order in which he saw and heard it he gives it
back). Such striking descriptions invited every “disorderly” recipient to take
part in a free composition. Highly reflective and wholly unspontaneous works
of art are on the other hand limited in terms of their effects and in their
stringent plots. Together these factors interfere with the performative char-
acter of art in favor of precisely calculated effects.
From an historical perspective such pedagogical limitations would render
themselves obsolete in the near future according to Herder. Together with
an aesthetics of disinterested pleasure they belong to a stage of transition in
the global art process. This historical-philosophical relativism explains the
ridicule leveled by Herder in Kalligone at an enlightened philosophy of art.
Whether it reduces beauty to the level of edifying entertainment or replaces
human progress with an antique doctrine of taste, the rationalistic system of
the arts becomes antiquated when viewed from the perspective of a global
development of reason, as does anthropological reductionism, under which
the sensual human being degenerates to a rationally gifted but otherwise de-
pendent marionette:
Hinweg also jene falsche Prinzipien, zu denen man die Künste des
Schönen erniedrigt, “müßiges Spiel, Bedürfnis- und Lohnfreie Übung,
marktende Mitteilung in der Gesellschaft.” Ohne Bedürfnis und Ernst
ward keine Kunst [. . .]; ohne Bedürfnis und Zweck, mithin ohne
Nutzen ist kein Geschäft, geschweige eine echt-schöne Kunst, nur
denkbar. Je mehr die Vernunft der Menschen sich besinnet, desto mehr
müssen auch ihre Künste des Schönen vom Tändeln zum Ernst, vom
Zwecklosen zur Absicht zurückkehren. Offenbar arbeitet hierauf die
fortgehende Kultur der Menschheit. (Kalligone, FA 8:775)
[Away with these false principles, to which one lowers the arts of the
beautiful, “idle play, exercise without need or compensation, commercial
communication in society.” Without need or seriousness there would be
no art [. . .]; without need and purpose, therefore, without usefulness, no
activity, to say nothing of true aesthetic art, is conceivable. The more
human reason comes into its own, the more their arts, too, must turn
from mere play to seriousness, from purposeless to intention. Obviously
the evolving culture of mankind is at work here.]
This conception of the end of an artistically paralyzing epoch in the his-
tory of art connects with the setting of a new goal in the individual arts. As a
socio-cultural and historical corrective they hence have the obligation of
working toward a future in which mankind is realized in a more global and
urbane sense.
Herder shows us how this might look within the framework of a critical
literature in his last aesthetic project, the journal Adrastea. Here he honors
the scholarly successes of the eighteenth century with a fitting didactic poem.
But in retrospect Herder also shows the intellectual limitations of the new
technologies. For example, what had once been established as the “Coper-
nican turning point,” is unmasked in his portrayal as a vain hope, to which
only the pedantic pupils of great scholars hold fast. Herder’s relativizing of
the accomplishments of various scientific disciplines with the help of poetic
devices later brought him the charge of engaging in improper polemics.
However, by evaluating hard to understand research based on its aesthetic
presentability, Herder shows that art once again proves itself as a medium of
free thinking. Furthermore, if Adrastea was to assuage the growing feeling
of helplessness among laypeople, then the poetic “transfiguration” of sup-
posedly hard facts would have redeemed the most original purpose of art —
the communal and aesthetic appropriation of a previously foreign reality.
Imitation of “All Forces of the Soul”

Since Aristotle, mimesis has been understood as the imitation of “active indi-
viduals” and their behavior. This goal is reached when reality is reproduced
as exactly and genuinely as possible. Without this relationship to reality the
recipient would not be able to get a feeling for the world portrayed. With a
view to the public Aristotle also grants the artist that creative freedom with
proven themes and motifs is necessary if an artwork is to have aesthetically
intensive effect. Aristotle justifies these creative aspects of his ideas on imi-
tation by indicating that reality (energeia) can only be recognized through
analogies and that it demands imaginative and shaping qualities from the
artist. Without this artful use of various tools of composition the work of art
remains epistemically ineffective. Aristotle supports these findings by con-
sidering the possibilities of aesthetic origins of the senses within the context
of an energetic range of effects and evident intentions to persuade. Inherent
in the imitation of concrete reality is aisthetic energy, which must move the
consuming public to an intellectual certitude. Should a work of art lack such
an insight or a spontaneously convincing “certainty,” then it will not be pos-
sible, for instance, for the viewers of a tragedy to free themselves willfully
and consciously from pent-up emotions.
The aesthetic meaning of energetic and evident manifestness split the
theoretical aesthetic discourse of the eighteenth century. Thus Descartes
made aesthetic certainty dependent on its intellectual “clarity and distinct-
ness.” According to Leibniz, rational certitude results from the reflection of
various beliefs and experiences. In this tradition certainty is viewed as an
objectively intentional phenomenon of truth. Conversely, Locke traced cer-
tainty back to an intuitively intentional perspective to which all knowledge is
beholden. While Descartes and Leibniz saw certainty as belonging to the
essence of immediately convincing premises, Locke viewed it from the per-
spective of the perceiving subject, which reacts to obvious facts or abstract
characteristics with their intuitive penetration. Kant later abandoned this imi-
tation model and made the certainty of the beautiful and sublime no longer
dependent on certain themes and motifs. With this pluralization of artistic
subject matter the aesthetic importance of the senses in the process of the
assimilation of art again threatens to decrease. Clearly arguing against Baum-
garten, Kant used the example of beautiful and sublime subjects to explain
that due to their “metaphysical” manifestness they would, without sensual
mediation, lead the individual into an intellectual debate. Any attempt to
depict mimetically the transsensual effect of the beautiful would equate to a
cheap and above all “uncertain” copy of abstract ideals of beauty.
Herder distances himself from these “transcendental ideas” (Transzen-
dental-Ideen), which are based on “einer freiwilligen Lossagung von allen
Datis der Erfahrung” (Kalligone, FA 8:644; a voluntary renunciation of all
empirical data) with a concept of imitation according to which art imitates

“alle Seelenkräfte in uns” (781; all the psychic forces within us). Aesthetically
duplicated premises are replaced by an artistic reworking of intensive pro-
cesses of viewing, which bring forth either energetic or evident reactions in
the audience. Here it is not incumbent upon the artist to use works of art to
prepare for the observation of significant perspectives of nature or to docu-
ment the superiority of his abilities over the potential effectiveness of natural
objects of perception. By further deliberating the medial difference between
individual perception and empirical world, Herder is able to present art as a
medium that increases the aisthetic “interest” to a certain degree and in so
doing challenges the recipient to an active, formative encounter. Herder
demonstrates what he means in Kalligone by using various art forms as
examples. All of them are oriented toward nature as a “workshop,” which is
to be constituted aesthetically. Furthermore, all art forms make “das Gesche-
hene vor uns entstehen” (Kalligone, 761, 781; events arise before us). Stage-
craft, however, uses its advantage to appeal directly to the public’s organs of
sense. In this respect, music, theater, or dance act energetically upon the
public, and the deep feelings they leave behind have to be transformed, as it
were, into individual certainty. Paintings and literature conversely have an
intuitive effect, that is, their evident expressions must be translated back into
aisthetic signals: “Auch die Natur wirkt und schafft Werke; auch der Künstler
tut (Latin: facit, Greek: ποιέι). Bei allen vorübergehenden Künsten sind seine
Produkte Wirkungen (ενεργειαι), nicht Werke; dagegen, wo ein bleibendes
Werk (opus) sein Ziel ist, seine Energie solange unvollendet ist, als er wirket”
(Kalligone, 759–60; Nature too works and creates works; as does the artist.
All the products of the temporary arts are effects, not works; on the other
hand, where a lasting work is his goal, his energy is incomplete as long as he
is in the process of producing.) Imitation, for Herder, belongs then to the
most aesthetically effective means of placing the “whole individual” into the
center of aesthetic intentions. By appealing to the senses as well as to reason,
art promotes both an aisthetic and an aesthetic identity.
To what extent this doctrine of imitation squares with the goal of all art
and with the incarnation of all nations and cultures is answered by Herder in
the course of his preoccupation with Winckelmann’s and Kant’s aesthetics.
In spite of his deeply felt respect he reproaches the archivist for having rep-
resented in his Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke
(Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works, 1755) an exclusive system of
beauty but not having sufficiently considered the world history of art. This
criticism also applies implicitly to Kant, who in his Beobachtungen über das
Gefühl des Erhabenen und Schönen (Observations on the Feeling of the Sub-
lime and the Beautiful, 1764) offers tasteless and even racial arguments in
order to distinguish his notion of art from the “silly” conception of art of
other countries. Arguing against such hegemonic claims, Herder refers to a
historically relativizing aesthetic, as a consequence of which the art of all

parts of the world necessarily gets mired in the provincial. Measuring it
against nature as a “lebendige Wirkerin” (living effecter), Herder gives evi-
dence, which was not popular in his day, that no national preference of taste
had ever succeeded in raising itself above local limitations: “Eben nur unsre
Eingeschränktheit macht, daß wir menschliche von der Naturkunst unter-
scheiden [. . .]. Unsre Kunstwerke, tot in sich, sind nur für andre zu Zwecken
berechnet” (Kalligone, 760–61; Precisely our limited perspectives cause us to
differentiate between human art and the art of nature [. . .]. Our works of
art, dead in themselves, are only calculated for purposes of others).
Climatic and geographic influences on the “body of the nation,” how-
ever, play a role in Herder’s aesthetics that must not be underestimated.
Also, his call to promote “ursprünglichen Inhalt, eigen bearbeitete, eigne
Materien” (original content and one’s own material, processed by oneself) in
art and his warnings against “Nachlallung” (parroting) and “ausländischer
Nachäfferei” (foreign aping) seem to contradict his concept of mimesis (Alte
Volkslieder, FA 3:19). As will be shown in greater detail in the section on
Herder’s poetics, behind this skeptical appraisal there is, however, no hidden
concern about an overly foreign influence (Überfremdung) on culture. Rather,
reflection on cultural identity frees up the view of the actual purpose of all
artistic creation. For this reason Herder is able to hold the view that the un-
conditional stranglehold of antiquity on matters of taste is a hindrance to the
further development of the cultivation process:
die Natur selbst strebt dahin, allenthalben ihre Gesetze ernster zu
enthüllen, fruchtbarer zu offenbaren. Umsonst leben wir nicht jetzt und
heut. [. . .] Young gibt einen ähnlichen Rat, die Alten dadurch in ihrem
Sinne nachzuahmen, daß man sich von ihnen entfernt. Wer will, befolge
den Rat; er wird sich dadurch frei, verjüngt, Herr über seinen Geist, über
seine Feder und Zunge fühlen. (Kalligone, FA 8:651–52)
[nature itself strives in all ways to reveal her laws more earnestly, to make
them more fruitfully clear. It is not in vain that we live in the here and
now. [. . .] Young gives similar advice: to imitate the ancients in their own
way means to distance oneself from them. May he who wants to follow
that advice; it will make him feel free, rejuvenated, lord of his own mind,
his pen, and his tongue.]
Poetologically, Herder’s urbane theory of imitation does not take aim
against the art of antiquity itself. Without fundamentally challenging its en-
ergetic and evident effectiveness, he points out to its adepts that every strict
imitation darkens the view for a modern and responsibly humanistic art.
Myth and Genius

Herder’s concept of mimesis and his aisthetic epistemology flow into his pre-
occupation with art as the earliest form of explaining the world: “Daher die
ältesten, die Kosmogonischen Märchen aller Völker; sie waren Erklärungen der
Natur [. . .]. Wo man nicht wußte, dichtete man und erzählte” (Adrastea,
FA 10:256; Therefore the oldest, the cosmogonic myths of all peoples were
explanations of nature [. . .]. When one didn’t know, one composed poetry
8
and stories). These sensually appealing yet hardly differentiated attempts at
interpretation prefigure, like a pattern of images, all later systems and knowl-
edge of a developing culture. Within this context Herder also considers the
artistic genius. In the spirit of the Sturm und Drang he liberates the true
genius from all rules and definitions. A genius’s revolt against the causal laws
of logic and the categories of the beautiful should not be confused with
complete aesthetic license. Notable artists are distinguished according to
Herder by their ability to revitalize the climatically and materially condi-
tioned features of their own culture. Genius is demonstrated only where the
individual work of art unfailingly reports, in terms of content as well as form,
the earliest explanations of the world of a language community. Why this
demand does not limit the artist thematically or aesthetically is a question
Herder answers while at the same time discussing the question of scholarly
genius.
In his Briefwechsel über Ossian and in his Shakespeare essay of 1773
Herder declares for the first time that creativity expands cultural knowledge
primarily through the “Dimension der fiktiven Erfahrung” (dimension of fic-
9
titious experience). In contrast, regional experiences and early wisdom were
gathered in the form of Sprüche, sayings, which Herder considers to be a
literary genre, mostly in verse form, including epigrams, proverbs, and aphor-
isms, from which religion, drama, philosophy, and the laws of a culture were
later developed. However, one must not conclude that the historical loss of
artistic originality is due to the competition between these two explanations.
The earliest prophecies, as well as lyrical songs, in essence put their stamp on
their own cultures’ ways of understanding the world. And since such systems
need to be developed according to Herder’s organic concept of being, art
and scholarly knowledge (Wissenschaft) were established as two apparently
independent spheres of culture. In the ensuing period both distanced them-
selves more and more energetically from their mythopoetic origin in order to
find legitimacy in times characterized by the progress of the rule of reason.
Original geniuses such as Homer or Ossian, Shakespeare or Milton distin-
guished themselves by exposing such institutionalization as a deception and
by countering the “Universa” of their time with a world of “inniger Wahr-
heit” (intimate truth, Kalligone, FA 8:781–82). On the other hand, they did
not go so far as to express fundamental doubts about the manifestness of
such cultural differences. To be sure, such geniuses compensate for these dif-
ferences with their imitations, which relate to a long-polarized reality that
loses clarity in the course of this inner-cultural divisiveness.
Herder accounts for such “genial” corrections of discursive and aesthetic
knowledge with the readiness of homo ludens to consider himself, even in
moments of enthusiastic creation, in his historical responsibility as homo
faber. Without invoking their freewheeling power of imagination, artists of
genius make themselves very conscious of how much their fellow men are
bound up in the prejudices of their own times. Even their grandiose break-
ing of the rules, which is immanent in every single work of art, is dedicated
to the goal of all aesthetic “games.” In contrast, art that relies on clever ef-
fects, such as breaking rules or establishing itself as a hermetic enclave, squan-
ders its cosmopolitan mission:
Der Genius nämlich, der in seiner Art ein höherer Verstand ist, mit
Absicht gibt er zu sehen, was vor und außer ihm niemand sah; [. . .]
Sobald er spielt, indem er unterhält, um zu spielen, und spielt um zu
unterhalten, hat er, wie jener israelitische Herkules seine Locke verloren
[. . .], kein Schöpfer mehr, sondern ein Spieler. Wirkungen zeigen vom
Werk; also was die darstellend-erzählende Poesie nicht etwa nur um dem
Verstande‚ spielend Nahrung zu verschaffen [. . .], um allen Kräften und
Neigungen der menschlichen Natur Richtung zu geben, was sie hiezu für
Hülfe geleistet, zeigt die Geschichte der Menschheit. Indem sie
Begebenheiten als ein Ganzes umfassen, Charaktere zeichnen, Gesin-
nungen sprechen, in Wirkungen die Ursachen vorführen [. . .], gab sie,
wie Herodot erweiset, nicht nur der ältesten Geschichte Gestalt; sie schuf
die Geschichte [. . .]. Sie zwang die ausgelassene Phantasie unwissender
Menschen, die nirgend ein Ende findet, unter Gesetze, in Grenzen.
(Kalligone, FA 8:783–84)
[The genius, who in his way is a higher form of understanding, inten-
tionally makes visible what no one besides him and before him one saw;
. . . As soon as he plays, when he entertains in order to play and plays in
order to entertain, he has, like the Israelite Hercules, lost his locks [. . .],
no longer a creator, but a mere player. The effects prove what kind of
work it is; therefore what representational-narrative poesy has achieved,
not merely to give nourishment to the understanding through play [. . .],
but to give direction to all forces and inclinations of human nature, how
much it is aided in this endeavor is shown by the history of humankind.
As it embraces the events in their totality, portrays characters, lets con-
victions speak, demonstrates the causes through their effects, it did not
only give shape to the oldest history, as is proven by Herodotus, it
created this history [. . .]. It forced the exuberant imagination of un-
knowing human beings, which never finds an end, into laws, into
boundaries.
What Herder wishes from the natures of genius of his own time can be
explained from a cosmopolitan perspective as the courage to convey knowl-
edge as a demonstrative contingency and to make a central theme of every
example of progress as an instance of long-term history. In times of rational
artistic intentions and normative genre aesthetics it was possible for Herder
to consider an overturning of these fundamental rules. Motifs or peculiarities
of style that were archaic or had been considered inappropriate could be
targeted and employed in order to work out in vivid terms the apparent
contrast between rational severity and energetic “primitiveness.” It was also
possible to consider exotic subjects from foreign cultures, which could be
mixed at home with familiar motifs. With such superimposing of one thing
on another, Herder does not focus on theoretically deliberated strategies of
revolution, but instead demands in a thoroughly modern sense tactical prac-
tices that will irritate entrenched tastes in a lasting way.
Poetics
Whenever creativity presupposes purpose and imagination continually excites
to a liberating play with the logical premises of one’s own culture, the course
of literature shows a loss of natural poeticism as well as a gain of genre di-
versity, stylistic finesse, and symbolic expression. This insight places Herder
among the first philosophers of the eighteenth century who were occupied
with the relationship of a single work to its respective genre and the genre’s
historical development.
But how does it happen that original art differentiates itself into various
genres and that within literature numerous genres develop? One answer can
be found already in Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache (Treatise on
the Origin of Language, 1772), in which Herder assigns each of the human
senses its own medium — the eye the medium of light, the ear the medium
of sound, and the sense of touch the medium of tactile nerve sensation. On
this field of experience they train their ability to distinguish between pleasant
and less pleasant sense impulses. Over time, says Herder, the various art forms,
which to a large extent orient themselves on one of these senses, develop out
of these media: painting presupposes the eye, music the ear, and sculpture
10
the sense of touch. Literature, however, can not be assigned a medium.
Since it is by nature “transmedial,” poetry causes clear images to appear to
the inner eye, makes the voices of characters audible for the ear, and touches
the feelings of the soul. This multiform effect is aimed at because literature
profits from the “energy” of the art forms — from the memory of sounds,
optical stimuli, and touch sensations. Under their influence the reader con-
nects the individual words with corresponding sense experiences and forms
them into a unified sensual reading experience.
This special position of literature gives rise to the thought that poetry
presupposes the complete development of all the senses and hence developed
later than the other art forms. This holds true also for so-called high
literature and its various forms, for the development of normative poetics
and genres keeps pace with the systematic cataloging and specialization of
cultural knowledge. On the other hand, the “Urpoesie” or original, primal
poetry of a specific culture marks the origins of its arts. Herder explains this
theory biologically and linguistically: since the eye is a very fast organ of per-
ception, it can only process the many light sensations with great effort.
These crowded signals are weakened by the ear, which connects hearing sen-
sations with individual sight reflexes, in so doing depriving the eye to a
certain extent of sensual energy. From a linguistic point of view, the primal
poetry reminds us of the “Ursprache,” or primal language, with which hu-
mans in the earliest times reacted to “sounding” nature. As “Ausdrucke der
Leidenschaft” (expressions of passion) neither one shows any signs of the
organization of a later culture, its language, or its art. Nevertheless, they do
capture its “timbre” or original mood. But, says Herder in his treatise Die
Lyra, during the time when the human, still learning language, experiences
nature as shapeable “energy” and brings forth his first memorable phrases,
he intones as an intuitive artist his first song of thanks about this “fortwäh-
rende, wachsende Wirkung” (FA 8:129; continual, growing effect). Herder
also states in the same work that this earliest song of nature proclaims a
feeling of deep connection with a reality that invites aesthetically intense
exploration:
Der Geist des Weltalls erfand eine glückliche Organisation, in der sich
beide Sinne, beide Welten verbinden. Was sich beweget, tönt; was lebt,
beweget sich und verkündigt sein Dasein; so ward die Schöpfung für den
durch beide Sinne Empfindenden gleichsam ein lyrischer Hymnus. Man
gehe die ältesten Hymnen durch, die der menschliche Geist ersann, und
seine Brust ausströmte; sie sind Lobpreisungen der Natur, in welchem
Laub und Baum, Bach und Strom, Wind und Hauch, alle Elemente
tönen. Wer in wilden oder sanften Szenen des Jahres und Tages je diese
Symphonie der Natur empfand [. . .]; unwillkürlich vielleicht geriet er
selbst in diesen Strom des Wohllauts, des Zusammenklanges der Schöp-
fung [. . .]. (FA 8:119–20)
[The spirit of the universe invented a happy organization in which both
senses, both worlds are connected. What moves, makes sound; what lives,
moves and announces its existence; so creation becomes for those who
feel with both senses a lyrical hymn. If one goes through the oldest
hymns that the human spirit devised and that streamed out of his breast,
they are hymns in praise of nature, in which leaf and tree, brook and
stream, wind and breeze, all elements make sound. Whoever has ever felt
this symphony of nature in wild or tender scenes of years and days [. . .];
he falls perhaps involuntarily into this stream of pleasing sound, of har-
mony of creation [. . .].]
According to Herder, still writing in Die Lyra, these “Gedanken- und
Empfindungsweisen der Nationen, ihre Sprachen und Tonarten” (FA 8:125;
ways of thinking and feeling of nations, their languages and their tones) live
on for a long time in the later arts and genres. The more energetically the
alleged naiveté of such primal songs is rejected, the more decisively a culture
distances itself from a natural joie de vivre. Judged by this, the goal of the
Enlightenment to emancipate the human being from mythic dependencies
seems like a sad and tragicomical submission to doctrinaire rules and rigid
premises: “Alle unpolicirte Nationen sind singend [. . .]. Natur hat den
Menschen frei, lustig, singend gemacht: Kunst und Zunft macht ihn ein-
geschlossen, mißtrauisch, stumm” (Alte Volkslieder, FA 3:60; All nations not
bound by rigid bureaucracy are singing ones [. . .]. Nature made human
beings free, happy, and singing: art and the guilds make him closed off, mis-
trustful, mute).
Herder elucidates his sobering findings using the example of the ode. In
early cultures it has effect of a “Proteus among nations.” This comparison
with one of the many ancient Greek sea gods is not by accident, for Proteus,
like his relatives, possesses the gift of prophecy. But he is able to change his
shape at will, and since he likes to shirk his religious duties, he uses this abil-
ity to ridicule the devout zeal of believers. Transferring this to the ode, it
may be accepted that the form distinguished itself heretofore through its
worldly irregularity, through intellectual breaches and leaps in argument.
Like all natural folk arts the early ode is characterized further by studied
“inhomogeneous” contents and forms of expression, which leads the public
to an active participation more strongly than those pale, preachy odes of later
generations, which have long since withered into a dried out literary form
and which illustrate dry rules of conduct with pretentious artistry. Compared
with the primal “disorder” of the ode, the ode literature of the eighteenth
century for Herder proves to be in many ways a document of an enligh-
tened, disciplined, and disciplining view of art. Instead of provoking the kind
of encounter that involves the senses, its strictly normalized contents and a
fixed rhetoric keep the reader from dissolving the communicated moral
values into opposing fantasy images:
In der Folge wurde die Ode mehr objektiv, teils um neu zu sein, teils
weil sich das Gefühl verminderte, und durch die Phantasie ersetzt [. . .].
Unter uns verlor sie fast den Schein der Empfindung, die Einzelnheit des
Gegenstandes, und wurde eine moralische Predigt über einen allge-
meinen Satz; kaum so feurig, als das kalte Lehrgedicht [. . .]; wir zirkeln
uns kalte Plane nach Regeln ab, um künstlich trunken in ihnen zu
kindern. Auf die Naturdichter, folgten Kunstpoeten, und wissenschaft-

liche Reimer beschließen die Zahl. (Ode, FA 1:89)
[In consequence the ode became more objective, partly in order to be
new, partly because the feeling diminished and was replaced by imagina-
tion [. . .]. Among us it almost lost the appearance of emotion, the
individuality of the object, and became a moralistic sermon about a gen-
eral statement; barely as fiery as a cold didactic poem [. . .]; we draw up
cold plans according to rules, to play around in them like children, arti-
ficially intoxicated. The nature poets were followed by art poets, and
scientific rhymers were the end result.]
Fables, fairy tales, and legends met with a similar fate in the course of
the progress of civilization, according to Herder. Even the folk song, which
Herder had dealt with since the early 1770s, had threatened to sink into ob-
livion. Its close connection between text and music raised it to the level of an
anti-poetic guarantor after the appearance of Herder’s Briefwechsel über
Ossian und die Lieder alter Völker (Correspondence on Ossian and the Songs
of Ancient Peoples, 1773) and the preface to his collection Alte Volkslieder
(Ancient Folk songs, 1778). Again, drawing close to a text of an original
language, Herder discusses in both treatises that, similar to a child who does
not yet know how to distinguish between various sensations and therefore
reacts with strong emotions to highly energetic sense perceptions. Such
terms as “Einfalt, Rührung, Notdrang ans Herz, Akzente und lange Nach-
klänge für die innigbewegte Seele” (see Alte Volkslieder, FA 3:18; simplicity,
emotion, heart’s longing, accents and long reverberations for the inwardly
moved soul) largely characterize the folk song. Phylogenetically, folk songs
belong to an earlier era in which humans were not capable of reflecting prag-
matically on the information transmitted by the eye, the ear, or by the sense
of touch. Instead they expressed their “naked simplicity” and “innate merri-
ness” (3:68) in the form of songs, which brought them closer to their fellow
man through singing and dancing:
Es ist wohl nicht zu zweifeln, daß Poesie und insonderheit Lied im An-
fang ganz Volksartig d. i. leicht, einfach, aus Gegenständen und in der
Sprache der Menge, so wie der reichen und für alle fühlbaren Natur
gewesen. Gesang liebt Menge, die Zusammenstimmung vieler: er fodert
das Ohr des Hörers und Chorus der Stimmen und Gemüter. [. . .] alle
künstliche Verschränkungen und Wortlabyrinthe sind dem einfachen
Sänger fremde, er ist immer hörbar und daher immer verständlich: die
Bilder treten vors Auge, wie seine Silbertöne ins Ohr fließen [. . .].
(Volkslieder II, FA 3:230–31)
[It is not to be doubted that poesy and especially song in the beginning
were very folk-like, that is, light, simple, from objects and in the language
of the crowd, just as nature, rich and felt by all, was also. Song loves
crowds, the harmonizing of many: it requires the ear of the listener and
the chorus of voices and minds.[. . .] All artificial limitations and word
labyrinths are foreign to the simple singer, he is always audible and for
that reason always understandable: the images come before the eyes just
as his silvery tones flow into the ear.]
Herder’s use of the word “Volk” was grossly misunderstood in the twentieth
century. As Ulrich Gaier has shown, nationalistic readings intentionally
disregard the fact that Herder defines the word Volk as an “Ursprungs-
kategorie” (category of origin). Accordingly, Volk designates as all “Ge-
schöpfe, die noch näher an Natur sind, als Gelehrte” (PhBV, FA 3:866–67;
11
creatures that are closer to nature than scholars). Cultures that secure their
social cohesion with the aid of original songs are also understood as Volk
cultures. Third, the concept Volk refers, according to Herder, to the “Stif-
tung einer synchronen und einer diachronen Zusammenstimmung der Men-
schen mit und in ihrer anthropologischen Grundverfassung” (ibid., 880;
foundation of a synchronic and a diachronic harmony of people with and in
their basic anthropological condition). Where people and cultures are con-
scious of the fact that in comparison with other peoples they have developed
only a limited national aesthetic taste, there a folklore on a human level is
established. No cultural identities need be overcome for the realization of
this hope. A forward-looking perspective that teaches a view of humanity as
an ensemble of fruit-bearing differences inheres as what Ulrich Gaier calls a
“Zielkategorie” (goal category) in the concept Volk.
The kind of culture-political dynamic that the folk-song movement can
develop is shown not only by the positive reactions in the territorially splin-
tered Germany of the eighteenth century. Herder’s appeal to a communal
consciousness of humanity has had a lasting effect in numerous eastern
European countries that were consolidated into independent nations at the
end of the twentieth century. The question whether a return to the aesthetic
beginnings of one’s own culture can always do justice to the historical and
geographic “tone” of a nation plays a subordinate role as long as new identity-
creating works of art contribute to the global progress toward brotherhood
of all men. Using this as a premise, Herder does not order the collected and
translated folk songs according to national or Eurocentric points of view.
Alongside English and German examples there are Lithuanian, Mauritanian,
Greenlandian, and — at least he strives for this — American Indian songs.
Accordingly the collection documents no cultural qualitative differences. By
placing side by side what he held to be original in form and content, Herder
instead thinks that folk songs get along fine without aesthetic rules and
regulations. The derisive animosity that Herder uses to raise the folk song
above those aesthetic models must also be read in this enlightened and anti-
imperialistic sense. The admirers of an elitist classicism invoke the aesthetic
models, but Herder writes that “Der junge Lappländer, der statt der Venus
mit seinem Renntierlein spricht [malt eben die] Liebe siebenfach wahrer [. . .]
als der süßlichste Sapphopedant in der künstlich verschrobensten Odenchrie
nach allen Gesetzen” (Alte Volkslieder, FA 3:67; The young Lapp, who speaks
with his little reindeer instead of with Venus paints love seven times more
truthfully [. . .] than the sweetest Sappho pedant in the most artificially con-
voluted ode structure with all its rules).
Herder explains why the folk songs of antiquity do not serve as models
for an academically rigid industry of culture with reference to his theory of
imitation. It is not because of their age or their enthusiastic joy over a nature
blessed by an eternal sun, which is invoked here as a climatic argument against
the adoption of exotic themes and motifs. In contrast to the northern Euro-
pean and the American Indian songs, the ancient songs exert no influence on
German folk songs, because a systematizing scholarship long ago robbed them
of their purity and spontaneity. Beyond that, says Herder, the orientation
toward Greek art promotes a feeling of aesthetic inferiority and paralyzes the
artist’s readiness to make a contribution to the national, and thus also to the
long-term global development of a unified humanity:
Man hat von einem kleinen Erdstriche, den wir erleuchtet nennen,
Proben, Muster, Meisterstücke, Regeln des Geschmacks fast in allen Arten
der Literatur, Dichtkunst und Menschenbildung erhalten, denen man
mit Ausschließung alles andern folgt. Sehr gut! denn diese Erdstriche
waren würklich von feiner Bildung und sehr glücklicher Lage! Aber auch
nicht sehr gut! wenn man dumm folgt! [. . .] Nicht gut endlich! wenn
dabei Alles Nationale, woraus doch unsre Kraft und Natur besteht, so
ganz verwischt und verdämmet wird, daß jeder sich schämt, das zu sein,
was er ist: und kann doch nicht, was er nicht ist, werden [. . .]. (Alte
Volkslieder, FA 3:62–63)
[We have retained the samples, models, masterpieces, rules of taste of a
small stretch of the earth that we call enlightened in almost all kinds of
literature, poetic art, and human formation, and we follow them exclusive
of all others. Very well! for these stretches of the globe were really of fine
formation and very fortunate location! But also not very good! if one
follows stupidly! [. . .] Not good, finally! if everything national, which is
what our power and our nature consists of, after all, is so completely
obscured and damned, so that everyone is ashamed to be what he is: and
is at the same time not able to become what he is not [. . .].]
Herder’s rejection of a classicistic academicism had long made him an un-
popular figure among the Weimar intellectuals. Only when Goethe dealt
more intensively with the aesthetic significance of Latin didactic poetry and
with the translation of oriental and European poetry did he voice an opinion
in a more candid manner on the impulses that emanated from Herder’s work
on international folk literature, to which Hebrew poetry equally belonged
alongside El Cid or Greek fables. This also holds true for the bitterly con-
tested fight at the beginning of the nineteenth century over the authorship
of Homer, whom Herder introduced as an important folk poet in his Homer
und Ossian (1795) and in his treatise Homer, ein Günstling der Zeit (Homer,
a Favorite of the Ages, 1795). He contended that Homer, in his epics, was
the first to capture like a painter the sun-bathed “Sichtbarkeit” (visibility) of
the Mediterranean region. On the other hand, Ossian and Shakespeare
entice the reader’s senses musically with the “Nebelgestalten” (misty figures)
of the north: “aus dem leisen Hauch der Empfindung sind sie geschaffen,
und schlüpfen wie Lüfte vorüber” (Homer und Ossian, FA 8:79; they are
created out of the quiet breath of feeling and slip by like a breeze). The
Romantics would later consider similar ideas. But it would be a misunder-
standing of Herder if his broad concept of folk literature were read merely as
an effort to preserve artifacts of more ancient stages of culture for the
purposes of creating an enchanted present. Under certain circumstances
misconstrued national impulses can also emanate from archives, whose task it
is to preserve things worth knowing. On the other hand, literature can only
become poetry for the people when it moves them as a means of com-
munication for the senses and is able to provoke with aisthetic energy their
aesthetic self-consciousness within their specific cultural situation. For as
Herder says: “So viel ist immer gewiß, ein großer und der größte Teil unsres
Wesens ist sinnliche Existenz: also auch Beschäftigung der Sinne” (Alte
Volkslieder, FA 3:24; So much is certain: a large and the largest part of our
12
being is sensual existence — in other words: engagement of the senses). And
since the senses can only unfold in such media as the environment makes
available, the poetry of the senses challenges the regionally limited reader —
and after all, all real, material readers are so limited — to engage in a sensual
reading. According to Herder, if one compares the artistic undertone of
native works of art with the pictorial impressions of other peoples, it is
possible for a less aesthetically inhibited, more world-encompassing thinking
to develop. Behind this hope a radically modern philosopher is once again
expressing himself, according to whom the Enlightenment can do justice to
neither the sensual man nor to his primal joie de vivre. In order to pointedly
overcome this blind rationalism, which upon closer examination excludes
cultural diversity, Herder urges his contemporary authors to reconnect the
specialized fields of knowledge to a condition of lyrical closeness to nature:
Sollen Beschreibungen der Natur nur als schöne Dichtungen gelten,
deren Ausübung und Darstellung keine schöne Kunst wäre? Dafür hielt sie
die alte und älteste Welt; die ersten Gesetzgeber gingen von dieser
schönen Kunst aus, und die reifste Philosophie des Lebens wird zu ihr
zurückführen. Lebendiger Natur-Unterricht wird und muß einst unser
tote Schulunterricht werden [. . .], so wie jede erlangte Kunde fremder
Länder in tausend Winken uns mit Macht und Güte weiset. Die Kunst,
die aus Natur ward, kehrt zurück zur Natur, allenthalben sie nutzend, sie
verschönend. (Kalligone, FA 8:767).
[Should descriptions of nature only count as pretty fictions, whose prac-
tice and representation is no beautiful art? The ancient and most ancient
world counted them thus; the first lawgivers took this beautiful art as
their point of departure, and the most mature philosophy of life can be
traced back to them. Our dead school lessons will and must one day be-
come the living lessons of nature [. . .], just as the knowledge of foreign
lands increases our power and goodness in a thousand ways. The art that
comes from nature returns to nature, using it and embellishing it every-
where.]
Translated by Michael Swisher
Notes
1
The long-discussed question whether Herder’s aesthetics were developed from his
ideas about the sense of touch will not be considered here, since recent research in-
dicates that Herder uses the sense of touch in order to remind us of the consonance of
all human senses. See Stefan Greif, “‘. . . wie ein Engel in Licht gekleidet’ — Herders
Bild- und Beschreibungsästhetik im Kontext des späten 18. Jahrhunderts,” Monatshefte
95.2 (2003): 207–16.
2
See Schelling’s discourse Über das Verhältnis der bildenden Künste zu der Natur and
Novalis’s Die Christenheit oder Europa.
3
A polarizing reading of the Aesthetica, according to which Baumgarten is too one-
sidedly differentiated from Herder’s position, does not do it justice, and is oriented
more to Herder’s own discussion of the philosophical. It must be pointed out that
Baumgarten in many places in his treatise vaguely and indecisively deals with ques-
tions that point to Herder’s aesthetic thinking and also appears to shy away from
definite judgments in favor of an aesthetically reflected view. Herder sometimes chafed
against such views (the felix aestheticus comes to mind) and was thus led to develop
his own ideas.
4
See Marion Heinz, Sensualistischer Idealismus: Untersuchungen zur Erkenntnis-
theorie des jungen Herder (1763–1778) (Hamburg: Meiner, 1994) and Hans Dietrich
Irmscher, “Zur Ästhetik des jungen Herder,” in Johann Gottfried Herder 1774–1803,
ed. Gerhard Sauder (Hamburg: Meiner, 1987), 43–76.
5
See Hans Adler, Die Prägnanz des Dunklen: Gnoseologie, Ästhetik, Geschichtsphiloso-
phie bei Johann Gottfried Herder (Hamburg: Meiner, 1990).
6
It is not possible to do justice here to Herder’s radically modern thinking; one can
only briefly allude to it. Other literature on this topic, which however does not fur-
ther consider Herder, includes: Albrecht Wellmer, Zur Dialektik von Moderne und
Postmoderne: Vernunftkritik nach Adorno (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985) and
Gerhard Gamm, Flucht aus der Kategorie: Die Positivierung des Unbestimmten als
Ausgang aus der Moderne (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994).
7
Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769, ed. Katharina Mommsen (Stuttgart: Reclam,
1976).
8
Jürgen Brummack indicates that Herder did not view myth as an early stage of culture
but rather as “Modell menschlicher Erkenntnis überhaupt [. . .]. Denn alle Gegen-
standswahrnehmung kann, weil nach Maßgabe der beteiligten Sinne und nach der
Regel des im Mannigfaltigen Einheit stiftenden inneren Sinnes erfolgt, ein Dichten, ein
Bilderschaffen genannt werden” (a model of human cognition in general. . . . For all
recognition of objects can, because it occurs according to the measure of the senses that
are involved and according to the regulation of the inner sense, which creates out of the
manifold a unity, be called a poetizing, a creation of images). Johann Gottfried Herder
1744–1803, ed. Sauder, 251–67, 258.
9
Adler, Die Prägnanz des Dunklen, 145.
10
See Herder, Die Lyra, FA 9:118–27.
11
See Gaier’s comprehensive commentary in vol. 3 of the Frankfurt Herder edition.
12
See Hans Dietrich Irmscher, Johann Gottfried Herder (Stuttgart: Reclam 2001),
177ff.
7: Myth, Mythology, New Mythology
Ulrich Gaier
C ONTRARY TO THE WIDESPREAD prejudices that the eighteenth century,

being a period of rational enlightenment, was an “extremely barren
1
epoch for research in mythology” and that the call for New Mythology
toward the end of the century signaled an anti-rational criticism of en-
2
lightenment, myth plays a central role as early as in the works of Christian
Wolff (1679–1754) and Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–1762),
protagonists of German Enlightenment philosophy. They represent, to a
3
certain extent, the two traditions of the mythical mode of thinking, which
can be linked, respectively, to Plato (427–347 B.C.) and Aristotle (384–
322 B.C.). In addition to the epistemological, aesthetic, and anthropo-
logical aspects dealt with by these philosophers, we must also delve into
the historical and semiotic aspects unfolded, for instance, by Giambattista
Vico (1668–1744), William Warburton (1698–1779), and Etienne Bonnot
de Mably de Condillac (1714–1780). Herder, who was familiar with these
4
philosophers, synthesized and transformed their teachings into highly
powerful ideas — for instance, Volk, nation, and humanity — that strongly
influenced the following two centuries. This essay examines these three
traditions — Platonic, Aristotelian, and historical — one by one in order
to show how Herder makes use of them.
In the eighteenth century, the concept of myth did not have the
metaphysical and religious weight that some of the recent mythologists,
5
such as Kurt Hübner, envisage, nor was it the term laden with psycho-
analytic lore packed onto it by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), Carl Gustav
Jung (1875–1961), and others. For a long time, terminology followed the
Latin tradition in the same manner as the Greek gods appeared in their
Latin replicas. So, the term was not “Mythos,” or “myth,” but “Fabel,”
or “fable,” which not only referred to Aesopian apologues but, according
6
to Aristotle’s use of mythos in his Poetics, to literary subject matter in gen-
eral, so that the literary critic Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700–1766),
for instance, defined fable as an invention that the poet could use for an
7
apologue, a comedy, a tragedy, or an epic poem. Benjamin Hederich, on
the other hand, in his Gründliches mythologisches Lexikon, cites the Greek
8
term mythos but translates it as “Fabel,” fable. Whatever the terminology,
166 ♦ ULRICH GAIER
myth was decried by some philosophers and theologians as a random in-

vention and a lie, while, on the other hand, they used Aesopian fables for
didactic purposes, and Francis Bacon (1561–1626) held in De sapientia
veterum (On the Wisdom of the Ancients) that the whole wisdom of an-
tiquity was stored in mythology.
The integumentum (veil) theory of fable had defended the stories for
centuries against the reproach of fictitiousness, maintaining that they were
ingenious inventions and interesting, witty, sweet covers that gild the bitter
pills of truth. In a century that sought to theorize on and to teach inven-
tion, the inventive aspect of the fable caught the attention of philoso-
phers, critics, and pedagogues. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781),
in his Abhandlungen über die Fabel (Treatises on the Fable, 1759), de-
voted the final chapter to the use of fables in education. Ask the student
to invent new fables with the well-known cast of animal characters, he
says, and he will become a genius. As the century became more and more
meticulous about truth, probability, and assumption in the developing
sciences, it also discovered the heuristic value of hypothesis and conjec-
ture. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), in his second discourse On the
Origin of Inequality among Mankind, starts out explicitly from a conjec-
ture about the natural state of man, and says: “Let us begin by putting all
the facts aside because they do not touch the question.” His question is
not how inequality began in reality but whether it is anthropologically
essential; thus he forms “conjectures drawn solely from the nature of man
and the creatures who surround him, about what mankind could have be-
9
come, had it been left to itself.” But myth, too, has always been a conjec-
ture on unknown powers that cause things to be as they are and that
continue to influence the state of the world. Just as a scientific hypothesis
requires experiment in order to test its reliability, so does myth require
cult, prayer, sacrifice, and devotion to determine whether the god or
goddess to whom the prayer is directed is the correct one and will help in
a given situation. It is the proximity of scientific to mythical conjecture
that caused Johann Georg Hamann to call for a New Mythology on the
10
basis of scientific discoveries, and that, on the basis of a mythical conjec-
ture about nature always working according to the same laws, generated
hypotheses in new fields — for instance Herder’s dyadic psychology in his
essay Liebe und Selbstheit (Love and Selfhood, 1781–82; FA 4:405–24)
on the basis of Newton’s celestial mechanics. The eighteenth century thus
deals with various aspects of myth and fable, not as compensation for the
deficits caused by rationalism, but as an essential component of philo-
sophical discourse and scientific procedure.
MYTH, MYTHOLOGY, NEW MYTHOLOGY ♦ 167
The Platonic Tradition

Although Plato wanted the poets, with their fictitious and irreverent sto-
11
ries about the gods, to be banned from his ideal state, he himself made
use of myths in his dialogues. In Phaedrus, for instance, he invented the
myth of the two horses of the soul and their carriage being governed by
reason, the supercelestial field of truth and the dwellings of the gods, the
problem of taming the unruly horse, and the descent of the soul’s carriage
12
into a material body. This may be termed an allegory; the borders be-
tween myth and allegory, however, are fluid in Greek mythology. At the
end of Phaedrus, Plato tells the myth of the Egyptian god Theut and his in-
13
vention of script, over which the king prefers the spoken word. Phaedrus
calls the invention of script trivial but must admit its truth; in this dia-
logue, we find above all the theory of the divine mania or furor inspired
by the Muses. “Whoever without this mania of the Muses comes to the
entrance-hall of poetry and believes that he can become a poet by tech-
nical skill alone, does not have the blessing, and his artistic poetry will be
14
eclipsed by the verses of the inspired poet.” This mythical theory of poe-
tic inspiration is corroborated by the dialogue Ion where Socrates makes
fun of a reciter but is very serious about the origin and effect of poetry,
which he allegorizes as the Muses’ magnetic stone that fills the poet, the
reciter, and the public with enthusiasm one after the other like a chain of
iron rings.
For the true poets of old stories do not speak all those beautiful poems
through art but as enthusiasts and maniacs. [. . .] For the poet is a
weightless creature, winged and holy and not capable of singing until
he is inspired and without consciousness and reason. [. . .] We must
not doubt that these beautiful poems are not human or made by hu-
mans but are divine and created by gods, and that poets are nothing
but speakers of the gods, possessed each one by the divinity who pos-
15
sesses him at a given moment.
This poetics of inspiration accounts for a tradition that revered in the
poet a second god or “a second maker under god” as Julius Caesar Scaliger
(1484–1558) or Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713)
taught, respectively, and that saw in the poem a second world or inversely
a poem in the world, as Baumgarten did. Myth and the lore of mythol-
ogy, in this tradition, are divinely inspired, and this accounts for the in-
delible fascination and power exerted by some myths over thousands of
years — Oedipus, Amphitryon, Prometheus and others — a power and fas-
cination that causes them to be told and retold in many literary forms and
variations. Herder followed his friend and teacher Johann Georg Hamann
(1730–1788) in the conviction that poetry is the mother tongue of man-
16
kind, but he was convinced that the history of civilization had dried up
this original faculty and that prose is our modern mode of thinking and
expression (“Dithyrambische Rhapsodie,” FA 1:31). In his early treatise Von
der Ode (On Ode), he describes two stages of archaic mythological poetry:
Die Oden der Hebräer sind Hymnen; da ihre Auge und Ohr, oder we-
nigstens ihre Einbildungskraft voll war von Wundern der Götter: von
Wundern, die gemeiniglich auf den Wagen der Cherubim, und den
Fittigen der Winde fuhren [. . .]. Ihren Gesängen war das Geist, was
unsern ein toter Buchstab des Gedächtnisses, oder einer veräußerten
Phantasie sein muß. [. . .] Die Mythologie [. . .] bleibt ein Schatz der
Dichtungskraft bei den Erfindern, über den wir erstaunen, wenn der
Grund jeder mythologischen Feier im Staube seiner Geburt erscheinen
sollte. Die Himmelsstürmerei war vielleicht ein kleiner Sieg des
Königes Zevs wider eine Bande großer Räuberknechte: und die gött-
lichen Herkulestaten, die einen Pindar weckten, Verrichtungen eines
kühnen Bauerkerls. Aus diesen Kleinigkeiten eine poetische Welt zu
schaffen, wurde gewiß ein griechisches Dichtungsvermögen erfodert.
(Ode, FA 1:83–84)
[The odes of the Hebrews are hymns; because their eyes and ears or at
least their powers of imagination were full of the miracles of the gods:
of miracles that commonly rode on the wagons of the cherubs and on
the wings of the wind [. . .]. Spirit was to their songs as the dead letter
of memory is to ours or what the expressions of fantasy must be. [. . .]
Mythology [. . .] remains a treasure of poetic power for its inventors,
over which we are astonished when the basis of that mythological cele-
bration appears from the dust of its birth. The assault on heaven was
perhaps a small victory of the King Zeus against a band of great robber-
vassals: and the divine deeds of Hercules, which aroused a Pindar,
were the actions of a daring peasant. To create a poetic world out of
these trivialities certainly required the poetic ability of the Greeks.]
This is the argument from Plato’s Ion where Socrates says that in the
state of enthusiastic rapture, poets drink milk and honey from the rivers but
not when they are conscious of themselves. Imagination, fired by enthusi-
asm, produces myths that are not invented but inspired. That is why they
convey the poetic strength of an imagination near to the origins of man-
kind. Herder observes also that the formation of language and mythology
are one single process:
Indem der Mensch aber alles auf sich bezog: indem alles mit ihm zu
sprechen schien, und würklich für oder gegen ihn handelte: indem er
also mit oder dagegen Teil nahm, liebte oder haßte, und sich alles
menschlich vorstellte; alle diese Spuren der Menschlichkeit druckten
sich auch in die ersten Namen [. . .] — ihre ganze Mythologie liegt in
den Fundgruben, den Verbis und Nominibus der alten Sprachen und
das älteste Wörterbuch war so ein tönendes Pantheon, ein Versamm-
lungssaal beider Geschlechter, als den Sinnen des ersten Erfinders die
Natur. Hier ist die Sprache jener alten Wilden ein Studium in den
Irrgängen menschlicher Phantasie und Leidenschaften, wie ihre
Mythologie. (US, FA 1:738)
[In that the human being related everything to himself, however; in
that everything seemed to speak to him and to act either for or against
him; in that he thus took sides for or against, loved or hated, and
imagined everything to be human; all these traces of humanity ex-
pressed themselves also in the first names [. . .] — their entire myth-
ology lies in the treasure-house, the verbs and nouns of the ancient
languages, and the oldest dictionary was such a resounding pantheon,
a gathering-hall of both sexes, as nature to the senses of the first in-
ventors of language. Here the language of those ancient primitives is a
course of study in the labyrinths of human fantasy and passions, like
their mythology.]
For Herder, as he wrote in his essay Über den Fleiß in mehreren ge-
lehrten Sprachen (On Diligence in Several Learned Languages, 1764), each
language — and accordingly each mythology — is intimately linked to the
character of the nation where this language is spoken (FA 1:23). The
mother tongue lays the foundations of our cognition of the world, of our
sensibility and reasoning, because language and mode of thinking are inti-
mately linked (ibid., FA 1:27). At the basis of this process of the for-
mation of language, thought, and mythology is the Volk, the people, in
Herder’s use of the word the mass of simple men and women who are not
deformed by civilization:
Eine Sprache in ihrer Kindheit? Man nenne dies Zeitalter, wie man
wolle, es bleibt ein Zustand der rohen Natur. Natur war damals noch
alles: Kunst, Wissenschaft — Schriftsteller, Weltweisen, Sprachkünstler
gab es noch nicht: alles war Volk, das sich seine Sprache bildete — zur
2
Notdurft, und denn allmählig zur Bequemlichkeit. (F1 , FA 1:609)
[A language in its childhood? Whatever one might call this era, it re-
mains a condition of raw nature. Nature was at that time still every-
thing: art, science — writers, philosophers, stylists did not yet exist:
everything was the Volk, which developed its language — according to
need, and then gradually according to comfort.]
Original mankind (which he always referred to with the singular Volk
rather than the plural Völker) possesses according to Herder the poetic
and mythopoetic mother tongue that, under conditions of climate, topo-
graphy, neighbors, and so on, is shaped into the language and mythology
of a nation. It is the Volk nature in every human being that Herder wished
to address and to touch with his collection of Volkslieder (1778–79), folk
songs taken from all over the world and arranged according to a system of
basic anthropological situations — myths of original humanity that Herder
carefully worked out in his translations (FA 3:865–925). Plato made the
mythical Muses’ inspiration responsible for the fascinating effect, the
strength and inward truth of the work of the genuine poet; Herder in-
vents a new mythic category, das Volk, original mankind, which receives
inspiration through its nature and anthropological essence. Since his con-
temporaries, even the uneducated, were no longer Volk in this sense but
rather the “antipodes of humanity” (DR, FA 1:31), Herder’s collection
of folk songs is not only a document of that mythopoetic genius of an-
thropological originality but also an instrument by which Volk can be re-
suscitated in every reader.
There is a second aspect and use of myth in Plato that runs in op-
posite direction from the first: inspired myth came from the gods down to
the earth; now, myth is the best possible and most probable conjecture of
an earthly human being about the divine or afterlife or anything that is
impossible to know. In Phaidon, the dialogue on Socrates’ death, the phi-
losopher develops a final myth about the subterranean world and the fate
of souls after death. In the end, Socrates admits that a reasonable man will
not take it for the truth, but that, the soul being immortal, something of
this kind must happen to it. He states that daring to believe it is worth-
while, since it is a beautiful venture and it is necessary to exert a kind of
17
spell upon oneself. Here, myth is not inspired in a poet who is but a me-
dium for the gods speaking through him, but is a best possible conjecture
about something that one cannot know and that, nevertheless, one is
anxious to remain aware of and open to its awe-inspiring powers. Conjec-
tural myth keeps the door open and provides an orientation to thoughts
of prayer, hope, gratitude, vows; to cult and sacrifices. Consciousness of
the conjectural status of these probable inventions remains until experi-
ence and experiment based on the premises of the conjecture have shown
its reliability or have proven it false. In the case of Socrates and his myth
of life after death, the magic spell of “positive thinking” replaces an im-
possible experiment. But otherwise, the stories told about the gods by
poets and priests characterize these unknown powers and give informa-
tion on religious rituals: where to go, how to pray, and what other rituals
to carry out. Thus, for instance, on his last day Socrates asks his friend to
sacrifice a cock for him before he dies. Etiological myths satisfy the need
to know the origins of strange phenomena such as a well on top of the
Acropolis of Athens or the endowment of a human being with super-
human powers, and can explain, at least conjecturally, the feats of heroes
in battle, the deeds of the great reformers, and those of helpers in dire
18
need, like Oedipus. Since etiological myths do not necessarily imply divine
powers to conjecturally explain the existence of a phenomenon or a hero,
this opens the way for natural and secular explanations, for observation,
comparison, experiment, and finally scientific methods. In a dominantly
religious culture, however, the inverse procedure will be more frequent:
secular insights, statements of values, admonition to certain forms of be-
havior are formulated through religious allegory and personification in
order to bestow upon them the authority of a divine power and to acti-
vate the “magic spell” of belief.
Herder’s observations on the anthropomorphic explanations of natural
phenomena in archaic cultures and languages have been quoted above;
one may say that he saw them as an archive of etiological myths that, with-
out our knowledge, delineate our world, establish relations, norms, and
values, and guide our judgment of people, objects, and situations as either
good or bad, dangerous or harmless, valuable or worthless. This mythical
basis of language and thought, alongside epistemological reasons, causes
him to argue as follows:
In dem Walde sinnlicher Gegenstände, der mich umgibt, finde ich
mich nur dadurch zurecht und werde über das Chaos der auf mich
zudringenden Empfindungen Herr und Meister, daß ich Gegenstände
von andern trenne, daß ich ihnen Umriß, Maß und Gestalt gebe,
mithin im Mannigfaltigen mir Einheit schaffe und sie mit dem Ge-
präge meines inneren Sinnes, als ob dieser ein Stempel der Wahrheit
wäre, lebhaft und zuversichtlich bezeichne. Unser ganzes Leben ist
also gewissermaßen eine Poetik: wir sehen nicht, sondern wir erschaf-
fen uns Bilder. [. . .] Hieraus ergibt sich, daß unsre Seele, so wie unsre
Sprache, beständig allegorisiere. (BDF, FA 4:635)
[In the forest of sensual objects that surrounds me, I only find my way
and become lord and master of the chaos of perceptions that I am
confronted with by separating objects from one another, so that I give
them outline, measure, and form, therefore creating for myself unity
out of the manifold and designating it in a lively and confident way
with the stamp of my inner sense, as if this were a stamp of truth. Our
entire life is thus a poetics, as it were: we don’t see, but instead we
create images for ourselves. [. . .] From this it follows that our soul, like
our language, constantly allegorizes.]
Herder explains the meaning and efficiency of etiology when he dis-
cusses the technique used by Pindar (ca. 520–ca. 446 B.C.) in the Olym-
pician Odes, where he praises a young man who was a talented runner.
The poet praises the runner’s native city from the time of its foundation
onward, its characteristics and advantages; he praises the boy’s family and
ancestors and links them to the throne of a god:
So wird seine Ode voll Mythologie, aber warum? um sich als Gelehr-
ter, als Artist zu zeigen, um eine mythologische Ode gemacht zu
haben? — Ganz und gar nicht! seine Mythologie ist Geschichte des
Vaterlandes, Geschichte der Vaterstadt, Familien- und Ahnenstolz seines
Helden, Ursprung des Vorfalls, den er besingt. Und was wird also sein
Gesang, ein heiliges National- Sekular- und patronymisches Lied, das
wert war, in dem Tempel des Gottes, und in den Archiven der Stadt,
die er sang, mit goldnen Buchstaben geschrieben, aufbewahret zu
werden; ein Familienstück für ein Geschlecht, und mehr als eine Bild-
säule für den Helden, wie der edle Stolz des Pindars selbst wusste. (F3,
FA 1:448–49)
[Thus his ode becomes full with mythology; but why? in order to show
himself to be a scholar, an artist, in order to have created a mythologi-
cal ode? — Totally and completely not! his mythology is history of the
fatherland, history of the home city, family and ancestral pride of his hero,
origin of the incident of which it sings. And how will the song that he
sings, a holy national, secular, and patronymic song, become worthy of
preservation, written in golden letters, in the temple of God and in the
archives of the city; a family portrait for generations, and more than a
stone monument for the hero, as the noble pride of Pindar itself knew.]
The etiology of the runner’s achievement thus links an outstanding
event to the world of myths already established in the culture. In so doing,
it conjecturally explains the extraordinary achievement and at the same time
confirms the reliability of the mythical world and everything it implies:
Zweitens: ein großer Teil der Mythologie ist Allegorie! personifizierte
Natur, oder eingekleidete Weisheit! Hier belausche man die Griechen,
wie ihre dichterische Einbildung zu schaffen, wie ihre sinnliche Denk-
art, abstrakte Wahrheit in Bilder zu hüllen wusste, wie ihr starrendes
Auge Bäume als Menschen erblickte, Begebenheiten zu Wundern hob,
und Philosophie auf die Erde führte, um sie in Handlung zu zeigen
[. . .]. Ich meine, statt daß ihr aus den Alten Allegorien klaubet, oft wo
sie gewiß nicht daran gedacht; so lernt von ihnen die Kunst zu alle-
gorisieren, vom philosophischen Homer, und vom dichterischen Plato.
(F3, FA 1:449)
[Second: a great part of mythology is allegory! personified nature, or
figurative wisdom! Here one should observe the Greeks, how their
poetic imagination knew to create, how their sensual way of thinking
knew how to cast abstract truths in images, how their staring eye saw
trees as human beings, raised occurrences to the status of miracles, and
brought philosophy down to earth in order to show it in action [. . .].
I believe that you often pick allegories from the Ancients, which they
didn’t think of doing; instead learn from them the art of allegorizing,
from the philosophical Homer and from the poetic Plato.]
Herder was clearly conscious of the aspects of myth in the tradition of

Plato: myth by inspiration that makes the poet, in his enthusiastic rapture,
the speaker of supernatural powers, etiological myth that, inversely, links a
phenomenon or person to the divine by pious conjecture, and allegorical
myth that piously invents divine intervention or activity to guide and deter-
mine human insight, social values, and orientation toward common action.
We have seen that Herder, in a century where even the personal nature of
the Christian God was called into question, invented the mythical allegory
of Volk as the source of inspiration for basic anthropological constellations
and mythical situations. He regarded language as an archive of archaic
mythology, and consequently saw thinking as dealing with and constitu-
ting images and allegories that, again, since we are not conscious of them
in their daily influence, inspire us with ideas, values, and prejudices about
the world that we can consciously correct and alter only to a very small
degree.
The Aristotelian Tradition

As mentioned earlier, Aristotle uses the term mythos for literary matter in
general, where, in the serious genres of epic or tragedy, the gods might play
a role, especially in tragedy, the origin of which lay in the cult of Dionysos.
19
But if one takes Aristotle’s distinction between historian and poet into
consideration, his primary interest in the modality of statements becomes
visible. The poet’s task is not to note or to recapitulate what has actually
happened but rather to relate
what can happen, that is, what is possible according to the laws of
probability or necessity. [. . .] Therefore, poetry is more philosophic
and noble than history, because the object of poetry is general while
history recapitulates singular things. By ‘general’ we mean that, accord-
ing to the laws of probability or necessity, a person is attributed certain
20
words or actions that match his or her specific character.
Poetry stands therefore in the middle between history and philosophy;
history, in Aristotle’s opinion, relates singular events without discussing
their relationship with similar ones or with one another; philosophy deals
with what is, necessarily as and how it is; poetry deals with things that
may change and be different, and relates the most probable appearance or
outcome. What is probable is decided, according to Aristotle, by what all
people or simply the old and wise believe to be normal, good, and right.
In deferring to the public judgment as an authority, the poet takes the
cultural knowledge, the standards and norms of the polis as a reference for
his mythos, which is tragic relative to these topological standards. Poetic
myths or fables are more philosophical than history because they pre-
suppose a normal course of events, and therefore in a way presume models

of reality and probability; they are more historical than philosophy, on the
other hand, because they relate a story, words, and actions.
This is what made Aristotle’s discussion of mythos or fabula interest-
ing to Christian Wolff, the father of German enlightenment philosophy.
Wolff’s epistemological ideal was the well-founded knowledge of distinct
rational concepts about things that are what they are by necessity, but he
was well aware that such knowledge was only possible in mathematics and
logic, and that, therefore, he was not able to devise general, true, absolute
rules and norms for action in practical philosophy. Moreover, a law or
commandment like “Thou shalt not kill” was so general that the excep-
tions postulated by society (killing in self-defense, in war, etc.) leave the
individual without guidance. Therefore, Wolff argues in his Philosophia
practica universalis of 1738–39 that other sources of practical knowledge
must be brought to bear: personal experience in comparable cases, sup-
ported by examples from other people or from history, is one of these
sources. But it is unreliable and depends on chance; moreover, the gen-
erality of moral precepts and the particularity of personal experiences dif-
21
fer so radically that Wolff speaks of a rather difficult marriage (connubium)
between these two sources of moral cognition, which becomes particu-
larly stormy when a general precept, rationally accepted and acknowl-
edged, is to be translated into real deeds and the eternal conflict between
spirit and flesh arises again. In such a case, rational conviction is not trans-
lated into living cognition (cognitio vivida) but remains dead knowledge.
The well-informed Aristotelian conceives of a third and intermediate source
of cognition and means of translation between the philosophical and ex-
periential approach to moral action: it is the child of this marriage, namely
mythos/fabula in the sense of literary subject matter. The sources of cog-
nition to which the inventor of fabulae is committed are common sense
and the knowledge, experience, and assessment of the actual, due, and
normal course of events and status of things. The inventor of fables,
therefore, must acquire knowledge of all res vulgares, the “experience that
22
is alive everywhere in all mankind,” the knowledge about what is consid-
ered right, probable, expectable, and “durable among the people” (in
vulgus constat). It is knowledge presumably shared by others, too, which
regulates the expectation of similar cases and provides a presumably suc-
cessful model of assessment and possible action in a given situation. Liter-
ature thus presents proven models for successful or unsuccessful action in
many individual cases, and consequently mediates between rational gener-
ality and experiential particularity. Living cognition that is readily trans-
lated into deeds is possible when all three sources of cognition coincide,
when we are rationally convinced, when our private experience assents,
and when the common-sense model in literature provides the same ori-
entation. In such a case, then, as Wolff has it, “senses, imagination, and
23
intelligence are brought to a consensus” that entails a kind of enthusi-
24
astic readiness to act accordingly, with the result being “living cogni-
25
tion” and the delightful feeling of our perfection and completeness as
humans beings, with all cognitive faculties, will, mind, and body playing
and working together and making us enter into our nature as humans ac-
26
cording to God’s idea.
Here we have two theorems that were extremely influential through-
out the eighteenth century: the concept of myth in the tradition of Aristotle
that renders myth the expression of knowledge of cultural topoi, and the
theorem of human completeness reachable through a free consensus of
senses, imagination, and reason. Wolff also discusses the methods for re-
duction of a given case to its general abstract form, and for fictional in-
vention of a successful literary model for the case so that the complete
fable is composed of case, model, and formula — the empirical, analogical,
and rational, or the historical, literary, and philosophical approach. Lessing
takes this method of fable construction up in his Abhandlungen über die
27
Fabel, where he quotes Wolff extensively. In his essay on the use of ani-
mals in fables, Lessing argues that they should be used on the basis of their
28
“allgemein bekannte Bestandheit,” that is, the well-delineated, timelessly
topological durability of their characters known to all not from natural
history, but from familiarity with the models, namely Aesop’s fables.
Herder takes up both theorems and, as he is wont to do, transforms
them. Although the prominent role of literature and art in Wolff’s argu-
mentation must have convinced him, Herder follows Alexander Gottlieb
Baumgarten’s Meditationes de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus (Medita-
tions on Some Matters Referring to Poems, 1735), in which the philoso-
pher distinguishes three methods of relating facts: the rational method
that proceeds from premise to conclusion; the imaginative method that
compares similar and distinguishes different cases; and the historical meth-
od that follows the given succession of events in time. The three methods
— all of which are performed by the cognitive faculties that we found in
Wolff and originally in Aristotle — alternate in a literary text, so that the
poet, in composing, and the recipient, in reading, are harmonically en-
29
gaged with all their faculties. Herder, from his very early writings onward,
extends this poetics to all intellectual activities: In his “Fragment über die
Ode” (Fragment on the Ode, written 1764), he says that in order to deal
with all aspects of this original form of poetry, one must be a poet, a his-
torian of antiquity, and a philosopher in one person, and that one must
accordingly approach the object as a triceps, a three-headed person (FA
1:98). In his Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache (Treatise on the
Origin of Language, 1772), he performs each step of his argument with
the three methods laid out by Baumgarten, representing the great schools
of eighteenth-century philosophy: rationalism, empiricism, and the neo-

30
Platonic philosophy of analogies. The idea of complete humanity, as op-
posed to the enlightenment tendency toward professionalized activities in
which a person is engaged only partially, is one of the strongest mythical
conjectures of the century — a conjecture, because this anthropological
ideal, naturally, is not open to scientific proof; mythical, because, as posited
by Wolff, the idea is founded upon the myth of Adam created by God in a
state of original perfection.
The concept of Aesopian fable confirmed by Lessing in his Abhand-
lungen über die Fabel is considerably transformed and deepened by Herder
in his essay “Über Bild, Dichtung und Fabel” (On Image, Poetry, and
Fable, 1787). Lessing had answered the question as to why the inventor
of fables uses animals, arguing that, whether zoologically correct or not,
they were generally known through the Aesopian tradition and, if used
according to this Bestandheit (the topological durability of their char-
acters), liberated the poet from the necessity of introducing and describ-
ing them. For Herder, the durability and familiarity with which these ani-
mals speak to the reader of fables has deeper reasons: The use of speaking
animals as such reaches back into the phylogenetic and ontogenetic child-
hood of man, where anthropomorphism was and is natural in all contacts
with the world (BDF, FA 4:649–51); we have seen that Herder traced my-
thology in general back to these anthropomorphic beginnings. The analogy
with human behavior, for Herder, comes from the mythical conjecture that
man is the summary and epitome of creation and contains all its elements,
genres, and creatures (Ideen, FA 6:72–76); now, since all radii of creation
meet in this center and find their goal and measure in it, man recognizes
inversely a draft, a part, an aspect of himself in the individual creatures:
“Die menschliche Seele ist gleichsam unter alle Tiercharaktere verteilt, und
die Fabel sucht diese verteilte Vernunft nur hie und da zu einem Ganzen
zu bilden” (BDF, FA 4:652; The human soul is, as it were, distributed
among all animal characters, and the fable seeks to form this divided rea-
son only here and there into a whole). On the basis of the neo-Platonic
and hermetic myth that Adam was made from the stem material of all cre-
ation and therefore contained it — a myth that underlies Herder’s Ideen
the History of Humankind) — the animal characters of fables become ven-
erable relatives of man out of whom the “Naturgeist” seems to speak (BDF,
FA 4:652), who act and speak out of inner necessity, whose behavior mir-
rors “höhere, allgemeine Naturgesetze, [. . .] die unmittelbare Verbindung der
Wesen im Reich der Schöpfung” (BDF, FA 4, 666–67; higher, general laws of
31
nature, [. . .] the direct relation of the beings in the empire of creation).
Herder’s essay Über Bild, Dichtung und Fabel also discusses a theory of
mythology as the foundation for poetic art. Herder says that there are three
simple ideas from which “sich alle Dichtung des menschlichen Geistes her-
vorgesponnen hat” (all poetry of the human spirit/intellect has spun forth):
1. Personifikation wirkender Kräfte.
2. Liebe und Haß, Empfangen und Geben, Tätigkeit und Ruhe, Ver-
einigung und Trennung, kurz zwei Geschlechter.
3. Aus zwei vereinigten Dingen ein Drittes, aus zwei widerstrebenden
Wesen Untergang des Einen. So erklärte man aus dem Sein das
Werden, den Tod aus dem Leben.
[1. Personification of effective powers.
2. Love and hate, receiving and giving, activity and rest, uniting and
dividing, in short, two genders.
3. From two united things a third, from two opposing beings the down-
fall of one of them. Thus one explained the becoming out of being,
the death out of life.]
Herder continues by saying that the oldest mythology and poetics is thus
“eine Philosophie über die Naturgesetze; ein Versuch, sich die Veränderun-
gen des Weltalls in seinem Werden, Bestehen und Untergehen zu erklären”
(BDF, FA 4:645; a philosophy about nature’s laws; an attempt to explain
the evolution of the universe in its becoming, existence, and its decline).
But such a philosophy is only conjecture, not certainty based on knowl-
edge, because:
Der Mensch erfindet nur aus Armut, weil er nicht hat: er wähnt und
dichtet, weil er nicht weiß. Und auch dann ist der Wahn seiner Dich-
tung eigentlich nichts als sinnliche Anschauung, von seinem bemer-
kenden innern Sinn mit dem Gepräge der Analogie bezeichnet. [. . .]
Was er tun kann, ist, Bilder und Gedanken paaren, sie mit dem Stem-
pel der Analogie, insonderheit aus sich selbst, bezeichnen; dieses kann
und darf er. (BDF, FA 4:645)
[The human being invents only out of poverty, because he has not: he
imagines and poeticizes, because he knows not. And even then the
delusion of his poetry is really nothing but a sensual intuition, marked
by his perceiving, inner sense with the stamp of analogy. [. . .] What he
is able to do is to pair up images and thoughts, mark them with the
stamp of analogy, in particular out of himself; this he is able and al-
lowed to do.]
According to Herder, both mythology and fable, though venerable, are
products of deficient knowledge because they are not only a projection but
in a more primary sense a retrieval of the essence of humanity from the
cosmos, which man poeticizes not with invented lies but with the enthusi-
astic and felicitous discovery of vestiges of his own being in a strange and
sometimes dangerous world.
With this interpretation of the topological tradition of mythology,
Herder closed the gap between the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions of
myth. We saw that with his concept of Volk in the sense of original man-
kind he interpreted the ancient Muses and Gods anthropologically and
envisaged a source of inspired poetry in man himself. Now, with the myth
of animals seen as elements of humanity in nature, or of nature focused
on man, he based the topological tradition of myth on the same anthro-
pological concept as the inspirational (Platonic) tradition. With this move,
he followed the program that he set himself early in his fragment Wie die
Philosophie zum Besten des Volks allgemeiner und nützlicher werden kann
(How Philosophy Can Become More Popular and Useful for the Benefit
of the People, 1765): “Einziehung der Philosophie auf Anthropologie,”
reduction of philosophy to anthropology (PhBV, FA 1: 132). As far as I
know, the first document of Herder’s conscious unification of the inspira-
tional and topological traditions is his rewording of Lessing’s formula
concerning the animal characters: for Herder, their use is not founded on
general knowledge about their attributes, but upon their “poetische Be-
standheit,” their poetic characters, durability and availability (F3, FA 1:433,
435). “Bestandheit” refers to the topological, “poetische” to the inspira-
tional tradition, and the unifying of the two in this one phrase is a decisive
move in the theory of mythology.
Historicity
Herder was able to take this move only on the basis of historical thinking,
which he introduced into the German discussion of mythology. (Giam-
battista Vico in his Principj di una scienza nuova (1725) had also ex-
plained myth as an archaic and original form of thinking, but Herder did
not discover Vico’s writings until his journey to Italy in 1788.) Following
Hamann and his formulation about the poetic mother tongue of man-
kind, Herder placed myth at the beginning of human culture: at the for-
mation of language, thought, and religion. Anthropologically, he held that
at that stage, man was “complete,” all his faculties active, with a bias to-
ward the sensual and imaginative faculties. A language developed in the
early stages was a language of exclamations and gestures; later of imitative
names and gestures; in the youth of mankind, language and thought be-
come genuinely poetic. Metaphors and audacious images counterbalance
expressions of passion and sensuality, poets grow up and sing in their odes
about heroic feats and victories, fables and moral maxims, laws and myth-
ology (F1, FA 1:183). The age of mythology, for Herder, is the youth of
a culture. With growing intellect, knowledge, regulation of public and
private affairs, the passions, the sensual receptivity, the faculties of imagin-
ation and fantasy are weakened, rationality and abstract concepts suppress
mythology or reduce it to a purely ornamental role. This is the develop-
ment Herder describes in his fragment on the epochs of the lives of lan-
guages (F1, FA 1:181–84). Herder viewed the German language (and con-
sequently, thinking) of his time as being predominantly intellectual, based
on prosaic concerns of utility, but there is still a potential of sensual pas-
sion and creative imagination that can and must be strengthened in order
to produce human completeness. Herder’s fitness program for the German
language (and again, consequently, thinking) consists of selective transla-
tion from languages with greater capacities for sensual expression and cre-
ative imagination — this is the program Herder discusses in his fragments
Über die neuere deutsche Literatur (On More Recent German Literature,
st
1 series, 1766). He discusses genres of literature inherited from Roman
culture in “Vom neuern Gebrauch der Mythologie” (The Modern Use of
Mythology) in a series of fragments (F3, FA 1:432–55). The use of Greek
mythology was attacked in Herder’s time on the basis of its trite and
purely ornamental character; on the other hand, Herder’s friend Hamann
had pressed for a new mythology because modern philosophy denigrated
senses and passions, whereas “passion alone gives hands, feet, wings to ab-
32
stractions and hypotheses — spirit, life and tongue to images and signs.”
Following Wolff’s and Lessing’s theory of mythos/fabula, Herder writes:
Kurz! als poetische Heuristik wollen wir die Mythologie der Alten
studieren, um selbst Erfinder zu werden. Eine Götter- und Helden-
geschichte in diesem Gesichtspunkt durchgearbeitet, — einige der
vornehmsten alten Schriftsteller auf diese Weise zergliedert, — das
muß poetische Genies bilden, oder nichts in der Welt. [. . .] Da diese
Erfindungskunst aber zwei Kräfte voraussetzt, die selten beisammen
sind, und oft gegen einander würken: den Reduktions- und den
Fiktionsgeist: die Zergliederung des Philosophen und die Zusammen-
setzung des Dichters: so sind hier viele Schwierigkeiten, uns gleichsam
eine ganz neue Mythologie zu schaffen. — Aber aus der Bilderwelt der
Alten gleichsam eine neue uns zu finden wissen, das ist leichter; das
erhebt über Nachahmer, und zeichnet den Dichter. Man wende die
alten Bilder und Geschichte auf nähere Vorfälle an: legt in sie einen
neuen poetischen Sinn, verändert sie hier und da, um einen neuen
Zweck zu erreichen; verbindet und trennet, führt fort und lenket seit-
wärts, geht zurück, oder steht stille, um alles bloß als Hausgerät zu
seiner Notdurft, Bequemlichkeit und Auszierung nach seiner Absicht,
und der Mode seiner Zeit, als Hausherr und Besitzer zu brauchen.
(F3, FA 1:449–50)
[In short! as poetical heuristics we want to study the mythology of the
ancients, in order to ourselves become inventors. A history of gods
and heroes worked through in this aspect — some of the finest ancient
writers dissected in this way — that has to give rise to poetic geniuses,
or nothing in the world. [. . .] But since this art of invention presup-
poses two powers, which are seldom found together, and often work
against each other — the spirit of reduction and that of fiction — the
dissection of the philosopher and the composition of the poet — thus
there are here so many difficulties in creating so to speak a totally new
mythology. — But to know how to find for ourselves, from the image-
world of the ancients, as it were, a new one, that is easier; that elevates
one above imitators and is the sign of the poet. One applies the an-
cient images and stories to more specific incidents: gives them a new
poetic sense, changes them here and there in order to achieve a new
purpose; combines and divides, carries them forth and steers them to
the side, goes backwards or stands still, in order to use it all, as the
head of the household and owner, as a household article for one’s
needs, comfort, and decoration according to one’s intentions and the
fashion of the day.]
This passage contains, along with a statement on mythology in mod-
ern times, a theory of intertextuality, given the fact that the terms mythos
and fabula designate not only Greek or old Germanic mythology but also
literary subject matter in general. Modern use of old myths and literary
subject matter implies, according to Herder, that the old expressions of
passion and products of creative imagination (the “spirit of fiction”) are
conserved and used in a recognizable way but transformed so that mod-
ern knowledge, problems, and beliefs are expressed by this poetic product,
in which old and new comment upon each other. Herder concludes the
series of fragments with hints and methods for how this can be achieved.
The classicist use of subject matter, genres, or meters from antiquity, as
espoused by Goethe, Schiller, Hölderlin, and others, is founded on this
theory of confrontation of antique and modern elements: just as Goethe’s
33
Iphigenie auf Tauris is “diabolically humane,” so there is no text that is
Greek or Roman in both form and spirit; that is, there is no “classical”
text as such.
Historicity, then, must be reflected upon and made visible when myths
from antiquity are used. Herder’s clash about mythology with Goethe and
especially Schiller, who in the 1790s tended to separate a world of pure art
from everyday concerns and from the social engagement of art, resulted in
the disruption of his relations and cooperation with them. One of the first
objects of his criticism was Goethe’s Roman Elegies, published by Schiller
in his journal Die Horen in 1795. Here, the playful use of antique mythol-
ogy and elegy only served, in Herder’s view, to mask the deeply immoral
tendency of the work’s content, which Goethe, of course, could justify
with a reference to illustrious predecessors in ancient Rome. The rupture
came when Herder voiced his dissent in his Briefe zu Beförderung der Hu-
manität (Letters for the Advancement of Humanity, 1793–97) and in the
essay Iduna, oder der Apfel der Verjüngung (Iduna, or the Apple of Re-
juvenation, 1796). Schiller also published the latter in Die Horen, but open-
ly condemned it, as Herder proposed in it Germanic mythology as an
alternative to Greek or Roman mythology, arguing that it is cognate to
the German mentality and therefore more useful to a German poet, since
poetic works should emerge from and seek their effect upon contem-
porary social life. Schiller, in his letter to Herder of 4 November 1795, con-
cedes this but questions the premise that literature should chain itself to
the prosaic mentality of the society of the present: the poet must with-
draw from the real world, and Greek mythology will help him establish
his work in a remote, strange, and ideal epoch. Herder surely accepted
Schiller’s point that Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724–1803) and his
school had failed in their attempt to replace Greek with Germanic mythol-
ogy, and did not follow up this part of the argument. But the rift between
them concerning the function of poetry and myth in society was too deep
to be bridged, so that from this time onward, Herder was pushed out of
the inner circle of the so-called Weimar Classicism.
New Mythology
Remaking traditional mythology for modern use, as Herder had proposed
in his Fragments in 1767, was a convenient way to overcome the era’s lack
of creative imagination, and he employed this strategy successfully for play-
ful occasions. In his Paramythien. Dichtungen aus der griechischen Fabel
(Paramythologies. Inventions from Greek Fables, 1785) he wrote enter-
taining stories “built upon old Greek fables that are called mythos,” and
which he “only provided with a new meaning” (P, FA 3:697). He did the
same with old Jewish mythology in Blätter der Vorzeit. Dichtungen aus der
morgenländischen Sage (Prehistoric Pages. Inventions from Oriental Myth,
1787), in which he took up the poetic ideas that he had found in the
course of his oriental studies and worked them into narratives that hark
back to biblical teachings (see BdV, FA 3:725–26). Herder’s translations
of ballads and poems from different ancient cultures in the Volkslieder pro-
vide glimpses into strange mythologies and their venerable treatment of
primal anthropological situations. His translation and adaptation of the
Spanish romanzero about the adventures of the Cid, hero of the reconquest
of the Iberian peninsula and the protagonist of many stories, took the form
of a ballad-epic; it may also be termed a paramythion or an epic about a
mythical hero (FA 3:545–693).
All these uses of mythologies, however, did not satisfy the demand of
Hamann, Herder’s friend, teacher, and mentor, in his Sokratische Denkwür-
digkeiten, for a new mythology of science about Nieuwentyt’s, Newton’s,

and Buffon’s revelations. Hamann had accused modern philosophy and
science of having severely debased nature with their abstractions and of pro-
ducing scientifically correct but dead knowledge. Deeply pious, Hamann
saw in the communicatio idiomatum two “languages” of God that one can
read in the creation; the creation speaks to the creatures through the crea-
tures, first in Adam, who is the outward appearance of the spiritual body
34
of man, and then in Jesus, who is the outward appearance of Christ.
This conjunction of spirit and matter is disrupted by modern philosophy,
which epistemologically deals only with abstractions and deactivates senses,
passion, and imagination; and by modern science, which reduces the
world to a meaningless mechanism. A new mythology based upon natural
science would occupy all faculties of cognition and would reinstate nature
to the status of God’s language and speech. Nature would reappear in the
poetic program of the Romantics, as Ausdrucksgestalt or expressive struc-
ture, as Hölderlin termed it, or as a system of signs as described by Novalis
in his Lehrlinge zu Saïs (The Apprentices in Saïs). But Herder was the medi-
ator for Hamann in his protest against the expulsion of meaning and spirit
from the world.
In the earliest text that we have from Herder, Versuch über das Sein
(Essay on Being, 1763–64), which is directed against Kant and is influ-
enced by Hamann’s ideas, he argues that true cognition of the nature and
essence of an object is impossible. On the basis of this epistemological skep-
ticism, he developed a conjectural systems theory, detailed for the first
time in 1772 in the Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache, which he
35
employed until the late Metakritik. The epistemological argument based
on this systems theory is that each organism, in contact with its sphere of
life, develops “organs” that enable it to cope with life’s dangers, challenges,
and possibilities: to find shelter, acquire nutrition, and see to reproduc-
tion. These organs also determine the quantity and quality of information
that the organism gains about its sphere of life. But whether it is a fly, a
snail, a fish, or man: all have their true, lively, and clear image of one and
the same creation (BDF, FA 4:638). Human intellect is but one of man’s
organs. Ideas, concepts, and knowledge are but instruments that enable
him to move confidently in the sphere of life into which he was set or
which he himself chose (Ideen, FA 6:304–13). The ideas and procedures
that enable fly, snail, fish, and man to move confidently in their spheres
have been determined by trial and error; they are best possible choices or
alternatives and are handed down from generation to generation and
changed according to changing conditions. We have already quoted from
the essay Über Bild, Dichtung und Fabel that human cognition is image
and allegory; “true” is the image that is practicable for a given sphere of life.
Now we have seen that Herder, from the start, constructed his arguments
as a triceps (three-headed being) with senses, imagination, and thought,

using empirical, analogical, and rational arguments, working by induction,
36
abduction, and deduction. Convinced that none of these methods alone
can produce adequate truth, he follows Wolff’s theory that a consensual
combination of the three methods produces the highest possible degree
of certainty, activates the “complete human being” and produces, through
the free consensual interplay among the faculties of cognition, the bliss of
a creature that enters into its “nature,” that is, the idea that God had in
creating it. The bliss, ardor, and enthusiasm that in Wolff’s view caused
the cognition to become a cognitio viva, prompting action, is what aes-
theticists like Baumgarten and Kant defined as the aesthetic state. Here
we find that Herder’s triceps, as the free consensual activity of the cog-
nitive faculties, is at the same time the complex organ of best possible
cognition, the fulfillment of human completeness and nature, and con-
sequently humanity, and that it should produce the bliss of the aesthetic
state. Schiller pursued the same goal in his letters Über die ästhetische Er-
ziehung des Menschen (On the Aesthetic Education of Man, 1793–95).
The completeness of man is one of the strongest myths of the eigh-
37
teenth century; it is a myth in the sense of a best possible conjecture
about the nature of man as created by God. Since all mythical conjecture
requires experiential confirmation, the experience of bliss is what indicates
this completeness. According to Wolff, such bliss takes possession of the
38
human being who experiences a moment of perfection. In the same sense,
Herder, in the Ideen, defines humanity as “a balance of human powers or
their harmonious movement,” whether in an individual, in societies, in
nations, or in universal mankind (FA 6:648):
Jeder einzelne Mensch trägt also, wie in der Gestalt seines Körpers so
auch in den Anlagen seiner Seele, das Ebenmaß zu welchem er ge-
bildet ist und sich selbst ausbilden soll, in sich. [. . .] Durch Fehler und
Verirrungen, durch Erziehung, Not und Übung sucht jeder Sterbliche
dies Ebenmaß seiner Kräfte, weil in solchem allein der volleste Genuß
seines Daseins lieget; nur wenige Glückliche aber erreichen es auf die
reineste, schönste Weise. Da der einzelne Mensch für sich sehr unvoll-
kommen bestehen kann: so bildet sich mit jeder Gesellschaft ein hö-
heres Maximum zusammen-wirkender Kräfte. (Ideen, FA 6:648–49)
[Every individual human being carries with him, in the form of his
body as also in the constitution of his soul, the symmetry with which
he was created and to which he should develop himself. [. . .]
Through mistakes and aberrations, through education, necessity and
practice every mortal seeks this harmony of his powers, because in this
alone lies the fullest pleasure of his existence; but only few happy ones
reach it by the purest, most beautiful way. Since the individual human
being can, kept to himself, exist in a very imperfect way: thus there
develops with every society a higher maximum of collaborative powers.]
“Maximum” is the term used by Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–
1777) in his systems theory for a state of balance in the interplay of pow-
ers in a system. So, with “complete human being,” with “humanity,” we
have conjectural ideas with mythical character because, etiologically, God
created man as a complete creature; historically, we have seen the theory
that passion and creative imagination have been lost through the process
of civilization; and ethically, humanity is a task for each individual and each
39
culture.
In ancient mythology, heroes like Heracles, Orpheus, and Achilles play
a great role; there were even cults of heroes as demigods in some regions.
Herder is quite skeptical about the dignity of such hero cults, yet admires
the strength of Greek mythopoeic imagination, which could make a strong
farm hand into a demigod and a rill of water into the god of a river (see
F3, FA 1:447–48). But with the myth of humanity, a new need for exem-
plary persons or personifications emerges. First, Herder re-interprets Greek
art as a “school of humanity,” the Greek gods, goddesses and heroes are
“vivid categories of mankind”; Greek art is a system of “thought forms,
eternal characters [. . .], a visible logic and metaphysics of our species in
its most important shapes, differentiated according to age, mood, inclina-
tion and tendency” (Hum, FA 7:363–64); the heroes are also delineated
according to their exemplary character (Hum, FA 7:370). While Herder
sometimes compares these categoric figures to star constellations (see Lie-
der der Liebe, FA 3:502), he describes modern heroes and elevates them
to the status of mythical figures. He depicts Benjamin Franklin, Frederick
II of Prussia, Luther, Gustavus Adolphus, and the Riga businessman
Johann Christoph Berens as individuals, as typical characters, and as ex-
amples of humanity in the same threefold way as Rousseau had depicted
himself in the Confessions. As the Greek works of art have to be judged by
the triceps of historian, philosopher, and poet/artist (Hum, FA 7:382),
these modern personalities must be judged by the standard of the “com-
plete human being” — this is the pantheon of modern mythology that
Herder builds, less dramatic and colorful than the Greek one to be sure,
but mythological nonetheless.
Etiological myth, in Greek culture, linked the phenomena of the world
to the actions of the gods, thereby making the world meaningful and
confirming the presence of the gods. We quoted Hamann’s protest against
modern philosophy and science that severed this link, which had been re-
established by the Christian religion. In the title of his Ideen zur Philoso-
phie der Geschichte der Menschheit, Herder announces the threefold per-
spective of philosophy, history, and (conjectural) ideas; in his preface he
promises to make use of the results of the sciences and to take note of
“metaphysical speculations” — thus including both empirical and phi-
losophical approaches — but he argues that these speculations, divorced
from the experience of nature and the analogies it provides, resemble bal-
40
loon flights that rarely lead to one’s intended destination. On the other
hand, history is a labyrinth in which one needs a guiding thread in order
to satisfy the philosophical urge for order, correlation, and insight. What
mediates between the inductive method of science and the deductive me-
thod of speculative philosophy is an analogy of nature — analogy being
according to Alexander Pope man’s “surest guide” here below, because
nature can be defined as God the creator’s ideas expressed in different
substances and circumstances and traceable by analogy. This is, then, what
Peirce would later call the abductive method, which conjecturally uses the
knowledge gained in one field for the investigation of another, for in-
stance Newton’s physics for studies in anthropology or psychology. Herder
anticipated Peirce’s concept of abduction, and not surprisingly, his justi-
fication for it as a method is mythical:
Gang Gottes in der Natur, die Gedanken, die der Ewige uns in der
Reihe seiner Werke tätlich dargelegt hat: sie sind das heilige Buch, an
dessen Charakteren ich zwar minder als ein Lehrling aber wenigstens
mit Treue und Eifer buchstabiert habe und buchstabieren werde.
(Ideen, FA 6:16–17)
[God’s pathway into nature, thoughts, which the Eternal One physi-
cally bestowed upon us through his successive works: they are the holy
book 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.]
It is this threefold method that Herder employs throughout the Ideen.
For instance, he takes the empirical fact that the ancient cultures devel-
oped along the great rivers and posits the philosophical speculation that
humanity is enhanced by a developed culture. Now he mythically con-
jectures God’s or Nature’s intention to develop humanity and concludes:
with the course of the great rivers, God or Nature has incised the history
of culture and humanity on the surface of the globe right from its begin-
ning (Ideen, FA 6:40–50). The book of nature, thus, can once more be
read and revered; empirical fact and philosophical concept are not altered
but rather linked by a conjecture that makes the world meaningful and
gives confidence to a human being who is perfected in himself by a com-
plete approach to a perfect object and thus may experience a moment of
bliss and encouragement on his difficult path toward that old and new
myth of Humanität. Herder does not criticize modern science for its re-
ductive approach to its material, for the methods it uses to gather the best
possible knowledge about the world. But he does say that this knowledge
must be integrated into a complete approach to the object of its investiga-
tion. In only relying on the scientific approach, modern society dehu-
manizes the human being and surrenders a meaningless nature to reckless
exploitation.
Notes
1
Christoph Jamme, Einführung in die Philosophie des Mythos, vol. 2, Neuzeit und
Gegenwart (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1991), 19. Similarly,
Hans Blumenberg, Arbeit am Mythos (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979), does
not deal with myth as a mode of thinking in the eighteenth century.
2
Manfred Frank, Der kommende Gott: Vorlesungen über die Neue Mythologie
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1982).
3
Gerhart von Graevenitz, Mythos: Geschichte einer Denkgewohnheit (Stuttgart:
Metzler, 1987).
4
He came to know Vico’s work, however, only in the 1780s.
5
Kurt Hübner, Die Wahrheit des Mythos (Munich: Beck, 1985).
6
Chapter 6 ff.
7
Johann Christoph Gottsched, Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst, chapter 4, in
Gottsched, Schriften zur Literatur, ed. Horst Steinmetz (Stuttgart: Metzler,
1972), 85.
8
Benjamin Hederich, Gründliches mythologisches Lexicon (1724), revised by Johann
Joachim Schwabe (1770). (Reprint Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-
schaft, 1967), XI.
9
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social [etc.] (Paris: Éditions Garnier Frères,
1954), 35, 40.
10
Johann Georg Hamann, “Nieuwentyts, Newtons und Büffons Offenbarungen
werden doch wohl eine abgeschmackte Fabellehre vertreten können?,” in Sokra-
tische Denkwürdigkeiten. Aesthetica in nuce, ed. Sven-Aage Jørgensen (Stuttgart:
Reclam, 1968), 111.
11
Plato, Politeia 377b–398b.
12
Plato, Phaedrus 246a–256d.
13
Plato, Phaedrus 274c–275b.
14
Plato, Phaedrus 245a.
15
Plato, Ion 533d–534e.
16
“Poesie ist die Muttersprache des menschlichen Geschlechts.” Hamann, Sokra-
tische Denkwürdigkeiten, 81. Cf. Herder, “Dithyrambische Rhapsodie,” FA 1:31.
17
Plato, Phaidon 114d.
18
Cf. Ulrich Gaier, “Hölderlin und der Mythos,” in Terror und Spiel: Probleme der
Mythenrezeption, ed. Manfred Fuhrmann (Munich: Fink, 1971), 295–340, esp.
295–312. Ulrich Gaier, “Mythos und Mythologie,” in Kritische Revisionen: Gender
und Mythos im literarischen Diskurs, ed. Japanische Gesellschaft für Germanistik

(Munich: Iudicium, 1998), 185–204.
19
Aristotle, Poetics, chapter 9.
20
Aristotle, Poetics, chapter 9.
21
Christian Wolff, Philosophia practica universalis methodo scientifica pertractata
pars posterior, with an afterword by Winfried Lenders, in Gesammelte Werke, ed.
Jean Ecole et al., vol. 2 (Hildesheim, New York: Olms, 1979), 11, § 289.
22
Wolff, Philosophia practica, vol. 2, § 312 note.
23
Wolff, Philosophia practica, vol. 2, § 323.
24
Wolff, Philosophia practica, vol. 2, § 411.
25
Wolff, Philosophia practica, vol. 2, § 249 note.
26
Christian Wolff, Psychologia empirica, in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, § 511, 5
note 20.
27
Cf. Ulrich Gaier, “Formen und Gebrauch neuer Mythologie bei Herder,” Herder
Jahrbuch 2000, ed. Karl Menges, Regine Otto, and Wulf Koepke (Stuttgart:
Metzler, 2000), 111–33; Ulrich Gaier, “. . . ein Empfindungssystem, der ganze
Mensch. Grundlagen von Hölderlins poetologischer Anthropologie im 18.
Jahrhundert,” in Der ganze Mensch: Anthropologie und Literatur im 18. Jahr-
hundert, ed. Hans-Jürgen Schings (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993), 724–46; concern-
ing Wolff, 729ff.
28
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Werke, ed. Herbert G. Göpfert, 8 vols. (Munich:
Hanser, 1970–79), 5:390.
29
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Meditationes de nonnullis ad poema pertinenti-
bus: Philosophische Betrachtungen über einige Bedingungen des Gedichtes, trans. and
ed. Heinz Paetzold (Hamburg: Meiner, 1983), § 72.
30
Ulrich Gaier, “Poesie als Metatheorie. Zeichenbegriffe des frühen Herder,” in
Johann Gottfried Herder 1744–1803, ed. Gerhard Sauder (Hamburg: Meiner,
1987), 202–24; Ulrich Gaier, Herders Sprachphilosophie und Erkenntniskritik (Stutt-
gart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1988).
31
More detail in Jürgen Brummack, “Herders Theorie der Fabel.” Johann Gottfried
Herder 1744–1803, ed. Gerhard Sauder, 251–66.
32
Hamann, Sokratische Denkwürdigkeiten, 121.
33
“Ich habe hier und da hineingesehen, es ist ganz verteufelt human.” Goethe to
Schiller, January 19, 1802.
34
Hamann, Sokratische Denkwürdigkeiten, 83, 87, 107, 137.
35
See Ulrich Gaier, “Philosophie der Systeme und Organisationen beim frühen
und späten Herder,” in Der frühe und der späte Herder: Kontinuität und/oder
Korrektur / Young Herder, Old Herder: Continuity and Correction, ed. Sabine
Gross and Gerhard Sauder (Heidelberg: Synchron, 2007).
36
Abduction is a term introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce for the method of
generalizing an individual case and conjecturally formulating it as the key for a
universal law in order to use it in a logic of invention. See Stefan Metzger, Die
Konjektur des Organismus: Wahrscheinlichkeitsdenken und Performanz im späten

18. Jahrhundert (Munich: Fink, 2002), 136ff.
37
See the references to Gaier’s articles above in note 27.
38
Christian Wolff, Psychologia empirica, vol. 2, § 511, 5 note 20.
39
Ulrich Gaier, “Humanität als Aufgabe,” in Neue Perspektiven der Anthropologie im
18. Jahrhundert, ed. Manfred Beetz, Jörn Garber, and Heinz Thoma (Göttingen:
Wallstein, 2007), 13–28.
40
The reference to balloon flights is particularly topical since the Montgolfiers
made the first balloon flights in 1783; Herder was writing in 1784.
8: Particular Universals: Herder on
National Literature, Popular Literature,
and World Literature
Karl Menges
A New Mythology
W HEN JOHANN GOTTFRIED HERDER at the age of twenty-two stepped

onto the literary scene with his first major publication, the fragments
Über die neuere deutsche Literatur (1766), he did so with a mixture of
appropriate modesty and youthful self-assurance. His text, supposedly, was
meant to be no more than a “supplement” to one of the most important
critical projects of eighteenth-century Germany, that is, the Briefe, die
neueste Literatur betreffend (1759–65), which were written and edited by
such luminaries as Lessing, Mendelssohn, Nicolai, and Abbt, among others.
The occasion for the composition of the Literaturbriefe was the Seven Years’
War (1756–63) in which a friend of Lessing’s, Ewald Christian von Kleist,
had been severely wounded. The ensuing period of his hospitalization
constituted the fictitious pretext for Lessing to start the Literaturbriefe, in
response to his friend’s request to alleviate the “boredom” of his recovery
with news about the latest developments in the world of letters and sciences
1
(SEW 93, 269–70). Herder had read all twenty-four parts of the Litera-
turbriefe in detail and considered his task to be that of a commentator; hence
the constant references, quotations, and commentaries on the general themes
of his source. Yet the thrust of his project turned out to be much more
ambitious, as it would not present a mere narrative in the form of another
collection of letters, but would aspire to a “pragmatic history in the republic
of learning,” aiming to be “the voice of patriotic wisdom and the reformer
of the people” (SEW 94). In other words, the text would address questions
of national urgency in which modern literature would play a crucial part.
This early linkage between the nation and its aesthetic representation is
central, as it motivates Herder’s “dream” of a unique literary resurgence,
which he posits against the reigning examples of classical and foreign con-
temporary literature. Measured against them, the country and its literary
output are in disarray. “We are laboring in Germany as in the days of the
190 ♦ KARL MENGES
confusion of Babel; divided by sects of taste, partisan in poetic art, schools of

philosophy contesting one other: no capital and no common interest, no
great and universal reformer and lawgiving genius” (SEW 95). Given this
grim perspective, one that Herder shared with the intellectual elite of his
time, he sees two possible courses of action: to learn from the ancients and
to compete against the contemporaries. He proposes to study and to em-
brace the former, making a clear distinction between classicist imitation and
modernist emulation. He wants to compete against the latter, driven by the
conviction that classicism, especially as manifested in French absolutist poli-
tics and taste, has lost all credibility. A new order is on the horizon with the
emergence of an enlightened public sphere against the obsolete and decaying
court culture of the ancien regime. The model for this new order is, of
course, England, with its early emancipation from feudal power structures
and its transition into a middle-class meritocracy. An even more advanced
example would soon become the United States of America, whose declara-
tion of independence from colonial rule was only a decade away. Not by co-
incidence Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s founding fathers, would be
viewed by Herder and the European elite at large as the exemplar of the mod-
ern, ambitious, and self-motivated citizen of a free and emancipated land.
With his program Herder did not intend to turn back the clock. He was
fully committed to the irreversibility of the dawning of modernism and was
not interested, for example, in a continuation of the famous Querelle des
Anciens et des Modernes, which he considered a “ridiculous dispute” for its
lack of historical perspective. At issue is not what the ancients accomplished
but how they did it, which leads Herder to the pointed proposition that the
highest praise for a modern poet or orator is not whether he writes or speaks
like Horace or Cicero, but whether he approaches his topic with the same
engagement and vigor with which Horace or Cicero would have approached
2
a comparable one. The latter involves emulating the ancients in their at-
tention to historical and social detail, while the former simply means copying
them as archeological artifacts.
At issue is thus the idea of a national and patriotic renewal in which
literature, grounded in a common language, is enlisted to support a sense of
individual pride and national identity. Herder, not surprisingly, opens the
Fragmente with a disquisition on language as the basis for any national, aes-
thetic, or scientific endeavor. For it is “through language that we learn to
think precisely” and the “genius of its language therefore is also the genius of
a nation’s literature” (SEW 102). Literature has thus a unifying function, yet
not just because of linguistic commonalities but more so because of its
“genius,” that is, certain unmistakable idiosyncratic traits and peculiarities.
Herder refers to them as Machtwörter (graphic expressions) that give each
language and literature its identity and distinction as a national poetic voice.
On this basis he consistently defends the particular against the totalizing pull
HERDER ON NATIONAL, POPULAR, AND WORLD LITERATURE ♦ 191
of the universal, a preference that puts him in sharp contrast with Western
rationalism at large.
Since its Greek beginnings, philosophy has privileged the general and
necessary over the particular and individual, or “idiotistisch,” which Herder
defines as “patronymische Schönheiten [. . .] die uns kein Nachbar durch
eine Übersetzung entwenden kann” (FA 1:190; patronymic beauties [. . .]
3
which no neighbor can steal from us through a translation). It is helpful to
remember here that the Greek composita with the stem “idio-” tend to carry
a pejorative connotation, which is borne out in the etymology of the “idiotes,”
the private citizen who stands apart from public affairs while tending to his
own business. This devaluation of the private sphere has its logical back-
ground in its inexpressibility. Individuum est ineffabile: with that concept
medieval philosophy adopts the Platonic dualism of the universal and the
particular, of idea and matter, while retracing the boundary between what
can be said and what resides in the margins and remains beyond articulation.
While addressing a particular entity, sensual apprehension always relates to
the implied generality of that particular, that is, its mediated status as an in-
dividual. The singular, in other words, is always already a generalized or
universalized singular, which means that it can only be noted as an empirical
object but not as some metaphysical entity. Yet the incommensurability of
the particular does not obviate its legitimacy. Even beyond the reach of a
general definition, it retains its identity and cannot simply be dismissed from
the assumed position of conceptual superiority. Herder makes exactly this
point by coming to the defense of aesthetic “idiotisms” and syntactic “in-
versions,” irregular linguistic structures that he considers untranslatable
treasures. They “are sacred to the patron goddess of language [. . .], beauties
woven into the genius of a language that are destroyed when separated out”
(SEW 111–12). Herder’s historical argument thus reaches out to the mar-
ginalized while resisting subordinating classifications. This tension between
particularism and universalism has been described as “the master problem of
4
his entire career.” The issue is: how to reconcile the individual with the
universal into which it is embedded; how to think about the “idiotistic” in
terms of a necessary mediation with an overarching structure that would
contain the particular without oppressing it and doing it harm?
Aware of these conflicting paradigms yet committed to their mediation,
Herder proposes an innovative solution with the introduction of a seemingly
contradictory concept. In the third collection of the Fragmente he inserts
an excursus titled Vom neuern Gebrauch der Mythologie (On the Modern Use
of Mythology, 1767), in which he argues for the rejuvenation of literature
out of the spirit of ancient mythology. This is an astounding proposal in
that myths were typically seen by eighteenth-century rationalism as outdated
belief systems unworthy of enlightened consideration, much less resurrec-
tion. While there was considerable historical interest in mythology, as is
192 ♦ KARL MENGES
5
evident in numerous tracts and surveys, such interest was typically limited to
academic questions about the origin and meaning of myths. Yet classical
mythology also maintained a considerable presence in the modern literature
of the day, for example, in Milton and Klopstock. This raises the question of
the function of mythology and, furthermore, whether the continuing pres-
ence of mythology in modern texts might not represent an illegitimate trans-
fer of poetic imagery that has lost its credibility in modern times.
Myths, of course, are sacred tales told as legends and fairy tales. They
serve the dual function of celebrating the lives of the gods while appealing to
6
the imagination of man. They also project an “expectancy of the familiar”
by providing constancy and stability through ritual remembrances and cele-
brations in an otherwise uncertain and disorienting world. Their sacred mes-
sage is therefore one of solace and meaning, offering cultural continuity and
social identity. Yet myths are also subject to historical change, which is the
reason for the decline of mythology in the process of Western civilization.
Myths become synonymous with fables, as J. G. Walch states with repre-
sentative assertiveness in his Philosophisches Lexicon (1726), and fables are
7
“invented stories” that historians only “pretend to be true.” This is a fairly
widespread Enlightenment position that is supported by the fact that Walch
8
copies a French publication nearly verbatim while he himself was plagiarized
by Zedler in his Universal-Lexicon. According to all these texts, myths are
“misperceptions” (“ungereimte Concepte”) going back to the preliterary
stages of mankind, which explains not just the eventual discrediting of myth-
ology as a basis for belief systems, but the suggestion that it is of interest
9
only as a “history of errors of the human spirit.” Challenging the continuing
validity of mythology therefore appears eminently reasonable. Yet while
Herder agrees with this argument in broad terms, he differs with it in
insisting that myth does not transport only truth claims but — more im-
portant in his view — aesthetic values. As sensual representations of abstract
concepts they engage the listener “through illusion,” which explains why the
use of mythology “as a means [. . .], not as an end in itself” (SEW 223;
Herder’s italics) is still a valid proposition that could continue to benefit the
quality and credibility of modern literature. Hence the differentiation Herder
makes about why myths are needed: “For the sake of truth I do indeed not
need them, but I do need them for the sake of their poetical being [. . .]”
(SEW 216).
Herder alludes here, by way of the classical life-cycle analogy, to the
mythopoetic distinction of archaic songs, in which early sensual experience
still dominates rational enjoyment. They are remnants of a pre-literary world
where oral traditions still had a powerful, socially stabilizing presence. The
modern world, by contrast, has lost this idealized state of innocence, and
what has been lost far outweighs any rationalist gains. Progress has obliter-
ated cultural traditions and collective memories, leaving behind a sophis-
ticated but anemic “culture of writing” that contrasts sharply with the
natural wisdom of ancient peoples. Herder rarely holds back in his polemics
against the contemporary Letternkultur, whose emergence he identifies as
part of an irreversible process. That irreversibility may in fact be the real
reason behind his many outbursts, particularly against the “philosophers of
Paris,” whom he considered the real champions of the modern enlightened
malaise (FA 4:66–67). On the other hand, he does not retreat, like Rousseau,
into a stylization of the past. This, then, brings up the need for a mediation
of the past and the present, of mythology and contemporary literature,
which Herder addresses by way of a rejuvenation of sensuous immediacy.
Poetry and Politics

10
Aesthetic experience (from Greek aisthesis ), as the synthesis of a manifold of
sense impressions, always precedes analytical thought. Rationality is de-
pendent on sense data, which means that reason cannot claim any founda-
tional capacity. It is secondary to impressions, which come to us through
sense perception in the form of images. These are reflections of a pre-cogni-
tive life-world, and they represent projections, inventions, or, as Herder puts
it, “Fictionen,” fictions in the dual sense of invention (Erfindung) and
poetry (Dichtung). Our rationality is grounded in such fictions, which sug-
gests an existential priority of aesthetic perception. “Unsre Vernunft bildet
sich nur durch Fictionen. [. . .] Ohne Dichtung können wir einmal nicht
seyn” (SWS 18:485; Our reason is formed only through fictions. [. . .] With-
out poetry we simply cannot be). Sensual receptivity is thus the basic tool
with which we construct our world and form our identities. Truth is there-
fore not a function of rational design, but first and foremost one of aesthetic
perception and its ongoing hermeneutical exegesis. It is here that the anti-
intellectualism of a new mythology has its empirical base.
Yet Herder’s “dream” of a new mythology is not just an aesthetic issue.
He is never interested in a narrow definition of aesthetics in terms of a tra-
ditional doctrine of the beautiful. Instead, following Baumgarten’s rehabili-
tation of sensual perception (FA 1:688), he pursues the more originary
function of sense perception as an alternative to pure rationalism. While
“lower” in conventional estimation, sense certainty represents in fact an
older, more authentic form of apprehension that deserves to be rescued from
its rationalist marginalization. At issue, then, is not just an aesthetic but an
epistemological and ethical task that is centered on the mediation of sensitive
and cognitive faculties and, by implication, on the reconciliation of margin-
alized individual experiences with the dominant culture of enlightened
universalism.
The emphasis on sense perception is key to Herder’s critique of rational-
ism, which he did not hesitate to direct at some of the most illustrious names
194 ♦ KARL MENGES
of the century. While admiring the work of the archaeologist and art his-
torian J. J. Winckelmann (1717–68), for example, he rejected his combina-
tion of historical analysis and classicist dogma regarding the exemplariness of
the Greeks. Winckelmann, according to Herder, erects a differential doctrine
(Lehrgebäude) by employing different and hence ahistorical standards in the
assessment of Greek as opposed to Egyptian art (SWS 8:476). In a similar
vein, he dismisses Voltaire’s global optimism regarding the universality of
rational progress based on the constancy of human nature — a trait he shares
11
with other distinguished historians of the time such as Robertson and Hume.
But what irritates Herder most is the disparaging treatment of mythology
12
and its rejection from a strictly rationalist point of view.
Against that background Herder develops his theory, combining the
originality of ancient mythology with a relativity of purpose, specifically the
notion that formerly sacred tales from the Greco-Roman pantheon must not
be transposed literally into the modern world. While any attempt at re-
juvenation should neither carry ancient “religious significance” (SEW 226),
nor get bogged down in the replication of “lifeless beauty,” it should project
a contemporary relevance that would strive to emulate — not imitate — the
ancient models (223). Therefore Herder speaks of an experimental “heuristic
use of mythology” (231) that would draw on “the modern age and its ways
in so felicitous a manner that the modern is made venerable and the ancient
rejuvenated” (232). To reach that goal, that is, to create “for ourselves an
entirely new mythology,” would require “two powers that are rarely found
together, and often work against one another, the reductive and the in-
ventive faculties, the analyzing of the philosopher and the synthesizing of the
poet [. . .]” (229). Only by tearing down — or in contemporary terms,
deconstructing — the prevailing perception of ancient images and re-inter-
preting them for our own time will we be able to do justice to the contin-
uing relevance of both. This would preserve the authenticity of the ancients
and lend legitimacy to the modern search for expression beyond mere imi-
tation. After all, the Greeks themselves never had a closed “system of fables
that they recited like Luther’s Catechism.” Rather, “every poet considered it
permissible to make additions and changes” (229), which means that adap-
tations are in order as long as they do not degenerate into mere copies.
Here, Herder addresses his age directly, saying that its analytical disposition
is precisely the reason for its dearth of authentic literature, and drawing the
following conclusion: “we want to study the mythology of the ancients as
poetic heuristics, so that we may become inventors ourselves. A story of gods
and heroes studied thoroughly from this point of view [. . .] must lead to the
shaping of poetic genius, or else nothing in the world will” (228–29).
Herder is as critical about the status of contemporary literature as he is
skeptical about the prospects of a possible improvement. Still, he advances
his argument for a rejuvenation not just of literature but of politics and cul-
ture at large. In either case the mythological reference stays in place, because
myths are never simply an aesthetic game, but always express and transmit
social issues. True poetry is not above the world but engaged in the political
process, which, as the business of the people and the nation, is nowhere
more evident than in the explicitly patriotic dimensions of ancient myth-
ology. Moses, the most eminent example, is a great author and a political
leader. The Exodus, the giving of the Ten Commandments, and the poetic
chronicling of both events not only give him a foundational role in the his-
tory of the Jewish people, but also elevate Hebrew poetry over all other na-
13
tional literatures of the time. Herder’s project, therefore, is not just about
the restoration of aesthetic values; it is first and foremost about the need to
reclaim a coherent national identity whose lack is reflected in the dismal state
of political and cultural division that defines the territorial situation of Ger-
many in the eighteenth century.
Poetry, then, is the originary voice of a unified people. In prehistoric
times this meant the sensual evocation of tradition (lebendige Sage) with the
poet as the creator of a whole world. “Ein Dichter ist Schöpfer eines Volkes
um sich: er gibt ihnen [sic] eine Welt zu sehen und hat ihre Seelen in seiner
Hand, sie dahin zu führen” (SWS 8:433; A poet is a creator of a nation
around himself: he gives them a world to see and has their souls in his hand,
to lead them there). Contemporary literature, by contrast, has degenerated
into writing, an observation which Herder compresses into the statement
that poetry has become literature: “Die Poesie ist Litteratur: ein Paradies
voll schöner Blumen und lachender Früchte; nur zeugt die schöne Farbe
nicht von Güte derselben, noch weniger der süsse Geschmack” (SWS 8:415;
Poetry is literature: a paradise full of pretty flowers and laughing fruits; only
the pretty color doesn’t prove the goodness of them, still less the sweet
14
taste). Or in less metaphorical terms: poetry has become an exercise in
writing, as opposed to the orality of ancient traditions. And writing is a
symptom of the aging of a culture, as is the preference for prescriptive rules,
academic decorum, and imitative entertainment. These symptoms are
indicative of a loss of sensual perception in the process of modernity and its
accelerating descent into an ever-more differentiated rational but also imper-
sonal and alienating life-world. Herder’s general interest in questions of
origin is a reflection of this dialectic of the Enlightenment. It underscores
the goal of recapturing the texture and spirit of ancient mythology, the
sensual immediacy of which remains the gold standard of poetic and popular
imagination on a national and transnational level.
Nation and Volk

Late eighteenth-century Europe discovered the nation as the basis of a new
sovereignty in which all members of the political spectrum were eligible to
196 ♦ KARL MENGES
participate. People took possession of their social environment in a process

driven by revolutionary ideals and their application in an egalitarian and
more or less democratic society. This process reflects the universal ambitions
of the Enlightenment in matters of religion and socio-political reform, but it
also reveals an underlying tension between particularism and universalism
that raises the question of a successful integration of both. The Enlighten-
ment mounted a broad effort to establish theories of equality and human
rights. Defined by an assumed universality of reason, nature, and progress, it
found its programmatic definition in Kant’s famous pronouncement: “Auf-
klärung ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbstverschuldeten
Unmündigkeit” (Enlightenment is the human being’s leaving behind his
15
self-imposed immaturity). This gives rationalism a universal reach. Yet this
assumed universality, which is spreading like cancer — “Das Licht der soge-
nannten Kultur, frißt, wie ein Krebs um sich!” (FA 3:23; The light of so-
called culture devours, like cancer, what is around it!) — is precisely what
triggers Herder’s objection, as evinced in the caustic comment: “Ein
Geschäft auf der Welt, wollt ihrs übel besorgt haben, so gebts dem Philo-
sophen!” (Whatever matters in this world, should you want to have it cared
for poorly, leave it to the philosopher!) Instead of honoring tradition (das
alte Herkommen), modern philosophy — “die leichte, die schöne!” — always
opts for the “bright and precious universal” over the individual (FA 4:62).
There can be no doubt that this involves inverted priorities and that all
dogmatic rationalists, Kant included, have it backwards. Herder calls their
position a “Hysteron Proteron” (FA 8:396) because it ignores the fact that
human cognition always starts with Erfahrung, that is, with a particular
experience of the world, which means that all human cognition is ultimately
empirical, non-metaphysical, and individual: “[. . .] in gewissem Betracht ist
also jede menschliche Vollkommenheit National, Säkular und am genaues-
ten betrachtet, Individuell” (FA 4:35; to a certain extent every human
perfection is national, secular, and, when most closely observed, individual).
To the extent, therefore, that modern rationalism universalizes the individual
by forcing it literally into a meta-physical system, it subverts its very own
16
basis, which is empirical and not speculative in nature. Any position ig-
noring these facts is empty talk, an attempt to claim a philosophical “prize”
through what is ultimately nothing but arrogance and “vain dialectics”
(“eitle Dialektik,” FA 8:313).
This spirited epistemological critique has its practical corollary in the
assessment of the concepts of Nation and Volk. Both terms are collective
singulars referring to a group of people with similar linguistic and cultural
traditions and aspirations. They have comparable beliefs, desires, hopes, and
prejudices, forming a national unity whose particular manifestations Herder
evokes in a multitude of terminological compound formations. Take for ex-
ample his frequent references to Nationaldichtkunst, Nationallieder, Natio-
nalmärchen, Nationalwünsche and so on, all of which are based on particular

sensual or emotive perceptions such as Nationalstolz, Nationalgefühl, Na-
tionalneigungen, or Nationalglückseligkeit. The core of such feelings rests in
Nationalgeist, defining a Nationalcharakter based on Nationaltraditionen
17
by which people eventually grow together to form a Nationalkörper. The
concept of a Nationaldenkart or a Nationalsehart is another complex vying
for articulation through a Nationalsprache, based on linguistic and geo-
graphical particularities. Here the term partly overlaps with the term Volk, in
that it crosses social boundaries and includes all people, especially those who
have so far been relegated to the margins of society.
All of these differentiations reflect the anti-universal disposition of the
term Nation, which has been present in Germany since the second half of
the fifteenth century, when it was directed against imperial as well as papal
18
powers. The same trend still informed the lively patriotic debate in Ger-
many in the 1760s against foreign cultural dominance, especially that of
France, which was perceived as a threat that could be met only through a
19
retreat to one’s own cultural heritage. Carl von Moser, for example, la-
mented the lack of a national consciousness (National-Denkungsart) and
love of country (Vaterlands-Liebe) and called for a commitment to serve
the general welfare of the state. J. G. Zimmermann appealed to national
pride and an awareness of the true value of the nation while cautioning
against the decline into crude nationalism. Herder, likewise, was aware of
the danger of national delusions of grandeur (“Nationalwahn,” FA 7:248)
but also leaves no doubt about the need for and legitimacy of national self-
determination.
Such calls for a national awakening correlate with Herder’s interesting
appraisal of prejudices, which, in contrast to Enlightenment dogma, he sup-
ports on the basis of their individual, even idiosyncratic characteristics.
Prejudices have important self-stabilizing psychological implications. They
are part of a pre-rational, mythopoetic tradition in that they unite people and
make them happy on the basis of collective sentiment rather than critical
reflection. Therefore, for Herder, prejudices, aside from their practical un-
avoidability, are good in the very basic sense of this unifying potential: “Das
Vorurteil ist gut, zu seiner Zeit: denn es macht glücklich. Es drängt Völker
zu ihrem Mittelpunkte zusammen, macht sie fester auf ihrem Stamme, blü-
hender in ihrer Art [. . .]. Die unwissendste, vorurteilendste Nation ist in
solchem Betracht oft die erste” (FA 4:39–40; The prejudice is good, in its
time: for it makes for happiness. It forces peoples to unite at their middle
point, makes them firmer on their family trees, more blooming in their own
way [. . .]. The most unknowing, most prejudiced nation is in this respect
often the first).
While Herder conflates in this passage the terms Volk and Nation, there
is an important differential time factor in that the former has a pre-rational
198 ♦ KARL MENGES
dimension referring back to the beginning of human socialization. Volk for

20
Herder is a primary category (Ursprungskategorie) connoting origin, au-
thenticity, and communal identity. Correspondingly, folk songs (Volkslieder
in Herder’s coinage) have a pre-literary, mythical or transcendent quality;
with their universal dimension, grounded in our common humanity and
expressed in its voice (die Stimme der Menschheit), with its multitude of
tongues, they invoke the divine, which is perceivable by all who still trust
their sensibilities. As such, they are a manifestation of sensory primacy. They
have a universal dimension, as they are grounded in our common humanity,
whose “voice” they represent as the Stimme der Menschheit, which always
speaks in a multitude of individual tongues. It is precisely their originary
voice that has been lost in the process of cultural differentiation, with the
emergence of the nation-state as its political point of reference.
21
This is not to say that the term Nation does not connect with Volk. It
obviously relates to the latter by virtue of being its historical successor. Yet
Nation in Herder’s usage does not just supersede Volk, but rather elevates
and contains it on a more differentiated level, much in anticipation of
Hegel’s tripartite notion of sublation (Aufhebung) through the dialectics of
negation, elevation, and preservation. Nothing gets lost in the inexorable
process of cultural differentiation, but this does not mean that nothing can
go awry. Herder perceives nations not as immutable entities but as living
organisms, and in a very modern sense as something similar to Benedict
22
Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities,” maintaining collective
stability through a distinct image of themselves. Different nations develop
different characteristics at different speeds, or as Herder puts it, they have
early or delayed national characteristics. England is a case of the former,
having taken a fortuitous route toward nationhood with the early intro-
duction of constitutional rights in the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, which
was later written into the constitution of the United States. Germany, by
contrast, has been dominated for most of her history by foreign interests that
not only stifled the development of a national spirit, but also made the emer-
gence of a national literature all but impossible. As Herder sees it, Germany
has been “the mother and servant of foreign nations” and thus both po-
litically and geographically divided for centuries (FA 3:21), which makes it
23
doubtful whether one can speak of a German nation at all. As it is, Herder
says, Germany has practically nothing, “no people, no public, no nation, no
language or poetry that would be ours that would live among us and thrive”
24
(SWS 9:529). Yet even such a state of disintegration is not reason to lose
hope. On the contrary, it should inspire introspection and self-preservation
concordant with the prejudicial and self-centered forces in all of nature.
Hence Herder’s suggestion: “Lerne dich selbst kennen: denn andre kennen
und mißbrauchen dich. Requirire dich, damit du nicht requirirt werdest.”
(SWS 20:342–43; Get to know yourself, for others know you and abuse you.
Seize yourself so that you may not be seized by others.)
What is called for, therefore, says Herder, is the creation of a strong and
unmistakable sense of identity within the family of nations. This is all the
more important because the concept of Nation itself has changed and be-
come unstable. Volk (dēmos) in the world of the Greek polis was a venerable
and accepted concept that included all citizens. In Herder’s time, he says, it
mostly connotes rabble and riffraff (Pöbel und Canaille). Herder contrasts
what he sees as the equality of the citizens of the Greek polis with the sep-
aration of and conflict between the classes in the Germany of his day: “Dort
waren alle Bürger gleich: sie waren Soldaten, Ackersleute, und Staatsräte
zusammen; heut zu Tage sondert man Ackerbau, und Soldatenstand, ja
gemeiniglich auch die Regierung vom Bürgerstande ab: man setzt Kaufmann
und Handwerker dagegen.” (FA 1:45; There all citizens were equal: soldiers,
farmers, and statesmen were all together; today one separates the farmers and
the military class, yes, presumably even the government from the bourgeois
class: one sets businessmen and craftsmen against it).
This transformation of Volk into Nation reflects the relentless modern
trend toward division of labor and the attendant process of social strati-
fication. The end result of this process is modern statehood, which Herder
defines in terms of artificiality and mechanical functioning. The state is es-
sentially an administrative machine suppressing everything individual and
25
non-conformist. The term “state” connects semantically with “status” and
strict stratification, involving bureaucratic elites that marginalize and suppress
the people. Not surprisingly, officials of the state are considered enforcers of
policy, not movers of events. History, in other words, is made not by politi-
cans but by poets and priests. As authors from the people and for the people,
they are Volkshelden and Volksschriftsteller, and they are effective not because
they belong to a higher social class, but because they are of the people —
26
like Moses, Luther, or, more recently, Franklin.
Herder’s emphasis on a German national revival has been accused of
feeding later nationalist and even National Socialist, ambitions. Yet if we stay
within Herder’s interpretive horizon, it is clear that his program is based on
restoration rather than on racial and hegemonic aspirations; its orientation is
not essentially national but international or transnational. What needs rescu-
ing, according to Herder, is the forgotten tradition of literary treasures, not
just in Germany but anywhere in the world where conquest and oppression
have silenced the originary voice of the people. Since the explosive expansion
of Western rationalism, knowledge has grown exponentially. But how, Herder
asks, do we relate to foreign people, especially to the so-called “savages or
half-savages” (“Wilde oder Halbwilde”) and their cultures? Only from the
outside, he says, depicting them in Fratzenkupferstiche (engraved carica-
tures), instead of “von innen [. . .] als Menschen, die Sprache, Seele, Emp-
200 ♦ KARL MENGES
findungen haben [. . .].” Only if we change our perspective and take this
inside approach, while discarding the “babble” of empire-building “Euro-
pean fools,” will we do justice to their sensuous, “uncivilized” songs, which
will lead us back not only to their identity but to our own as well. For the
overarching connection between the savages and us is our common human-
ity, which liberates us, whereas the prevailing “cancerous” culture will only
bring loss and destruction (FA 3:59–60).
The extent of this paradigm shift becomes evident when Herder con-
siders the modern quest for liberation from the “tyranny” of Greece. Within
the context of his folk-song project, Herder views the ancients, in their
classicist stylization, as caricatures as well: “an die Wand gemalte Regeln,
idealische Fratzenvorbilder der Welt und Nachwelt” (FA 3:64), cutouts, in
other words, without life and vitality. Yet if literature is supposed to reflect
the distinctiveness of a people, it must be popular (volksmäßig) or it becomes
27
“a classical air bubble.” The imposition of rigid classicist standards, then,
does not just extend to the native people but to our Western tradition as
well. The allusion to the contemporary absolutist state of affairs in politics
and aesthetics is unmistakable. Although veiled in a mostly moderate dis-
cursive context because of the threat of political repercussions, Herder could
not have been clearer in his allusion to the Zeitgeist of classical Weimar,
which certainly did not conform to his hopes for a national agenda, Goethe’s
classical turn included.
Volksliteratur, Nationalliteratur, Weltliteratur

If there is an answer to this inevitable price of enlightened modernism, it is
to be found through folk literature, which Herder is intent on rescuing —
for love of the nation — before it is too late. It is against this state of affairs
that he reaffirms the sensual tradition of the folk songs, in part because they
require urgent intervention themselves not to be lost forever: “Wir sind am
äußersten Rande des Abhanges: ein halb Jahrhundert noch und es ist zu
spät!” (FA 3:21).
And then there is the unifying aspect of popular literature. Driven by
pre-rational preferences, it has a mythical dimension that conveys stability by
grounding believers in a set of normative values. Hence the prevalent focus
on relations of kinship and community in familial, tribal, or ethnic constel-
lations, which Herder defines as a dynamic process with self-affirming char-
acteristics. Pindar’s poetry, for example, is focused on the particularity of the
Greek archaic period. His “mythology is history of the fatherland, history of
the native city,” reflecting the “hero’s pride of family and ancestry.” His
hymns represent “sacred national, secular, and patronymic songs,” worthy
“to be preserved in the temple of the God and to be written in golden letters
in the archives of the city where he sang” (SEW 228). As sacred tales they are
particular universals, telling individual stories of general applicability. Their

individuality, in other words, is representative of patriotism anywhere, fo-
cused on its own and carrying “its center of happiness in itself like every ball
28
its center of gravity” (FA 4:39).
Nowhere is this more apparent than in those folk songs in which the
29
“national character” of a people finds its most appropriate representation.
Since the early collections of the Fragmente (1767) and the Alte Volkslieder
(1774), Herder found these “national treasures” in a wide range of tradi-
tions, for instance in ancient Classical and Nordic poetry, in the Gaelic and
Celtic bardic tradition, in the Edda, and, more recently, in the Ossian com-
plex. Major testimonials are the Homeric poems and even more so the Bib-
lical Genesis text, which Herder considered the most originary document of
mankind, as it links the ancient history of the Hebrews with the entire
Western Judeo-Christian tradition. It is no coincidence that Herder refers to
the Old Testament as the Älteste Urkunde des Menschengschlechts (Oldest
Document of Mankind, 1774), for humanity at large is its overarching prin-
ciple, in which all national particularities will eventually come together. Ulti-
mately, then, Volkslieder or popular literature represent world literature, or
to put it conversely, world literature can only grow out of national roots.
Herder’s two collections of folk-poetry (1778/79) best document this
universal trait. Thematically, the songs are concerned with the simple life and
the daily issues of common people. Herder collects, translates, and compiles
from a rich oral and published tradition without regard for status or even
proven authorship. Hence the range of the collections, which contain mostly
German and English songs, but also translations and re-creations (Nach-
dichtungen) of a variety of other national texts, mostly of southern, eastern,
and northern European origin. Then there are texts from the Old Testament
such as the Songs of Salomon, but also poems by Homer and Shakespeare,
Percy’s Reliques, and Macpherson’s Ossian as well as poems by Luther, Opitz,
Klopstock, Goethe, and Matthias Claudius, whose Abendlied is included in
order to document the tone and diction of great contemporary folk poetry
(FA 3:426).
One of the initial sparks for the collections was the publication of the
Ossian songs in 1765, whose German translation Herder reviewed with a
distinct bias against the classicist rendering of the English “original,” which
at that time had not yet been identified as a forgery. His critique grew even
more pronounced when he read the English text, prompting his decision to
part with the classical tradition altogether. In the revised second edition of
the first collection of the Fragmente (1768) he even advocated the emanci-
pation from all classical influence by insisting that Ossian’s originality was
comparable with that of Homer. Herder consistently argues “[. . .] daß wir
unsere Litteratur nicht edler und ursprünglicher bereichern, als wenn wir die
Gedankenschätze eines Volks erbeuten, das keine Sklavin und keine Kolonie
202 ♦ KARL MENGES
der Griechischen Litteratur gewesen, daß ein Oßian gegen Homer, und ein
Skalde gegen Pindar gestellt, keine unebne Figur mache [. . .]” (SWS 2:118–
19; that we can’t enrich our literature more purely and with more originality
than when we plunder the thought-treasures of a people that was no slave
and no colony of Greek literature; that an Ossian compared to Homer and a
30
skald compared to Pindar do not make an uneven figure). The Greeks
should no longer be the model to be imitated, not because they were not
exemplary in content — “Die Väter aller Litteratur in Europa sind die
Griechen” (SWS 2:112; The fathers of all literature in Europe are the Greeks)
— but because they have been turned into formal icons of classicism. This
happened when artists and critics decided to write in the language of the
ancients for purely formalist reasons, which had the effect
[. . .] daß man alles Unklassische vermied, um nicht von den Alten abzu-
weichen: also entsagte man seiner Eigenheit, man opferte alles auf, das
uns den Namen klassisch streitig machen könnte; und ward ein klassischer
Nachahmer! — O das verwünschte Wort klassisch! [. . .]. Dies Wort wars,
das alle wahre Bildung nach den Alten, als nach lebenden Mustern, ver-
drängete, und den leidigen Ruhm aufbrachte: ein Kenner der Alten, ein
Artist zu sein [. . .]. (FA 1:418–19)
[that one avoided everything unclassic, in order not to deviate from the
ancients: so one forsook one’s individuality, sacrificed everything that
could call the designation classic into dispute, and became a classical
imitator! — Oh the accursed word classic!. . . . It was this word that
suppressed all true education on the model of the ancients or based on
living models, and established the tiresome claim to fame of being a
expert on the ancients, of being an artist. . . .]
Not only did such prescriptive poetics do harm to modern literary
voices, according to Herder; it also missed the tone of the Greeks, who were
in reality just as untamed, uncivilized, and “authentic” as the heroes and
gods of the Nordic tradition. In one of the Vorreden to the Alte Volkslieder
31
(1774) Herder expands on this observation by claiming that the ancients
were no more than “half savages” themselves when they produced their best
works. Not surpringly, there are obvious correspondances between ancient
and modern literary motifs, for example between Tyrtaeus, the Spartan poet,
whose praise of battle is present thematically in the songs and dances of the
American Indians. By the same token, who would deny that Orpheus, the
earliest voice in Greek poetry, was an uncivilized shaman from Thrace? (FA
3:63–64). Herder’s point was that Greek art was not what it was made out
to be by contemporary aesthetic rules of imitation à la Winckelmann (SWS
8:476). For Herder, imitation was the main problem in creating a new and
vital literature that went beyond the classical, prescriptive canon. It was there-
fore not an antiquarian interest that motivated Herder in his collections, but
the idea of an alternative model to contemporary aesthetic constraints. He

believed that an aesthetic re-education was required, starting with the re-
membrance and documentation of the language of the people, whose many
voices ultimately converge in the single and overarching voice of Humanität.
Herder consistently stressed the interplay between universalism and in-
dividualism, based on his conviction that human nature represents an infinite
variety moving inexorably toward unity and perfection. He conceives of such
32
unity in terms of the great connection of Humanität, and his Volkslied
project provides the paradigm of this process. Its concept is driven by the
idea that that “which was old should be new again” (FA 3:16). There are
stages in this process: from its wild origins, human civilization first develops
into a model akin to Attic democracy, which engages every free man. From
there, the emergence of the monarchy splits the community into nation and
state, which fundamentally affects the concept of the people. While it once
encompassed all citizens, the word Volk now denotes only the lower, dispos-
sessed class. Civilization has thus reached modern statehood with its or-
ganized division of labor and, implicitly, alienation. This is the state from
which Herder hopes to recover, which is no less an ambitious task than the
reconstruction of the common voice of mankind in its prelapsarian state of
innocence. While giving expression to a distinct national voice, popular lit-
erature thus transcends national boundaries, which brings Herder’s utopian
reflections full circle. By grounding literature again in sensual individuality,
he hopes to recapture the basis for a national consciousness. From popular
literature through the differentiation into the varieties of national literatures,
the poetic aspirations of a new mythology come into focus as world liter-
33
ature, the unifying term of which is Humanität.
While Herder does not refer to Goethe’s famous term of Weltliteratur
34
explicitly, the commonalities in the two men’s views on the topic are ap-
parent even though they are overshadowed by personal differences and even
animosities. There is a remarkable convergence of interests in the concep-
tualization of world literature. Beginning with the heady Sturm und Drang
days in Strasbourg in 1770 and extending into a life-long exchange of ideas
in Weimar, these commonalities far outweigh the differences. The two men
shared an interest in Shakespeare and in everything else considered Ger-
manic, Teutonic, or “Gothic“; furthermore they shared a fascination with
oriental poetry, with particular focus on Hafis, who, as the “preserver of the
Quran” stands for the preservation of tradition and faith; both men also
conducted detailed studies of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, as well
as the classics, the two of which they considered the basis of European
culture; finally Herder shared Goethe’s fascination with the study of nature,
in terms of a merging of history and natural evolution — an interest in
morphology, geology, optics, the mineral and agricultural sciences, aug-
mented by an attention to the new physiocratic school of economics, whose
204 ♦ KARL MENGES
timely recognition of emerging capital markets signaled the end of the sys-
tem of exploitative, absolutist mercantilism. To summarize, given their com-
mon history and interests, it is surprising that the relation between Goethe
and Herder turned problematic at all. And yet, a slow disintegration of the
friendship did occur, which may be explained in part by the gradual role
reversal between former teacher and student and Goethe’s rise to the status
of statesman and literary celebrity — an icon, as it were, of world literature
himself.
Of course, the changing political conditions and their reverberations in
Classical Weimar played a decisive role as well. Herder had first supported
Goethe unambiguously as a young genius in Shakespeare’s tradition. By con-
trast, Herder viewed Goethe’s later works both as a throwback to classicist
models and as an acquiescence to the political status quo. By the early 1780s
the American colonies had gained their independence and a populist revolt
in France foreshadowed fundamental changes that Herder supported
cautiously but also without hesitation. While he rejected the concept of a
radical revolution — and not just for philosophical reasons but also because
he detested what would all too soon morph into the excesses of the French
Terreur — he remained a reformer with a clear bias against the ancien
régime and its German adaptations, among them the duchy of Sachsen-
Weimar with Goethe at its cultural and political center. And while Duke Karl
August was a moderate by comparison, he still had to appease the two most
powerful states in Germany, both of which had taken a turn to the right after
the relatively liberal and enlightened rules of Friedrich II of Prussia and
Joseph II of Austria.
When Goethe joined his duke, the Prussian general, on the military cam-
paign against France, the relation between the two former friends reached a
low that is perhaps nowhere more noticeable than in the faint praise with
which Herder dismissed Goethe’s more recent literary output as unengaged
and formalist exercises. This includes such indisputable masterpieces as Eg-
mont, Iphigenie, and Tasso, which Herder characterized as “disinterested”
(teilnahmslos) reworkings of the “form of the ancients” without any clear con-
temporary relevance. This judgment stands in sharp contrast to Herder’s view
of the dramatic works of Goethe’s youth, Götz von Berlichingen in particular,
which Herder praised as “ein Deutsches Stück, groß und unregelmäßig wie
das Deutsche Reich ist; aber voll Charaktere, voll Kraft und Bewegung” (FA
7:561; a German drama, great and irregular like the empire is; but full of
character, full of power and movement). The medieval German empire set
against the enlightened regionalism of Weimar: in such juxtaposition, Her-
der’s usually astute judgment in matters of aesthetic quality loses its force
driven by the as yet unresolved problem of a German literary resurgence.
Still, a possible resolution comes into focus under a new conceptual um-
brella, namely the overarching notion of an “advancement” of Humanität.
Humanität
How does this term, which has been described as the “capstone of Herder’s
35
Gesamtwerk” specifically relate to our topic? Herder had difficulty defining
36
it and occasionally even resorted to tautological explanations. What is clear,
however, is that Humanität is a goal or unifying concept that we must strive
for (FA 7:148), individually and collectively, in a learning process that in-
volves two uniquely human dispositions, curiosity and fear. Curiosity in that
we are always driven to tease out the connections between cause and effect
in everything we encounter; and fear, the great motivator of the Enlighten-
ment, which compels us to search for “invisible causes” when the visible
ones prove to be inadequate. Because we have no cognitive access to the
innermost workings of nature and do not even have insight into our own
selves, we can at best surmise but never know exactly how things really work.
While the ultimate cause of things is thus beyond cognitive grasp, we are still
able to divine (erraten), through analogies, the ultimate “connection of all
things,” the “being of beings” (FA 6:162). And we are able to do so through
intuition (Einfühlung) on the assumption that all visible creation is the ever
emerging result of an invisible spiritual “force” structuring all of reality. That
force is God or pure being.
37
This intuitive method of analogical discovery is driven decisively by
38
Herder’s adaptation of Spinoza’s deus sive natura doctrine. Against the
39
prevailing dualism in the Cartesian (and later Kantian) tradition, Herder
posits God as an iconic Pantocrator, emerging and reconstituting himself
perpetually in the manifold of nature. While rejecting all conceptual system
building, Herder assumes a “chain” of competing “forces” with God as the
“originary force of all forces” (FA 4:710; “Urkraft aller Kräfte”). These forces
have a graduated, experiential dimension in relation to the natural world, but
they extend as well into the invisible realm as “an ascending sequence within
the invisible manifold of creation” (FA 6:168; “eine aufsteigende Reihe von
Kräften im unsichtbaren Reich der Schöpfung”). Man’s evolutionary dis-
position to Humanität rests at the apex of the model: “Das Göttliche in
unserm Geschlecht ist also Bildung zur Humanität” (FA 7:148; the Divine
in our species is thus education toward humanity). This insight is framed by
a metaphor that captures the spiritual dimension of nature with each glo-
rious “day of creation” as Herder is fond of saying. While the notion of a
supreme being thus remains a metaphysical (literally, an invisible) propo-
sition, its everyday manifestation in a world of competing forces simulta-
neously ensures its empirical presence. Addressing that hidden, yet ever-
emerging, sensuous order of things is the task of poetry and religion. It is
also the highest form of our humanity.
We touch here the metaphysical core of Herder’s anthropology, which
appears encumbered, at first sight, by a conceptual contradiction. On the
206 ♦ KARL MENGES
one hand, the notion of a “capstone” or overarching principle seems indis-

pensable if we assume that history is imbued with meaning and destined to
lead us to Humanität. Yet if every entity, individually as a person or col-
lectively as a nation, is centered in itself, the stipulation of a general unifying
process toward humanity seems contradictory. Individual history can hardly
progress toward a universal goal when it is stuck in a self-referential loop.
Conversely, if history represents an “eternal Proteus” (FA 4:40), an end and
culmination of history in Humanität appears equally problematical, since
permanent change would imply an ultimate senselessness of all historical
evolution, which would relegate Humanität, as a concept of completion and
sublation, to an abstract utopian proposition.
It was Kant who took issue with this conceptual ambiguity in his ex-
40
tensive review of the first two books of Herder’s Ideen (1785). And while it
may be true that he misunderstood Herder in some epistemological
41
respect, it is equally evident that his argument is driven by a larger dis-
agreement with Herder’s naturalism, which is modeled not on the Cartesian
dualism of res extensa and res cogitans but on the dynamic interaction of
both. That position, moreover, is inspired and supported not only by
Spinoza’s deus sive natura doctrine but in the same measure by scientific
advances of the day, especially the discussion over preformation, which Kant
supports, vs. epigenesis, which Herder adopts in its central stipulation of an
immanent vis essentialis as the driving force in all manifestations of nature.
The theory of epigenesis no less than Spinoza’s deus sive natura concept
represents a major paradigm shift. It advances a dynamic model of emerging
and ever-differentiating life forces over the established doctrine of preforma-
tion, which stipulates that all parts of an organism exist completely pre-
formed in the cellular state and develop only by incremental increase in size.
Preformationism represented the most advanced scientific theory of embry-
ology and generation in the early Enlightenment. First advanced in the
1670s by Malebranche, it eventually united some of the most prominent
scientists of the time, such as Albrecht von Haller, Charles Bonnet, and
Lazzaro Spallanzani. Not surprisingly, Herder originally follows prefor-
mationism, whose influence can be traced into the early 1770s, as is evident,
for instance, in the treatise Über den Ursprung der Sprache (On the Origin of
Language, 1772) where Herder poses the rhetorical question: “Muß es nicht
schon Keim sein, was da wachsen soll? Und ist also nicht im Keime der
ganze Baum enthalten” (FA 1:720; Does not everything that grows have to
be germ first? And is therefore not the whole tree contained in the germ
42
already?)
Against that model, which anchors life in an early act of intelligent
design, epigenesis sets a new concept of immanent cellular evolution that is
focused on the self-replicating potentiality of the physical world at large. In
that it has a revolutionary impact not only on evolutionary biology but on
the social sciences as well. And while this new scientific paradigm does not
define Herder’s original position, it marks a substantial shift in the Ideen, in
which Herder in the 1780s countered preformation with the argument:
“Präformierte Keime, die seit der Schöpfung bereit lagen, hat kein Auge
gesehen” (FA 6:171; Preformed germs that have lain ready since creation no
eye has ever seen). By contrast, “was wir vom ersten Augenblick des Wer-
dens eines Geschöpfs bemerken, sind wirkende organische Kräfte” (FA
6:171; what we notice [rather] from the first moment of an emerging being,
are generating organic forces). Which supports the assumption: “Es ist also
anatomisch und physiologisch wahr, daß durch die ganze belebte Schöpfung
unsrer Erde das Analogon Einer Organisation herrsche” (FA 6:76; “It is
therefore true, anatomically and physiologically, that the complete creation
of our world is defined by the analogon of one organization).
This change of position is neither contradictory nor coincidental as it
mirrors, for instance, Haller’s indecision on the same question. But where
Haller switches from preformation to epigenesis and back to an admittedly
43
more sophisticated model of preformation, Herder stays with the new
44
theory, which had first been introduced by Caspar Friedrich Wolff only to
gain full acceptance with Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s revised dissertation
Über den Bildungstrieb und das Zeugungsgeschäfte of 1781 — just three years
before the publication of part 1 of Herder’s Ideen.
It is no coincidence that this new epigenetic model triggered Kant’s
scathing reproach of Herder for lack of philosophical rigor and sophistica-
tion. Herder’s “analogical” conflation of history and nature, which Kant per-
ceived as entirely speculative and “poetic,” bore the brunt of Kant’s attack.
He was particularly critical of the stipulation of a “certain invisible realm of
creation” (“ein gewisses unsichtbares Reich der Schöpfung”) from which a
life force would emanate that organizes everything in developmental grada-
45
tion. While this assumption of a vis essentialis (Wolff) is key to the
epigenetic explanation of microscopic embryology, it transcends, for Kant,
all experience and reaffirms the kind of pre-critical speculation that is the
central concern of the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/87). From the posi-
tion of Kant’s transcendental turn, Herder’s integration of particularism and
universalism in an analogous advancement toward Humanität thus collapses
on grounds of a self-referential contradiction. Again, such advancement
remains postulative if everything is centered in itself. Conversely, as history
implies perennial change, the emanation of historical forces from one over-
arching principle constitutes a metaphysical proposition. These conceptual
issues, moreover, are reflected in a discursive style that lacks philosophical
stringency as it advances entirely on an analogical and “poetic” level.
It is difficult to dismiss these objections unless one takes seriously what
Kant suggests facetiously in his polemic against Herder’s aesthetic line of
thought. He mocks his “dichterische Beredsamkeit” (poetic eloquence) and
208 ♦ KARL MENGES
poses the question “ob nicht hier und da Synonyme für Erklärungen, und
Allegorien für Wahrheiten gelten” (Kant 12:799; whether not here and
there synonyms might stand for explanations, and allegories for truths).
What he misses, in other words, is conceptual verifiability, charging that the
“philosopher,” as he refers to Herder not without sarcasm, seeks refuge “im
fruchtbaren Felde der Dichtungskraft” (Kant 12:792; in the fertile field of
poetic imagination). The implication is clear: Herder’s discourse is not phi-
losophy (and certainly not critical philosophy), but conventional, pre-critical
metaphysics, as seemingly affirmed by the author himself, who refers to
religion as “die höchste Humanität des Menschen” (FA 6:160; the highest
humanity of mankind).
Yet while intended as a resounding rejection of his former student’s
philosophical ambitions, the tone of Kant’s argument betrays his very own
conceptual dilemma. Rather than addressing the dialectic of the visible and
the invisible, or the particular and the universal, in the epigenetic argument,
Kant merely resorts to a declaration of what is supposedly unphilosophical
and poetic about it from his own dogmatic preformationist stance. His ar-
gument thus misses its target, as he fails to engage not just Herder, but his
central reference point, epigenesis, the most advanced scientific paradigm of
his time. Ultimately, the Ideen review, therefore, must be seen as a decep-
tively brilliant yet disingenuous attack. It remains an interesting polemic, but
it is nowhere near the devastating critique it has been characterized as
46
throughout the history of Herder scholarship. While Kant’s dismissive
treatment of the analogical concept illustrates the epistemological difference
to critical philosophy, it implicitly legitimizes Herder’s approach as an al-
ternative discourse that deserves recognition, not the least due to its solid
foundation in the history of science.
Given the dislocations associated with emerging modernity, Herder pur-
sues a vision of unity in the concept of Humanität. That unity is not a closed
theoretical construct but a work in progress, an empirical target in motion in
infinite epigenetic progression, as the early Romantics would later describe
it. It is centered in the notion of a community of man as represented by the
people, not by a politicized nation, and least of all by a mechanized state. Its
self-representation is folk poetry, the unifying “patronymic” and common
“voice” in the dual sense of a particular people and that of humanity at large,
which, although “invisible,” can and must be integrated, per intuition and
analogy, with the historical forces that always surround and define mankind.
Ultimately all these voices converge in one voice; it is not the “Stimmen der
Völker” in the plural, but the collective singular of the “lebendige Stimme
[. . .] der Menschheit selbst” (the living voice of mankind itself) that Herder
47
had in mind. His great project thus comes full circle in the sensual and
intuitive convergence of popular literature and world literature. It is the voice
of Humanität, preserved in the “Stimme der Völker” as a memorial to the
ancient tales of mankind and their remembrance in a “new mythology” whose

task would be the re-enactment of an authentic poetic text without which
“we simply cannot be” (SWS 18:485).
Notes
1
Citations refer to the German Herder editions Sämmtliche Werke, ed. Bernhard
Suphan (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877–), cited as SWS, and Werke in zehn Bänden (Frank-
furt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985–), cited as FA. English citations are taken
from Herder, Selected Early Works, 1764–1767, ed. Ernest A. Menze and Karl Menges
(University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 1991), cited as SEW. Additional un-
published translations are provided by the author.
2
“[. . .] das ist ein großer, ein seltener, ein beneidenswerter Ruhm, wenn es heißen
kann: so hätte Horaz, Cicero, Lukrez, Livius geschrieben, wenn sie über diesen Vor-
fall, auf dieser Stufe der Kultur, zu der Zeit, zu diesen Zwecken für die Denkart dieses
Volks, in dieser Sprache geschrieben hätten” (FA 1:391; that is a great, a rare fame,
worthy of envy, if one can call it fame: this is how Horace, Cicero, Lucretius, Livy
would have written, if they had written about this incident, at this level of culture, at
this time, to these purposes for the way of thinking of the people, in this language).
3
See Individualität: Poetik und Hermeneutik 13, ed. Manfred Frank and Anselm
Haverkamp (Munich: Fink, 1988), 611–12.
4
Michael Morton, Herder and the Poetics of Thought (University Park: Pennsylvania
State UP, 1989), 20.
5
Such as Franciscus Pomey’s Pantheum Mythicum (1741). See Hans Poser, “Mythos
und Vernunft. Zum Mythenverständnis der Aufklärung,” in Philosophie und Mythos:
Ein Kolloqium ed. Hans Poser (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1979), 132.
6
Clyde Kluckhohn, “Myths and Rituals,” in Myth and Literature: Contemporary
Theory and Practice, ed. John B. Vickery (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1966), 41.
7
Johann Georg Walch, Philosophisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1726, 881): “Die histo-
rischen Fabeln sind erdichtete Erzehlungen, welche die Historien-Schreiber für wahr
ausgeben [. . .].”
8
René-Joseph Tournemine, “Project d’un ouvrage sur l’origine des fables,” Mémoires
pour l’Histoire des Sciences et des beaux Arts, Nov.–Dec. 1702 and Jan.-Feb. 1703, 1–
22. See Poser, “Mythos und Vernunft,” 133.
9
Bernhard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, “De l’origine des fables,” Œuvres diverses (The
Hague, 1724), 1:340. See Poser, “Mythos und Vernunft,” 137.
10
See Hans Adler, Die Prägnanz des Dunklen: Gnoseologie, Ästhetik, Geschichtsphi-
losophie bei J. G. Herder (Hamburg: Meiner, 1990), 63.
11
“[. . .] Hume! Voltäre! Robertsons! klassische Gespenster der Dämmerung! was seid
ihr im Lichte der Wahrheit?” (FA 4:38).
12
One of Herder’s prime targets is Christian Adolf Klotz, professor at Göttingen and
later Halle. See SEW 224: “Herr Klotz appears everywhere to have in mind only one
use of mythology, which consists of empty allusions, mere blossoms of words,
210 ♦ KARL MENGES
bloated comparisons, distorted taste in phrasing, and the learned peddling of

images.”
13
“Die Poesie der Ebräer bekam einen unverkennbaren Vorzug vor allen Nationa-
poesien der Erde, daß sie Gottes- daß sie reine Tempelpoesie ward” (FA 5:934).
14
See Adler, “Weltliteratur — Nationalliteratur — Volksliteratur. Johann Gottfried
Herders Vermittlungsversuch als kulturpolitische Idee,” in Nationen und Kulturen:
Zum 250. Geburtstag Johann Gottfried Herders, ed. Regine Otto (Würzburg: Königs-
hausen und Neumann, 1996),” 276.
15
Immanuel Kant, “Beantwortung der Frage Was ist Aufklärung?” Werkausgabe. ed.
W. Weischedel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977), 11:53.
16
See Adler, Prägnanz, 45–46.
17
Koepke, “Herder’s Concept of ‘Nation,’” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth
Century 265 (1989): 1657: “Nations [for Herder] are an extension of families; they
are based on common traditions [. . .] and a life under common conditions.”
18
Reinhart Koselleck, “Volk, Nation,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Stuttgart: Klett-
Cotta, 1992), 7:282. Koselleck speaks of Nation as an “antiuniversalistischer Kampf-
begriff” (antiuniversalistic polemic concept).
19
See Carl von Moser, Von dem Deutschen Nationalgeiste (1761). The title of the
pamphlet is a direct adaptation of Voltaire’s main historiographical work, the Essai
sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations (1756). Moser received particular attention dur-
ing Prussia’s Seven Years’ War, which he perceives as a great patriotic conflict of
liberation.
20
See Ulrich Gaier’s extensive commentary (“Kommentar”) in Herder, FA 3:867–
68, 873 etc.
21
See the early, detailed study by F. M. Barnard, Herder’s Social and Political
Thought: From Enlightenment to Nationalism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), 59–60.
Also Wulf Koepke, “Das Wort ‘Volk’ im Sprachgebrauch Johann Gottfried Herders.”
Lessing Yearbook 19 (1987): 213.
22
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (Rev. ed., London, New York: Verso, 1991). In the most recent debate
on nationalism Anderson conceives of the nation as an imagined political community
“both inherently limited and sovereign” (6). The term “imagined” is used not in the
sense of “invented,” but to describe the way nations exist in a shared cultural
tradition. The belief of the members in the community creates it.
23
See Herder’s realistic assessment of his project in the fourth collection of the Briefe
zu Beförderung der Humanität: “Die geographischen Grenzen allein machen das
Ganze einer Nation nicht aus . . .” (FA 7:276; Geographic borders alone do not
make up a nation).
24
“Doch bleibts immer und ewig, daß wenn wir kein Volk haben, wir kein Publikum,
keine Nation, keine Sprache und Dichtkunst haben, die unser sei, die in uns lebe und
wirke” (SWS 9:529).
25
See Wulf Koepke, “Der Staat — die störende und unvermeidliche Maschine,” in
Nationen und Kulturen, ed. Otto, 228–29.
26
Koepke, “Herder’s Concept of ‘Nation,’” 1658.
27
“Und doch bleibts immer und ewig, daß der Theil von Litteratur, der sich aufs
Volk beziehet, volksmäßig seyn muß, oder er ist klassische Luftblase” (SWS 9:529).
28
See also Herder’s statement that “alles was mit meiner Natur noch gleichartig ist,
was in sie assimiliert werden kann, beneide ich, strebs an, mache mirs zu eigen;
darüber hinaus hat mich die gütige Natur mit Fühllosigkeit, Kälte und Blindheit
bewaffnet; — sie kann gar Verachtung und Ekel werden — hat aber nur zum Zweck,
mich auf mich selbst zurückzustoßen, mir auf dem Mittelpunkt Gnüge zu geben, der
mich trägt” (FA 4:39; everything that is of a kind with my nature, that can be
assimilated in it, I envy, strive for, make my own; beyond that, kind Nature has armed
me with lack of feeling, coldness, and blindness; — it can even become contempt and
disgust — has however the sole purpose of reverting me to myself, of making me
satisfied with the center of gravity that carries me).
29
See FA 7:495: “Wie ganzen Nationen Eine Sprache eigen ist, so sind ihnen auch
gewisse Lieblingsgänge der Phantasie, Wendungen und Objekte der Gedanken, kurz
ein Genius eigen, der sich, unbeschadet jeder einzelnen Verschiedenheit, in den
beliebtesten Werken ihres Geistes und Herzens ausdruckt.” — “[. . .] jedes Zeitalter
hat seinen Ton, seine Farbe; und es gibt ein eignes Vergnügen, diese im Gegensatz
mit andern Zeiten treffend zu charakterisieren.” (As a single language is a whole
nation’s own, so are also certain favorite ways of imagination, turns and objects of
thought — in short, a way of genius — its own, which, notwithstanding every
individual difference, is expressed in the most beloved works of its mind and heart.)
See also Hans Dietrich Irmscher, “Poesie, Nationalität und Humanität bei Herder,”
in Nationen und Kulturen: Zum 250. Geburtstag Johann Gottfried Herders, ed.
Regine Otto (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1996), 35–47; here, 35–36.
30
See with particular emphasis on Herder’s anti-classicism Andreas F. Kelletat,
Herder und die Weltliteratur (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1984), 37.
31
Herder withdrew the Alte Volkslieder from publication due to an abundance of
printer’s errors; most of the poems and songs appear in the Volkslieder collections of
1778/79.
32
FA 7:750: “Die Tendenz der Menschennatur fasset ein Universum in sich [. . .].
Eine unendliche Verschiedenheit, zu einer Einheit strebend, die in allen liegt, die alle
fördert. Sie heißt, (ich wills immer wiederholen,) Verstand, Billigkeit, Güte, Gefühl
der Menschheit.” (The tendency of human nature contains in itself a universe. . . . An
unending variety striving toward unity, which lies in all, which fosters all. It is called
(I want to repeat it always) reason, fairness, kindness, feeling of humanity.”)
33
See Gaier, “Kommentar,” FA 3:876. Adler speaks of Herder’s unifying concept of
world literature in terms of an “Archiv prägnanter Abbreviaturen der Humanität,” in
his “Weltliteratur — Nationalliteratur — Volksliteratur. Johann Gottfried Herders
Vermittlungsversuch als kulturpolitische Idee,” in Nationen und Kulturen, ed. Otto,
283.
34
Speaking to Eckermann on 31 January 1827, Goethe used his newly minted term
Weltliteratur, which quickly became common currency following the publication of
the Conversations with Goethe in 1835. See Eckermann Gespräche mit Goethe. Johann
Wolfgang Goethe. Sämtliche Werke (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1999),
Vol. 12 (39), 225: “National-Literatur will jetzt nicht viel sagen, die Epoche der
212 ♦ KARL MENGES
Welt-Literatur ist an der Zeit und jeder muß jetzt dazu wirken, diese Epoche zu
beschleunigen.” (National literature now does not mean much; the epoch of world
literature has arrived and everyone must now effect the acceleration of this epoch.)
For further references see among others, Fritz Strich, Goethe und die Weltliteratur
(Bern: Francke, 1957); also Hans Joachim Schrimpf, Goethes Begriff der Weltliteratur
(Stuttgart: Metzler, 1968).
35
Samson B. Knoll, “Herder’s Concept of Humanität,” in Johann Gottfried Herder:
Innovator through the Ages, ed. Wulf Koepke and Samson B. Knoll (Bonn: Bouvier,
1982), 9.
36
Take, for example, the following definition of intellect (Verstand) which appears as
man’s most exquisite gift and is thus foundational to his humanity: “Die Function
des Verstandes ist: anerkennen, was da ist sofern es dir verständlich ist, d.i. deinem
Verstande gehöret; deswegen heißt der Verstand Verstand, intellectus. Er lieset aus
und verstehet, d.i. er ergreift der gelesenen Dinge Bedeutung; so erkennet er sich an,
was sein ist” (FA 8:392; The function of reason is to recognize what is, to the extent
that it is understandable to you, i.e. that it belongs to your reason; it is because of
that that reason is called reason, intellectus).
37
“Was wir wissen, wissen wir nur aus Analogie . . .” (FA 4:330; Whatever we know,
we only know through analogies). On the function of the analogy, see Hans Dietrich
Irmscher, “Beobachtungen zur Funktion der Analogie im Denken Herders,” DVjs
55 (1981): 65–97.
38
Herder’s reception of Spinoza, especially in Gott. Einige Gespräche (1787), is well
documented. During the early years in Riga (1764–69), he followed the typical
dismissal of Spinoza as an excommunicated heretic, but changed his views radically in
the mid 1780s, engaging in a spirited defense upon a close re-reading of the Ethics
(1677). Spinoza now becomes his “philosophical Credo” based on the adaptation of
God as the “ens realissimum.” Johann Gottfried Herder, Briefe. Gesamtausgabe, ed.
Wilhelm Dobbek, Günter Arnold (Weimar: Böhlau, 1977–88), 5:90.
39
Descartes’s “erroneous” separation of matter and spirit leads Herder to stipulate a
mediating term (“verbindender Mittelbegriff,” FA 4:707), “so as to escape the Car-
tesian Dualism” (“um dem cartesischen Dualism zu entweichen”) on the assumption
that “God manifests himself in infinite forces and in infinite ways” (FA 4:709; daß
sich die Gottheit in unendlichen Kräften auf unendliche Weise offenbare).
40
Immanuel Kant, “Zu Johann Gottfried Herder: Ideen zur Philosophie der Ge-
schichte der Menschheit,” in Werkausgabe vol. 12, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel (Frank-
furt: Suhrkamp, 1977), 781–806.
41
See for example Ulrich Gaier, “Poesie oder Geschichtsphilosophie? Herders er-
kenntnistheoretische Antwort auf Kant,” in Johann Gottfried Herder: Geschichte und
Kultur, ed. Martin Bollacher (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1994), 7.
42
On the general context of the debate, see Shirley A. Roe, Matter, Life, and
Generation. Eighteenth Century Embryology and the Wolff-Haller Debate (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1981), 5ff. Regarding Herder’s preformationism see Tino
Markworth, Unsterblichkeit und Identität beim frühen Herder (Paderborn: Schöningh,
2005), 50ff. As to Herder’s changing position and eventual adaptation of the
epigenetic concept as an “invisible force” see Wolfgang Pross, “‘Ein Reich un-
sichtbarer Kräfte.’ Was kritisiert Kant an Herder?” in Scientia Poetica. Jahrbuch für
Geschichte der Literatur und der Wissenschaften, vol. 1, ed. Lutz Danneberg et al.
(Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997), 99–100.
43
See John H. Zammito, “Epigenesis: Concept and Metaphor in Herder’s Ideen,” in
Vom Selbstdenken: Aufklärung und Aufklärungskritik in Herders “Ideen zur Phi-
losophie der Geschichte der Menschheit,” ed. Regine Otto and John H. Zammito
(Heidelberg: Synchron, 2001), 134.
44
The central spark in favor of epigenesis was Wolff’s Theorie von der Generation in
zwei Abhandlungen erklärt und bewiesen (Halle 1759, Berlin 1764, repr. Hildesheim:
Olms, 1966). Wolff introduces, mainly against Bonnet and Haller, the notion of one
“vis essentialis” as a central invisible, yet ever-emerging force of nature. Pross, aptly,
refers to him as a “Spinoza der Physiologie” (100).
45
Kant, Werkausgabe, 12:790; Herder has to assume “ein gewisses unsichtbares Reich
der Schöpfung [. . .], welches die belebende Kraft enthalte, die alles organisiert [. . .].”
46
For a brief survey see Pross, “‘Ein Reich unsichtbarer Kräfte,’” 118–19.
47
See Gaier, “Kommentar,” FA 3:876.
9: Herder’s Views on the Germans and
Their Future Literature
Wulf Koepke
T HE CONDITION OF GERMAN LITERATURE and its place and function in

society was one of Herder’s major concerns. He thought of “literature”
in an older, more comprehensive sense: It included, in addition to poetry, all
types of prose writing, not only drama and fiction, but also biographies and
memoirs, historiography, essays on all topics of general interest including
science, and last but not least writings in the area of theology and religion,
from church hymns and sermons to edifying and scholarly treatises. Herder
opposed the ongoing process of specialization and professionalization that
made itself felt during his lifetime and that began to generate specialized
scholarly idioms (or jargons) for different fields of knowledge. As Herder ad-
hered to the ideal of Bildung for a well-rounded personality, he insisted on
standards for a clear and beautiful prose accessible to a general public as part
1
of a public discourse.
In his early texts, Herder mentioned the project of a “history of German
literature” (F1, SWS 1:133), but this never materialized. Instead, he wrote
extensively on the current state of German letters, on the social functions
and psychological effects of literature, on specific authors, and on the history
of individual genres. His studies and commentaries were made in different
contexts and for different purposes and are scattered throughout his oeuvre
from its beginnings to his last project, the periodical Adrastea (1801–4). In
their variety and diversity, they reveal some underlying themes and principal
concerns that can be specified and will be highlighted in the following
presentation.
As Herder was preoccupied with the role of language, literature, and
culture in general in shaping the changing German society, his views on
literature must be discussed in connection with his perspective on the his-
torical situation of Europe, and specifically on the social and political con-
ditions of Germany. Herder was a sharp critic of his “philosophical” age,
which, in his view, was anything but enlightened about itself, a criticism
most stridently voiced in his polemic treatise against Enlightenment philoso-
phy of history, Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Mensch-
heit (Another Philosophy of History for the Education of Humankind,
216 ♦ WULF KOEPKE
1773). According to Herder, his age considered itself the pinnacle of human
history, but it was blind to its own serious faults and weaknesses. Herder
considered Europe, and France in particular, in a state of crisis, in an age of
decadence and in need of a radical renewal. He shared the widespread
opinion that the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was in its last
stages of decomposition, and that a rebirth of a true German nation had to
begin with a new national culture, that a “Kulturnation” would help to gen-
erate the institutions and structures eventually leading to a national state of
2
the Germans. Herder was among those who looked for inspiration for such
a future nation in the traditions and institutions of the Germanic past. For
him, one of the faults of the Germans was that they neglected and un-
derestimated the achievements of their own great men, so that many im-
portant talents had languished in misery and neglect, while the French and
the British proudly honored their outstanding scientists, artists, writers, and
philosophers.
Herder became known through a first major publication, Über die neuere
deutsche Literatur. Fragmente (On Recent German Literature. Fragments),
published in 3 volumes in 1766 and 1767. He followed this with numerous
book reviews, a biographical sketch on Thomas Abbt, and Kritische Wälder
(Critical Forests, 3 volumes, 1768–69; a fourth volume was published post-
humously in 1846), investigations of fundamental questions of aesthetics
and poetics with an eye on the ongoing debates in Germany. In 1770, he
won the prize of the Berlin Academy for his Abhandlung über den Ursprung
der Sprache (Treatise on the Origin of Language), published in 1772. A new
trend manifested itself in Herder’s collection of essays (some of which were
by other writers, as will later be explained) Von deutscher Art und Kunst (Of
German Kind and Art, 1773), which included essays on Shakespeare and on
Ossian and folk songs — folk songs presented as a source of inspiration for
future poetry instead of primitive trash by uneducated peasants. In 1778–79
he published collections of folk songs from all parts of the world in his own
translations or adaptations. During the 1770s he wrote several prize essays
for different academies on the significance of literature and the humanities
for society.
At the same time, Herder pursued his biblical studies with an emphasis
of offering a new exegesis (and translation) of the text of the Bible (see the
essays by Bultmann and Kessler in this volume). This began with the pub-
lication of his controversial translation and commentary on Genesis, Älteste
Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts (The Oldest Document of the Human Race,
1774–76), followed in 1778 with Lieder der Liebe, a translation with com-
mentary of Solomon’s Song of Songs, and later by Vom Geist der Ebräischen
Poesie (On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry), 1782–83, a history of Old Tes-
tament poetry, including the psalms and the book of Job.
HERDER’S VIEWS ON THE GERMANS AND THEIR FUTURE LITERATURE ♦ 217
During the 1780s Herder began to collect his shorter essays under the
title Zerstreute Blätter (Scattered Leaves, 1785–97), in which he also in-
cluded histories of various literary genres and his own translations. The
Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität (Letters for the Advancement of
Humanity, 1793–97) contained a history of European literature from a com-
parative point of view, and the periodical Adrastea provided Herder’s as-
sessment of the achievements of the eighteenth century, including numerous
sections on literary genres and individual authors.
The period from 1766 to 1803 witnessed momentous changes in Euro-
pean history, the outstanding event being the French Revolution of 1789. It
was also a remarkably creative age for the culture in the German-speaking
countries: In music, in the arts, in philosophy, and particularly in literature,
which emerged from being considered a backward non-entity to become the
model for European Romanticism. Herder contributed seminal ideas to this
development, although his position in his later years differed sharply from
those of the German Classicists and Romantics, so that it became contro-
versial and diminished the impact of his legacy. It is best to follow a chrono-
logical sequence to understand and do justice to Herder’s ideas and their
significance.
There is no text that truly summarizes Herder’s views on German lit-
erature, on its history and future prospects. It is therefore understandable
that scholars have preferred to deal with narrower, more specific questions.
Herder’s early writings, his views on folk literature, and his concept of “Na-
tion” have attracted the most scholarly attention. Next in number have been
studies on Herder’s views on literary genres, such as the drama, the fable,
and the epigram. More recently there have been investigations of Herder’s
concept of literature in a social and political context. His contributions to
the beginnings of comparative literature have also been noted. Literary
scholars have so far largely overlooked the significance of Herder’s works on
3
the Bible, such as his translation of the psalms. The following presentation
will also address the often neglected issue of the changes in Herder’s con-
ception of German literature. Too often Herder’s later views have been dis-
missed as a mere “backsliding” into previous Enlightenment positions that
had been left behind by new movements and younger generations.
A Comprehensive Concept of Literature

Herder entered the literary scene with Über die neuere deutsche Literatur.
Fragmente, commonly referred to as Fragmente. This was a critique of a cri-
tique, since Herder declared it to be a commentary on the 24 volumes of the
Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend (Letters Concerning the Most Recent
Literature), a review journal started by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–
81) in 1759, with the help of Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86) and Friedrich
218 ♦ WULF KOEPKE
Nicolai (1733–1811), later carried on mainly by Thomas Abbt (1738–66).

The Briefe had ceased to exist in 1765, but during their life span they had
been the most prominent voice of criticism on current literature in Germany.
By declaring his Fragmente a “Beilage” to the Briefe, Herder affirmed that
he would continue in the same spirit. However, his project was different and
ambitious. He offered nothing less than a survey of the present state of Ger-
man literature as a whole and gave directions for future improvements.
As Herder explained in the section “Von den Lebensaltern der Sprache”
(On the Life Stages of Language), languages as well as civilizations go
through the same life stages as individual human beings, from childhood to
youth and adulthood to old age. Herder considered his own age as “old,”
characterized by abstract thinking expressed in expository prose. A renewal
or rejuvenation was needed, one that would have to take its inspiration from
the poetic idioms of earlier times. The literature of his day was mere artistry
for idle entertainment written to exhibit the mastery of sophisticated struc-
tures and complex stylistic features. Instead, Herder wanted to go back to
times when poetry, and literature in general, really did matter, and was of
concern for everyone, expressing fundamental thoughts and feelings com-
mon to the entire society.
At that time, German society and culture was considered backward and
inferior compared to the French and English, not keeping up with the march
of the times, both by foreigners and the Germans themselves. This sense of
inferiority had led to the notion, prominently espoused by the “praeceptor
Germaniae” of the 1730s and 1740s, the Leipzig professor Johann Christoph
Gottsched (1700–1766), that an improvement of German literature could
only come through the imitation of classical Latin and French models. While
Gottsched’s positions had been vigorously attacked, notably by Lessing in
the Literaturbriefe, the idea of imitation remained dominant, even if the
model was Shakespeare instead of French classical tragedies. Herder’s Frag-
ments offered a systematic critique of the virtues and usefulness of such
imitations: he analyzed what German literature could gain from “Oriental”
literature, meaning primarily the Old Testament of the Bible, from ancient
Greek and Latin poetry, and from French and English models. His answer
was that it could gain very little directly, since the Germans were not like the
Greeks of the fourth century B.C., nor the Romans of the Augustan age, nor
the French of the seventeenth century.
Herder abandoned his project midway, before arriving at the question of
the imitation of the French and the English, but he had made his point: Not
imitation, but emulation and “Übertragung,” cultural transfer, was the an-
swer. The Germans could be inspired by Homer, by the psalms, by Shakes-
peare, but they had to transfer and adapt the models to their own age and
their own literary and social customs. In so doing, they had to stay true to
their own cultural traditions and be mindful of the current state of their
society.
While Herder attacked lack of originality, his most enduring criticism
targeted sterile artificiality. He condemned a prose style that was colored by
the “polite” and political language of the courts, reminiscent of the Baroque
era. He also fought against lifeless, abstract academic prose as well as reli-
gious tracts that did not address authentic human concerns. Herder repre-
sented the aspiration of the emerging middle class to establish a common-
sense public discourse. He realized that he lived in an age of prose, not of
poetry, but he strove for a “schöne Prosa,” a beautiful prose, a prose of
clarity and purpose, yet enhanced by poetic metaphors, a language that
could move and impress the reader and listener. He considered this “beauti-
ful prose” a station on the way back to true poetry; it would also enhance
the discourse on social matters, culture, and philosophy and thus establish a
common idiom for the entire German-speaking public.
For this purpose, Herder proposed a “pure” spoken language as op-
posed to the dialects then commonly used in the different regions of Ger-
many, a national language as a medium for the public communication of the
entire nation. Such a common German language, based on Martin Luther’s
usage, had evolved into the written means of communication among the
Germans. While he strove for a “pure” German, Herder (in a seeming con-
tradiction) held that such a language needed to be enriched by the everyday
language of the people, meaning the dialects. In some sense, he followed the
example of Luther, who used words and phrases from different regions to
make his translation of the Bible accessible to all Germans. (Here it must be
kept in mind that Herder was a teacher and a preacher, and as a Lutheran
minister, used Luther’s idiom in his sermons and lessons.)
At the time of his writing of the Fragments, Herder was in a particular
position that motivated him to insist on such a “pure” German language: he
was living in Riga, which was part of the Russian empire, but whose domi-
nant classes were German-speaking, though surrounded by a Latvian (and
Latvian-speaking) population. Russian was the official language, and the
nobility, as elsewhere in Europe, used French as their means of commu-
nication. In contrast to these languages, the German-speaking middle class
in Latvia considered German a symbol of cultural identity and pride, being
convinced of the value of a “pure” language that contrasted strongly with
the dialects that were spoken by most Germans, including such writers as
Goethe and Schiller. What Herder was after was a common, “folk” language,
but purified of too much dialect.
The Fragments offered examples of exemplary modern German prose in
the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68), Thomas Abbt,
Moses Mendelssohn, Friedrich Karl von Moser (1723–82), Johann Joachim
4
Spalding (1714–1804), and above all Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Herder
220 ♦ WULF KOEPKE
cited the most recent texts from different areas of knowledge, like Winckel-
mann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (1765), Moser’s Über den deutschen
Nationalgeist (1765), Mendelssohn’s Phädon (1767), Abbt’s Vom Verdienste
(1765), and Lessing’s Laokoon (1765).
Yet notwithstanding these examples, under the particular conditions of
the German letters Herder considered it his foremost task to clear the ground,
“aufräumen,” that is, to prepare the soil so that new plants could grow. He
also felt a need to clear the ground for certain literary genres, expounding
them at the expense of others. While Herder joined Lessing in his campaign
to free drama, tragedy in particular, from unnecessary and unnatural restric-
tions imposed by the masters of French poetology, he declared the grand
epic in the manner of Virgil obsolete for his time, offering the example of
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724–1803), whose odes he praised very
highly, but whose epic Der Messias he considered a failed experiment. Herder
especially appreciated Klopstock’s more personal poetry, and went on to
5
write such “Erlebnisdichtung” himself.
Herder advocated a school curriculum that emphasized the mother
tongue and realia instead of Latin grammar and rhetoric, and he wanted to
turn away from bookish literature to relevant social issues, as Thomas Abbt
had done in Vom Tode fürs Vaterland (1761), and Vom Verdienste (1765).
While Herder praised Abbt’s Tacitus-like brevity, clarity, and forcefulness, he
also recommended the very personal and subjective style of his friend Johann
6 7
Georg Hamann (1730–88), a signal for a transformation in the making.
Hamann’s emotional and difficult style with often enigmatic allusions and
quotations was not the model recommended by Herder’s Fragments, but it
provided a foretaste of Herder’s own style in the next stage of his life.
In 1765, Friedrich Nicolai had founded another review journal, the
Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek, a successor to the Literaturbriefe, with the
major difference that now the reviews had to be factual and without value
judgments. Nicolai invited Herder to contribute to the Bibliothek, and this
started a rather stormy relationship between the two. Herder’s reviews were
often marked by their subjectivity, for instance his very emotional 1768 re-
view of the tragedy Ugolino by Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg (1737–
8
1823). The cooperation between Herder and Nicolai ended in 1773 with
9
mutual polemics.
Herder’s life’s journey took him to unexpected shores, from Riga to
Nantes and Paris, to a trip through Germany, where he met his future wife
Caroline Flachsland in Darmstadt and Johann Wolfgang Goethe in Stras-
bourg, and ended up temporarily in the tiny principality of Schaumburg-
Lippe as court preacher and consistorial councilor. In this period from 1771
to 1776, considered his “Storm and Stress,” Herder wrote several seminal
texts on literature and history.
What Is “German” Literature Supposed to Be?

Herder has been called the father of cultural nationalism. It would have been
impossible for Herder at that time to define the “German nation” as a po-
litical entity, since there was none, but there was a cultural and linguistic
entity in the making. According to Herder, the German “states” were arti-
ficial creations, founded through conquests or inheritance, while real nations
were built through the generations and based on common history, language,
and culture. It would be a primary task of a future German literature to help
develop a national identity, a historical awareness of the Germans, as Shakes-
peare had achieved for the English with his historical plays.
During this period, the concept of a “Nationalcharakter” was debated
by the Germans with particular vigor. This is indicated by the enormous suc-
cess of Johann Georg Zimmermann’s (1728–95) book Vom Nationalstolz
(On National Pride, 1758). As the theater was the only public forum avail-
able, the idea of a “Nationaltheater” took hold, and several successive ven-
tures set out to establish one, all of them failures. These experiences showed
the interconnection of politics and culture and proved that without a radical
change of the German political landscape, “national” institutions in the cul-
tural domain would also find it hard to survive. A “Nationalgeist” (national
spirit) arose only after Prussia’s defeat by Napoleon in 1806–7, but it was a
spirit of the kind of exclusive nationalism that Herder would have rejected.
Herder had been thinking from the beginning about the German “Na-
tionalgeist” and “Nationaldenkart” (national way of thinking). In analyzing
his views, it is necessary to make important distinctions. In 1773, Herder
published the collection of essays Von deutscher Art und Kunst, two of the
essays in which were his own, a booklet that has been heralded as a clarion
call for a true German literature and the foundation of a literary national-
10
ism. Herder himself downplayed the significance of the book, character-
izing it as a collection of occasional pieces. The use of the word “deutsch” is
misleading, since Herder uses it to mean something closer to “Germanic” or
“Nordic,” among which he included the Celtic peoples. Herder spoke some-
times of “deutsche Völker,” meaning the Goths, the Lombards, the Vandals,
and the Anglo-Saxons. On later occasions, he discussed the German national
character and the traditional literature of the “Germans,” using the word in
its modern meaning.
The two essays Herder himself wrote for Von deutscher Art und Kunst
were on Shakespeare and on Ossian and folk songs. A third piece was
“Deutsche Geschichte,” an excerpt from the introduction to the 1768 pub-
lication Osnabrückische Geschichte by Justus Möser (1720–94). The remain-
ing two selections gave two opposite perspectives on Gothic architecture:
Goethe praised Erwin von Steinbach and the Münster, the cathedral in
Strasbourg, which Herder contrasted with parts of a 1766 publication by
222 ♦ WULF KOEPKE
Paolo Frisi that offered a critical comparison of the classical and gothic styles.
Thus, at first sight, there is little that deals directly with specifically German
art and mentality. Möser comes closest to doing so, stressing the Germanic
traditions in society against the modern system of absolutism and centralized
administration by insisting on the crucial role of free landowners for a
healthy balance of the social classes. Goethe praised the gothic cathedral
without calling the style “German”; his contribution helped to initiate a
fresh look at medieval architecture and thus the Middle Ages against the
prejudicial image of the “dark ages.” Only later, in the nineteenth century,
did German nationalists begin — wrongly — to insist on the “Germanness”
of the gothic style.
Herder’s essay defends the form and structure of Shakespeare’s plays as
authentic and suitable for his age and its theater, therefore fulfilling the
needs of Shakespeare’s society just as Sophocles fulfilled those of his, both
working within the rules of the theater of their time and place. This was not
only a justification of the Shakespearean form of the drama as as valid as the
Greek tragedy, but a warning that German writers of Herder’s day who
emulated Shakespeare’s plays had to take into account the historical and
cultural differences as well. Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen was the limit to
which a transfer of the Shakespearean form could go.
11
The most important piece may be Herder’s Ossian essay. Beyond the
initial question whether Macpherson’s text was genuine folk literature, and
his contention that it should not be translated into German as a classical epic
in hexameters, Herder went on to discuss the nature of folk songs and the
relevance of authentic folk songs for a renewal of German literature. In his
prefaces and introductions to his collections of Volkslieder (1778–79),
Herder reiterated that young poets should turn to the sources of literature
still alive among the common people: songs, tales, legends were a richer
source of inspiration than medieval poetry written in a strange and often
artificial idiom. The similarity of older English and German folk poetry, due
to their common ancestry, made the English ballads and songs especially
relevant for the German poets, as was then borne out by the evolution of the
German form of the literary ballad.
12
Herder used the word Volk and its many compounds to describe the
part of society where he found the old cultural traditions still alive and from
where a cultural reorientation of the German nation could emerge. The term
Volk is notoriously vague, as it may designate the lower classes, the peasants
and craftsmen, or the entire population of a nation in a political sense. Since
the old songs and tales were alive among the peasants, “folk literature” took
on the meaning of rural poetry, sometimes identified with idyllic peasant
scenes. Herder’s enterprise, however, was to regain an almost lost paradise, a
journey into the past, and thus has become a model for the Romantic quest
for nature. Herder’s intended audience was the literate middle class, the ur-
ban public whose estrangement from nature and from the common folk he
wanted to overcome.
In his later years Herder based his suggestions for the renewal of Ger-
man literature on an analysis of the German national character, where he
found, in agreement with most observers in the eighteenth century, the fol-
lowing dominant traits: “Rechtlichkeit,” a sense of justice; “Redlichkeit,”
honesty; “Biederkeit,” being true to one’s word; “Bescheidenheit,” a trust-
ing naiveté, all of these seen in opposition to the French with their “po-
litesse,” their elegance, their deceptive sophistication, and their theatrical
13
manners. Such a contrast brings to mind the scene in Lessing’s comedy
Minna von Barnhelm (1767), in which the French adventurer and gambler
Riccaut gives Minna a lesson in deceptive sophistication by playing on her
trusting naiveté and her sense of pity.
In the older German literature Herder saw a tradition of practical wis-
dom, common sense advice, a sober outlook on life, and a sense of justice.
This was expressed in traditional genres such as the fable, the epigram or
Spruch, fairy tales, songs and poems about everyday life, and legends, as well
as comedies depicting real-life situations. Such literature reflected the con-
ditions of society and provided useful lessons for life. Herder followed
Lessing’s example in writing a number of analyses of such literary genres,
their definition and their history, offering examples both from the German
past and from many foreign sources. These were one of the elements of his
six collections under the title Zerstreute Blätter (Scattered Leaves, 1785–97),
which also contain essays on fundamental poetological questions and on
metaphysical issues, primarily immortality and palingenesis, as well as short
texts intended for a general audience.
Such “primary genres,” short and clear in their meaning, dealt with is-
sues meaningful for ordinary people. They could provide the nucleus and
basis for more elaborate forms of literature and avoid the two pitfalls of
modern literature: meaningless artistry and trivial entertainment. Herder’s
investigations into the history and aesthetic structures of such “small” forms
were, therefore, also meant to redirect the orientation of contemporary writ-
14
ers and poets in Germany.
The Moral, Social, and Religious

Impact of Literature
Herder’s major complaint was that literature and the arts had lost their
meaning for society and had become a mere game for idle people in the
upper classes, an ornament of life without substance and purpose. Herder
used the venue of prize essay contests for different academies to bring these
issues before a larger public, especially during the later seventies. The titles of
the essays include: Ursachen des gesunknen Geschmacks bei den verschiedenen
224 ♦ WULF KOEPKE
Völkern, da er geblühet (Causes of Sunken Taste among the Different Peoples

in Whom It Once Flourished, 1775), Über die Wirkung der Dichtkunst auf
die Sitten der Völker in alten und neuen Zeiten (On the Effect of Poetry on
the Customs of Peoples in Ancient and Recent Times, 1778), Über den
Einfluß der schönen in die höheren Wissenschaften (On the Influence of the
Humanities on the Sciences, 1779), and Vom Einfluß der Regierung auf
die Wissenschaften und der Wissenschaften auf die Regierung (On the In-
fluence of Governments on the Sciences and the Sciences on Government,
1780). The last essay won the prize of the Berlin Academy. These essays
were pleas for what Schiller in his drama Don Carlos called “Gedanken-
freiheit”; they gave examples from the past, especially from antiquity, of the
interaction of governments and the arts, and they propagated for the present
a literature of social relevance and engagement, in the manner of Lessing’s
Minna von Barnhelm and his tragedy Emilia Galotti, Thomas Abbt’s books
Vom Tode fürs Vaterland (Of Death for the Fatherland, 1761) and Vom
Verdienste (On Merit, 1765), and a play such as Die Soldaten (The Soldiers,
1775) by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751–92), which Herder had helped
to get published.
The outbreak and course of the French Revolution of 1789 presented a
severe test for reform-minded Germans and for a Herderian concept of lit-
erature. Herder initially welcomed the revolution as a giant step on the way
to a true “Volksregierung” where the traditional society divided into social
estates would be replaced by a participatory system in which offices and
responsibilities would be conferred to those most capable to lead, popular
leaders that Herder called “Aristodemokraten” in a draft version of the Briefe
zu Beförderung der Humanität (FA 7:768). However, Herder could not
help being concerned about the chaos and violence subsequently caused by
the revolution, and he became very apprehensive when the defensive wars of
the French Republic turned into offensive actions and conquests. At that
point, as documented in Herder’s Humanitätsbriefe, he began to emphasize
order, moderation, and peace as the primary imperatives, and while he had
previously thought about change and asked for a literature of social reform
and liberation of the minds, he now offered an aesthetics of harmony, of or-
der, and balance, yet still socially engaged, in the sense of overcoming chaos
15
and disorientation.
In these tumultuous days of the revolution Herder clashed with his
friend Goethe, leading to the eventual dissolution of their friendship. Since
their first meeting in Strasbourg in 1770, when Herder became a mentor for
the aspiring young student Goethe, their relationship had gone through dif-
16
ferent phases of attraction and repulsion, with a period of friendship and
productive cooperation beginning in 1783. Goethe, who was a member of
the government of the duchy of Sachsen-Weimar and valued order, hier-
archy, and tradition, saw the revolution from its beginning as a dangerous
outbreak of violence, leading to nothing but disorder and chaos, the destruc-
tion of existing customs, and the advent of a “Parteigeist,” a partisan spirit
with an ideological bias and fanaticism that endangered human relations.
During his stay in Italy from 1786 to 1788, Goethe had experienced the
enduring beauty of the art of antiquity, especially Greek architecture and
sculpture, the art of the Renaissance, and the clear lines, light, and beauty of
the Italian landscape. Returning to Germany, he felt estranged in the fog of
the Nordic climate and culture, and made it his goal to emulate the spirit of
Greek antiquity in literature and art. The French Revolution and the subse-
quent wars confirmed him in his conviction that it was the mission of poetry
and the arts to stay above and aloof from the destructive partisan spirit of the
time and strive for the constructive, fundamental forms and ideas of peren-
nial truth and beauty. His ideas were close to those of Friedrich Schiller
(1759–1805), and they propagated their program in their journal Die Horen
(1795–97), as well as in the classicist forms and themes of their works of this
period. The Germans have termed this period the Klassik and consider it a
climax of German cultural history, especially as it coincided with high achieve-
ments in philosophy and music and a classicist style in architecture.
This apolitical concept of art and literature was contrary to Herder’s
beliefs, whose Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität situated literary texts
within the framework of his debates on fundamental social concepts like
17
“Humanität” and “Geist der Zeit” and mixed poetry with excerpts from
writings on history and society. Herder drew his literary examples from writ-
ers of the previous generation, such as Klopstock, Johann Wilhelm Ludwig
Gleim (1719–1803), and Lessing. In his sketch of a history of German
literature, contained in the Humanitätsbriefe, Herder presented Lessing as
the model for the future. In his evaluations, Herder’s major criterion, be-
sides literary quality and innovation, was the relevance of the works for the
issues of the current society.
In this survey, Herder gave a rather hostile description of Goethe’s
achievement, characterizing him as a mere formalist, and totally ignored
18
Schiller’s works. Their fundamental difference was not only in their con-
cepts of literature, but in the fact that for Herder, the truly classical German
literature was still to come in the future, and this at a time when Goethe and
Schiller were being enthroned as “Klassiker” by the next generation of critics,
the young Romantics, especially the brothers Schlegel. Although the Ro-
mantics owed much to Herder’s ideas and orientation, for instance the redis-
covery of the folk song and folk tales and the appreciation of Shakespeare
and Homer, they rarely mentioned his name, due to his opposition to the
German Classicism of Goethe and Schiller and also because of Herder’s po-
lemics against Kantian philosophy.
In 1794, personal conflicts had exacerbated these political and aesthetic
disagreements between Herder and Goethe, causing a permanent rift in their
226 ♦ WULF KOEPKE
relationship. Since the later critics and literary historians adhered to Goethe’s
and Schiller’s concept of Classicism, Herder’s alternative views have been
largely ignored. It became a conventional wisdom to say that Herder had
been a seminal thinker and mastermind of the generation of the Sturm und
Drang, and that his propagation of cultural nationalism, of Shakespeare, and
of folk literature had a powerful impact on Romanticism, but that he re-
gressed in later years, largely out of jealousy for the achievements of Goethe,
and fell back on Enlightenment positions that had long been left behind.
Thus Herder’s contributions to the establishment of a German literature that
was part of a public discourse and to the education of the people toward par-
ticipation in public affairs were ignored.
Ironically, Herder’s later aesthetic concepts were rather close to Goethe’s.
As Herder emphasized moderation, “das Maß,” in all human affairs, mindful
of the law of retribution, of Nemesis, he valued the beauty of classical pro-
portions and abhorred ugliness and the contortions of extreme expressions.
There is some truth to his “falling back” into Enlightenment positions in
later years, as Herder advocated a literature that could be understood by the
entire nation and that was relevant to the daily lives of people, a literature
with didactic, that is, educational, value. For him the German nation was still
in the making, and so was German literature, which had the duty to con-
tribute to the Bildung of future citizens. While still critical of his “philo-
sophical” age, which believed in the principle of abstract reasoning to solve
life’s problems — his objection to abstract reasoning and a self-empowering
ratio were major reasons for his campaign against his former teacher, Kant
— Herder adhered to many Enlightenment principles, modified by a differ-
ent understanding of the human being and its primary medium of expres-
sion, language.
Herder was a Lutheran minister, a preacher, and a church administrator,
19
and therefore also a school inspector. He had to consider the impact of the
spoken word in his sermons and his “Schulreden.” Language remained for
him primarily the spoken word; the written text could only be a poor substi-
tute for direct oral communication. One of his goals was to give back to
literature the energy and impact of the spoken word. In his essays he turned
to forms that enhanced direct communication, such as the dialogue and the
letter. As there were no outlets for public debate, church sermons remained
the sole means (besides the theater) of direct communication with an audi-
ence. Herder considered homiletics a crucial part of his ministry. Sermons
had to have a direct message easily understood by the audience. Further-
more, the message had to be constructive, practical, and uplifting. Herder
demanded the same from literary works, while granting them a much higher
degree of complexity. On the whole, Herder wanted to close the widening
gap between the ecclesiastical and the secular realm. His sermons empha-
sized ethical problems and practical matters; on the other hand, he strove for
a religious message in “secular” literature, or, generally speaking, the inte-

gration of religion into social life, strongly opposing the attitude of the
“Sunday Christians.”
Personally and in his cultural outlook, he was more comfortable with
“primary” or simple genres such as epigrams and fables, legends and short
tales with clear messages than with novels, which were then, as now, the
dominant form of fiction, and tended to be mere entertainment. He liked
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith and Samuel Richardson’s novels
as well as those of Jonathan Swift; but it is indicative that he said very little in
public about the novels of his close friends Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–
1813) and Jean Paul Richter (1763–1825).
Herder, unlike Lessing, had no talent for the drama, but he could not
ignore the enormous social significance of the theater. In his later years, he
envisioned theater as a public forum for the entire community, a drama in
the spirit of Athenian Greek tragedy, a “Gesamtkunstwerk” (though Herder
did not use that term) with dialogue, music, and dance. In order to give an
illustration of his concept, he wrote some stage plays that have, however,
hardly ever received a fair reading. It is ironic, in view of Herder’s view of
Schiller as an elitist who advocated a literature “above” the social and poli-
tical issues of the day, that Schiller’s classical plays went on to become the
mainstay of what may be called a German “Nationaltheater.”
Book Reviews
Book reviews were an essential part of the cultural life at the time. The pro-
liferation of review journals indicates their appeal. Books were expensive and
often not available in smaller towns; access to libraries was limited, there
being no public libraries yet. Many readers therefore relied on review jour-
nals for information about books and even as a substitute for them; this was
the function of Friedrich Nicolai’s journal Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek: to
provide factual, unbiased accounts of the content and style of the books it
reviewed, which it drew from all areas of knowledge. Readers thus received
an overview of new publications, a useful function that explains the longevity
20
of the journal, which endured until 1805. Other journals were more lim-
ited in scope, such as theological review journals or journals of a more aca-
demic character connected with one of the universities. Then there were
literary journals that included book reviews as one of their features. In an age
of slow communications, of censorship, when most people in Germany lived
in villages or small towns, such journals were often the only connection with
the outside world. Just as travelogues had to take the place of real travels,
which were beyond the means of most citizens, the reading of book reviews
replaced the purchase and reading of books.
228 ♦ WULF KOEPKE
Jean Paul Richter turned this phenomenon into a classic humoristic

story, “Leben des vergnügten Schulmeisterleins Maria Wutz” (1793), whose
title character, too poor even to have access to review journals, takes book
titles from the catalogue of the Leipzig book fair and writes his own books
from them, thus creating very original versions of masterpieces like Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason, Klopstock’s Messias, and others.
Herder contributed over the years a considerable number of book re-
views, prefaces and introductions to works of friends, and surveys of litera-
ture, as well as biographical essays and essays on literary history. He was,
among many other things, also a literary critic. The confrontation with other
books often stimulated him to write his own, and he considered discussion
of and debate on publications to be a necessary part of an enlightened so-
ciety: critiques of today’s literary productions could serve as a preparation for
future masterworks. Most of Herder’s contributions in this area are encour-
aging and constructive. It is not surprising, however, that Herder’s polemics,
although few in number, have attracted much more attention than his posi-
tive evaluations.
There is no question that one of the motivating factors for the large
amount of Herder’s book reviews was financial. He always needed money,
and reviews were well paid, considering their length and the amount of time
needed to write them. Book reviews were generally anonymous; they were
not written to make a name. Of course, people in the know easily recognized
the style of the reviewer, and it was a mark of distinction and reputation to
be asked to contribute to respected journals.
Herder wrote for journals of different types, and this fact explains the
considerable differences in style and structure of the works he contributed to
them. He began very early as a contributor to the Königsberger Gelehrten
und Politischen Zeitungen, and he continued his entire life to write for the
local press. After the success of the Fragmente made him a known figure, in
1768 Nicolai approached him to become a contributor to his Allgemeine
Deutsche Bibliothek. Herder accepted, but his reviews sometimes stretched
the limits of what was supposed to be an organ of mere “neutral” informa-
tion. In particular, Herder’s review of Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg’s
tragedy Ugolino (1768) was characterized by its empathy, its emotional style,
and by Herder’s subjective judgments (SWS 4:308–20). The reviewer de-
scribed his own emotions and invited the reader to join him in his enthu-
siasm. Such an emotional style of writing, whether it contained praise or
criticism, was not to Nicolai’s liking, but he recognized Herder’s compe-
tence and talent. It is remarkable that Herder wrote more than forty reviews
over a long period of time for this journal, which represented the German
Enlightenment like no other. But quarrels between these two stubborn men
with such divergent opinions were inevitable, and the relationship ended on
a stormy note in 1774. Nicolai asked Herder mostly for reviews in the areas
of expertise for which he was then known, aesthetics and “schöne Literatur.”
Herder reviewed for instance Lessing’s writings, Klopstock’s odes, Denis’s
translations of Ossian, and works on aesthetics by Johann Georg Sulzer,
Charles Batteux, Christian Adolph Klotz, and Johann Jakob Dusch.
In 1772, a group of young rebels including Goethe, Johann Heinrich
Merck, and Goethe’s brother-in-law Johann Georg Schlosser took over the
Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen and filled the pages with irreverent opinions
and emotional polemics. Herder participated actively in this enterprise. Since
he was able to select the books he wanted to review himself, he wrote mostly
on matters of theology. He reviewed, for instance, books by Johann David
Michaelis, one of the most prominent scholars of Hebrew and the Old Tes-
tament at the time. A polemical review of the Göttingen historian August
Ludwig Schlözer’s Vorstellung seiner Universal-Historie, which was merely an
“announcement” or advertisement of Schlözer’s course on world history
(albeit an advertisement that was long-winded enough to look like a small
book!), led to a nasty controversy (SWS 5:436–40). Schlözer replied with
another voluminous book in which he characterized Herder as an incom-
petent, unprofessional dilettante, a “Belletrist.” That was a label that would
be repeatedly applied to Herder by his critics: it characterizes Kant’s reviews
of Herder’s Ideen and reappears throughout the course of the academic
reception of Herder’s work.
Herder’s short-lived friendship with the Zurich pastor, writer, and
proponent of physiognomic theories Johann Caspar Lavater induced him to
write reviews for the Auserlesene Bibliothek der neuesten deutschen Litteratur,
which Lavater exerted considerable editorial influence on and which was
based in the small northwest German town of Lemgo, during the years 1776
to 1778. Herder wrote nine reviews in the area of theology plus two reviews
of volumes of Lavater’s own Physiognomische Fragmente. But at this point
Herder abandoned book reviewing, although he continued to write about
books.
When he arrived in Weimar, Wieland approached him to contribute to
his Teutscher Merkur, where he always needed help, this time not with book
reviews but with several biographical and philosophical essays. Herder’s later
collections Zerstreute Blätter, Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität, and
Adrastea contain a good number of evaluations of books along with exten-
sive excerpts from pertinent texts, with commentaries by Herder.
Toward the end of Herder’s life, in 1797, Karl Theodor von Dalberg,
the administrator of the territory of Erfurt, sought Herder’s assistance for a
review journal called Nachrichten von gelehrten Sachen, a project of Dalberg’s
Akademie nützlicher Wissenschaften (Academy of Useful Sciences). These
reviews — signed by Herder — were intended to propagate useful literature,
especially for the young generation. Herder wrote at least twenty-six reviews
230 ♦ WULF KOEPKE
between 1797 and 1800 in a spirit of educational usefulness, not anything

close to literary criticism.
It is only when one considers this output of “Kleine Schriften” that Her-
der’s profile as a man of letters, homme de lettres, really emerges, someone
who strove to establish and promote a public literary sphere in Germany,
who tried to enhance the awareness of the Germans of their own literary
past, who wanted to bring the world of ideas to a backward society. All of
Herder’s writings are meant to educate and enlighten the public in matters
of style, ideas, and citizenship, and to encourage young talents. They are part
of Herder’s role as an educator, as a praeceptor Germaniae.
In specific terms, Herder’s criticism marks, in various ways, the transi-
tion from the merely informative style of journals like Nicolai’s to a more
personal style that offers opinion as well as information. It would be wrong
to limit Herder’s merits to the realms of “Einfühlung” and “Erlebniskritik”;
it makes more sense to say that Herder tried to judge each work in its own
right, and then to judge its usefulness for the development of the German
society and the advancement of humanity.
Herder’s Legacy
In his conversation with Eckermann on 24 November 1824, Goethe made a
remark that would be reiterated by countless critics and detractors, that in
his Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, Herder had made a
positive contribution — one absorbed by the Bildung of the German nation
— but that in his later writings, he had turned negative and ceased to be
“erfreulich” (pleasant). Herder’s ideas as expressed in his texts of the seven-
ties and eighties were indeed absorbed by the following generations in Ger-
many. He was considered a mastermind of the Sturm und Drang movement,
and his concept of Volksliteratur, in which was included Lieder, ballads, and
fairy tales, was interpreted in the Romantic manner, whereas the more
didactic and pragmatic as well as the ethical and political aspects of his works
were ignored. Herder attacked a merely rationalistic view of human nature
and human history, he insisted on the power of the senses and the emotions,
but he equally stressed the fundamental significance of Vernunft, reason, and
Besonnenheit, reflexivity and self-awareness.
Pragmatism and a common sense approach were always evident in Her-
der’s writings and attitudes, underlying even his polemic, emotional out-
bursts of the seventies. He never deviated from his program of reviving
literature and the arts as a meaningful concern for society as a whole and in
the lives of individuals, and his emphasis on more didactic genres such as the
fable and the epigram was part of this program. As he envisioned a society
without the artificial boundaries of hereditary social classes and privileges, he
advocated a national culture for all Germans that would overcome the sepa-
ration of the states, regions, religions, dialects, and classes.
It was with the French Revolution and Goethe and Schiller’s program of
German Classicism that Herder came to be considered an outsider, opposed
to the mainstream of German cultural life, who advocated ideas and attitudes
that were publicly ignored or rejected as retrograde, although they had some
unacknowledged impact. The positive aspects of Herder’s image were those
associated with “Erlebnisdichtung,” Sturm und Drang, cultural nationalism,
and emotional subjectivism. In his later writings, however, Herder warned
against extreme emotionalism and subjectivity, against blind nationalism,
and advocated the principles of moderation, reason, order, fairness (Billig-
keit), balance, and responsibility. In terms of his own literary works and
literary taste, he came close to an ideal of classical beauty, although he
warned against sterile classicism. He remained open to all forms of literature,
be they oriental or occidental, “professional” texts or folk songs, ancient or
modern. But he wanted a literature for the advancement of true “Humani-
tät,” and in the case of the Germans, he advocated a literature that would
help to overcome the disorientation, fragmentation, and alienation in their
society and in their daily lives and create a nation worthy of the name.
Notes
1
See Hans Adler’s essay “Herder’s Style” in this volume.
2
It should be noted that the term and the concept of a “Kulturnation” in opposition
to a “Staatsnation” does not occur in Herder’s texts, and is only a creation of the
Wilhelminian age around 1900; cf. Wulf Koepke, “Kulturnation and its Author-
ization through Herder,” in Johann Gottfried Herder: Academic Disciplines and the
Pursuit of Knowledge, ed. Wulf Koepke (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1996), 178.
3
A considerable advance in this area can be seen in contributions to the volume edited
by Martin Kessler and Volker Leppin, Johann Gottfried Herder. Aspekte seines Lebens-
werkes (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005).
4
Fragmente 1, SWS 1:216–26; cf. SEW, 150–55.
5
On this point see Erich Ruprecht, “J. G. Herders Bekenntnisgedichte. Selbstbe-
fragung und Selbstgewißheit,” in Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder
1983, ed. Brigitte Poschmann (Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1984), 174–89.
6
F1, FA 1:248–50; see SEW 155–57.
7
See Renate Knoll, “Herder als Promoter Hamanns: Zu Herders früher Litera-
turkritik,” in Herder Today, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter,
1990), 207–27.
8
Herder, “Rezensionen,” FA 2:723–35.
9
Walter D. Wetzels, “The Herder-Nicolai Controversy,” in Johann Gottfried Herder:
Language, History, and the Enlightenment, ed. Wulf Koepke (Columbia, SC: Camden
House, 1990), 87–97. The two men differed in their concept of the folk song and in
232 ♦ WULF KOEPKE
their style of writing, but there were also other issues, for instance concerning the his-
tory of Freemasonry.
10
See Otto Dann, “Herder und die Deutsche Bewegung,” Johann Gottfried Herder
1744–1803, ed. Gerhard Sauder, 308–40 (Hamburg: Meiner, 1987). The subsequent
turns and twists in the history of German nationalistic ideology and fervor have given
Herder’s title many unintended meanings, and it is evident that it was not so much the
text of the collection but the title that attracted such unwanted attention.
11
See Howard Gaskill, “Ossian, Herder, and the Idea of Folk Song,” in Literature of
the Sturm und Drang, ed. David Hill (=Camden House History of German Literature,
vol. 6) (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2003), 95–116 and Wolf-Gerhard Schmidt,
James MacPhersons “Ossian” und seine Rezeption in der deutschsprachigen Literatur. 4
vols. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004.
12
See Wulf Koepke, “Das Wort ‘Volk’ im Sprachgebrauch Johann Gottfried Herders,”
Lessing Yearbook 19 (1987): 207–21.
13
Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität, FA 7:553–54.
14
It should be noted that in his later years, Goethe followed a similar path, recom-
mending the revival of a sense for literature among the lower classes of society. For
example, he praised Johann Heinrich Voss for his successful combination of literary
form and popularity, for instance in his idyllic tale Luise, and Des Knaben Wunderhorn,
the collection of folk songs by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano. See Wulf
Koepke, “Goethe and the Aesthetic Education of the Germans.”
15
See Christoph Fasel, Herder und das klassische Weimar. Kultur und Gesellschaft 1789–
1803 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1988); Hans-Wolf Jäger, “Herder und die
Französische Revolution,” in Johann Gottfried Herder 1744–1803, ed. Gerhard Sauder
(Hamburg: Meiner, 1987), 299–307; Günter Arnold, “Die Widerspiegelung der
Französischen Revolution in Herders Korrespondenz,” Impulse 3 (1981): 41–89.
16
See Hans-Dietrich Irmscher, “Goethe und Herder — eine schwierige Freundschaft,”
in Johann Gottfried Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, ed. Martin Kessler and Volker
Leppin (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2005), 233–70.
17
See Hans Adler’s essay “Herder’s Concept of Humanität” in this volume.
18
See Hans Adler, “Autonomie versus Anthropologie. Schiller und Herder,” Monats-
hefte 97.3 (2005) Special Issue: Begegnungen mit Schiller, 408–16.
19
See the contributions by Harro Müller-Michaels and Martin Kessler on Herder’s role
as an educator in this volume.
20
From 1793 under the title Neue Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek.
10: Herder’s Biblical Studies
Christoph Bultmann
Preliminary Observations
H ERDER’S WORK ON THE BIBLE has a distinctly theological thrust. Thus

he asserted in the opening statement of his encyclopedic Briefe, das
Studium der Theologie betreffend (Letters Concerning the Study of The-
ology) of 1780–81: “Es bleibt dabei, mein Lieber, das beste Studium der
Gottesgelehrsamkeit ist Studium der Bibel” (There is no denying it, my
1
good man, the best study of theology is the study of the Bible . . .). Tak-
ing this idea even further, he suggested that ideally “jeder gute Theolog
sich seine Bibel selbst müßte übersetzt haben” (STh 357; every good the-
ologian ought to have translated his Bible himself). Biblical studies must
not get lost in irrelevant detail: alluding to a quotation by Basilius the
Great (329–79), Herder coined the motto “theologein dei, ou philologein
monon” — theological reasoning is required, not only philological reason-
ing (STh 416). The competent reader of the Bible — and, according to
Herder, every Christian is such a reader, not just the Christian theologian
(STh 367) — ought to strive for an understanding of the meaning of the
words (die Wörter; Latin: verba) as well as what they refer to (die Sache;
Latin: res).
This is one aspect of Herder’s work on the Bible. A second, equally
important aspect is his comparative view of biblical texts as literary works
of art that are not lacking in stylistic and intellectual quality when com-
pared to the writings of the classical Greek or Roman authors. Herder’s
approach to the Bible, notably the Hebrew Bible or Christian Old Testa-
ment, was as much that of a literary critic as that of a theologian. At-
tempts to take the Bible into account in literary criticism can already be
found in early manuscripts such as the essay Von der Ode or the Versuch
einer Geschichte der lyrischen Dichtkunst (Essay on a History of Lyrical Poe-
try) as well as the so-called fragments Über die neuere Deutsche Literatur
(On Recent German Literature), which otherwise focused on ancient Greek
and Roman authors and the challenge their works offered for modern
2
writers. Whereas Herder’s theological view of the Bible was firmly rooted
234 ♦ CHRISTOPH BULTMANN
in the Lutheran tradition, for which the insistence by Martin Luther

(1483–1546) on the Sacred Scriptures in contrast to the accumulated
teachings of the ecclesiastical tradition had become an unquestionable stan-
dard, he owed his literary-critical view of the Bible to two Enlightenment
scholars, Robert Lowth (1710–87) and Johann David Michaelis (1717–
91). In the 1740s, Lowth in his then capacity as a professor of poetry at
the University of Oxford had presented a series of lectures on the Old
Testament which resulted in a book De Sacra Poësi Hebraeorum (On the
Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, 1753). In an annotated and expanded edi-
tion published by Michaelis in Göttingen in 1758–61, these lectures be-
3
came for Herder a major source of inspiration for biblical hermeneutics.
Not surprisingly, he made the rhetorical claim in the opening statement
of his book Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie (On the Spirit of Hebrew
Poetry) of 1782–83: “Jedermann ist des Bischofs Lowth schönes und all-
gepriesenes Buch [. . .] bekannt” (FA 5:663; Bishop Lowth’s elegant and
4
much-praised book is known to everyone).
A third aspect to be considered is Herder’s preoccupation with his-
tory. Due to certain source-critical hypotheses about the Pentateuch as well
as certain almost cryptic ideas about the history of some assumed relics of
the beginning of human civilization, the Bible was considered to have pre-
served some of the most ancient documents concerning the earliest peri-
ods of history. According to this set of ideas, Moses — whom Herder, in
tune with the biblical and post-biblical tradition, regarded as the author
of the Pentateuch — would have had access to such documents and would
have used them to compose the book of Genesis, especially Genesis 1–11,
the stories about the creation and the plentiful primeval garden, about the
deluge and the ark, about the separation and migration of the nations.
Thus the concluding chapters of the second part of Herder’s Ideen zur
Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas on the Philosophy of the
History of Humankind) of 1784–85 culminate in the assertion that scien-
tific, anthropological, geological, and historical investigations point the
philosopher to that “schriftliche Tradition [. . .], die wir die Mosaische zu
nennen pflegen” (written tradition . . . that we are in the habit of calling
5
the Mosaic). Driven by apologetic concerns in defense of the biblical her-
itage, Herder in his time once again tried to provide a synthesis of uni-
versal history and the biblical master narrative.
Bibliographical Survey
Apart from several sections on the Hebrew Bible in his early writings on
literary criticism, Herder elaborated his interpretation of Genesis 1–11 as
the “earliest documents of humankind” in a manuscript of 1769, “Über
6
die Ersten Urkunden des Menschlichen Geschlechts.” A prolonged proc-
HERDER’S BIBLICAL STUDIES ♦ 235
ess of revision of this treatise led to the publication, in 1774, of the first
volume of a book titled Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts (The Old-
est Document of the Human Race — this translation of the title, however,
7
eschews the ambiguity of the character of Genesis 1 as primeval “lore”).
An imaginative interpretation of Genesis 1 is followed in this book by an
enthusiastic, if not always convincing, attempt at scrutinizing Egyptian,
Western Asian, and Greek religious traditions along the lines of the con-
cept of a prisca theologia, that is, of a primordial religious tradition that
8
underlies the religions of all humankind. The second volume of this work,
published in 1776, offers an interpretation of Genesis 2:4–6:7 as “Heilige
Sagen der Vorwelt” (Sacred Legends of the Primeval Age) in an almost
homiletic tone (ÄU, FA 5:491–660).
Closely related to Herder’s study of Genesis are two works he au-
thored on the New Testament. The first, Erläuterungen zum neuen Testa-
ment aus einer neueröffneten morgenländischen Quelle (Comments on the
New Testament from a Newly Discovered Oriental Source, 1775), is an
exposition of the prologue to the Gospel of John (John 1:1–18) and of
several core notions of the New Testament with regard to the language of
ancient Oriental mythology, which, in Herder’s view, had been recovered
by Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (1731–1805) in his French
9
translation of Zoroastrian texts. The second work is a commentary on the
Revelation of John, which was only published in 1779 under the title
Maran Atha. Das Buch von der Zukunft des Herrn, des Neuen Testaments
Siegel (The Book of the Coming of the Lord, the Seal on the New Testa-
10
ment). Both these works reflect Herder’s interest in comparative my-
thology; the former is a kind of sequel to the chapter on Zoroastrianism
in Älteste Urkunde I.3.6, while the latter relies on some ideas in the
chapter on the Cabbala (I.3.5) in that seminal work. A further publication
in 1775 is a short commentary on the Letters of James and Jude in the
New Testament that aims at an elucidation of traditions about certain sects
11
in early Christianity. A different venture in biblical studies is Herder’s
translation of the Song of Songs, published in 1778 under the title Lieder
der Liebe. Die ältesten und schönsten aus Morgenlande (LL, FA 3:431–521;
Songs of Love. The Most Ancient and Most Beautiful from the Orient)
together with an interpretation of the love poems in this biblical anthol-
ogy supposedly from the era of Solomon. This translation finds its context
12
in Herder’s collection and translation of folk poetry from many cultures.
From 1780 to 1785 Herder devoted a series of books to issues of
biblical studies. The Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend contain a
kind of introduction to the books of the Old Testament and the New
Testament gospels as well as directions for reading the Bible and recon-
13
structing the historical Jesus. Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie offers an-
notations on Genesis 1–11 and the Book of Job, on the patriarchal
traditions and on Moses, on poetic sections in the historical books, and

14
on the psalms. The first two volumes of Ideen zur Philosophie der Ge-
schichte der Menschheit focus on the origin of humankind and the meaning
of humanity in a compositional structure that to a certain extent imitates
the structure of Genesis 1; the work tellingly ends, as has been mentioned
15
above, with an exposition of that “document.”
While the Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend contain some
material on the New Testament, more significant for Herder’s understand-
ing of this part of the Christian canon are two late works on the gospels:
Vom Erlöser der Menschen. Nach unsern drei ersten Evangelien of 1796
(Of the Savior of Humankind. According to our First Three Gospels) and
Von Gottes Sohn, der Welt Heiland. Nach Johannes Evangelium of 1797
(Of the Son of God, the Savior of the World. According to the Gospel of
16
John). They are part of the Christliche Schriften, a series of treatises some
of which refer to issues in New Testament theology from a more system-
17
atic perspective. What is striking about this list of works is that Herder
did not publish any more extensive investigations of the prophetic books
18
in the Old Testament or the letters of Paul in the New Testament.
Biblical Hermeneutics
Herder advocated a critical historical approach to biblical texts. The most
basic issue was that of translation: the biblical languages — Hebrew, Ara-
maic, Greek — were considered to have a power of expression that could
not easily be perceived through modern translations. Herder’s tremen-
dous stylistic sensibility as a literary critic — which even inspired him to
help shape the dramatic idiom of the Sturm-und-Drang movement of the
1770s — had a strong impact on his reading of biblical texts just as it had
on his reading of Greek or Roman authors. The wider issue was that of
the cultural context in which particular literary compositions originated.
Just as a Greek or Roman author built on the shared memories and ex-
periences of his or her contemporaries, the ancient Hebrew authors and
their Christian successors addressed specific audiences at specific moments
in history. Reading the Bible with an awareness of these facts is what lies
behind Herder’s hermeneutic directive:
Menschlich muß man die Bibel lesen: denn sie ist ein Buch durch
Menschen für Menschen geschrieben: menschlich ist die Sprache,
menschlich die äußern Hülfsmittel, mit denen sie geschrieben und auf-
behalten ist; menschlich endlich ist ja der Sinn, mit dem sie gefaßt
werden kann, jedes Hülfsmittel, das sie erläutert, so wie der ganze
Zweck und Nutzen, zu dem sie angewendet werden soll. (STh 145)
[One must read the Bible in a human way: for it is a book written by
human beings for human beings: human is the language, human are
the outer means with which it was written and preserved; human, in
the end, is indeed the sense with which it can be grasped, every means
that serves its interpretation, as well as the entire purpose and use to
which it is supposed to be put.]
The traditional doctrine of divine inspiration was thus transformed into
a doctrine of human witness, without, however, abandoning the idea of
the Bible’s theological significance. Herder drew a clear distinction be-
tween the “Biblische Antiquar” (biblical antiquarian) and the “Biblische
Theologe” (biblical theologian), who is concerned with the meaning of
the biblical text for his or her own present (STh 500).
In practical terms, Herder had more to say about biblical Hebrew than
about biblical Greek. In contrast to the Christian exegetical tradition, in
which a particular mode of figurative meaning was assigned to the lan-
guage of the Old Testament, he regarded Hebrew as a “lebendige,
menschliche Nationalsprache” (living, human national language) of the
19
Israelites in antiquity. Since Herder still accepted the biblical narrative as
a historical source, he idealized early Hebrew as a “ländlichpoetische, un-
philosophische” (rural-poetic, unphilosophical) language and admonished
the reader to imagine himself or herself among shepherds and farmers in a
plain, rural setting when reading Old Testament texts (at least those from
20
the time before David set up his royal court). This attitude has often
been labeled Herder’s “romanticism.” Herder risked circularity when he,
as he often did, emphasized the “appropriateness” of individual texts with
regard to their place and time. Criticism of historical sources based on
consistent criteria becomes nearly impossible when narrative traditions are
simply regarded as presenting events in a way characteristic of those peo-
ple who would originally have been involved in the narrated events. On
the other hand, Herder offered some pertinent reflections on the his-
torical or fictional character of biblical narratives, when, for example, he
discussed the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2:4–3:24 or the story of
Jonah (STh 153–59; 223–27). The problem of questioning or defending
historicity remains unresolved when it comes to Herder’s apologetic read-
ing of the gospels in opposition to the critical views that had been put
forward by Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) in his so-called Wol-
fenbüttel Fragments and by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81), notably
21
in his Eine Duplik (A Rejoinder, 1778) and Axiomata (Axioms, 1778).
The notion of historical criticism does not sufficiently characterize Her-
der’s biblical hermeneutics. More than the external cultural conditions
under which an author composed a text, it is the Geist, the “spirit,” of a
work, a voice, an age, or indeed a language that he tried to investigate.
This spirit is a pattern of fundamental ideas that found their expression in
a range of particular texts and gave these texts a certain force and a certain
coherence. In the biblical writings, Herder identified ideas such as the sub-
lime exaltedness of God or the “parallelism” of heaven and earth as an in-
dicator of the human being’s place in the world, considering them to be
pivotal elements of the spirit of the texts. In this sense, his book Vom Geist
der Ebräischen Poesie is devoted to research into the “Urideen” (original
ideas) enshrined in Hebrew language and poetry, while his book Erläute-
rungen zum Neuen Testament aus einer neueröfneten morgenländischen
Quelle focuses on the formation of Israel’s religious language following its
encounter with Persian culture.
The Orient and the Hebrews

In Herder’s view, Hebrew as the language of Israel — be it from the time
of Abraham, be it from the time of Moses — was heir to the original lan-
guage of humankind. Thus the “original ideas,” the “spirit” of Hebrew
poetry is derived from an age that preceded Israel’s distinctive, “national”
history. For Herder, this was the age of the “Morgenland” (the Orient),
which he considered to have been the first period of human history.
Throughout his writings on Genesis 1, he aimed at recovering the as-
sumedly original, Oriental religious ideas. From the perspective of philos-
ophy of religion, these ideas are more or less identical with those religious
ideas that were at the center of eighteenth-century concepts of “natural
religion,” and Herder even declares: “Wenn die Lehren des reinsten
Deismus auf die kräftigste Art ausgedrückt werden sollen: so nehmen sie
aus dem A[lten] T[estament] ihre Sprache” (EP, FA 5:1048; If the teach-
ings of the most pure Deism are to be expressed in the most forceful way,
they will take their language from the Old Testament). Majesty and ubi-
quity, power and wisdom, providence and benevolence are attributes of
the Divinity that Herder identified in Genesis 1 as well as the Book of
22
Job. In rather cryptic parlance, Herder traced these ideas back to a di-
vine revelation:
Solche Bilder und Ideen, als uns auch nur die ersten Kapitel Moses
gewähren, sind keinem wilden Volk möglich. [. . .] Hier ist als ob
Einer der Elohim [d.h. göttlichen Wesen] selbst, der Genius der
Menschheit, unsichtbar lehrte. [. . .] Und diese feine Ideen sind [. . .]
schon in den Wurzeln der Sprache da [. . .] Und diese alte unter
einem weiten Himmel gebildete Sprache pflanzte sich in einem Hir-
tenstamm fort [. . .] (EP, FA 5:987–89)
[Such images and ideas as are offered to us by even the first chapters of
Moses are not possible for an uncivilized people. [. . .] Here it is as if
one of the Elohim [that is, divine beings] themselves, the genius of
mankind, were invisibly teaching. [. . .] And these fine ideas are [. . .]
already there in the roots of the language [. . .] And this old language,
formed beneath a broad heaven, propagated itself among a tribe of
shepherds.]
Moses resumed this line of the primeval tradition and preserved it in spite
of his Egypt-inspired legislation:
Er suchte die Religion der Patriarchen, seiner Väter hervor; auch was
ihm aus Ägypten zur Hülle seiner Einrichtungen und Gesetze diente,
mußte das reine Licht nicht verdämmern, das ihm die Offenbarung im
Arabischen Feuerbusch gab, und so wurden mit der Zeit die hohen
Ideen gebildet, die wir in Psalmen und Propheten finden. (EP, FA
23
5:1044–45)
[He sought out the religion of the patriarchs, of his forefathers; even
what he adapted from Egypt as the cover for his institutions and laws
could not dim the pure light that the vision of the burning bush in
Arabia gave him, and thus were formed over time the noble ideas that
we find in the Psalms and the prophets.]
Herder thus recognized the transmission of a supposedly original, “Ori-
24
ental” theism as the genuine significance of Israel’s tradition.
Religious Poetry
For Herder, reflections on religious rituals, religious laws, religious doc-
trines, religious narratives, and historical traditions were only ancillary to
an understanding of religious poetry. In his contributions to biblical stu-
dies, he employed an expressivist concept of poetry: poetry is the means
to give expression to certain insights and sentiments. The two defining
characteristics of poetry, for Herder, are its wealth of imagery and its depth
25
of emotions. Herder agreed with Johann Georg Hamann (1730–88)
who had declared, in his Aesthetica in nuce (Aesthetics in a Nutshell) of
1762, “Poesie ist die Muttersprache des menschlichen Geschlechts [. . .].
26
Sinne und Leidenschaften reden und verstehen nichts als Bilder.” (Poe-
try is the mother-language of the human race [. . .]. Senses and passions
talk and understand nothing but images.) Building on Robert Lowth’s
form-critical analysis of biblical poetry, Herder presented Genesis 1 as a
poetic text characterized by poetic parallelism, and considered this docu-
ment as well as the poetic composition of the Book of Job, notably Job
38–42, to be “Naturpoesie”:
Nicht nur der erste kurze Bericht von der Schöpfung, sondern auch
alle Ebräische Loblieder auf dieselbe [. . .] sind wie im Anblick dieser
Dinge selbst gebildet worden: dies gab also die älteste Naturpoesie der
27
Schöpfung. (EP, FA 5:697)
[Not only the first short account of the creation, but indeed all the
Hebrew songs of praise to it [. . .] are formed as if in sight of these
things: this gave rise to the oldest nature poetry of the creation.]
Poetry as speech in images is then understood to have developed into
poetry as choral song, and Herder emphasized that Hebrew poetry was rich
in both these genres: “Beide Gattungen der Poesie waren bei den Ebräern
heilig: die größesten Bilderredner waren Propheten, die erhabensten Lieder
Gesänge des Tempels” (EP, FA 5:979; Both genres of poetry were holy to
the Hebrews: the greatest orators in images were prophets, the most so-
lemn songs the songs of the temple).
The early “Oriental” poets, Moses as a collector, lawgiver, and poet,
and David as a composer of psalms thus established a tradition of worship
in Israel that found its continuation throughout the centuries. However,
while Herder put such a strong emphasis on the origins of poetry, he did
not pursue the full course of ancient Hebrew poetry which, in his time, he
conceptualized in this way as derivative of early Oriental poetry.
Early Christian Narratives

Herder’s view of the New Testament gospels can be seen as a result of his
understanding of the process of tradition-building in Israel and at the same
time as a response to the desperately apologetic strand in the study of bib-
lical narratives in his time. Relying on Christian Schöttgen’s (1687–1751)
28
work on Jewish sources, Herder compiled what he called a “Kanon der
Kennzeichen des Messias” (canon of the marks of the Messiah), that is, a
repertoire of ideas related to the figure of an eschatological Davidic king
29
who would bring salvation for Israel and all the nations. Since it is the
basic tenet of Christian faith that Jesus of Nazareth was this messianic fig-
ure and as such converted the future kingdom of God into a present real-
ity to be perceived by the faithful, Herder assigned to Jesus’s followers —
disciples, apostles, evangelists — the task of discovering and demonstrat-
ing the concordance between this “canon” and the life of Jesus. In this
sense he saw the Christian story as the fulfillment of Israel’s prophetic hope.
The earliest way to communicate this understanding of Jesus was, accord-
ing to Herder, direct and popular proclamation. Herder emphasized that
there was nothing like new Christian “scriptures” in the first decades of
the emerging Christian communities that would have supplemented the
foundational scriptures of Israel (which later came to be called the Chris-
tian Old Testament). Since oral proclamation would allow for considerable
variety, there was no point in expecting the gospels to be biographical in a
strict sense.
In his writings of the 1790s, Herder offered a rather sketchy hypo-
thesis about the historical traditions behind the four New Testament gos-
30
pels. Stage 1 is characterized by the proclamation of the gospel in Jeru-
salem and in all those places that were reached by itinerant apostles. While
there was as yet no Christian sacred narrative, Herder postulated the exis-
tence of some kind of written outline of basic elements of the presenta-
31
tion of Jesus to new audiences. In stage 2, fuller accounts in Aramaic of
the life of Jesus would have been composed on the basis of this outline and
also on that of the routine of proclamation. One version of these was an
early form of Mark’s gospel, another version was a no longer extant short-
er form of Matthew’s gospel. Stage 3 is marked by the decisive step to-
wards editing and promulgating these texts as gospels that could become
Scripture. The gospel of Mark in Greek is the first such composition, the
extensive literary work that Luke dedicated to Theophilus (the gospel to-
gether with Acts) comes second, and the gospel of Matthew in Greek
comes third. Herder offered some sharp observations on the rise of anti-
judaism and on the development of constitutional elements for Christian
congregations in Matthew’s gospel, to which he assigned a date of com-
position after A.D. 70, that is, after the Roman destruction of the temple
in Jerusalem. The gospel of John stands on its own at stage 4. Herder
added some color to this historical hypothesis when, referring to ancient
patristic traditions, he introduced Mark of Jerusalem as a companion of
Peter, Luke of Antioch as a companion of Paul, Matthew as a direct dis-
ciple of Jesus (Matthew 9:9, 10:3) and John as Jesus’s favorite disciple and
friend (John 13:23, 19:26). However, he was even more concerned with
acknowledging the freedom and competence of all these narrators to shape
the tradition as seemed best to them. With all his experience as a literary
critic, Herder insisted that each gospel should be read as a work in its own
right, and expressed his personal preference for the generous and liberal
32
Hellenistic spirit that he found in Luke.
In sum, the process through which the early Christian narratives ori-
ginated and developed into Scripture (in Greek) reflects a transition from
an early application to Jesus of a “canon of the marks of the Messiah” to a
presentation of Jesus as a great humanistic teacher for an audience in all
parts of the Greco-Roman world. Hermeneutically, a reader’s attention
should again focus on the spirit of the respective works of each individual
evangelist. This was Herder’s hermeneutic alternative to the contempo-
rary debate about the inerrancy of the representation of the life of the his-
33
torical Jesus in the four gospels.
Against this background, Herder offered his interpretation of the
theological essence of the gospel as a lasting heritage of the early Chris-
34
tian proclamation. Salvation to him meant the restitution of humankind
to the “image of God” in which, according to Genesis 1:27, they were
created. The gospel therefore had for him a universal and moral dimen-
sion; it also had a critical dimension with regard to particularistic and ritu-
35
alistic religious traditions including the Christian “ecclesiastical faith.”
Herder emphasized two root metaphors: God as “father” of all human-
kind, and human beings as “brothers.” He illustrated his understanding
of Jesus’s message and the Christian proclamation with two references to
Matthew’s gospel: “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5:48)
and “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you”
(7:12). He saw virtues such as justice, equity, love, magnanimity, forbear-
ance, patience, forgiveness as corresponding to the liberation from super-
stition, folly, vice, prejudice, and inertia through the Christian faith. While
Herder tried to solve the tension between eighteenth-century concepts of
“natural religion” and the biblical tradition, the question of how success-
ful he was will remain open to debate. Conceiving a meaningful theology
of the creation in juxtaposition with a meaningful theology of the gospel
continues to be a major challenge posed by Herder’s writings on the Bible.
Notes
1
FA 9/1:145; henceforth cited as STh and page number. Cf. Johann Gottfried
Herder, Against Pure Reason: Writings on Religion, Language, and History. Trans-
lated, edited, and with an introduction by Marcia Bunge (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1993), 218. Henceforth cited as APR. See also Philippe Büttgen, “Philo-
sophie, théologie, luthéranisme: Le projet religieux de Herder,” Les Études
philosophiques 3 (1998): 327–55; Markus Witte, “‘Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie’
— Johann Gottfried Herder als Bibelwissenschaftler,” in Herder-Gedenken, ed.
Wilhelm Ludwig Federlin (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005), 171–87; and
Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture
(Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005); see my review in Biblical Interpretation 16
(2008): 504–8.
2
Fragmente einer Abhandlung über die Ode, FA 1:57–99, esp. 77–96; SEW 35–51;
Versuch einer Geschichte der lyrischen Dichtkunst, HW 1:9–61; SEW 69–84; F1–3,
F12, FA 1:161–649, esp. 277–95; SEW 85–233, esp. 175–89. All of these manu-
scripts and works date back to the 1760s.
3
Further editions of this Göttingen edition of Lowth appeared in 1768 and in
1770; the work was also reprinted in Blasio Ugolino’s Thesaurus Antiquitatum
Sacrarum in Venice in 1766. In Britain, several editions in Latin and English
appeared well into the nineteenth century, and there was also a French translation.
A modern reprint of the original Latin work as well as its English translation of 1787
is included in Robert Lowth, The Major Works, 8 vols. (London: Routledge/
Thoemmes, 1995). On Lowth, see David Norton, A History of the Bible as Litera-
ture (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993), 2:59–73; and the conference volume
Sacred Conjectures: The Context and Legacy of Robert Lowth and Jean Astruc, ed.
John Jarick (New York/London: T. & T. Clark, 2007).
4
Some excerpts in translation in APR, 158–75. A full English translation is: The
Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, trans. James Marsh (Burlington, VA: Edward Smith, 1833;
reprinted Naperville, IL: A. R. Allenson, 1971); the quotation is from vol. 1:13.
5
Ideen, FA 6:, 380–423, the quotation 402; OWH, 195–226, the quotation 212. A
full English translation is: Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, trans. T. O.
Churchill (London: J. Johnston, 1800), here 257–88, the quotation 273. The
section offers a brief commentary on Genesis 1–11. The first two (of four) volumes
of the Ideen can be considered separately from their continuation.
6
Now in FA 5:9–178; in part translated in OWH 81–95. See the introduction by
Rudolf Smend in FA 5:1328–36 and Christoph Bultmann, Die biblische Urgeschichte
in der Aufklärung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 39–48.
7
In FA 5:181–488; a brief excerpt translated in APR, 107–11. For brief comments
on this and other works by Herder see Robert T. Clark Jr., Herder: His Life and
Thought (Berkeley: U of California P, 1955) and Wulf Koepke, Johann Gottfried
Herder (Boston: Twayne, 1987).
8
In a letter of 1770, Herder tells a friend about his “discovery” of the viability of
this concept: HB 1:261–62. The significance of this concept for Herder’s thought
has been pointed out by Hugh Barr Nisbet, “Die naturphilosophische Bedeutung
von Herders Ältester Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts,” in Bückeburger Gespräche
über Johann Gottfried Herder 1988: Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts, ed.
Brigitte Poschmann (Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1989), 210–26, with reference to Daniel
P. Walker, The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the 15th to the
18th Century (London: Duckworth, 1972). Cf. also Ralph Häfner, “Die Weisheit
des Ursprungs: Zur Überlieferung des Wissens in Herders Geschichtsphilosophie,”
Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook, vol. 2, ed. Wilfried Malsch and Wulf Koepke
(Stuttgart: Metzler, 1994), 77–101.
9
Not in FA. SWS 7:335–470. Anquetil-Duperron’s work is Zend-Avesta. Ouvrage
de Zoroastre, contenant les Idées Théologiques, Physiques & Morales de ce Législateur, les
Cérémonies du Culte Religieux qu’il a établi, & plusieurs traits importans relatifs à
l’ancienne Histoire des Perses (Paris: N. M. Tilliard, 1771; reprint New York:
Garland, 1984). A German translation appeared in 1776–78, the translator and the
publisher were friends of Herder’s, cf. HB 10:310–11. On Anquetil-Duperron, see
Michael Stausberg, Faszination Zarathustra: Zoroaster und die Europäische Reli-
gionsgeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit, 2 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1998), 790–809.
10
Not in FA. SWS 9:101–288, an earlier manuscript version ibid., 1–100.
11
Not in FA. SWS 7:471–560. The commentary on James includes a brief section
on an early Hebrew version of Matthew’s gospel; the commentary on Jude refers
again to Anquetil’s translations.
12
Introduction by Ulrich Gaier, FA 3:1199–1209. John D. Baildam, Paradisal
Love: Johann Gottfried Herder and the Song of Songs (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1999), is an extensive study of the translation. Christoph Bultmann, in his
“Dichtung und Weisheit der Blütezeit: Zum Salomobild im 18. Jahrhundert,” in
Ideales Königtum: Studien zu David und Salomo, ed. Rüdiger Lux (Leipzig: Evan-
gelische Verlagsanstalt, 2005), 153–74, offers some comments on Herder’s pre-
critical view of the era of Solomon. For Herder’s later play with “Oriental” tales and
sayings cf. SWS 26:305–443.
13
STh, FA 9/1, esp. 145–367; 453–90. Translated excerpts from the first and thirty-
seventh letters are in APR 218–21, 241–43.
14
EP, FA 5:661–1308. Translated excerpts are in APR 158–75.
15
FA 6:9–423. OWH, 110–226. The third volume of the Ideen (1787) offers an
additional chapter on the Hebrews (FA 6:483–92; OWH 257–63), the fourth
volume (1791) a chapter on the origin of Christianity (FA 6:710–21).
16
The former in FA 9/1:609–724; SWS 19:135–252, translated in part in APR
175–94; the latter not in FA; SWS 19:253–424. Excerpts from the appendix “Regel
der Zusammenstimmung unsrer Evangelien, aus ihrer Entstehung und Ordnung”
(380–424) are in APR 194–200 (as “Principles for Comparing the Evangelists”).
17
The full texts of the Christliche Schriften are in SWS 19 and 20.
18
Herder’s sketchy commentary on the letter of James makes it clear, however, that
he had read Paul’s letters in the light of that letter, see SWS 7:500–505. Herder
thereby directly or indirectly follows George Bull’s Harmonia Apostolica of 1670.
Cf. the English translation George Bull, Harmonia Apostolica. Two Dissertations
[. . .] (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1842).
19
STh, FA 9/1:150. The term “national” has only very limited political implications
here since it also refers to the age of the patriarchs and their families.
20
STh, FA 9/1:151. Cf. Thomas Willi, “Die Metamorphose der Bibelwissenschaft in
Herders Umgang mit dem Alten Testament,” Johann Gottfried Herder: Geschichte
und Kultur, ed. Martin Bollacher (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1994),
239–56; Willi, “Hebräische Sprache und Sprachlichkeit der Bibel bei Herder,” in
Nationen und Kulturen: Zum 250. Geburtstag Johann Gottfried Herders, ed. Regine
Otto (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1996), 395–404; Henning Graf
Reventlow, “Johann Gottfried Herder — Theologian, Promoter of Humanity, His-
torian,” in Hebrew Bible / Old Testament. The History of Its Interpretation. Vol. 2,
ed. Magne Sæbø (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 1041–50.
21
STh, FA 9/1:271–85. The texts by Reimarus and Lessing are found in Lessing FA
8, 1989, and FA 9, 1993. An English translation of the Wolfenbüttel Fragments is
Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Fragments, ed. Charles H. Talbert (London: SCM
Press, 1971). Lessing’s substantial contributions to the controversy, notably his
Axioms, are translated in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Philosophical and Theological
Writings, trans. and ed. Hugh Barr Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005), 62–
82, 120–47. Nisbet’s volume contains only the introductory section of Eine Duplik.
See also Christoph Bultmann, “Early Rationalism and Biblical Criticism on the Con-
tinent: Reimarus, Voltaire, Lessing” in Hebrew Bible / Old Testament, vol. 2, ed.
Sæbø, 875–901 (see n. 20).
22
See esp. Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie I. 2–5 and II. 4. A good introduction to
the issue of “natural religion” is Peter Byrne, Natural Religion and the Nature of
Religion: The Legacy of Deism (London: Routledge, 1989). See also Peter Harrison,
Religion and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (1990; Cambridge: Cam-
bridge UP, 2002) and Gerald R. McDermott, Jonathan Edwards Confronts the
Gods: Christian Theology, Enlightenment Religion, and Non-Christian Faiths (New

York: Oxford UP, 2000).
23
On Moses as a mediator between the “Orient” and Israel see Christoph Bult-
mann, “Bewunderung oder Entzauberung? Johann Gottfried Herders Blick auf
Mose,” in Johann Gottfried Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, ed. Martin Kessler
and Volker Leppin (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005), 15–28.
24
For an alternative eighteenth-century view of the history of religion see David
Hume’s Natural History of Religion of 1757. David Hume, Dialogues and Natural
History of Religion, ed. John C. A. Gaskin (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993), 134–96,
and the works mentioned in note 23.
25
Herder attempts a concise definition of poetry in Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie
II.1. Cf. also FA 4:631–48. Useful observations on this are in Isaiah Berlin, “Herder
and the Enlightenment,” Aspects of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Earl R. Wasserman
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1965), 46–104, reprinted in Isaiah Berlin, Three
Critics of the Enlightenment, ed. Henry Hardy (London: Pimlico, 2000), 168–242;
Stephen Prickett, Words and the Word: Language, Poetics and Biblical Interpretation
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986), esp. 37–94; David Norton, A History of the
Bible as Literature, 2:197–202.
26
Originally published as part of Kreuzzüge des Philologen (A Philologist’s Crusades)
against the Oriental scholar Johann David Michaelis, in J. G. Hamann, Werke, ed.
Josef Nadler (Vienna: Thomas-Morus-Presse im Herder-Verlag, 1950), 2:195–217,
here 197. A useful annotated edition of this work is Johann Georg Hamann, Sokra-
tische Denkwürdigkeiten. Aesthetica in nuce, ed. Sven-Aage Jørgensen (Stuttgart:
Reclam, 1968; rev. ed. 1998), the quotation 81–83. See Sven-Aage Jørgensen,
“‘wenn Sie wüsten, wie ich Sie buchstabire.’ Herder als Dolmetscher Hamanns in
der ‘Ältesten Urkunde,’” Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder 1988:
Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts, ed. Poschmann (Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1989),
98–107; Sven-Aage Jørgensen, Klaus Bohnen, and Per Øhrgaard, Aufklärung,
Sturm und Drang, frühe Klassik. 1740–1789 (=Geschichte der deutschen Literatur,
ed. de Boor and Newald, vol. 6) (Munich: Beck, 1990). See also Isaiah Berlin, Three
Critics of the Enlightenment.
27
Cf. also FA 5:735–80, esp. 748–52 on Job. Cf. also the elucidation of Genesis 1
as a painting of a sunrise in Älteste Urkunde, FA 5:239–44. From the perspective of
biblical studies it has to be pointed out, however, that there is no evidence of the
stylistic feature of parallelism in Genesis 1.
28
Christian Schöttgen, Jesus, der wahre Messias, aus der alten jüdischen Theologie
dargethan und erläutert (Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1748). Quoted, for example, in Her-
der, FA 9/1:301 (Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend) and FA 9/1:674
(Vom Erlöser der Menschen).
29
FA 9/1:672–74; SWS 19:199–201(Christliche Schriften II; Vom Erlöser der
Menschen), 385–87 (Christliche Schriften III; Von Gottes Sohn, der Welt Heiland).
Cf. already FA 9/1:308–22.
30
Cf. FA 9/1:666–98. See Marcia Bunge, “Johann Gottfried Herders Auslegung
des Neuen Testaments,” in Historische Kritik und biblischer Kanon in der deutschen
Aufklärung, ed. Henning Graf Reventlow, Walter Sparn, and John Woodbridge
ff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff on Thu, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC

(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1988), 249–62; Bunge, “Herder’s View of the Gospels

and the Quest of the Historical Jesus,” in Johann Gottfried Herder: Geschichte und
Kultur, ed. Bollacher, 257–73; Jörg Frey, “Herder und die Evangelien,” in Johann
Gottfried Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, ed. Kessler and Leppin, 47–91.
31
This outline would have been an extension of the sequence that one finds, for
example, in Acts 2:22–24. Herder refers to Acts 2 in FA 9/1:669–70 among other
places.
32
On Luke see esp. SWS 19:410–16.
33
In his Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend, esp. letters 13–19 and 34–36,
Herder attempted a response to Reimarus’s criticism on the ground of historical
arguments; however, by the mid-1790s, he had reconsidered this earlier response.
34
Cf. esp. FA 9/1:711–24; SWS 19:239–52; English translation in APR 187–94.
35
This later issue is prominent especially in Kant’s philosophy of religion; see his Der
Streit der Fakultäten, in Schriften zur Anthropologie, Geschichtsphilosophie, Politik und
Pädagogik, vol. 1 (Volume 11 of Werkausgabe), ed. Wilhelm Weischedel (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1968), esp. 300–40. English translation in Religion and Rational Theol-
ogy, ed. Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1996), esp. 262–88.
11: Herder’s Theology
Martin Kessler
A MONG THE THEOLOGIANS of the late eighteenth century, Herder com-

bines a unique variety of traditional elements with highly progressive
and innovative components. His publications touch on most classical fields
of academic education as well as the broad range of professional interests
typical of the Protestant clergy. Herder expanded the frontiers of academ-
ic theology, exploring and interpreting results of contemporary debates in
the humanities and sciences. Within the boundaries of a transitory period
characterized by rationalist, empirical, and idealistic currents of thought,
Herder investigated the various positions by addressing a wide range of
fundamental questions. Striving for popularity and practical applications
of his own convictions, Herder worked as a theologian in active service of
the church throughout his life. This essay deals with not only the theo-
1
retical but also the practical aspects of his work.
Elements of Systematic Theological Reflection

The sequence of topics in this first section, focusing on the theoretical as-
pects of Herder’s work, follows traditional patterns of systematic thought
in Christian theology. Herder’s contributions will be illustrated by refer-
ences to texts that show either the continuity or the evolution of his con-
cepts, with the intention of providing a background for the reading of his
main publications. A number of unpublished manuscripts will be cited in
order to portray certain elements with the stringency and formal density
2
that such references can offer.
Theology and Religion

Working against rising academic restrictions, Herder promoted the es-
sentially liberal character of theology, which he rated as “gewissermaassen
die liberalste von allen [Wissenschaften]; eine freie Gottesgabe ans Men-
schengeschlecht, die diesem auch zu allem liberalen Guten der Vernunft,
einer edeln Tugend und Aufklärung geholfen. Theologen waren die Väter
3
der Menschenvernunft, des Menschengeistes und Menschenherzens” (in
a certain sense the most liberal of all the disciplines; a free gift of God to
248 ♦ MARTIN KESSLER
the human race that helped it to attain all the liberal values of reason, a
pure virtue, and Enlightenment. Theologians were the fathers of human
reason, the human spirit, and the human heart).
The notion of theology implies a general and a specific meaning. In a
general sense, the term refers to fundamental reflection on the conditions
of human life within the entirety of creation. Herder considers the aware-
ness of human limitations and the consciousness of infinity as an ele-
mentary experience. Building on his understanding of the early biblical
documents as “Naturpoesie,” poetry of nature, he regards the basic forms
of reflection as theology: “Jedwede Nation dachte sich also die Ent-
stehung der Welt, und des Menschengeschlechts, und ihres Zustandes,
und ihrer Völkerschaft in Begriffen der Religion! Alles bekam theologische
4
Farbe.” (Every nation thus imagined the origin of the world, and of the
human race, and its condition, and of its tribe, in terms of religion! Every-
thing took on a theological color.) Improved levels of reflection led to a
gradual development from mythological to philosophical thought. Behind
this inclusive view of theology stands Herder’s concept of the “Lebens-
alter einer Sprache” (stages of life of a language) which was inspired by an
5
idea of Johann Georg Hamann’s. In accordance with an individual’s devel-
opment, language as a collective phenomenon grows from “dem höchsten
Punkte der Schönheit” (the highest point of beauty) in poetry through the
mature form of expression in prose and on toward the “Stuffe der Voll-
6
kommenheit” (stage of perfection) in philosophy.
Within the specific context of his time, Herder refers to theology as
an academic subject in the Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend
(Letters Concerning the Study of Theology, 1780–81). Three points are
of importance. First, these Briefe present an “encyclopedia,” that is, a
summary of the evolving structure of specialized subjects within the aca-
demic field of theology: biblical studies (parts 1–2), dogmatics (part 3),
homiletics, liturgy, church history, and practical aspects of the ministerial
7
office (part 4). Second, in order to reduce these branches of learning to
foundational principles, Herder offers a tripartite basic structure: “Bibel,
Dogmatik, Vortrag sind meine drei Hauptgegenstände, denen Alles andre
8
nur dienet.” (Bible, dogmatics, lecture are my three mainstays, which all
else is only in service of.) One field connects to another: dogmatics are
derived from biblical theology. While dogmatic understanding involves
philological and historical research, the biblical essence can be taught in
9
the minister’s main lecture, the sermon. Third, focusing on dogmatics,
Herder sketches a colorful model of the Christian tradition. The first guide-
line is to follow the teachings of Jesus, the “Geschichte [. . .] und Lehre,
10
d. i. Thatsachen, Vorschriften und Verheißungen Christi” (History [. . .]
and doctrine, that is, facts, instructions, and promises of Christ), as Herder
puts it in his late series of Christliche Schriften (Christian Writings, 1794–
HERDER’S THEOLOGY ♦ 249
98). The Schriften offer detailed studies on topics related to the Briefe. In
one of these late publications, Von Religion, Lehrmeinungen und Ge-
bräuchen (On Religion, Dogmata, and Rituals, 1798) Herder’s concern is
to distinguish these early “Lehren” or teachings from subsequent “Lehr-
11
meinungen” or dogmata. He regards the latter as mostly in opposition
to the former. To Herder, Catholicism serves as the prime example of this
deviation. He expects the Protestant tradition to move forward to “das
reine Christenthum, worüber ein jeder Mensch nur sich selbst symbo-
lisches Buch seyn kann” (the pure Christianity, about which every human
12
being can only be a symbolic book to himself).
Herder’s concept of religion, which is expressed in numerous of his
13
writings, forms the background to these views. Religious beliefs are
highly individual convictions: “Religion ist [. . .] eine Sache des Gemüths,
14
des innersten Bewußtseyns.” (Religion is a matter of disposition, of the
innermost consciousness.) The latter term indicates an awareness of a divine
presence. Furthermore, it points in a more specific way toward the con-
science (Latin: conscientia), describing the basic judgments on what is
right and wrong that lead to personal moral responsibility. Religion in
15
this respect is a phenomenon specific to humankind. Given that human
reason has great abilities, yet remains limited, Herder can also state in the
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas on the Philoso-
phy of the History of Humankind, 1784–91; henceforth: Ideen) that “die
16
erste und letzte Philosophie ist immer Religion gewesen” (religion has
always been the first and last philosophy).
Within a progressing development toward the most human religion,
Herder wanted theology, as the “Lehre von Gott und dem Menschen”
(Teachings of God and Man) to become a popular and complete philoso-
17
phy of humankind.
Revelation and Reason

Defining the relationship between revelation and reason is a pivotal aspect
18
of the theological discourse in which Herder participated. A range of
subjects is connected to it, such as revelation and nature, theology and
scripture, and scripture and spirit. Herder’s contribution to this complex
can be outlined in three steps. The key is a consistent restriction to empir-
ical observation.
First, concerning his theological understanding of reason, Herder
states: “Vernunft [ist] nur eine Conkretion von Erfahrung, Bemerkungen,
19
Ordnung.” (Reason [is] only a concretion of experience, observations,
order.) The two major fields of observation are nature and history. Herder’s
open conception of reason as “der natürliche, lebendige Gebrauch unsrer
20
Seelenkräfte” (the natural, lively use of our powers of mind), which moves
toward abstraction, drives him to an apologetic argumentation. Since he
sees reason as tied to empirical and historical observation, reason — if put

on an abstract level of judgment beyond experience — has no right to
21
evaluate the truth of revelation and history. Hence, rationalistic criticism
of revelation is inappropriate.
Second, revelation, like reason, is subject to human experience, but
for Herder it historically predates reason: “Offenbarung im weitesten Ver-
stande [ist] Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts — Unterweisung — Auf-
22
weckung der Vernunft — Geschichte derselben.” (Revelation in the
broadest understanding [is] education of the human race — instruction —
awakening of reason — history of same.) The Briefe, das Studium der
Theologie betreffend outline the model of revelation as a gradual develop-
23
ment of reason. The strong similarities to Lessing’s Erziehung des Men-
24
schengeschlechts indicate parallel reflections deriving from shared sources
and thoughts, as well as a familiarity with each other’s work. The theory
that Herder put forward is less speculative. In Auch eine Philosophie der
Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit (Another Philosophy of History for
the Education of Humankind, 1774) he sketches the course of history as
a “Spiegel des Menschengeschlechts in aller Treue, Fülle, und Gefühl der Of-
fenbarung Gottes” (Mirror of the human race in all its fidelity, fullness, and
feeling of the revelation of God). Herder is aware of his human limitations
in sketching such a picture; the true author would have to be God, writ-
ing that “grosse [. . .] Buch [. . .] Gottes [. . .], das über Welten and Zeiten
25
gehet!” (the great book of God [. . .] that goes beyond worlds and time).”
26
Third, revelation predates scripture. What Herder calls “Buch der
Natur” or “Buch der Schöpfung,” at times also “Buch der Geschichte”
(book of nature/creation/history), complements the books of the bible,
“die Schrift.” Herder shares this inclusive understanding of revelation
with Hamann and early modern English writers such as Robert Boyle
27
(1627–1691). It was also part of the pietistic tradition, figuring in
Johann Arndt’s (1555–1621) Wahres Christenthum, which Herder read
28
on a regular basis. For Herder, the guiding principle of understanding is
29
“Analogie in der Natur, das redende Vorbild Gottes in allen Werken.”
(Analogy in nature, the speaking model of God in all works.) The special
quality of the divine word lies within “Gedanken, Empfindungen, Seele,
30
Geist, der [darin . . .] lebt und von unserem Geist gefaßt werden muß.”
(Thoughts, feelings, mind, spirit, that live [in it] and must be grasped by
our intellect.) As revelation, says Herder, scripture cannot be understood
31
a priori because of God, but only a posteriori out of experience.
In tracing this interpretation back to biblical tradition, Herder’s favo-
rite quotation is I Corinthians 13:12, where a gradual development from
the initial darkness of the mirror toward eventual completion is envi-
32
sioned. Herder’s understanding of revelation also refers to further pas-
sages attributed to Paul, including Romans 1:19–20 and 2:14–15 and
33
Acts 17:27–28. Vom Geist des Christenthums (On the Spirit of Christian-
ity, 1798), one of Herder’s late publications in his series of Christliche
Schriften, closes with reflections on revelation. They summarize Herder’s
understanding of the biblical meaning of revelation: “Bei diesem freien
und reichen Sinn des Worts Offenbarung lasset uns bleiben, oder, da ein-
mal so viel dumpfe Nebenbegriffe daran haften, es lieber vermeiden. [. . .]
Enthüllung, Bekanntmachung, Aufhellung, klarer Begriff, Einsicht, Ueber-
34
zeugung [. . .] sagen dasselbe nach Ort und Zeit.” (Let us keep with this
free and rich sense of the word revelation, or, since so many hazy related
concepts can attach themselves to it, avoid it. [. . .] Unveiling, publication,
illumination, clear concept, insight, conviction [. . .] say the same depending
on place and time.)
Ideas of God
For Herder the focus of all religion, revelation, and reason implies within
the boundaries of human nature and the progression of history a gradual
development of the ideas of God. While the essential unity of God forms
the basis of his reflection, the three main attributes referred to by Herder
in most of his writings are omnipotence (“Allmacht”), wisdom (“Weis-
heit”), and goodness (“Güte”). This triadic structure, which stands in a
long tradition that includes a Trinitarian adaptation by Augustine (354–
430), the philosophical conception of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–
1716), and the contemporary reception of writers such as Johann Caspar
35
Lavater (1741–1801), occurs in Herder’s earliest manuscripts. Herder
employs this characterization of God until his very last writings.
An interesting development in Herder’s understanding is his opening
up of the notion of omnipotence to include a more differentiated concept
36
of natural forces (“Kraft”). This step is well illustrated in the preface to
the Ideen: “Wem der Name ‘Natur’ [. . .] sinnlos [. . .] geworden ist, der
denke sich statt dessen jene allmächtige Kraft, Güte und Weisheit, und
nenne in seiner Seele das unsichtbare Wesen, das keine Erdensprache zu
nennen vermag. Ein gleiches ists, wenn ich von den organischen Kräften
37
der Schöpfung rede.” (He to whom the name “nature” [. . .] has be-
come meaningless should imagine instead that almighty force, goodness,
and wisdom, and should name in his soul the invisible being that no earthly
language is able to name. It is the same thing when I speak of the organic
forces of creation.) This paraphrase of the term God points toward a future
publication. Herder added further systematic elements in the preface to
his book called Gott (God) in 1787, where yet another project is outlined,
one on “meine Adrastea oder von den Gesetzen der Natur, sofern sie auf
38
Weisheit, Macht und Güte als auf einer innern Nothwendigkeit ruhen”
(my Adrastea or of the laws of nature, insofar as they rest on wisdom,
power, and goodness as well as on an inner necessity).
In Gott, which is considered the intellectual peak of the debate that

had been instigated by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819), the ter-
minological connections to the discussion of the Dutch philosopher
Spinoza (1632–1677) amalgamate with Herder’s early studies of the
39
English Deist Shaftesbury (1671–1713) and Leibniz. Mainly interested
40
in parallels between these philosophers, Herder develops a compre-
41
hensive ontological foundation for a doctrine of God, God’s essence and
42
attributes. One of the central thoughts in Herder’s contribution to the
complex is the fundamental connection of the term substance with an
inclusive theory of forces: “jede substanzielle Kraft ist [. . .] Ausdruck der
höchsten Macht, Weisheit und Güte [. . .] in Verbindung mit allen übri-
43
gen Kräften” (every substantial force is [. . .] an expression of the high-
est power, wisdom, and goodness [. . .] in connection with all other
44
forces). God comprises the sole “wesentliche Kraft” (essential force)
from which all other forces emanate in numerous forms of organization
according to development in nature. The individual modifications of the
divine substance represent substantial organic forces which persist in con-
tinuity: “Alle Kräfte der Natur wirken organisch. Jede Organisation ist
nichts als ein System lebendiger Kräfte, die nach ewigen Regeln der Weisheit,
45
Güte und Schönheit einer Hauptkraft dienen.” (All forces of nature work
organically. Every organization is nothing but a system of living forces,
which by eternal rules of wisdom, goodness, and beauty serve one main
force.) Herder’s concept of the substantial organic forces serves as a “Mit-
telbegriff” or means of overcoming the dualism of models in the Car-
tesian tradition which was known for separating vital elements, based on
46
spirit, from dead material.
The question of what intellectual influences Herder drew on in the
formation of his theory is subject to further discussion. The research by
Wolfgang Pross leads into a wide horizon of polyhistorical scholarship.
Günter Arnold proposes that Leibniz’s theorems were more influential on
Herder than those of Spinoza, tracing to the former Herder’s understand-
47
ing of substance, continuity, and analogy. Ulrich Gaier has noted a con-
vergence in Herder’s use of the term “System” and that of Johann Hein-
rich Lambert (1728–1777); in regard to “substantielle organische Kräfte,”
he refers to the “organisierende Kraft” profiled by Friedrich Christoph
48
Oetinger (1702–1782).
Moving on from the question of what sources Herder may have con-
sulted, the impact of his alterations to the dogmatic teaching on the point
of God’s essence and attributes was significant. In Gott, Herder explicitly
voices his disapproval with the very concept of divine attributes, calling
49
them “anstößig [. . .], unpassend” (offensive, unfitting). Herder’s own
employment of the term “force,” which he developed from the qualities
of omnipotence, wisdom, and goodness, understood as a dynamic union,
draws on the potential of association and analogy between the sciences and
50
the humanities. In Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend, Herder
expresses his criticism of the dogma of divine attributes, and questions in
51
particular the practical use of this teaching within the ministerial office.
Herder’s drafts and revisions of catechetical textbooks reveal his own
52
efforts in this respect. His manuscript notes also represent three different
ways of dealing with the tradition of the Trinity. The oldest manuscript
mentions the divine qualities of the three “persons” without any explana-
53 54
tory framework, which is, however, provided by the second autograph.
The eventual publication of Luthers Katechismus (1798), an explanation
of Luther’s Kleiner Katechismus of 1529, avoids dogmatic terms such as
“person” and aims at a more formal awareness of the basic structure by
55
arranging the text in specific units. Herder sees the Trinity as a divine
“Geheimnis,” or secret, allowing himself rather subtle adaptations of its
56
traditional structure.
Herder’s early idea, developed from a discussion of the Trinity, of an
“allgemeinen Versuch, der gleichsam die vornehmsten alten Religionen
vergliche, um aus ihnen die Geschichte des Menschlichen Verstandes, oder
57
die Geschichte der Völker zu lernen” (general attempt to so to speak
compare the most noble of the ancient religions in order to learn from
them the history of human reason or the history of the nations) widens
58
into the project of a “Geschichte der Lehre von Gott durch alle Zeiten”
(history of the teachings of God through all time). Some of Herder’s
publications touch this aim. Most of the texts discussed here can be con-
sidered practical applications and philosophical adaptions of Herder’s in-
tended advance toward the ideas of God.
Creation and Man

The doctrine of creation, including reflections on humankind, is central
to Herder’s theology. He considers light the first element of creation; one
of his sermons refers to it as the purest element: “daher [ist es] so schnell,
[es ist das] Bild der Sonne [. . .], Luft [und] Wasser [sind] noch gröber,
[darunter steht die] Erde endlich, damit nimmt Geist, Kraft, Geschwin-
59
digkeit [. . .] ab” (therefore [it is] so fast, [it is the] image of the sun
[. . .], air [and] water [are] still coarser, [among them stands the] earth
finally, so that their spirit, power, speed are lesser). The sermon illustrates
an understanding of natural phenomena as symbols of the divine forces.
This idea was of great importance to Herder and can be found in Herder’s
60
introductory letter to Lavater. Herder mirrors these thoughts in the Ideen
when he explains elementary organic forces: “wo wir keimendes Leben
sehen, werden wir das unerforschte und so wirksame Element gewahrt,
das wir mit den unvollkommenen Namen Licht, Aether, Lebenswärme be-
nennen und das vielleicht das Sensorium des Allerschaffenden ist, dadurch
61
er alles belebet, alles erwärmet” (where we see life germinating, we are
presented with the undiscovered and thus so effective element that we call
by the imperfect name light, ether, warmth of life and which is perhaps the
sensorium of the creator of all, through which he brings everything to
life, warms everything). The conjectural reasoning that is evident here
corresponds with Herder’s interpretation of Genesis 1 as a text that docu-
62
ments early observations of nature. In a more popular sense, light as a
metaphor correlates to human reason and its understanding of funda-
mental structures and natural laws.
The element of light, determining visibility and invisibility, is connec-
ted to other identifications within creation. Herder’s earliest catechetical
manuscript employs the traditional distinction between visible (sichtbar)
beings and those that are invisible (unsichtbar), the latter including the
angels. Man is a complex case, with his body visible, his soul invisible and
63
undying, in the image of God. Observations on the human body and
comparative physiological studies enrich this concept in part 1 of the Ideen.
In this book, Herder’s theological anthropology describes man as the first
64
creature released into freedom, the first “Freigelassene der Schöpfung.”
The moral disposition of humankind is based on the insight into the
general laws of nature and their tendency to create states of balance for
the involved forces. Human morality aims at continually overcoming op-
posing forces. It reasserts the capacity of reason, which “mißt und ver-
gleicht den Zusammenhang der Dinge, daß sie solche zum daurenden
Ebenmaas ordne. Die Billigkeit ist nichts als ein moralisches Ebenmaas
der Vernunft, die Formel des Gleichgewichts gegen einander strebender
65
Kräfte” (measures and compares the connections of things, setting them
in lasting regularity. Fairness is nothing but a moral regularity of reason,
the formula of balancing forces striving against one another). From this
idea of fairness Herder develops a doctrine of retribution (“Wiederver-
geltung”). This moral teaching refers to the universal laws of nature and
applies the principle of action and reaction to human deeds. It will be fur-
ther discussed in the following section of this essay, since Herder attri-
66
butes the doctrine of retribution to Jesus.
The topic of creation relates to two more fields of systematic theo-
logical reflection. First, the act of divine creation is part of two Trinitarian
structures in traditional patterns of theological thought. The first se-
quence — creation (“Schöpfung”), salvation (“Erlösung”), and sanctifica-
tion (“Heiligung”), known in the Lutheran tradition as the “drei Artikel”
67
— provides the formal structure for Herder’s catechetical conceptions.
Creation is understood as the first act of God’s benevolence (“Wohlthat”),
68
followed by salvation and sanctification. The second sequence — crea-
tion, conservation (“Erhaltung”), and providence (“Vorsehung”) — is part
of the divine economy or “Regierung.” Herder’s explanation of the first
article of Luther’s catechism is structured in accordance with this tradi-

69
tion. However, in Herder’s theology, the second sequence — the sub-
70
structure — is of greater importance than the first one. Conservation and
providence are closely related in Herder’s thinking. Providence explains the
divine acts of salvation and sanctification. Herder’s concept of a divine order
behind seemingly accidental arrangements and events builds on God’s attri-
71
butes and qualities, which are expressed in creation. Consequently the
72
laws of nature are understood as serving God’s providence. This also ap-
73
plies to human capacities and dispositions. Hence, Herder’s references to
providence are often ambiguous in the subject of action. While all actions
refer to God, the subject might include man as well as nature.
The second field of systematic theological reflection concerns the rela-
tionship between God and his creation. The way in which creation ema-
nates from God is said to be “unbegreiflich” (incomprehensible) but can
be compared to the “Emblem, wie [die] Seele Gedanken hervorbringt”
(picture, how [the] soul creates thoughts) — which correlates to the idea of
74
a divine “Weltseele.” An early manuscript, “Grundzüge der Philosophie,”
75
connects God’s infinite thought to infinite space and time. An applica-
tion of the term “unendlich,” (infinite) with reference to the created world,
is common in Herder. This affects the relationship between God and crea-
76
tion. It remains open to question whether Herder consistently maintained
77
this categorical difference between cause (God) and effect (creation).
To sum up the present subject and move on to the two following sec-
tions, a sermon from 1788 illustrates Herder’s systematic construction of
the first Trinitarian sequence: by creation man received the gift of “Ver-
nunft,” reason; salvation through Jesus Christ is passed on as a “histo-
rische Wahrheit” (historical truth); and sanctification remains a “praktische
78
Wahrheit und Hoffnung” (practical truth and hope).
Jesus Christ and Christianity

Herder assigns Jesus a central place within the history of humankind due
to his teachings as well as in his life and death. Christianity, which Herder
regards as a spiritual movement toward the purest and most consistent form
of religion, passes on elements of Jesus’s personal ideals and puts them in
79
a universal perspective.
Herder considered the Sermon on the Mount to be foremost among
Jesus’s teachings, followed by the parables. A pastoral letter he wrote in
1771 gives expression to his high esteem:
Für mich, weiß ich, daß wenn ich 10 Jahre an der Religion gezweifelt,
ich käme endlich in ein Gewölbe, und fände auf 3 Blättern Nichts, als
die 3 Kapitel Matthäi [. . .] 5–7. und ich hätte Aufrichtigkeit genug,
mir aus diesem Wenigen den Geist der Religion zu bilden, den dieser
Mann predigte [. . .] und wenn ich nie die Christliche und meine
Religion geliebt hätte — so würde ich sie jetzt lieben! Hier ist mehr als
Plato und alle Weisen! (HB 2:96–97)
[For me, I know that if I doubted religion for ten years and came into
a vault and found on three pages nothing more than the three chap-
ters of Matthew [. . .] 5–7, and if I had righteousness enough to build
the spirit of religion out of this little bit that this man preached [. . .]
and if I had never loved the Christian religion, my religion — then I
would love it now! Here is more than Plato and all the wise men!]
Herder specifies this conviction in 1796 in Vom Erlöser der Menschen, the
publication on Jesus Christ in his series of Christliche Schriften. Here he
calls the heavenly kingdom of God “die reine Idee, unter den Menschen
Menschlichkeit, ein Reich der Gerechtigkeit, Billigkeit, Verträglichkeit und
Liebe, eine fortdaurende Ueberwindung des Bösen durchs Gute zu grün-
80
den” (the pure idea of founding among human beings humanity, an em-
pire of justice, fairness, tolerance, and love, a lasting conquest of good
over evil).
81
The biblical basis for this statement can be traced to three passages.
Herder first identifies the principle of fairness with the Golden Rule (Mat-
82
thew 7:12). The Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend most clearly
present Herder’s attribution to Jesus: “Christus entdeckt uns nehmlich
die moralische Regierung Gottes in der Welt als eine große, unsichtbare
83
Waage der That und der Folgen” (Christ reveals to us the moral gover-
nance of God in the world as a great, invisible scale of actions and conse-
quences). Subject to this fundamental structure of action and reaction, but
bringing the concept onto a higher level, is, second, the act of forgiving.
84
Herder alludes to the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:12), making the point
that the act of forgiving creates corresponding effects and thus contri-
butes to good overcoming evil. Loving the enemy, third, is seen to be an
application of this thought, its most important expression being the Law
85
of Love (Matthew 22:37–40). These principles describe the moral char-
acter of the invisible kingdom. Its essence is spiritual, corresponding to
86
the spiritual nature of God (John 4:24).
Herder emphasizes that Jesus’s self-understanding might differ from
87
the interpretations of the disciples and early Christianity. The distinction
between Jesus’s faith and faith in Jesus — outlined along the lines of
88
Lessing’s Die Religion Christi — marks this particular step. Herder draws
a parallel in the development of the notion of the “Menschensohn” (son
of man) as Jesus’s favorite self-designation, and the notion “Sohn Gottes”
(son of God). The latter he derives from Jesus’s belief in God as the father
89
of all humankind, thereby interpreting the two notions in a similar way.
Furthermore, Herder explains the title of the Messiah in terms of the pro-
90
phetic traditions and religious beliefs of the first century. He notes a
spiritual and universal transformation of these elements within Christian-
ity that lead beyond all national limitations. The Christian Messianic belief
aims, so Herder claims, at “eine Zeit reinerer Erkenntniß Gottes, abgeleg-
91
ter Vorurtheile, ausgeübter Tugend und Sittlichkeit” (a time of more pure
knowledge of God, the laying down of prejudices, the exercising of virtue and
morality).
Herder links Jesus’s particular contributions to and impact on the de-
92
velopment of Messianic expectations to the divine act of salvation. In
one of his catechetical manuscripts he stresses man’s preceding condition
of “Knechtschaft, [einem] Zustand von Sklaverei [. . .], aus dem der
93
Mensch zur Freiheit erlöset worden ist u. erlöset werden soll” (servitude, a
condition of slavery [. . .] from which the human being was saved to
freedom and supposed to be saved to freedom). Herder’s comments in
his Luthers Katechismus include several definitions of sin, the final one
94
being: what is “wider Gesetz und wider unser Gewissen” (against the
law and against our conscience). This central reference to the human con-
science points back to Herder’s concept of religion. This connection also
becomes evident in the Erläuterungen zum neuen Testament (Comments
on the New Testament, 1775), where Herder charts the impact of Jesus
on the transformation from the state of sin, when “Sünde, Unvollkom-
menheit, positiver Verfall [. . . und] Finsterniß verschattete [. . .] die
Gottheit” (sin, imperfection, positive decay [. . . and] darkness cast a
shadow [. . .] on the Divine) and emphasizes the idea of “Himmel und
95
Erde” getting “versöhnt d. i. vereinigt” (heaven and earth . . . reconciled,
i.e. united). On the basis of his interpretation of sin, Herder could have
developed the historical dimension of his understanding of salvation more
forcefully. Nevertheless, he regards the confession that “Jesus ist Christ,
der Sohn Gottes” (Jesus is Christ, the son of God) which stands in the cen-
ter of an early Christian creed, as referring to an “erfahrne oder geglaubte
96
Geschichte” (an experienced or believed history).
Herder accepted the resurrection of Christ, which led to the forma-
tion of the church and its institutions, as a historical fact. He does not ques-
tion the actual death, which he acknowledges in accordance to the biblical
documents, since these, to Herder, represent historical sources and recol-
97
lections. Von der Auferstehung, als Glaube(n), Geschichte und Lehre (On
the Resurrection as Belief, History, and Teaching, 1794), the relevant
publication in his Christliche Schriften, does not aim at an explanation of
98
the actual processes beyond the biblical tradition. Herder’s approach to
the topic, which is documented in his sermons, makes use of analogies of
nature, including decisive references to the opening seed, natural meta-
99
morphosis, and the cyclic structures of continuation within creation. Von
der Auferstehung gives no mention to these interpretations, but might

point toward them in the following statement:
Wäre die Wiederauflebung Christi auch blos als eine Naturbegeben-
heit gerettet: so wäre dies für die Geschichte des Christenthums nicht
unbeträchtlich: denn diese träte damit wenigstens in das Licht eines
100
natürlichen Zusammenhanges, über den man frei sprechen darf.
[Even if the resurrection of Christ were only recovered as an occur-
rence of nature, this would not be unimportant for the history of
Christianity: for it would then at least step into the light of a natural
context, about which one may speak freely.]
It may have been a matter of consequence to Herder to refrain from specu-
lating on this natural context. In accordance with the quotation that con-
cluded the previous section, he did indeed restrict himself to the historical
truth of salvation and resurrection.
The Future and Continuity of Life

Herder left his views on man’s and mankind’s future development open
to a certain degree. Accordingly, the Ideen offer the consideration: “Der
jetzige Zustand der Menschen ist wahrscheinlich das verbindende Mittelglied
101
zweener Welten” (The current condition of the human being is probably that
of the connecting middle member of two worlds). Herder’s pastoral teach-
ings add references to basic distinctions within creation, including visi-
bility and invisibility, to the anticipated movement from “dieser zu jener
Welt” — from this world to the other one — as the expression commonly
used by Herder goes. One sermon refers to the personalized idea of the
Last Judgment as ruled by the invisible Judge, who will one day become
visible; another one states that in the afterlife knowledge ceases and belief
102
is complemented by “Sehen,” vision.
A constant feature of Herder’s reflections on the continuity of life is
his insistence on distinguishing between knowledge and other forms of
insight. His relevant essay Ueber Wissen, Ahnen, Wünschen, Hoffen und
Glauben (On Knowing, Sensing, Wishing, Hoping, and Believing, 1797)
concludes: “Glaube [. . .] ist weder Wissen, noch Ahnen, weder ein bloßes
Hoffen noch Wünschen; er ist eine stille Zuversicht des Unsichtbaren nach
dem Maasstabe des Sichtbaren; nach der Analogie des Gegenwärtigen und
Vergangenen ein Ergreifen der Zukunft” (Belief [. . .] is neither knowing,
nor sensing, neither a mere hoping nor wishing; it is a quiet confidence of
the invisible according to the standards of the visible; a grasping of the fu-
ture according to the analogy of the present and the past). The allusion
here to Hebrews 11:1 opens, in the last of Herder’s volumes known as the
Zerstreute Blätter, into further ruminations on the spiritual life of man, fo-
cusing on the belief in “die ewigen Kräfte” (the eternal forces) that con-
103
tinue beyond the visible world.
Several of Herder’s letters are related to future life. Following his study
of Moses Mendelssohn’s Phaedon oder über die Unsterblickeit der Seele,
Herder wrote in his first-ever letter to Mendelssohn in April 1769 that he
opposed the idea of a soul detached from sensuousness and body and
104
presented instead what he called a “Lehre der Palingenesie” (doctrine
of palingenesis). The basis for this, according to Herder, is the principle of
analogy: “wenn meine gegenwärtigen Anlagen mir Data seyn sollen, meine
Zukunft zu errathen [. . .]: werde ich wieder so ein vermischtes Wesen als
105
ich bin” (if my present tendencies are supposed to provide me data with
which to predict my future [. . .]: I will become once again such a mixed
being as I am). Herder advocates the idea of an individual’s “Ausbildung
und Entwicklung” (formation and development) in the present world and
106
concludes programmatically: “Erziehe dich u. andre für dieses Leben!”
(Educate yourself and others for this life [i.e. life on earth]!) Herder adds
more details in another letter to Mendelssohn eight months later, but he
stresses that everything remains what it is in substance: “im Grundstoff
107
[. . .,] bleibt, was es ist.” To a high degree, Herder tries to avoid re-
ligious differences with the Jewish philosopher, presenting his own dif-
108
fering convictions as a result of his academic studies. In a sermon of
November 1768 with the title Ueber die Unsterblichkeit der Seele Herder
complements these early reflections with the notions of hope, anticipa-
109
tion, and expectation.
Another letter by Herder was also precipitated by a publication by a
leading thinker of the day: in 1772 he wrote comprehensively to Johann
Caspar Lavater (1741–1801) in response to Lavater’s 1768 book Aussich-
ten in die Ewigkeit. In this letter Herder presents himself as a theologian
who admires the other’s “Glauben,” “Intuition,” and “Gefühl” (belief,
110
intuition, feeling). The emphasis remains, similar to the correspondence
with Mendelssohn, “daß wir hier schlechterdings nicht wißen, was wir seyn
111
werden” (that we here simply don’t know what we will become). An-
ticipation of future developments is linked to a progress of the moral
sense toward eternal perfection, and to belief based on analogies or sym-
112
bols of immortality within creation. Restricting himself to these concepts,
Herder reproaches Lavater for being like a “willkührlicher Baumeister
eigner, oft sehr subalternen, unwesentlichen u. kleinen Ideen” (arbitrary
architect of individual, often very subordinate, unimportant, and small
ideas) on subjects of eternity. At a later stage, Herder shared with Lavater
some of his collected historical references on related topics. In order to
plant the seeds of immortality and future life in peoples’ minds, Herder
had set out to search for the “Ahndungen, Offenbahrungen und Symbole”
(presentiments, revelations, and symbols) of it in the history of humankind.
Herder took up this interest in later publications, including Hades

und Elysium, reprinted as Das Land der Seelen (The Country of the Souls,
113
1797). Also connected to this topic is Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet
114
(How the Ancients Pictured Death, 1774). It led to Herder’s rejections
of certain conceptions, which are further outlined in Ueber die Seelenwan-
derung (On Metempsychosis, 1782), a work with which Herder partici-
pated in the discussion instigated by Johann Georg Schlosser (1739–
115
1799). As before, Herder modulates the previous debate on reincar-
nation into a presentation of his basic convictions, thereby stressing the
boundaries of knowledge and concluding with the program of an “Erzie-
116
hung des Herzens,” an education of the heart. A reference to the Sermon
on the Mount in this context points toward belief and proposes a “Palin-
genesie dieses Lebens” (palingenesis of this life), which would lead to a
117
“fröliche, höhere, aber uns unbekannte Metempsychose” (cheerful, ele-
vated, but to us unknown metempsychosis) as a rather open concept of
afterlife.
Finally, Herder’s answer to Lessing’s speculations on reincarnation at
the end of the Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts is outlined in Palin-
genesie. Vom Wiederkommen menschlicher Seelen (Palingenesis: On the Re-
118
turn of Human Souls, 1797). Herder explains ideas of palingenesis in
historical perspective, calling them sensuous delusions and popular opi-
119
nions. Herder sees its original conception by Pythagoras (ca. 570–496
B.C.) as the plan of a social union toward human enlightenment, which
120
was passed on through tradition as “Glauben,” belief. Herder again pro-
motes “eine große Palingenesie der Gesinnungen” and “ein Reich der Ver-
121
nunft, Billigkeit und Güte” (a great palingenesis of convictions; an empire
of reason, fairness, and goodness). The initial question of reincarnation is
thus left open, as Herder stresses the impact of the “wiederkommende
122
oder [. . .] neu ankommende Seelen” (returning or [. . .] newly arriving
123
souls) as the main issue. Further essays add more facets to this debate.
The Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit corresponds to
the distinction between knowledge and belief when they present “Hofnung
und Glaube der Unsterblichkeit” (the hope and belief in immortality) as a
124
matter of religion. Despite some evolution and changing emphases over
time, there are several constants in Herder’s conceptions of the future.
While he opposes any confusion of knowledge and belief, he considers both
to be vital for humankind. His own efforts attempt to theoretically dif-
ferentiate and practically promote both. The openness and at times am-
biguity of Herder’s explications may be a consequence of this; however,
he stands firm and clear on the individual’s moral responsibility with re-
gard to the future of humankind.
Herder’s Practical Work in

School, Church, and University
Herder spent his entire professional career, some four decades, in active
church service. As an institution, the church formed the public body re-
sponsible for school education as well as for providing social and pastoral
assistance to people. Herder’s service to the church included part-time
teaching in Königsberg (1763–64) and a school and ministerial post in
Riga (1764–69), as well as higher church offices in Bückeburg (1771–
125
76), and Weimar (1776–1803). From 1771 on, he was responsible for
organizing and supervising the Protestant church of the respective terri-
tory. The strong academic interests that Herder maintained throughout
his life acquired a particular relevance during his time in Saxony-Weimar,
which lasted almost three decades and marks the the main period of his
practical theological work. Herder’s institutional involvement in school
and church marks long-term commitments and is profiled here in two
chronologically arranged sections. A third section sketches his commit-
ment to the University of Jena during the time in Weimar.
School
Building on his earliest experience in his father’s elementary school, Herder
took on some teaching responsibilities during his years as a student at the
126
University of Königsberg. His employment in Riga marks the peak of
his active schoolteaching when measured in terms of the number of les-
sons given.
The first year in Bückeburg provides evidence of Herder’s central am-
bitions in school matters. In order to uphold an adequate religious
education, he opposed the introduction of a modernized catechism as an
127
obligatory school book in 1771. Following this intervention, he sug-
128
gested his own modifications of the school syllabus. He advocated a
reduction in the teaching of the classics — without, however, questioning
their compulsoriness for students bound for university — and new em-
phasis on the natural sciences and history. With the aim of allowing pupils
and teachers to advance their studies, Herder promoted further acquisi-
129
tions for the school’s library. One of Herder’s basic convictions was that
good instructors were essential for the quality of a school, and that the
staff should have adequate books, equipment, and financial resources for
their teaching. Concerning the employment of instructors, one of Her-
der’s earliest petitions in Bückeburg was to urge the count to introduce a
130
central examination for elementary school teachers in rural areas.
Herder’s school projects in Weimar reveal similar intentions. Improv-
ing professional training in addition to working and living conditions for
teachers were central concerns. Herder developed several creative models
of financial support. His involvement was highly personal, since he aimed

to turn his ideals for the formation and education of humankind into
practical impulses for reform. Although the bounds of the church’s admin-
131
istrative structure were problematic in some respects, the widespread
picture of Herder’s colleagues in the church governing body, the High
Consistory, categorically opposing all his suggestions must be consider-
ably modified. Certain projects such as a seminary for elementary-school
teachers and financial support rather than school meals for grammar-
school pupils had been put forward by his colleagues and were taken up
132
and revised substantially by Herder. Due to Herder’s perseverance and
Goethe’s diplomacy in the resulting conflict, Duke Karl August’s general
133
support in school matters was secured from 1783 on. Following that,
134
some of Herder’s earlier plans were realized. The revision of the school’s
135
curriculum, the establishment of an extensive library, and additions to the
staff set new standards. During his last decade in office, Herder showed
certain tendencies toward centralizing the school system, while with re-
gard to local schools he encouraged to hold examinations as events open
136
to the public in order to raise the community’s awareness of the achieve-
ment of teachers and pupils. His plan to start a trade school, however,
remained unrealized.
Church
137
Herder’s service as a minister goes back to the time in Riga. His presen-
tation of sermons had the character of a highly personal address to the
138
congregation, which proved to be an attraction.
139
In Bückeburg, Herder’s preaching was complemented by pastoral
care for individuals. In his official position, this was mainly restricted to the
nobility. As a supervisor, Herder was responsible for selecting qualified
140
candidates for any vacant posts. In 1774, he proposed the idea that every
minister should be allowed a free choice of biblical texts for his ser-
141
mons. His own cycle of sermons, Über das Leben Jesu (On the Life of
142
Jesus, 1773–74), indicates this particular interest.
Herder’s early suggestions in office in Weimar aimed at improve-
143
ments of liturgy and the hymn book. In 1780, Herder proposed a re-
duction of special church services and the corresponding public holidays
144
for church holy days. The plan was to have fewer church services but to
place more emphasis on the ones offered, and to direct the newly available
resources of staff to other projects. One of the key thoughts behind this
intensified scheme of public ceremonies was to establish the church as the
central institution for bringing together people of all classes and levels of
education. A common spirit and sense of responsibility was to be devel-
oped, beyond the social and political differences, on the basis of shared
human conditions. Herder strongly opposed the upper classes’ privileges
145
of financial dispensations within the penance system. His long-term pro-
ject to amalgamate the Court’s chapel with the city’s main church did not
146
succeed. However, a mixed congregation was formed from the Court
147
and a military congregation.
The year 1787 was the turning point in Herder’s involvement in
church matters. With the support of Duke Karl August, Herder presented
his most comprehensive list of suggestions, mostly with regard to the
148
liturgy. His compilation of the Weimarisches Gesangbuch, published in
1795, was a masterly success. Herder coordinated the revision of a first
part, consisting of old hymns, which contained less than a fourth of the
number of songs that had been in the duchy’s established hymn books.
Herder did not allow his colleagues to participate in the work on the sec-
ond part, containing new hymns. What he produced was considered by
contemporaries as well as by subsequent research to be a genuine collec-
149
tion of Herder’s. However, more than ninety percent of the songs are
taken and carefully edited from the so-called “Mylius,” the hymn book of
the Prussian reformers, which caused a wave of uproar when it was made
mandatory in Berlin in the 1780s. Herder’s introduction of the new com-
pilation into church practice could not have been more subtle. The minis-
ters and congregations were not forced, as it had been done in Berlin, to
use the new hymns. The following publication of Luthers Katechismus
(1798) provides numerous references to songs on particular topics, most-
ly from the second part of the Gesangbuch. Herder fully understood the
long-term effects of educating a new generation to adopt new songs.
Herder’s project of 1774 to expand the range of biblical texts to be
150
used for sermons was realized in 1798. Two changes are important here.
First, Herder did away with his initial plan to let the ministers choose
their own texts. Each year, he himself selected a series of readings he
deemed complementary to the set lections that had become accepted in
the early history of the church and the middle ages. The new texts, like
those of the hymn book, were introduced in the least offending way. Sec-
ond, Herder decided to allow some sermons to be based on hymns. Seven-
teen out of the twenty hymns authorized as the basis of sermons were
from the second part of the Gesangbuch. Under examination, these two
changes allow the reconstruction of a thoughtful program. In a first step,
Herder widened the ministers’ and congregations’ biblical horizons. The
second step, the authorization of hymns as basis for sermons, opened the
biblical horizon even more, to match that of the contemporary church and
151
of current poetry. Herder’s plan, reported on by those who knew him,
for a further, third step to open church practice toward an even wider
human horizon did not materialize; the intention was to arrange a se-
quence of texts from the practical life of Jesus with the aim to educate the
listener in matters concerning the practical life of humankind.
University
Herder’s interest in the university as an educational institution corres-
ponds to his own lifelong ambitions for an academic career. In 1788,
during his time in Weimar, he voiced his interest in an active teaching
post at the University of Jena, and he continued to speculate on such an
152
involvement in the following years. Also interested in the actual running
of the university, he presented detailed suggestions concerning student
153
associations. His plan to use an endowment for grants for students in
financial need instead of for subsidized meals remained unrealized due to
154
practical problems.
Several of Herder’s suggestions concern the academic status of the
study of theology. In 1794 he backed the teachers of theology at the
University of Jena against accusations regarding their orthodoxy by
emphasizing that religious education was a responsibility for all members
155
of society — not just academic theologians. From 1797 to 1803, Herder
focused on the project of establishing a seminary for preachers. In his first
year in Weimar, he had opposed an official institution, being convinced
156
that private initiative was the best way to get an institute running. His
efforts with regard to practical training of the clergy coincided in the early
1780s with the publication of Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend.
In 1797, he rejected the suggestion of a former colleague to separate
theological education entirely from the university and developed a project
to forge stronger links between the three main educational institutions —
157
grammar school, church, and university. This unrealized project involved
more church supervision of the university and schools, but Herder’s es-
sential aim was to increase the practical abilities of future ministers. Her-
der’s reaction in 1803 to a colleague’s plan for establishing a seminary for
158
preachers not in Weimar, but in Jena demonstrates similar concerns.
Rather than having one man doing the job, Herder suggested that the
entire faculty of theology, and possibly that of philosophy, should join
forces in building up a seminary dedicated to ministerial work. If this plan
had been realized, theologians in Jena would have been trained academic-
ally and practically by their university teachers.
This understanding of theology, debatable as it may be, marks one of
Herder’s central convictions. To Herder, theology was not just an aca-
demic subject. It involves theories that have a strong practical impact on
human life. Herder’s written works coincide with his school, church and
university commitments in the ambition to spread these vital thoughts.
One’s own and others’ religious education was a central aim. Herder
employed a rich variety of ideas and institutions in this very respect.
Notes
1
The most profound article on Herder’s theology is Eilert Herms, “Herder, Johann
Gottfried von (1744–1803),” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie (Berlin, New York:
de Gruyter, 1986), 15:70–95. After biographical and bibliographical introduc-
tions, Herms develops a systematic conception of Herder’s publications. Christoph
Bultmann has provided an extensive summary of more recent research in his article
“Herderforschung 1985–2000,” Theologische Rundschau 67 (2002): 35–60. Since
that time, further investigations from the fields of systematics, New Testament
studies, and church history have appeared (referred to in later notes). Eilert Herms’s
readable introduction, “Bildung des Gemeinwesens aus dem Christentum. Beo-
bachtungen zum Grundmotiv von Herders literarischem Schaffen,” in Johann
Gottfried Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, ed. Martin Kessler and Volker Leppin
(Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2005), 309–25, is to be recommended. A com-
prehensive introduction in English is in APR, 1–37.
2
Dating of all unpublished manuscripts quoted in this article is discussed (except
HN XXV, 28–30) in Martin Kessler, Johann Gottfried Herder — der Theologe unter
den Klassikern: Das Amt des Generalsuperintendenten von Sachsen-Weimar, 1 vol. in
2 parts (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2007).
3
STh, SWS 10:277; for a translation and the full context see APR 221.
4
“Über die Ersten Urkunden des Menschlichen Geschlechts,” FA 5:13; SWS
32:149.
5
Johann Georg Hamann, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 2, ed. Josef Nadler (Vienna:
Thomas Morus Presse im Verlag Herder, 1950), 197; Herder’s central passage is
found in F1, SWS 1:151–55, and is translated in SEW, 104–7.
6
F1, SWS 1:137. Cf. also letter 47 of Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend,
henceforth abbreviated in references as STh.
7
Cf. Eilert Herms, “Herder, Johann Gottfried von (1744–1803),” in Theologische
Realenzyklopädie, 15:76–77. Bultmann offers a study of the dogmatic structure of
part 3 in FA 9/1:982–83. The order of topics display in STh includes an initial
reflection on theology and concludes with the “letzte [. . .] Dinge [. . .] der Welt”
(de novissimis), SWS 10:397. The sequence of theological subjects mentioned in the
main text correspondes to part 4 of STh, SWS 11:5–63; 63–83; 83–96; 96–129. For
translated passages see APR 218–64.
8
STh, SWS 11:97.
9
STh, SWS 10:314–18.
10
Von der Auferstehung, als Glaube[n], Geschichte und Lehre SWS 19:114.
11
Von Religion, Lehrmeinungen und Gebräuchen (On Religion, Interpretations and
Rituals) SWS 20:142. On this topic see Jörg Baur, “Religion pur — Herders
Meinungen ‘Von Religion, Lehrmeinungen und Gebräuchen’ (1798) als Exempel
einer problematischen Entgegensetzung von Religion und Dogmatik,” in Religion
und Wahrheit: Religionsgeschichtliche Studien. Festschrift für Gernot Wiessner, ed.
Bärbel Köhler (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998), 195–215, here: 195–96. A trans-
lation and good selection of relevant passages is found in APR 91–98. A recent
paper on Von Religion, Lehrmeinungen und Gebräuchen is Volker Leppin, “Für
‘junge Lehrer der Religion.’ Theologische und religionsphilosophische Klar-

stellungen in Herders Schrift ‘Von Religion, Lehrmeinungen und Gebräuchen’
(1798),” in Religion und Aufklärung: Studien zur neuzeitlichen “Umformung des
Christlichen,” ed. Albrecht Beutel and Volker Leppin (Leipzig: Evangelische Ver-
lagsanstalt, 2004) , 123–30.
12
Recalled from a conversation with Herder by Karl August Böttiger, found in
Literarische Zustände und Zeitgenossen: Begegnungen und Gespräche im klassischen
Weimar, ed. Klaus Gerlach and René Sternke (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 2nd ed.,
1998), 341–42.
13
An excellent introduction is provided by Matthias Wolfes, “Das höchste Gut, was
Gott allen Geschöpfen geben konnte, war und bleibt eignes Daseyn. Herders Ideal
freier Religiosität,” in Johann Gottfried Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, ed.
Kessler and Leppin, 293–307, here: 302–5. For comprehensive topical connections
cf. Markus Buntfuss, Die Erscheinungsform des Christentums: Zur ästhetischen Neu-
gestaltung der Religionstheologie bei Herder, Wackenroder und de Wette (Berlin, New
York: de Gruyter, 2004).
14
Von Religion, Lehrmeinungen und Gebräuchen SWS 20:141–42. A similar refer-
ence is found in another publication of the Christliche Schriften, in Vom Erlöser der
Menschen SWS 19:235–39.
15
AePh, SWS 5:484–85. A complete English translation of AePh is found in PhW
272–358, translated passages are in APR 38–48. Ideen, SWS 13:161–65; an English
translation is found in OWH 141–48; similar thoughts are presented in Herder’s
essay Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft (On Knowing and Not Knowing the
Future, 1797), SWS 16:380–81.
16
Ideen, SWS 13:161–62; a translation of the context is found in OWH, 141–49.
More information is presented in Ideen, SWS 13:387–95.
17
STh, SWS 10:281; An Prediger. Funfzehn Provinzialblätter (To Preachers. Fifteen
Provincial Messages, 1774) SWS 7:300. Translated passages of the Provinzialblätter
are found in APR 221–23 and 213–18.
18
A complex survey on this topic is Thomas Zippert’s Bildung durch Offenbarung:
Das Offenbarungsverständnis des jungen Herder als Grundmotiv seines theologisch-
philosophisch-literarischen Lebenswerks (Marburg: Elwert, 1994), which emphasizes a
unison within Herder’s literary work and concentrates on the time until Bückeburg.
19
HN XXV:29, 1r; in a shorter version: HN XXV:30, 1r. This undated und un-
published manuscript can be summed up as Herder’s main compilation of dog-
matics (henceforth: manuscript on dogmatics).
20
STh, SWS 10:286; an English translation of this letter is found in APR 223–28.
21
STh, SWS 10:289–90.
22
HN XXV:30, 2r (manuscript on dogmatics). On revelation predating reason in
short see STh, SWS 10, 288.
23
For the relevant passage cf. STh, SWS 10:284–303; in English: APR 223–32.
24
Lessing’s text is found in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Werke und Briefe, vol. 10,
Werke 1778–1781, ed. Arno Schilson and Axel Schmitt, 73–99 (Frankfurt am Main:
Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2001); an English translation is found in Lessing, Phi-
losophical and Theological Writings, ed. Hugh Barr Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 2005), 217–40.
25
AePh, SWS 5:565; 585.
26
On the topic see STh, SWS 10:285.
27
FA 9/1:1055–56.
28
Peter Frenz provides a good collection of references to the tradition of this topic
in his Studien zu traditionellen Elementen des Geschichtsdenkens und der Bildlichkeit
im Werk Johann Gottfried Herders (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1983), 241–59,
here 247. Cf. also Aus dem Herder’schen Hause: Aufzeichnungen von Johann Georg
Müller (1780–82), ed. Jakob Baechtold (Berlin: Weidmann, 1881), 87.
29
AePh, SWS 5:513. For more details on the relationship between nature and
scripture see STh, SWS 10:292–99.
30
HN XXV:30, 6v (manuscript on dogmatics). In his publications Vom Geist des
Christenthums, part of the Christliche Schriften, cf. SWS 20:82–85.
31
HN XXV:30, 6r (manuscript on dogmatics).
32
STh, SWS 10:291. For a comprehensive view of this progression, see Hans Adler,
Die Prägnanz des Dunklen: Gnoseologie — Ästhetik — Geschichtsphilosophie bei
Johann Gottfried Herder (Hamburg: Meiner, 1990).
33
These biblical references are given in the initial passages of Herder’s catechetical
autograph from Bückeburg, GSA 44:165, 2r, as well as, in a more subtle way, in
Herder’s late explanation of Luther’s catechism (SWS 30:309, 335, 337). The
mentioned manuscript is discussed in the preface to SWS 30, page xxii, and in
Kessler, Der Theologe unter den Klassikern, 514–28. See the edition of the text:
Martin Kessler, “Herders Catechismus-Manuskript (GSA 44:165). Einleitung und
Edition,” in Vernunft — Freiheit — Humanität. Über Johann Gottfried Herder und
einige seiner Zeitgenossen. Festgabe für Günter Arnold zum 65. Geburtstag, ed.
Claudia Taszus (Eutin: Lumpeter & Lasel, 2008), 134–87.
34
Vom Geist des Christenthums, SWS 20:128–31, here 131.
35
One could add Johann Jakob Scheuchzer’s Physica Sacra, which was known to
Herder; see SWS 6:197. For the triadic structure in Herder’s oldest manuscript of a
sermon, see HN XX:188, 230r–28r, here 228r. A summary of this particular
manuscript is in Kessler, Der Theologe unter den Klassikern, 746–65. An early model
referring to this basic understanding of God’s nature in connection to biblical
history is outlined in Herder’s Versuch einer Geschichte der lyrischen Dichtkunst (Es-
say on a History of Lyric Poetry), SWS 32:85–140, here 127–40.
36
The available translations of Herder offer a variety of English terms for the
German “Kraft.” APR translates it as “power or energy” (22); OWH favors
“power”; while PhW mainly chooses “force.” Due to specific analogies to physical
forces such as gravity, we prefer “force.” The term “power,” however, is more
inclusive and should constantly be considered as an additional connotation.
37
Ideen, SWS 13, 10. For a full English translation see OWH, 110–15.
38
Gott, SWS 16:404. Passages of this work are translated into English in APR 125–
40.
39
Herder had originally planned to dedicate the book to the three; cf. Rudolf
Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken (Berlin: Rudolph Gaertner,
1877–1885; reprint Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1954), 2:296–302; FA 4:1345–48. For
a recent introduction to the debate see Jan Rohls, “Herders Gott,” in Johann Gott-
fried Herder. Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, ed. Kessler and Leppin, 271–91. For an
evaluation see Hermann Timm, Gott und die Freiheit: Studien zur Religionsphi-
losophie der Goethezeit, vol. 1, Die Spinozarenaissance (Frankfurt am Main: Kloster-
mann, 1974), 276. For Herder’s views of Spinoza, Shaftesbury, and Leibniz cf. HW
3/1:1047–63; SWS 30:211–27; HW 3/1:1078–87.
40
HB 5:28; this document is translated into English in APR 120–25.
41
A comprehensive treatment of Herder’s ontological understanding is provided by
Eilert Herms in “Herder, Johann Gottfried von (1744–1803),” in Theologische
Realenzyklopädie, 15:85–86.
42
For this specific theological term used by Herder see STh, SWS 10:325.
43
Gott, SWS 16:545.
44
Gott, SWS 16:543, 546–47.
45
Gott, SWS 16:569; for the wider context of this thought see 452–53; 570.
46
Gott, SWS 16:543.
47
Günter Arnold, “Zur Leibniz-Rezeption Herders: das biographische Exzerpt HN
XXVIII:17, 1–7r,” Nachrichten der Philologisch-historischen Klasse der Göttinger
Akademie 5 (2003): 311–45, here 311.
48
Ulrich Gaier, “Herders systematologische Theologie,” Johann Gottfried Herder:
Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, ed. Kessler and Leppin, 203–18, here: 203–5; 206–8.
49
SWS 14:51.
50
Gaier, “Herders systematologische Theologie,” 210.
51
STh, SWS 10:325–26.
52
Herder’s catechetical manuscripts document these efforts. His “Catechismus”
from Bückeburg presents “Allmacht, Weisheit u. Güte” as basic attributes (GSA
44:165, 2v–3r.). Herder’s next catechetical autograph focuses more intensely on the
triad, interweaving explications with subtle allusions to a number of other attributes
(HN XXI:66; in print “Anfangsgründe des Unterrichts in der Religion. Johann
Gottfried Herders Familienkatechismus,” ed. Thomas Zippert, Zeitschrift für Neuere
Theologiegeschichte 11 (2004): 246–78; examined in detail in Kessler, Der Theologe
unter den Klassikern, 529–61). Herder’s publication explicating Luthers catechism
follows a similar pattern, but is not free of redundancies (SWS 30:313, 335, 338,
341, 343–44).
53
GSA 44:165, 2v, 5v, 7v.
54
“Anfangsgründe des Unterrichts in der Religion,” HN XXI:66, 2v.
55
For these obervations see in detail Kessler, Der Theologe unter den Klassikern,
595–96.
56
Herder’s aforementioned manuscript on dogmatics, HN XXV:30, 9v–10v, here
9v, draws a similar conclusion to that of his early reflection on the Trinity, Nach-
richten von einem neuen Erläuterer der H. Dreieinigkeit (Notes on the latest Inter-
preter of the Holy Trinity, 1766, SWS 1:28–42, here 40–42), which Suphan called
Herder’s “first theological piece of writing” (Bernhard Suphan, “Herders theo-
logische Erstlingsschrift,” Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philologie 66 [1875]: 165–203).
This early article stresses the basic character of a divine mystery, the converging
historical and philosophical explanations of which can be integrated in church
discussions. The manuscript on dogmatics sketches a short biblical “Geschichte der
Lehre” (HN XXV:30, 10r).
57
Nachrichten von einem neuen Erläuterer der H. Dreieinigkeit, SWS 1:42.
58
HN XXV, 30, 10v (manuscript on dogmatics).
59
SBS, MB, JGM, Fasc. 511, 163r (manuscript of sermon from Weimar dated
1777).
60
HB 9:162–63.
61
Ideen, SWS 13:175.
62
Ideen, SWS 13:420–42.
63
See the “Catechismus” from Bückeburg GSA 44:165, 3v.
64
Ideen, SWS 13:146. An English translation of the quotation and its context is
found in OWH, 128–49; here 135. On Herder’s theological anthropology see
Michael F. Möller, Die ersten Freigelassenen der Schöpfung: Das Menschenbild Johann
Gottfried Herders im Kontext von Theologie und Philosophie der Aufklärung, ed.
Ulrich Kühn (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1998) and Claudia Leuser, Theologie
und Anthropologie: Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts bei Johann Gottfried
Herder (Frankfurt am Main, New York: P. Lang, 1996).
65
Ideen, SWS 14:234.
66
On this topic, see Wulf Koepke, “Die höhere Nemesis des Christentums,” Der
frühe und der späte Herder: Kontinuität und/oder Korrektur, ed. Sabine Gross and
Gerhard Sauder (Heidelberg: Synchron, 2007), 211–20. For a passage combining
Herder’s doctrine of retribution with his understanding of providence see STh, SWS
10:336–39.
67
“Catechism” from Bückeburg GSA 44:165; “Anfangsgründe des Unterrichts in
der Religion” HN XXI:66; Luthers Katechismus, SWS 30:334–66.
68
Leading the pattern of “Wohlthaten” back to Rambach’s Ordnung des Heils see
Thomas Zippert, Bildung durch Offenbarung, 33–34.
69
Luthers Katechismus, SWS 30:335–44.
70
Systematically this is portrayed in the two earlier manuscripts, the “Catechismus”
from Bückeburg GSA 44:165, 4r, and the “Anfangsgründe des Unterrichts in der
Religion” HN XXI:66, 4v.
71
The STh mirror the catechetical writings in presenting the idea of providence in
this way, SWS 10:334–47. The STh and the manuscript on dogmatics (HN XXV:30,
12v) both connect providence with the question of theodicy.
72
Herder sketched a similar construction in the early fragment Grundzüge der Phi-
losophie, reflecting the development of his thought in the late 1760s (SWS 32:230).
The end passages to the third part of the Ideen take up the term of providence in a
subtle way (SWS 14:244). Specific to the manuscript on dogmatics, HN XXV:30,
12r, is an explanatory correlation to miracles, which is indicated also in Herder’s

publication Vom Geist des Christenthums (SWS 20:63).
73
SWS 13:147; OWH 135.
74
HN XXV:28, 1v (text compilation along with the manuscript on dogmatics). On
this topic see Tino Markworth, Unsterblichkeit und Identität beim frühen Herder
(Paderborn: Schöningh, 2005), 115–17, 129–31.
75
“Grundzüge der Philosophie” SWS 32:228.
76
An important later source on this topic is HB 5:29.
77
Eilert Herms, in his “Herder, Johann Gottfried von (1744–1803)” suggests a
“Kategorienfehler,” category mistake. The basis for Herms’s suggestion might be
seen in Gott, where Herder stresses the categorical difference between God and his
creation: God is eternal, while creation, subject to “Raum und Zeit d.i. [. . .]
Ordnung,” is “eine Verbindung von Dingen der Zeit” (SWS 16:488; space and
time, that is, [. . .] order [is] a linking of time-bound things). Systematically, con-
servation is tied to the creatio continua. The “Anfangsgründe des Unterrichts in der
Religion” HN XXI:66, 4r, call it “fortgesetzte,” the early reflection on Trinity a
second creation (SWS 1:42). Providence is portrayed as part of an “ewiger” (eternal)
act of creation in the “Catechismus” from Bückeburg (GSA 44:165, 4r).
78
SBS, MB, JGM, Fasc. 511, 403v (sermon manuscript from Weimar dated 1788).
79
Herder outlines the historical impact of Christianity including its deviations from
basic teachings, several times: see AePh, SWS 5:516–22; along with An Prediger,
SWS 7:307–12; Ideen, SWS 14:290–341; and Hum, FA 7:317–19, 752. In his
collection Christliche Schriften, Herder provides numerous details that he also
expressed, often with a stronger sense of topical and formal unity, in his pastoral
teachings.
80
Vom Erlöser der Menschen, SWS 19:185; 169–72.
81
On Herder’s studies of the New Testament see Jörg Frey, “Herder und die Evan-
gelien,” in Johann Gottfried Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, ed. Kessler and
Leppin, 47–91.
82
Vom Erlöser der Menschen, SWS 19:171. In most publications, such as Ideen, SWS
13:160, this attribution goes without saying. Some sermons explain this connection
explicitly (SBS, MB, JGM, Fasc. 511, 434v, 437r, sermon manuscript from Weimar
dated 1796).
83
STh, SWS 10:337.
84
GSA 44:139, 33r (sermon manuscript from Weimar dated 1777).
85
This opens into the tripartite structure of duties (to God, oneself, and others)
common to the moral discussions of the time and used by Herder in several
applications, for instance in Luthers Katechismus (SWS 30:311).
86
Vom Geist des Christenthums (SWS 20:78–89); “Catechismus” from Bückeburg
GSA 44:165, 2v; “Anfangsgründe des Unterrichts in der Religion” HN XXI:66, 2r,
2v; Luthers Katechismus (SWS 30:335, 357).
87
The dogmatic tradition — explaining the nature of Christ, his divine attributes
and fate on earth and in heaven — was well known to Herder. His catechetical
manuscripts present these points in some detail, while the eventual publication of
Luthers Katechismus moves on to more subtle ways of inclusion and paraphrase than
the deletion alleged by the critical edition of Dahms in SWS (Kessler, Der Theologe
unter den Klassikern, 507–606).
88
Ideen, SWS 14:291–92. An English translation of Lessing’s text is found in Les-
sing, Philosophical and Theological Writings, ed. Nisbet, 178–79.
89
Vom Erlöser der Menschen, SWS 19:239–40; 242–43.
90
On the impact of prophecy see Günter Arnold, “Von den letzten Dingen —
eschatologische Elemente in Herders Werk und ihre Quellen,” in Johann Gottfried
Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, ed. Kessler and Leppin, 383–411, here: 409–10.
91
Vom Erlöser der Menschen, SWS 19:228.
92
93
The “Anfangsgründe des Unterrichts in der Religion” HN XXI:66, 6r, improve
the “Catechismus” from Bückeburg (GSA 44:165, 6v), which presents the tradi-
tionally based doctrine of sin (hamartiology) subsequent to the act of salvation.
94
Luthers Katechismus, SWS 30:333.
95
Erläuterungen zum Neuen Testament, SWS 7:383–84. Referring to Paul and
taking up the fundamental categories of creation, Herder stresses the unity of every-
thing visible and invisible. For the relevant passage of Briefe, das Studium der
Theologie befreffend, see SWS 10:347–49.
96
97
Von der Auferstehung, als Glaube[n], Geschichte und Lehre, SWS 19:129–30, here
130, footnote “*”.
98
Von der Auferstehung, als Glaube[n], Geschichte und Lehre, SWS 19:1, 60–134.
99
Of particular interest on the topic of Resurrection are Herder’s sermons delivered
on Easter day; cf. Kessler, Der Theologe unter den Klassikern, 940–75. On the
metaphorical use of the opening seed, see Adler, Die Prägnanz des Dunklen, 90–93.
100
Von der Auferstehung, als Glauben, Geschichte und Lehre, SWS 19:60–34, here:
127.
101
Ideen, SWS 13:194–96. A translation of the relevant passage in its context is
found in OWH, 156–61.
102
For the first reference see SBS, MB, JGM, Fasc. 511, 342r (sermon manuscript
from Weimar dated 1796); SBS, MB, JGM, Fasc. 511, 493v (sermon manuscript
from Weimar dated 1778).
103
This final volume of Zerstreute Blätter was published in 1797; the entire second
book, including the subject of legends, is dedicated to the complex of immortality
and the strategies of the human mind to imagine and understand it, see SWS
16:382–86; here 385.
104
HB 1:137–43; here 142.
105
HB 1:139.
106
HB 1:142. Herder adds, next to theorems taken from Bonnet and possible earlier
influences from Baumgarten, central elements taken from Leibniz (cf. Markworth,
Unsterblichkeit und Identität, 71–72, 76–78), including the idea of the soul as
thinking substance, indestructible as such (HB 1:138). Cf. Arnold, “Von den letzten
Dingen,” 385.
107
HB 1:177–81; here 180.
108
HB 1:178.
109
SWS 32:333–51. Kessler determines the exact date of the sermon (27 November
1768) in Der Theologe unter den Klassikern, 768. Markworth has to be corrected
accordingly: Markworth, Unsterblichkeit und Identität, 33–34. Differences between
sermon and letter are discussed by Arnold, who interprets the letter as the complete
explication of Herder’s convictions (“Von den letzten Dingen,” 386), and
Markworth, who does not realize the sermon’s inclusive character (Unsterblichkeit
und Identität, 36–38), cf. SWS 32:346–47.
110
HB 9:158–65; here 159–60.
111
HB 9:160.
112
HB 9:161–62, 164.
113
Das Land der Seelen, SWS 16:315–40.
114
Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet, SWS 15:429–85.
115
Ueber die Seelenwanderung, SWS 15:243–303.
116
SWS 15:302.
117
SWS 15:303.
118
Palingenesie. Vom Wiederkommen menschlicher Seelen, SWS 16:341–67.
119
Palingenesie. Vom Wiederkommen menschlicher Seelen, SWS 16:343; 347; 363.
120
Palingenesie. Vom Wiederkommen menschlicher Seelen, SWS 16:350.
121
122
123
Tithon und Aurora (1792) introduces the concept of palingenesis as a “glückliche
Evolution der in uns schlummernden, uns neu=verjüngenden Kräfte” (happy
evolution of the rejuvenating powers that lie slumbering in us, SWS 16:109–28, here
122). Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft (On Knowing and Not Knowing
the Future, 1797) indicates a possible “Wissenschaft der Zukunft” (science of the
future) based on the full reflection on the entirety of effects, and yet stressing “wie
nothwendig [. . .] Glaube an eine fortgehende Zukunft sei, selbst sogar den Fall
gesetzt, daß diese nicht vorhanden wäre” (how necessary belief in a continuing
future is, even assuming that it doesn’t exist; SWS 16:368–81, here 375, 378).
Ueber die menschliche Unsterblichkeit (On Human Immortality, 1792) outlines the
ideal of having a lasting effect on humankind through “Schriften [. . .], Anstalten,
Reden, Thaten, durch Beispiele und Lebensweise” (writings [. . .], institutions,
speeches, deeds, through example and way of life; SWS 16:28–50, here 42), for
translated passages see APR 58–63.
124
Ideen, SWS 13:164–66; for a translation of the quotation in its context see OWH
148.
125
Further research is needed on Herder’s early activities to add to the information
Haym provides in his Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken. Herders private
employment in Eutin (after Riga, before moving to Bückeburg) is investigated by
Gerd Bockwoldt in “‘Mein Prinz’ — Johann Gottfried Herders Mission in Eutin.

Mit drei bislang unbekannten Briefen im Anhang,” Herder Yearbook, vol. 6, ed. Karl
Menges, Wulf Koepke, and Regine Otto (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2002), 21–42. Two
articles provide summaries of the Bückeburg period: Brigitte Poschmann, “Herders
Tätigkeit als Konsistorialrat und Superintendent in Bückeburg,” in Bückeburger
Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder 1983, ed. Brigitte Poschmann (Rinteln:
Bösendahl, 1984), 190–213, and Hermann Heidkemper, “Herder in Bückeburg,”
Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für niedersächsische Kirchengeschichte 16 (1911): 1–42. A
good introduction to Herder’s time in Weimar is Hans Eberhardt, “Johann
Gottfried Herder in Weimar,” Amtsblatt der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche in
Thüringen 31 (1978): 198–207, reprinted in Fundamente: Dreißig Beiträge zur
Thüringischen Kirchengeschichte (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1987), 155–
68. Herder im geistlichen Amt: Untersuchungen, Quellen, Dokumente, ed. Eva
Schmidt (Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1956) offers a compilation of studies and
sources (mostly from SWS).
126
Johann Gottfried Herders Lebensbild, ed. Emil Gottfried von Herder (Erlangen:
Theodor Bläsing, 1846), 1/1:70, 146, 157.
127
HB 2:46–50. The catechism was Johann Friedrich Jacobi’s Die ersten Lehren der
christlichen Religion, nebst einer Anleitung, wie sie der Jugend ohne mühsames Aus-
wendiglernen auf eine leichte, angenehme und erbauliche Art beyzubringen (The First
Lessons of the Christian Religion, with an Introduction on How to Teach Them to
Youth without Odious Memorization and in a Pleasant and Edifying Way).
128
HB 2:118. This initiative led to a plan outlined in two versions in 1774–75: HB
3:146–49; SWS 30:426–29 and FA 9/2:284–88.
129
HB 3:146.
130
HB 2:46; in reference to this see Poschmann, “Herders Tätigkeit als Konsis-
torialrat und Superintendent,” 199–200; Heidkemper, “Herder in Bückeburg,” 18.
131
With regard to Bückeburg, again, see Poschmann, “Herders Tätigkeit als
Konsistorialrat und Superintendent,” 194–96.
132
SWS 30:453–67. Herder’s first concept of a seminary for elementary-school
teachers is found in Herders Plan zu einem Seminar für Landschullehrer aus dem
Jahre 1780, ed. Paul Mitzenheim, in Jahrbuch für Erziehungs- und Schulgeschichte
(Berlin: Kommission für deutsche Erziehungs- und Schulgeschichte der Akademie
der Pädagogischen Wissenschaften der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik,
1987), 192–96. For the basic literature on the project see Hermann Ranitzsch, Das
Grossherzogliche Lehrerseminar zu Weimar in dem ersten Jahrhundert seines Bestehens:
Eine Gedenkschrift (Weimar: Böhlau, 1888) and Hermann Ranitzsch, “Herder und
das Weimarer Seminar,” Pädagogische Blätter für Lehrerbildung und Lehrerbil-
dungsanstalten, ed. Karl Muthesius, vol. 32 (1903): H. 12, 584–610. Cf. also
Kessler, Der Theologe unter den Klassikern, 423–71.
133
Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken 2:374. 1785 was an equally
central year in regard to the grammar school, see FA 9/2:1239.
134
SWS 30:429–52; FA 9/2:601–26.
135
FA 9/2:478; HB 5:151–56; FA 9/2:1238–41.
136
FA 9/2:670–73.
137
A short summary of the time in Riga is found in Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben
und seinen Werken 1:103.
138
Many of the early manuscripts are printed in SWS 31:11–143 and 32:241–514.
See with regard to the number of sermons delivered by Herder the remarks of
Hoffmann in SWS 32:537–88, and Herder in Riga: Urkunden, ed. Jegòr von Sivers
(Riga: Kymmel, 1868), 56–57. A sketch of Herder’s development as a preacher is
Johann Anselm Steiger’s “Von Riga nach Weimar. Auf den Spuren Johann Gott-
fried Herders theologischer und homiletischer Entwicklung,” Kerygma und Dogma
47 (2001): 308–34.
139
For the sermons see SWS 31:144–432.
140
SWS 31:741–50. The rejection of one candidate, who had attempted to buy
himself a lucrative ministerial post (a case of simony), led to a heated controversy;
see Poschmann, “Herders Tätigkeit als Konsistorialrat und Superintendent,” 198–
99, 208–9.
141
The proposal is found in HB 3:75.
142
SWS 31:238–396.
143
Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken 2:406; Johann Gottfried von
Herder’s sämmtliche Werke. Zur Philosophie und Geschichte, vol. 22 [Erinnerungen,
vol. 3] ed. Maria Carolina von Herder, Johann Georg Müller (Stuttgart: Cotta,
1830), 25–26.
144
Herders Plan zu einem Seminar, ed. Mitzenheim, 195. Moving ahead in hardly
noticeable steps, Herder reduced the high number of church holidays radically
until 1789.
145
SWS 30:752–57. Herder eventually accepted a general scheme of financial
charges that took the offender’s financial situation into account; Haym, Herder nach
seinem Leben und seinen Werken 2:879.
146
On the overall project see Martin Kessler, “Herders Kirchenamt in Sachsen-
Weimar in der öffentlichen Wahrnehmbarkeit von Stadt- und Hofkirche,” in Johann
Gottfried Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, ed. Kessler and Leppin, 327–51, here:
338–40.
147
Herder’s strategy in realizing this plan is outlined in SWS 31:757–61.
148
SWS 31:761–74.
149
An excellent introduction to Herder’s understanding of church songs is Martin
Rössler’s “Das 18. Jahrhundert,” in Kirchenlied und Gesangbuch: Quellen zu ihrer
Geschichte. Ein hymnologisches Arbeitsbuch, ed. Christian Möller (Tübingen: Francke,
2000), 170–213. Konrad Ameln provides insight into the compilation and prefaces
of the Weimarisches Gesangbuch in his “Johann Gottfried Herder als Gesangbuch-
Herausgeber,” Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie 23 (1979): 132–44. For
detail on this topic, see Kessler, Der Theologe unter den Klassikern, 300–392.
150
SWS 31:787–95. On this subject see Kessler, Der Theologe unter den Klassikern,
393–423.
151
An autograph compiled by one of his colleagues reveals this plan. HN XXIII:
102, 3v.
152
HB 5:268–71; HB 6:313–14.
153
SWS 30:468–75.
154
Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken 2:488–90. For the text of
Herder’s plan see Günter Arnold, “‘. . . sehr brav durchdacht und gewaltig ge-
schrieben.’ Herders Gutachten zur Verbesserung des Konviktoriums in Jena,” in
“Ältestes bewahrt in Treue, freundlich aufgefasstes Neue,” Festschrift für Volker Wahl
zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Katrin Beger, Dagmar Blaha, Frank Boblenz, and Johannes
Mötsch (Bad Zwischenahn: Hain-Team: 2008), 291–318.
155
SWS 31:775–78; Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken 2:606–8.
Kessler, Der Theologe unter den Klassikern, 637–42.
156
SWS 31:752. Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken 2:151; on this
and the following subjects, see Kessler, Der Theologe unter den Klassikern, 642–70.
157
SWS 30:488–501. The plan, which met with Haym’s strong disapproval (Herder
nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken 2:707), had a lot more to it than keeping the
territorial pupils away from the philosophy taught in Jena, which is how Haym
interpreted it.
158
HB 8:398.
12: Herder and Politics
Arnd Bohm
Gewalt und Macht sind nicht Gerechtigkeit.

— Herder, “Der entfesselte Prometheus”1
H ERDER’S VIEWS ON POLITICAL TOPICS such as liberty and tyranny,

sovereignty, the constitutions of states, statecraft, and international
relations were largely theoretical, the product of wide-ranging studies in
history, theology, philosophy, and the emerging discipline of comparative
anthropology. Due to his vocation as a theologian and Protestant clergy-
man, Herder was virtually precluded from holding political office or com-
menting frankly on public affairs, except as mediated by the established
church. Thus he stands in contrast to Goethe, whose training as a lawyer
and long years of service managing the affairs of the Duchy of Saxe-
Weimar-Eisenach gave him practical insight into the problems of govern-
ment. Nevertheless, of the two, Herder has had a more significant impact
on the history of political thought. Herder’s analyses of key concepts such
as nation, state, and the obligations of government are still cited, debated,
and deployed by historians and political scientists down to the present.
Care must be taken, however, not to confuse the reception of Herder’s
views with what he actually said. Above all, blaming Herder for the ex-
treme xenophobic nationalism that was sponsored by embittered German
intellectuals after the shock of defeat in the First World War is anachro-
2
nistic, an instance of what Hans Adler has termed “retro-semanticizing.”
The Reception of Herder as a Political Thinker

The two most widely held opinions about Herder’s politics are inaccurate.
One was that Herder was apolitical, a position summed up by Reinhold
Aris:
Herder [. . .] was not a political thinker in the true sense of the word
and political ideas form a very small part of his vast intellectual output.
[. . .] We do not even find that he attempted to determine the relation
between the individual and the State, and we seek in vain for proposals
3
as to how the State ought to be organised.
278 ♦ ARND BOHM
The other is that Herder’s primary contribution to political thought was

providing the concept of Volk to the nationalist movements of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries and thereby undermining the univer-
4
sal claims of the Enlightenment. Neither position is tenable any longer.
Michael Forster puts the revised view of Herder’s politics strongly:
Herder is not usually thought of as a political philosopher. But he was
one, and moreover one whose political ideals are more admirable, the-
oretical stances more defensible, and thematic focus of more enduring
5
relevance than those of any other German philosopher of the period.
And against the simplistic interpretation of Herder’s concept of Volk there
is a growing literature that emphasizes how subtle Herder’s analyses and
6
distinctions were. Despite the growing number of increasingly specialized
studies on Herder, relatively little work has been done on his politics, nei-
ther on his political philosophy nor on his activities. It is striking that the
most extensive investigations have been undertaken by Anglo-American
7
scholars, foremost among them F. M. Barnard. In German there are a
8
few useful but limited studies.
Herder’s concept of the Volk, variously translatable as “people,” “na-
tion,” or “ethnic community,” came at a time when the political institu-
tions were about to undergo rapid change. The Holy Roman Empire,
which had been a more or less stable framework for centuries, was be-
coming increasingly dysfunctional. Its structures and procedures were so
intricate and so carefully balanced that little could be accomplished ef-
ficiently. During the course of the eighteenth century a new model for
the modern state arose, represented first by England and Prussia and then
by the United States and France after their respective revolutions. These
states were highly centralized and could mobilize economic and human re-
sources quickly in order to wage war; they easily swept away the old
imperial system. Herder and other Germans saw the ensuing period of
flux as an opportunity for innovative political formations based on a com-
mon language and culture. The Habsburgs had endured by ignoring lin-
guistic and ethnic differences as irrelevant for the purpose of government,
while religious differences had been regulated by the Treaty of Westphalia.
From the middle of the eighteenth century, Germans began to argue that
the “space” of each Volk, defined primarily through a common language,
should be congruent with the domain of a state, permitting cultural aut-
onomy together with political independence. In Herder’s lifetime such a
country did not exist for speakers of German; not until 1990 was there
finally a “Germany,” from which even now Austria and German-speaking
9
Switzerland are excluded. Elsewhere Herder’s theory had tremendous
impact, as all ethnic groups began to dream of and agitate for their own
10
national states, often with disastrous consequences.
HERDER AND POLITICS ♦ 279
Herder’s decisive theoretical contribution to the history of national-

ism has been studied in depth, but much less is known about his actual
political career. Various causes for the paucity of studies on Herder’s
politics might be adduced. First, many of the issues that are considered
political have been subsumed under other topics, such as Herder’s phi-
losophy of history. Second, there is a lingering reluctance to examine the
politics of German intellectuals, particularly those associated with Weimar
Classicism, a period that was held to have risen above the murky waters of
mere political engagement. Those who were willing to investigate the
radical politics of writers such as J. M. R. Lenz were likely repelled by
Herder’s reputation as someone apolitical at best and conservative at worst.
Then there were factors of personal risk. The inevitable emergence of
one’s own political position when discussing someone else’s politics made
an objective assessment of Herder a delicate matter, particularly during the
11
Nazi period. Only through selective, distorting quoting could Herder’s
political views be assimilated into the increasingly conservative agenda of
12
German intellectual history after 1870. Researchers in the German Demo-
cratic Republic were able to do excellent work in publishing editions but
on the whole had to be circumspect on matters such as Herder’s chal-
13
lenges to the authority of the state.
Finally, there are the methodological difficulties inherent in any at-
tempt to study politics in the eighteenth-century territories. Without a
parliament, the institutions associated with politics in the Anglo-American
sphere — parties, election campaigns, political rhetoric, public assemblies,
indeed politicians as such — did not arise. The word “politics” as we un-
derstand it today could not be translated into the German vocabulary of
the eighteenth century. “Politik” was used to designate the tactics of gov-
14
erning, somewhere between today’s “policy” and “political science.”
The characteristic quality of “Politik” was the exercise of “Klugheit,” the
cunning born of practical experience. An antithesis to “Klugheit” was
15
“Weisheit,” wisdom. With this background, one can follow the logic of
Herder’s frequently quoted pronouncement: “Der Politik ist der Mensch
ein Mittel; der Moral ist er Zweck. Beide Wissenschaften müssen eins wer-
den, oder sie sind schädlich widereinander” (For politics, the human be-
ing is a means; for ethics he is an end. Both spheres of knowledge must
16
become one, or they do each other damage [emphases in original]).
Herder clearly means with “Politik” the sort of management skills often
associated with Machiavelli, and not the party politics found in the England
of the eighteenth century. Given these conditions, is it even possible to
investigate Herder’s politics?
An affirmative answer is available in transformation of the history of
political thought as represented in the work of J. G. A. Pocock and
Quentin Skinner. As historians rather than political scientists, they have
280 ♦ ARND BOHM
directed attention away from a narrow concern with turning points in po-
litical thought and toward the investigations of the forms and discourses
in which political problems were construed by participants at the time.
Continuity assumes an increased importance within this perspective; the
17
ruptures become less significant. Applied to the case of Herder, this means
exchanging the usual limited focus on his “innovation” regarding the topic
of Volk for an investigation of where and how the idea emerged and what
Herder sought to accomplish with it. It also means that understanding his
writings as a response to what he perceived as vital matters is more useful
than are strained efforts to find in him a precursor — whether of liberal-
ism, of conservatism, or of nationalism.
Herder’s Politics and Christian History

Almost immediately, such a reorientation will cause many who are interes-
ted in Herder’s politics and political thought to balk. But whether we like
it or not, the bedrock of Herder’s convictions was his Christian faith, and
all of his life’s work was dedicated to advancing the cause of Christianity.
“Political” issues such as the duties and rights of subjects and rulers, the
nature of tyranny, the quest for international peace, and the protection of
freedom of conscience were always examined by Herder within the frame-
work of religion. Moreover, there is considerable evidence that Herder’s
allegiance was to quite a specific version of Christianity, one that he did
not invent, but did adopt, defend, and amplify. We have to take seriously
Herder’s participation in the long-term project of building a Christian
18
commonwealth here on earth.
Herder’s utopian vision of a community of peaceful Christians living
in harmony until the final Day of Judgment brought an end to the present
phase of history drew upon various intellectual sources. First and foremost,
there was Scripture, including the commentaries by the Church fathers
and, given Herder’s beliefs, major Protestant theologians such as Martin
Luther (1483–1546) and John Calvin (1509–64) and historians of the
Church such as Gottfried Arnold (1666–1714) and Johann Lorentz von
19
Mosheim (1693–1755). For Herder, the Bible was more than a history
of what had happened in the past; read properly, it contained instructions
for every facet of daily life and the adumbrations of an ideal community.
Herder’s description of the earliest period of Christian history in the Ideen
the History of Humankind, 1784–91) depicts a community governed by
Christ’s example and teachings and therefore serves as the blueprint of a
social order yet to be re-established. The community of the spirit was re-
flected in a commonwealth based upon sharing:
Die menschenfreundliche Denkart Christi hatte brüderliche Eintracht

und Verzeihung, thätige Hülfe gegen die Nothleidenden und Armen,
kurz jede Pflicht der Menschheit zum gemeinschaftlichen Bande seiner
Anhänger gemacht, so daß das Christenthum demnach ein ächter
Bund der Freundschaft und Bruderliebe seyn sollte. (Ideen, SWS
14:296; emphases in original)
[Christ’s philanthropic way of thinking had made brotherly harmony
and forgiveness, active help for the needy and poor, in short, every
duty of mankind, into a communal bond among his followers, so that
Christianity accordingly is supposed to be a true league of friendship
and brotherly love.]
Herder’s account of how the community came to be corrupted encapsu-
lates much of his political philosophy and may be quoted at length:
Das Christenthum sollte eine Gemeine seyn, die ohne weltlichen Arm von
Vorstehern und Lehrern regiert würde. Als Hirten sollten diese der
Heerde vorstehen, ihre Streitigkeiten schlichten, ihre Fehler mit Ernst
und Liebe bessern, und sie durch Rath, Ansehen, Lehre und Beispiel
zum Himmel führen. Ein edles Amt, wenn es würdig verwaltet wird,
und verwaltet zu werden Raum hat: denn es zerknickt den Stachel der
Gesetze, rottet aus die Dornen der Streitigkeiten und Rechte, und
vereinigt den Seelsorger, Richter und Vater. Wie aber, wenn in der
Zeitfolge die Hirten ihre menschliche Heerde als wahre Schaafe be-
handelten, oder sie gar als lastbare Thiere zu Disteln führten? Oder
wenn statt der Hirten rechtmäßig-beruffene Wölfe unter die Heerde
kamen? Unmündige Folgsamkeit ward also gar bald eine christliche
Tugend; es ward eine christliche Tugend, den Gebrauch seiner Ver-
nunft aufzugeben und statt eigner Ueberzeugung dem Ansehen einer
fremden Meinung zu folgen, da ja der Bischof an der Stelle eines
Apostels Bothschafter, Zeuge, Lehrer, Ausleger, Richter und Entschei-
der war. (Ideen, SWS 14:297–98; emphasis in original)
[Christianity was supposed to be a community that was ruled by leaders
and teachers, without a secular arm. As shepherds these should lead the
flock, settle their difficulties, mend their errors with seriousness and
love, and show them the way to heaven through counsel, respect,
teaching, and example. A noble office, when it is fulfilled with dignity,
and when there is room for it to be fulfilled: for it takes away the sting
of the law, eradicates the thorns of quarrels and rights, and unites the
pastors, judges, and priests. But how would it be if in the course of
time the shepherds treated their human flocks as actual sheep, or even
led them, as beasts of burden, into the thistles? Or if, instead of the
shepherds, officially-sanctioned wolves came among the flocks? Im-
mature obedience thus very soon became a Christian virtue; it became
a Christian virtue to give up the use of one’s reason and instead of
282 ♦ ARND BOHM
following one’s own convictions respect another’s opinion, since after

all the bishop, in place of an apostle, was ambassador, witness, teacher,
interpreter, judge, and decider.]
Although aimed in the first instance at the Catholic Church’s institution
of the pope, the historical narrative opens up allegorically, as everywhere
in Herder, to contemporary applications. If all the Christian monarchs de-
rived their legitimacy, their divine right to rule, via transmission from the
popes, then they had also inherited and were perpetuating the original
betrayal of the sheep by the shepherds. No one in the eighteenth century
could have missed hearing the satirical critique of obedience to “another’s
opinion”: this was taking direct aim at the intolerance imposed by Chris-
20
tian monarchs upon their subjects. Careful readers would also have been
struck by Herder’s avoidance of the language of contracts that typified
discussions of the rights of the sovereign at the time. In the contractarian
model, the office of the sovereign was made necessary because human be-
ings, innately vicious and aggressive, elected him so as to put an end to
their strife and conflict. For Herder, the reverse is true. Human beings,
innately good and peaceful, were taught to be aggressive by corrupt lead-
ers. Given such a view of history, it is not far to Herder’s affirmation of a
natural right to resist tyranny for the common good:
Jedem einzelnen Gliede wird also die Wohlfahrt des Ganzen sein
eigenes Beste: denn wer unter den Uebeln desselben leidet, hat auch
das Recht und die Pflicht auf sich, diese Uebel von sich abzuhalten
und sie für seine Brüder zu mindern. Auf Regenten und Staaten hat
die Natur nicht gerechnet; sondern auf das Wohlseyn der Menschen in
ihren Reichen. [. . .] In alle diesem zeigen sich die Gesetze der Wie-
dervergeltung nicht anders als die Gesetze der Bewegung bei dem
Stoß des kleinsten physischen Körpers und der höchste Regent Euro-
pa’s bleibt den Naturgesetzen des Menschengeschlechts sowohl unter-
worfen, als der Geringste seines Volkes. Sein Stand verband ihn blos,
ein Haushalter dieser Naturgesetze zu seyn und bei seiner Macht, die
er nur durch andre Menschen hat, auch für andre Menschen ein weiser
und gütiger Menschengott zu werden. (Ideen, SWS 14:248)
[The welfare of the whole thus becomes for every member his own
highest good: for whoever suffers under its evils also has the right and
the duty to ward off such evils and to reduce them for his brothers.
Nature did not reckon for regents and states but for the well-being of
the human beings in their realms.[. . .] In all of these the laws of reci-
procity as well as the laws of motion show themselves in the collision
of the smallest physical bodies, and the highest regent of Europe re-
mains as much subject to the natural laws of the human race as the
least of his people. His status alone required him to be a keeper of
these natural laws and through his might, which he only has through
other human beings, to also be a wise and kindly human idol for other
human beings.]
Perhaps this passage could be taken as Herder’s support of “enlightened
despotism,” but doing so misses his point, which was to undermine the
legitimacy of despotic rule. Who, after all, must decide whether the sov-
ereign is “wise and good” but the subjects themselves, especially when
the sovereign’s authority no longer derives from God? Overall, Herder
shared the aversion of fundamentalist Protestants such as the Pietists for
any hierarchical structures in the Church. The extent to which he had ab-
sorbed Johann Valentin Andreae’s radical critiques of Church government
or simply found in them anticipations of his own thought requires further
21
study.
Some sense of how thoroughly imbued Herder’s analysis was with the
political language rooted in Scripture and an indication of how inac-
cessible that language has become for us may be found in Herder’s theory
of tyrants. Reflecting on the spread of despotism in global history, Herder
introduces a note of optimism:
Keinem Nimrod gelang es bisher, für sich und sein Geschlecht die Be-
wohner des Weltalls in Ein Gehäge zusammen zu jagen und wenn es
seit Jahrhunderten der Zweck des verbündeten Europa wäre, die
Glückaufzwingende Tyrannin aller Erdnationen zu seyn, so ist die
Glückesgöttin noch weit von ihrem Ziele. (Ideen, SWS 13:341)
[No Nimrod has succeeded until now in driving, for himself and his
descendants, the inhabitants of the universe into a corral, and even if
for centuries it were the whole of united Europe’s goal to be the tyrant
who forces happiness on all the nations of the earth, nevertheless For-
tuna is still far from her goal.]
The passage is repeated almost verbatim in the Briefe zu Beförderung der
Humanität, and then amplified:
Eben jenes Nimrods weltvereinigendem Entwurf zuwider, wurden
(wie die alte Sage sagt) die Sprachen verwirrt; es trenneten sich die
Völker. Die Verschiedenheit der Sprachen, Sitten, Neigungen und
Lebensweisen sollte ein Riegel gegen die anmaßende Verkettung der
Völker, ein Damm gegen fremde Überschwemmungen werden; denn
dem Haushalter der Welt war daran gelegen, daß zur Sicherheit des
Ganzen jedes Volk und Geschlecht sein Gepräge, seinen Charakter
erhielt. (BBH 2:249–50; emphases in original)
[Just to spite that Nimrod’s plan to unite the world, the languages
were (as the old story tells) confused, the peoples sundered. The va-
riety of languages, customs, inclinations and manners were supposed
284 ♦ ARND BOHM
to be a bar against the growing linkage of the peoples, a dam against

foreign floods; for it was important to the keeper of the world that, for
the security of the whole, his stamp and his character should be re-
ceived by every people and every race.]
The drastic political implications of Herder’s language are difficult to re-
cover now. Although hardly anyone recognizes the figure today, for cen-
turies all serious discussions of the causes and consequences of tyranny
were shaped by what Scripture and the commentators had discovered about
22
Nimrod, the first tyrant. Out of the sparse details given in Genesis there
had developed an extended theory of the psychology of tyrants. Once smit-
ten by the lust for power, Nimrod’s territorial ambitions knew no limits
and led to the beginnings of the colonial expansion that Herder could
identify as European imperialism. Because Nimrod was descended from
Cain and had also been a hunter, he became associated with the greatest
blood-sport of tyrants, war (BBH 2:287). At the same time, the opposi-
tion by God to Nimrod’s other project, building the tower at Babel, offered
reassurance that tyrants would never succeed in achieving total domina-
23
tion, that God would always restore justice by confounding their plans.
Since all tyranny had begun as a rebellion against the divine order, no
tyrant could ever claim authority from God. When, therefore, Herder’s
friend Johann Georg Hamann referred to Frederick II of Prussia as a “Nim-
rod,” he summed up a serious set of accusations against the king: this was
a tyrant who waged needless wars because of his vanity and blood lust, in
24
defiance of God’s will; Herder would have understood and agreed.
Carefully woven into Herder’s description of the corruption of the
original Christian community are hints of how it may be restored. Above
all, the martyrs demonstrated how to remain loyal adherents to the vision
of Christ’s kingdom (SWS 14:296). Their faith led them to disdain the
world and its corrupting influence. There can be little doubt that in his
life, filled with struggles against arbitrary rulers and for the improvement
of congregations under his care, Herder too found solace in his faith and
in the ideal of Christ’s kingdom. Poignantly he concluded the history of
the earliest Christian communities with a resolute optimism (SWS 14:305).
To be sure, the cynic will observe that ultimately the pure and good did
not triumph in Herder’s time and still seem far off, that the Christian
commonwealth was and remains an empty utopian dream.
Utopianism: The Christian Commonwealth

However, such observations should not hide the fact that Herder could
also draw inspiration, arguments, and evidence from a wide and deep tra-
dition of Christians who had been organizing and working since the six-
teenth century to make the Christian commonwealth a reality. This second

influence on Herder’s political thought has caused considerable difficulty
for historians because of its complexity and its frequent recourse to alle-
gorical, hermetic language. Few historians have been willing to take con-
cepts like a “Fraternity of the Rosy Cross” seriously. Even finding a label
for the movement is difficult. A felicitous designation is Charles Webster’s
borrowing of “the great instauration” from the title of Francis Bacon’s
Instauratio Magna (1620) to describe the whole network that spread
25
throughout Europe, from Czechoslovakia to England. Broadly speaking,
the program was an effort by Protestants to carry the Reformation for-
ward to completion on all fronts, including the assimilation of new sci-
entific knowledge to Christian doctrine, the reform of social institutions
to make them conform to Christ’s teachings, the abolition of manifesta-
tions of active evil (above all the elimination of war), and the improve-
ment of human beings, individually and collectively, to make them fit to
be subjects of Christ’s dominion. Or, to put it in terms the participants
used, the ideal societies outlined in works such as Thomas More’s Utopia,
Tomaso Campanella’s City of the Sun, Bacon’s New Atlantis, James Har-
rington’s Oceana, and Johann Valentin Andreae’s Christianopolis were to
be taken as blueprints for the transformation of the social order. Given
the vastness and sheer audacity of the undertaking, whose repercussions
continue to the present, we are only gradually beginning to map the con-
nections of the network of figures and social experiments between 1550
and 1800. This network linked the best minds of Protestant Christendom
without respect for state boundaries or regard for sectarian differences. To
the list of More, Campanella, Bacon, Harrington, and Andreae, one should
add those of Comenius (Komenský), Grotius, Milton, Penn, Hobbes,
Pufendorf, Newton, Locke, Leibniz, Spinoza, and Lessing, all mentioned
by Herder in the Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität, making it read
like a history of the movement. In the German context one must also
include the Pietists, figures such as Johann Arndt (1555–1621), Phillipp
Jakob Spener (1635–1705), August Hermann Francke (1663–1727),
Johann Conrad Dippel (1673–1734), and Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzen-
26
dorf (1700–1760), all named and lauded by Herder in his Adrastea.
Although usually shunted to the margins in histories of the eighteenth
century because they did not fit well into the model of the emergence of
the state under the aegis of “enlightened despots,” the Pietists in the Ger-
man territories, no less than the Puritans in England, were a driving force
behind the intellectual and social reforms that came to be known as the
27
Enlightenment.
For Herder all these figures, with their prolific writings and active,
often radical, social experiments, were tangible and plausible leaders in the
ongoing struggle to spread true Christianity, that is, rational Protestant-
286 ♦ ARND BOHM
ism, throughout the world. We are only beginning to investigate Herder’s

28
obligations to this tradition. To cite some instances of his positive recep-
tion of them, there is Herder’s detailed summary of Comenius’s works in
the Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität (BBH 1:284–91). And there is
Herder’s remarkable compliment to Grotius: “Zu deinem Grabe wallfahr-
tete ich einst, mein Anti-Machiavell, Hugo Grotius. Du schriebst kein
‘Recht des Krieges und Friedens,’ denn du warest kein Prinz; du schriebst
‘vom Rechte des Krieges und Friedens’” (BBH 1:333; I once made a pil-
grimage to your grave, my Anti-Machiavelli, Hugo Grotius. You did not
write ‘right of war and peace,’ for you were no prince; you wrote ‘of rights
of war and peace’”). Not least, there is the untold story of Herder’s re-
sponse to Andreae, whose life and writings have only recently been at-
tracting scholarly attention, notably in the work of Roland Edighoffer.
Herder reports that when young he had already been attracted to the work
of Andreae. In the 1790s there was a notable surge of interest on Herder’s
part in Andreae, signaled by the publication of a number of “political
parables” in the Zerstreute Blätter. Herder made a remarkable observation
about the contemporary relevance of Andreae in the preface:
Dichtungen und Gespräche, die in den Jahren 1770 und 1780 ohn’
alle Gefährde erschienen wären, fand ich gut, im Jahr 1793 lieber zu-
rückzuhalten, ob sie gleich 1617 oder 1620 verfaßt waren; es waren
unter diesen trefliche Parabeln und Gespräche. (SWS 16:132).
[Writings and dialogues that could have appeared without any danger
in the years 1770 and 1780, I found it better to withhold in 1793,
even if they were written as early as 1617 or 1620; among these were
excellent parables and dialogues.]
Herder’s efforts on behalf of Andreae’s reception took various literary
forms, including translations, introductions, and essays. Moreover, Herder
was clearly interested in the possibilities of reviving Andreae’s projects for
social and political reform along the lines of a Christian utopia. Against
the background of the constitutional crises and the imminent dissolution
of the Holy Roman Empire, the 1780s and 1790s seemed to present an
opportunity for realizing the sort of constitutional program enunciated by
Andreae, as in his Christianae societatis Imago (1619) and the Christian-
opolis. Herder’s hopes took one concrete form in Idee zum ersten patrio-
tischen Institut für den Allgemeingeist Deutschlands (1787; Idea for the
First Patriotic Academy for the General Spirit of Germany), which reflec-
ted Andreae’s radical political agenda.
As the passage just quoted reminds us, even republishing writings
such as those of Andreae in the supercharged atmosphere created by the
French Revolution and its repression by German rulers was a risky busi-
ness. Herder had to be even more circumspect in announcing his own

utopian projects. His earliest and most revealing plan for how he might
contribute to the expansion of enlightened Protestantism, a travel diary,
was not published during Herder’s lifetime, appearing only partially in
1820 and in 1846, even though it had been written in 1769. In it, Herder
imagined himself in the role of a reformer and mused on what needed to
be done for the city of Riga, which he was in fact leaving, never to return:
Sie bleibe keine Scheinrepublik, keine Respublica in republ.; aber eine
Dienerin mit Vorzügen und Range; wie glücklich wer das könnte! der
ist mehr als Zwinglius und Calvin! ein Befreier und zugleich Bürger —
sind dazu keine Wege möglich? aber jetzt nicht: spät: durch Gewalt
am Hofe. [. . .] im Stillen arbeiten, und vielleicht bekomme ich einmal
ein Wort ans Ohr der Kaiserin! (Journal, HW 1, 416)
[It would cease to be a republic in name only, a Respublica in republ.;
but become a servant with distinction and rank; how happy he who
could to do that! He would be more than Zwingli and Calvin! a
liberator and at the same time a citizen — are there no ways to achieve
that? but not now: late: through force at court. [. . .] work in quiet,
and perhaps one day I will get a word into the ear of the Empress!]
The references to Calvin and Zwingli leave no doubt that Herder was pos-
tulating himself, with the ambition of youth, as someone who could ex-
tend the frontiers of Protestantism into the territories in eastern Europe
still under the sway of the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox
churches. Nor was Herder alone in such ambitions. The context for his
missionary impulses was the multi-pronged intellectual assault on those
territories already begun by the Pietists, directed by the tireless August
29
Hermann Francke from his base in Halle.
Virtue and Classical Republicanism

The third major component of Herder’s political philosophy came from
30
the discourse on classical republicanism, which he studied directly in the
Greek and Roman sources and received indirectly, especially from Ita-
31 32 33 34
lian, English, Scottish, and French thinkers. Markku Peltonen has
summarized the key points of classical republicanism:
It conceived of men as citizens rather than subjects; they were char-
acterized not so much by obedience to the king as by active partici-
pation in the political life of their community through counselling and
the law-making process. The citizens’ participatory role was chiefly
based on their virtuous characters, which enabled them to promote
35
the public good.
288 ♦ ARND BOHM
Although today it would appear eccentric for a politician to be concerned

explicitly with the question of whether virtue was increasing or declining,
it was a fundamental political category until it was supplanted by the con-
cept of power at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In our terms,
36
virtue might best be translated as “energy.” Historians and philosophers
were fascinated by what caused some countries to succeed and others to
fail, and they ascribed the difference to the presence or lack of a virtue, a
vital energy, that caused commerce, the arts, and the population to flour-
ish. Genuine virtue began with personal ethics, but could be transmitted
to others by example, action, and rhetoric, in order to energize the whole
community.
The classic examples of virtue were found in the Greek city-states and
in republican Rome. The degree of civic virtue was the measure by which
Herder evaluated states and governments in his historical writings. The
Greek republics were the example of ideal states where genuine virtue
flourished in a democracy. In the Ideen he praised “the noble sublimity of
spirit” that flourished among the Greeks,
wie es selbst noch ihre ungerechten, neidigen Kriege, die härtesten
ihrer Bedrückungen und die treulosesten Verräther ihrer Bürger-
tugend zeigen. Die Grabschrift jener Spartaner, die bei Thermopylä
fielen:
Wanderer, sag’s zu Sparta, daß seinen Gesetzen gehorsam
Wir erschlagen hier liegen —
bleibt allemal der Grundsatz der höchsten politischen Tugend, bei
dem wir auch zwei Jahrtausende später nur zu bedauren haben, daß er
zwar einst auf der Erde der Grundsatz weniger Spartaner über einige
harte Patricier-Gesetze eines engen Landes, noch nie aber das Prin-
cipium für die reinen Gesetze der gesammten Menschheit hat werden
mögen. (SWS 14:121)
[even by their unjust wars of envy, the most severe of their oppres-
sions, and the most unfaithful traitors against civic virtue still show.
The epitaph of those Spartans who fell at Thermopylae:
Wanderer, tell Sparta that, obedient to its laws
We lie here slain —
remains for all time the basis of the highest political virtue, which we
even two millennia later still have only to regret: that while once on
earth it was the foundation of a few Spartans for some severe patrician
laws of a small country, but has never yet been able to become the
principle of the purest laws of the whole of humanity.]
The Greek city-states were small enough to allow public affairs to be con-
ducted in face-to-face encounters, in the space suitable for the republic.
Under those conditions, thoughts could be expressed in open debate and
the arts could move to perfection. Although he had no direct experience

of the republicanism of the Italian city-states, Herder was familiar with the
37
historical example of municipal self-government in the Hanseatic cities.
He spent some happy and productive years in Riga, where the ongoing tra-
dition of government by the merchant class inspired him to think about
38
the possibility of resurrecting the urban public of the Greek city-states.
Herder excoriated the Roman state as an example of what happened
when the original energy of its founders was left unchecked. While the
Romans had appeared virtuous, that was only the function of external pres-
sure: “Der größeste Theil der gepriesenen Römertugend ist uns ohne die enge,
harte Verfassung ihres Staats unerklärlich; jene fiel weg, sobald diese weg-
fiel” (SWS 14:165; The greatest part of the much-praised virtue of the
Romans is inexplicable to us without the straitened, severe constitution of their
state; the former ceased to be as soon as the latter ceased to be). As am-
bition took the place of civic virtue, the true nature of the Romans, their
martial spirit, transformed the republic into a ruthless killing machine that
taught despotism through its empire and then fell into ruin:
Wir gehen also auf dem Blutbetrieften Boden der Römischen Pracht
zugleich wie in einem Heiligthum classischer Gelehrsamkeit und alter
überbliebner Kunstwerke umher, wo uns bei jedem Schritt ein neuer
Gegenstand an versunkne Schätze einer alten nie wiederkehrenden
Weltherrlichkeit erinnert. Die Fasces der Ueberwinder, die einst un-
schuldige Nationen züchtigten, betrachten wir als Sprößlinge einer
hochherrlichen Cultur, die durch traurige Zufälle auch unter uns
gepflanzt worden. (SWS 14:152)
[Thus we wander around on the blood-spattered ground of Rome’s
glory as in a shrine of classical scholarship and of works of art of an-
cient vintage, where with every step a new object reminds us of lost
treasures of an ancient splendor of the worldly glory that will never
come back again. The fasces of the conquerors, which once punished
innocent nations, we view as the seedlings of a splendid culture, which
through unhappy coincidence were also planted among us.]
The chapter in the Ideen on the expansion of the Roman Empire reads
like the jeremiad Herder intended, equally applicable to ancient and mod-
ern imperialism (SWS 14:169–77).
Herder was well aware of French views on the questions of virtue and
republics, notably those of Montesquieu and Rousseau. Although Rousseau
is more readily associated with Herder because of the impact he had in
the Sturm und Drang period, Montesquieu deserves serious attention as a
39
shaping influence for Herder. Marginalia in his copy of L’Esprit des lois
(1748) indicate how intensely Herder engaged with Montesquieu’s mon-
40
umental critique of all forms of government. Although Herder could
290 ♦ ARND BOHM
not agree with everything he found in Montesquieu’s work, by and large

the two thinkers saw world history in similar ways. Both operated within
the paradigm of civic humanism, in which virtue was a central explanatory
41
component. For example, Herder, in his account of what went wrong
with the Roman republic as it was transformed into the empire, came to
the same conclusions formulated by Montesquieu in his Considérations sur
les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence (1734):
While the domination of Rome was limited to Italy, the republic could
easily maintain itself. A soldier was equally a citizen. [. . .] But when
the legions crossed the Alps and the sea, the warriors, who had to be
left in the countries they were subjugating for the duration of several
42
campaigns, gradually lost their citizen spirit.
Not surprisingly, Herder’s discussion of despotism in the Ideen (SWS
43
13:385) follows Montesquieu’s analysis of its causes and consequences.
44
War was a thorny problem for classical republicanism. On the one
hand, individual heroism was one of the paradigms for genuine virtue. On
the other, war drained the resources of a people so much, depleted their
vital energy to such an extent that the community might lose its ability to
45
remain independent. It is interesting to observe Herder’s attempts to re-
solve the dilemma as reflected in his reading of Homer on war. According
to Herder, Homer had been careful to distinguish a genuine heroism from
the horrors of battle:
Seine Tote läßt er nie als Tiere fallen; er bezeichnet, soviel er kann, in
einigen Versen als Menschenfreund ihr trauriges Schicksal. Dieser wird
nie mehr zu seinen geliebten Eltern, zu seinen Brüdern, seiner Gattin,
seinen Kindern wiederkehren; jener hat Reichtum, Wohlstand, eine
glückliche Ruhe verlassen, die er nie mehr genießen wird. (BBH
1:184)
[He never lets his dead fall as animals; in some of his verses he de-
scribes as a friend of man, as much as he can, their sad fates. This one
will never again return to his beloved parents, to his brothers, to his
bride, to his children; that one has left behind riches, prosperity, a
happy peace, never to enjoy them again.]
A full account of Herder’s critique of war remains to be written. Unlike
some of his contemporaries who glorified rulers such as Louis XIV and
Frederick II with the epithets of epic heroism, Herder denied them and
their armies any claim to nobility and virtue. War was the absolute
antithesis to virtue: “Der Menschenfreßende Krieg z.B. war Jahrhunderte
lang ein rohes Räuberhandwerk” (SWS 14:221; For example, war, de-
vourer of human beings, was for centuries a raw tool of robbers). Genu-
ine heroism, for Herder, was expressed through a patriotism founded on
virtue. Again, it is easy to misread in retrospect all the references to

“Vaterland,” to “patriotism,” and to “Deutschland.” Herder’s “Deutsch-
land” was indeed an imagined community, one that has not yet been
realized. As Otto Dann has argued, Herder’s patriotism demanded a
nation founded on principled virtue. It is telling that Dann describes this
as an “unusual” patriotism; those still schooled in the tenets of classical
46
republicanism would have recognized it as normal. For anyone dedicated
to a better world free of despotism, intolerance, superstition, ignorance,
and mutual mistrust, the French Revolution was both a great opportunity
and an even greater disappointment. Herder was no exception. He dared
welcome the revolution as it got underway, but soon had to realize that
47
the future had not yet arrived.
The “Academy” as a Constitutional Model

As things turned out, Herder was never granted the opportunity to achieve
any of his youthful ambitions. He never got the ear of an empress or em-
peror. Instead, he was constrained to work within the boundaries of two
relatively tiny territories in the Holy Roman Empire, with responsibility
for church affairs first in Schaumburg-Lippe under Count Wilhelm and
then in Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach under Duke Carl August, as General Super-
intendent. All reports are that he performed his duties with the same
diligence and loyalty to the established church that was typical of German
48
Protestant pastors in the eighteenth century. Quickly enough, the daily
grind of bureaucratic chores and the lack of resources or support from the
49
secular side taught Herder the limitations on reform. No less than Kant
in Prussia, Herder had to curb his tongue when it came to instructing his
50
sovereign.
However, on occasion there were signs that Herder remained stead-
fast in his convictions and pursued them wherever he could. One such
moment was his submission in 1787 of an outline of his Idee zum ersten
patriotischen Institut für den Allgemeingeist Deutschlands. When it is prop-
erly situated in the context of the “great instauration,” his plan is both
51
familiar and daring. The aim was not, as one might suppose, to get gov-
ernment funding for an academy that would do its work within the
confines of the state. Instead, by assembling all the best minds in one
institution it would be possible to bring into being a parliament, an al-
ternative to one that the Holy Roman Empire never convened. The
territorial divisions and boundaries would be subject to the authority of a
general assembly. The year 1787 seemed propitious for making another
effort to use the device of the academy to bring about a political revolu-
tion, since the always-cumbersome structures of the Holy Roman Empire
292 ♦ ARND BOHM
were on the verge of collapse. Perhaps the rulers did see in the academy a
means to resolve the crisis — but they could read between the lines and,
while they rejected the plan on the grounds that it was unfeasible, they
52
surely recognized its subversive potential. In an era when there were few
forums for the public exchange of ideas, the extensive network of acade-
mies that flourished in the eighteenth century was key for the work of the
Enlightenment and provided training grounds for an egalitarian, cosmo-
53
politan sociability. In addition to publishing what would later become
scholarly journals, the academies promoted international discourse by pro-
moting essay competitions on current topics. Herder himself contributed
his Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache to the Académie Royale
des Sciences et Belles-Lettres in Berlin and had the satisfaction of gaining
merit in the virtual republic of letters, beyond the narrow limits of just
54
one particular territory, and without interference from a political ruler.
What the Idee zum ersten patriotischen Institut für den Allgemeingeist
Deutschlands makes apparent are the political ramifications of Herder’s
long-standing choice of the Volk as an organizing unit for the political
order. The Volk would not be dependent upon the existing state for its
legitimacy, yet would at first have no public forum in which its represen-
tatives might gather and deliberate for the common good. Once the acad-
emy were in place, the representatives to that academy would come from
the Volk instead of being delegates from the sovereign. Unity would be
achieved through the exclusion of all partisan and state-sponsored inter-
ests: “Kein getheiltes politisches Intereße einzelnder Reichs-Stände soll
wißentlich je die Ruhe ihres Kreises, die Klarheit ihres Urtheils oder den
reinen Eifer ihrer Bemühungen stören: denn Deutschland hat nur Ein
Intereße, das Leben und die Glückseligkeit des Ganzen” (SWS 16:607;
No partisan political interest of an individual imperial estate should ever
disturb the peace of its region, the clarity of its judgment, or the pure zeal
of its deliberations: for Germany has only one interest, the life and the hap-
piness of the whole). Herder took care to present the proposal as patri-
otic, as an almost naive constitution for the republic of letters, but he
knew full well that the thrust behind such academies had been ultimately
to supplant secular sovereigns by a government of wise reason. The suc-
cessful example of such an academy in “Deutschland” — a conceptual ter-
ritory only, it must be recalled — could then be transposed to higher levels,
first to all other Protestant lands, then all Christian states, and ultimately
the entire world. The academy would become the practical instrument for
universal enlightenment:
Jede hellere Wahrheit, die herrschende Vorurtheile und böse Gewohn-
heiten aufhebt oder vermindert; jeder praktische Versuch und Vor-
schlag zur beßern Erziehung der Fürsten, des Adels, des Landmannes
und Bürgers; leichtere und beßere Einrichtungen in allen öffentlichen

Anstalten, in Handhabung der Gerechtigkeit, im Umgange der Stände
gegen einander, in Einrichtung der Kirchen und Schulen, in einer
vernünftigen Staatswirthschaft und menschlichen Staatsweisheit, wer-
den Gegenstände des Nachdenkens, der Ueberlegung und Erfahrung
der Akademie werden. Denn niemand kann es leugnen, daß in unserm
Vaterlande hie und da noch Vorurtheile und Thorheiten gelten, die in
benachbarten Ländern öffentlich dafür erkannt sind und auch bei uns
von jedem vernünftigen Herren und Unterthan dafür erkannt werden.
(SWS 16:609–10)
[Every brighter truth that abolishes or reduces prevailing prejudices
and bad habits; every practical endeavor and purpose for improving
the education of the princes, the nobility, the countryman, and the
citizen; simpler and better arrangements in all public institutions, in
the conduct of justice, in the dealings of the estates with one another,
in the organizing of the churches and schools: in a rational political
economy and humane political science, all these will become objects of
consideration, deliberation, and experience for the academy. For no
one can deny that in our Fatherland prejudices and follies still prevail
here and there, so that they are recognized publicly as such in our
neighboring countries, and are even recognized as such at home by
every thinking ruler and subject.]
The structure of the academy and the agenda of reforms are those of
Andreae’s Christianopolis, and of the other utopias associated with the
“great instauration,” overlaid with Montesquieu’s advocacy of federations
55
as a possibility for achieving a balance of power among states. Not least
among the benefits to flow from such a congress would be an end to strife
56
and conflict between warring states. The major obstacle blocking the es-
tablishment of universal peace had always been the refusal of rulers to give
up their power. That tendency had been reinforced under the West-
phalian system, which identified the rulers’ interests as the interests of the
state and all its subjects. Hence it is possible to grasp the extreme political
radicalism of Herder’s insistence that the Volk was prior to and autonomous
of any state, irrespective of the form of government. He would surely have
been dismayed to see how proponents of the state were able to co-opt the
concept of the Volk in the nineteenth century. Herder, like other Protes-
tant reformers, eagerly anticipated the day when the state would be ren-
57
dered superfluous and all the different peoples would live in harmony.
Herder in Current Affairs

Lest the impression linger that Herder’s views on politics are irrelevant
today, relics from a distant past, there are signs that the opposite is true
294 ♦ ARND BOHM
and that Herder’s thinking is gaining renewed prominence and will yet
come into its own. Considerations of the community as an alternative to
58
the organized political state continue to refer to Herder. One indication
that Herder remains relevant is the lively debate taking place in Canada
and Quebec about how to balance the rights of a national minority against
59
the practical exigencies of state government. That debate has also begun
to resonate in France, where the antithesis of state versus community has
60
become an intense and potentially explosive issue. Another development
is the realignment of Herder in postcolonial discourse as an important,
61
prescient critic of European imperialism. The end of the Westphalian
system has also opened up discussions about how or whether to organize
62
a new world government, how to preserve the rights of peoples as well
63
as individuals under international law, and how to overcome the fatal link
64
between national identity and territory. Finally, but by no means least,
Herder’s insights into the ontological bases of human freedom deserve
renewed interest in light of phenomena such as the untimely resurrection
65
of the political philosophy of Carl Schmitt. The intervention in that trend
by Giorgio Agamben is salutary, but could be strengthened by reference
to the tradition that sustained Herder and was transmitted by him, where-
by human beings, but not political entities, are sacred.
Notes
1
“Violence and power are not justice.” SWS 28:347.
2
Hans Adler, “Nation. Johann Gottfried Herders Umgang mit Konzept und
Begriff,” in Unerledigte Geschichten: Der literarische Umgang mit Nationalität
und Internationalität, ed. Gesa von Essen and Horst Turk (Göttingen: Wallstein,
2000), 39.
3
Aris, History of Political Thought in Germany from 1789 to 1815 (1936; reprint,
London: Frank Cass, 1965), 235. J. L. Talmon’s discussion of Herder in The
Unique and the Universal: Some Historical Reflections (London: Secker & War-
burg, 1965), 91–118, is an unfortunate lapse by a respected historian. Isaiah Berlin
mounts an impassioned defense of Herder in his “Herder and the Enlighten-
ment,” in Aspects of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Earl R. Wasserman (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1965), 46–104; reprinted in I. Berlin, Three Critics of
the Enlightenment, ed. Henry Hardy (London: Pimlico, 2000), 168–242. While a
fair reading of Herder’s texts as he found them, Berlin’s essay is strangely silent on
the historical context.
4
The canonical text remains Robert Reinhold Ergang, Herder and the Founda-
tions of German Nationalism (1931, reprint New York: Octagon Books, 1966).
Historians and political scientists continue to see Herder in this light as they deal
with issues of nationalism and communal identity. See for example: Russell Arben
Fox, “J. G. Herder on Language and the Metaphysics of National Community,”
The Review of Politics 65 (2003): 237–62; Peter Hallberg, “The Nature of Col-
lective Individuals. J. G. Herder’s Concept of Community,” History of European

Ideas 25.6 (1999): 291–304; Judson M. Lyon, “The Herder Syndrome. A
Comparative Study of Cultural Nationalism,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 17.2
(1994): 224–37; K. R. Minogue, Nationalism (London: B. T. Batsford, 1973),
57–62; Thomas D. Musgrave, Self-Determination and National Minorities (Ox-
ford: Clarendon, 1997), 9–10; Jan Penrose, “Nations, States and Homelands.
Territory and Territoriality in Nationalist Thought,” Nations and Nationalism 8.3
(2002): 277–97; Jan Penrose and Joe May, “Herder’s Concept of Nation and Its
Relevance to Contemporary Ethnic Nationalism,” Canadian Review of Studies in
Nationalism 18.1–2 (1991): 165–78; Brian Vick, “The Origins of the German
Volk. Cultural Purity and National Identity in Nineteenth-Century Germany,”
German Studies Review 26.2 (2003): 241–56; and Brian J. Whitton, “Herder’s
Critique of the Enlightenment: Cultural Community versus Cosmopolitan Ra-
tionalism,” History and Theory 27 (1988): 146–68. Reference works pick up the
theme; see for example “Nationalism,” in Political Theory for Students, ed. Matthew
Miskelly and Jaime Noce (Detroit: Gale, 2002), 230–52; and Steven Grosby,
“Herder’s Theory of the Nation,” in Encyclopedia of Nationalism, ed. Athena S.
Leoussi, with Anthony D. Smith (New Brunswick, NJ, London: Transaction Pub-
lishers, 2001), 121–24.
5
Forster, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/herder/, section 8. Substantially the
same as his “Introduction.”
6
See the three articles by Hans Adler: “Johann Gottfried Herder’s Concept of
Humanity”; “Nation. Herders Umgang mit Konzept und Begriff”; and “Welt-
literatur — Nationalliteratur — Volksliteratur. Johann Gottfried Herders Vermitt-
lungsversuch als kulturpolitische Idee,” in Nationen und Kulturen: Zum 250.
Geburtstag Johann Gottfried Herders, ed. Regine Otto (Würzburg: Königshausen
und Neumann, 1996), 271–84. See also Hans Dietrich Irmscher, “Poesie, Natio-
nalität und Humanität,” Nationen und Kulturen, 35–48; Samson Knoll, “Herders
Nationalismus-Debatte ohne Ende,” Nationen und Kulturen, 239–48; Wulf
Koepke, “Kulturnation and Its Authorization through Herder,” in Johann Gottfried
Herder: Academic Disciplines and the Pursuit of Knowledge, ed. Wulf Koepke
(Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1996), 177–98; Koepke, “Das Wort ‘Volk’ im
Sprachgebrauch Johann Gottfried Herders,” Lessing Yearbook 19 (1987): 207–19;
Wilfried Malsch, “Nationen und kulturelle Vielfalt in Herders Geschichtsphilo-
sophie,” Nationen und Kulturen, 121–30; Bernd Springer, “Sprache, Geschichte,
Nation und Deutschlandbilder bei Herder,” in Poetisierung — Politisierung:
Deutschlandbilder in der Literatur bis 1848, ed. Wilhelm Gössmann and Klaus-
Hinrich Roth (Paderborn, Munich: Schöningh, 1994), 33–62; Hermann Strobach,
“Herders Volkslied-Begriff. Geschichtliche und gegenwärtige Bedeutung,” in
Jahrbuch für Volkskunde und Kulturgeschichte 21 (1978): 9–55; Jürgen Teller,
“Nachteil und Nutzen in der Unschärfe des Herderschen Volksbegriffes,” in
Herder-Kolloquium 1978: Referate und Diskussionsbeiträge, ed. Walter Dietze, et
al. (Weimar: Verlag Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1980), 299–314.
7
F. M. Barnard, Herder’s Social and Political Thought: From Enlightenment to
Nationalism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965); Barnard, introduction to J. G. Herder on
Social and Political Culture, ed. Barnard (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1969), 3–
296 ♦ ARND BOHM
60; Herder on Nationality, Humanity, and History (Montreal and Kingston:

McGill-Queen’s UP, 2003). See also Frederick C. Beiser, Enlightenment, Revo-
lution, and Romanticism: The Genesis of Modern German Political Thought, 1790–
1800 (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard UP, 1992); Benjamin W. Redekop,
Enlightenment and Community: Lessing, Abbt, Herder, and the Quest for a Ger-
man Public (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2000); Anthony La
Vopa, “Conceiving a Public. Ideas and Society in Eighteenth-Century Europe,”
Journal of Modern History 64 (1992): 79–116; La Vopa, “Herder’s Publikum.”
Language, Print, and Sociability in Eighteenth-Century Germany,” Eighteenth-
Century Studies 29.1 (1995): 5–24; Harold Mah, Enlightenment Phantasies: Cul-
tural Identity in France and Germany, 1750–1914 (Ithaca and London: Cornell
UP, 2003).
8
Good overviews are provided by Wilhelm Dobbek in his “Johann Gottfried
Herders Haltung im politischen Leben seiner Zeit,” Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 8
(1959): 321–87, and Horst Dreitzel in his “Herders politische Konzepte,” in
Johann Gottfried Herder: 1744–1803, ed. Gerhard Sauder (Hamburg: Meiner,
1987), 267–98. Brief yet incisive comments are found in Ursula Cillien, Johann
Gottfried Herder: Christlicher Humanismus (Ratingen: Aloys Henn Verlag, 1972),
87–106. See also the thorough monograph by Emil Adler, Herder und die deutsche
Aufklärung, trans. Irena Fischer (Vienna: Europa Verlag, 1968), especially 221–32.
9
An excellent overview of this history in the “Inventing the Nation Series” is
Stefan Berger’s Germany (London: Hodder Arnold, 2004).
10
On linguistic nationalism and the modern state, see Benedict Anderson, Im-
agined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London:
Verso, 1983).
11
On the Nazi misappropriation of Herder, see Christa Kamenetsky, “Political
Distortion of Philosophical Concept. A Case History — Nazism and the Roman-
tic Movement,” Metaphilosophy 3.3 (1972): 198–218; and Jost Schneider,
“Herder und der deutsche ‘Kriegsgesang,’” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift
47 (1997): 53–64.
12
Too much has been made, for example, of Herder’s “organicism” in his theory
of the “Volk.” Much of what has been attributed to him on the topic of com-
munity and fellow-feeling belongs properly to the history of Christian theology.
Typical of a serious distortion of Herder’s ideas is Reinhard Adam, “Wesen und
Grenzen der organischen Geschichtsauffassung bei Joh. Gottfried Herder,”
Historische Zeitschrift 155 (1937): 22–50 — caveat lector.
13
Regine Otto, “Zur Herder-Forschung in der DDR — Resultate, Tendenzen,
Aufgaben,” in Herder Today: Contributions from the International Herder Confer-
ence, Nov. 5–8, 1987. Stanford, California, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (Berlin, New
York: de Gruyter, 1990), 433–45.
14
An overview is given by Volker Sellin, “Politik,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe:
Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto Brunner,
Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1978), vol. 4, 789–
874; here 817–38. Various aspects of the problem are examined in Hans Erich
Bödeker and Ulrich Herrmann, eds., Aufklärung als Politisierung — Politisierung
der Aufklärung (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1987); and by Harro Segeberg, “Von
der Revolution zur ‘Befreiung.’ Politische Schriftsteller in Deutschland (1789–

1815),” in Europäische Romantik, ed. Karl Robert Mandelkow, with Ernst Behler
(Wiesbaden: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1982), 205–48. For
“policy” as “politics,” see Marc Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and
Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600–1800 (New
Haven: Yale UP, 1983). On political science as an academic discourse in the
eighteenth century, see Robert Wokler, “The Enlightenment Science of Politics,”
in Inventing Human Science: Eighteenth-Century Domains, ed. Christopher Fox,
Roy Porter, and Robert Wokler (Berkeley/Los Angeles: U of California P, 1995),
323–45.
15
On “Klugheit” and political science, see Jutta Brückner, Staatswissenschaften,
Kameralismus und Naturrecht: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Politischen Wissen-
schaft im Deutschland des späten 17. und frühen 18. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Beck,
1977); and Merio Scattola, “‘Prudentia se ipsum et statum suum conservandi.’
Die Klugheit in der praktischen Philosophie der frühen Neuzeit,” in Christian
Thomasius (1655–1728): Neue Forschungen im Kontext der Frühaufklärung, ed.
Friedrich Vollhardt (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997), 333–63. In English, see Eugene
Garver, Machiavelli and the History of Prudence (Madison: U of Wisconsin P,
1987), 105–12. Herder knew Machiavelli’s works well. A detailed study of
Herder and Klugheit is needed; a good starting point is Ralph Häfner, “Die
Weisheit des Ursprungs: Zur Überlieferung des Wissens in Herders Geschichts-
philosophie,” Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook (1994): 77–102. Much of
Herder’s infamous scorn for the Aufklärung was actually directed at what he
perceived as the cynical science of how to manipulate ideas and people without
understanding them.
16
Herder, Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität (henceforth cited as BBH),
1:123; 2:360.
17
See the discussions of methodological issues in J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Com-
merce and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth
Century (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985), especially 37–50; and Quentin
Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” History and
Theory 8 (1969): 3–53,
18
Herder would have seen the phrase in Hobbes’s Leviathan. He might also have
encountered it in John Eliot, The Christian Commonwealth, or, the Civil Policy of
the Rising Kingdom of Christ (1659). Rpt. in Collections of the Massachusetts His-
torical Society 1856, 127–64.
19
On the connection between the Bible and the discourse of republicanism, see
Warren Chernaik, “Biblical Republicanism,” Prose Studies 23.1 (2000): 147–60.
20
Herder’s language resembles — and his chronicle concurs — with Kant’s
“Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?” (1783), which postulates a time
before the present era of “selbstverschuldete Unmündigkeit” (self-imposed lack of
majority). See Ehrhard Bahr, ed., Was ist Aufklärung? Thesen und Definitionen
(Stuttgart: Reclam, 1974), 9.
21
Bettina Wirsching, “Andreae und Herder,” in Pietismus und Neuzeit: Ein Jahr-
buch zur Geschichte des neueren Protestantismus 14 (1988): 221–29.
298 ♦ ARND BOHM
22
Entry points into the literature are Arnold Williams, The Common Expositor: An
Account of the Commentaries on Genesis 1527–1633 (Chapel Hill: U of North
Carolina P, 1948), 160–63, 220–28; Christopher Kleinhenz, “Dante’s Towering
Giants: Inferno XXXI,” Romance Philology 27 (1973–74): 269–85; Richard F.
Hardin, “Milton’s Nimrod,” Milton Quarterly (1988): 28–44; K. van der Toorn
and P. W. van der Horst, “Nimrod before and after the Bible,” Harvard Theo-
logical Review 83.1 (1990): 1–29. Herder knew not only the Scriptural sources
but also the amplifications on Nimrod by Josephus, Augustine, Dante, and Milton.
23
Here and elsewhere Herder has anticipated the argument put forth by Antonio
Negri and Michael Hardt about the politics of globalization in their book Empire
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2000).
24
On Hamann’s names for Frederick II and the “most unusual appellation” Nim-
rod, see James C. O’Flaherty, The Quarrel of Reason with Itself: Essays on Hamann,
Michaelis, Lessing, Nietzsche (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1988), 139–40.
25
Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform 1626–
1660 (London: Duckworth, 1975), 1–31. A chain can be followed through fig-
ures whose work Herder knew well: Rose-Mary Sargent, “Bacon as an Advocate
for Cooperative Scientific Research,” in The Cambridge Companion to Bacon, ed.
Markku Peltonen (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), 146–71; G. H. M. Post-
humus Meyjes, “Hugo Grotius as an Irenicist,” in The World of Hugo Grotius
(1583–1645): Proceedings of the International Colloquium Organized by the
Grotius Committee of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences,
Rotterdam 6–9 April 1983 (Amsterdam and Maarssen: APA-Holland UP, 1984),
43–63, where the phrase “Christian commonwealth” is used unabashedly (48);
and Leroy E. Loemker, Struggle for Synthesis: The Seventeenth-Century Background
of Leibniz’s Synthesis of Order and Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1972),
53–85. The almost complete neglect of Grotius and Pufendorf as influences on
Herder results from a paradigm shift sketched by Richard Tuck in “The ‘Modern’
Theory of Natural Law,” in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern
Europe, ed. Anthony Pagden (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987), 99–119.
26
SWS 23:493–94; 24:32–37. On Herder’s relationship to the Pietists, see Tadeusz
Namowicz, “Pietismus und Antike als Komponenten des Herderschen Frühwerks,”
Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder 1975, ed. Johann Gottfried
Maltusch (Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1976), 1–21 and Emil Adler, Herder und die
deutsche Aufklärung, 238–71.
27
Overviews in English are provided by Mary Fulbrook, Piety and Politics: Re-
ligion and the Rise of Absolutism in England, Württemberg and Prussia (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1983); F. Ernest Stoeffler, German Pietism during the Eighteenth
Century (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973); W. R. Ward, “Orthodoxy, Enlightenment and
Religious Revival,” Studies in Church History 17 (1981): 275–96, and Ward,
“The Relations of Enlightenment and Religious Revival in Central Europe and in
the English-Speaking World,” in Reform and Reformation: England and the Con-
tinent c1500–c1750, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, for The Eccle-
siastical History Society, 1979), 281–305.
28
Studies of Herder’s connections to the figures in the movement have tended to
emphasize epistemological and philosophical concerns: H. B. Nisbet, “Herder and
Francis Bacon,” Modern Language Review 62 (1967): 267–83; Beate Monika

Dreike, Herders Naturauffassung in ihrer Beeinflussung durch Leibniz’ Philosophie
(Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1973); and Wolfgang Pross, “Spinoza, Herder, Büchner:
Über ‘Gesetz’ und `Erscheinung,’” Georg-Büchner-Jahrbuch 2 (1982): 62–98. We
will also have to stop continuing insulating Herder’s references to “Kraft” from
the realm of politics in light of Margaret Jacob’s Newtonians and the English Revo-
lution, 1689–1720 (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1990). A possible direction is
suggested in Jack Fruchtman Jr., The Apocalyptic Politics of Richard Price and Joseph
Priestley: A Study in Late Eighteenth-Century English Republican Millennialism
(Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1983), 23–29.
29
On Francke’s projects, see Carl Hinrichs, Preußentum und Pietismus: Der Pietis-
mus in Brandenburg-Preußen als religiös-soziale Reformbewegung, ed. Elfriede
Hinrichs (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971); Kurt Aland, “Der Pietis-
mus und die soziale Frage,” in Pietismus und moderne Welt, ed. Kurt Aland
(Witten: Luther-Verlag, 1974), 99–138; and Martin Schmidt, “Der Pietismus und
das moderne Denken,” in Pietismus und moderne Welt, ed. Kurt Aland (Witten:
Luther-Verlag, 1974), 9–74.
30
The effort to reconcile the Christian and the non-Christian discourses was not
original to Herder; see for example Mark Goldie, “The Civil Religion of James
Harrington,” in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed.
Pagden, 197–222. Herder mentions Harrington; when he read him and what he
took from him remains to be investigated.
31
On Vico and Herder, see Erich Auerbach, “Vico und Herder,” Deutsche
Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 10 (1932): 671–
86; and Wolfgang Pross, “Herder und Vico. Wissenssoziologische Vorausset-
zungen des historischen Denkens,” in Johann Gottfried Herder: 1744–1803, ed.
Gerhard Sauder (Hamburg: Meiner, 1987), 88–113. Herder’s relationship to
Machiavelli is complex: he rejects “Machiavellianism,” that is, the instructions to
the Prince on how to maintain power, but also accepts key elements of his analy-
sis, and concedes: “Daß aus dieser machiavellischen Geschichte, wenn sie scharf
siehet und richtig rechnet, viel zu lernen sei, ist keine Frage. Beschäftigt sie sich
nicht mit dem verflochtensten, wichtigsten Problem, das unserm Geschlechte
vorliegt? Menschenkräfte im Verhältnis ihrer Wirkungen und Folgen. (BBH 2:294;
That there is much to learn from this Machiavellian story, if it is looked at sharply
and reckoned rightly, is not in question. Does it not concern itself with the most
complex, most important problem that confronts our race?). Not least, Machiavelli’s
analysis of the role of fortuna in human affairs had a profound influence on Her-
der’s discussion of nemesis, something that does not receive sufficient attention in
Koepke’s informative “Nemesis und Geschichtsdialektik?” in Herder Today. Con-
tributions from the International Herder Conference, Nov. 5–8, 1987. Stanford, Cali-
fornia, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1990), 85–96.
32
There has never been doubt about the significance of Shaftesbury’s aesthetics
for Herder, and there is an awareness of the ethical implications; see Denise
Modigliani, “Zur moralisch-gesellschaftlichen Funktion der Dichtkunst bei Herder
im Licht seiner Shaftesbury-Lektüre,” Herder Jahrbuch/Herder Yearbook (2000):
57–77. Needed is a re-reading of their relationship with an awareness of Lawrence
300 ♦ ARND BOHM
E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural
Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994).
Herder’s reception of Milton needs to be re-examined in the light of work over
the last two decades on Milton’s politics; a useful entry point is Martin Dzelainis,
“Milton’s Classical Republicanism,” in Milton and Republicanism, ed. David
Armitage, Armand Himy, and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1995), 3–24.
33
As Zammito notes, the importance of the Scottish Enlightenment as an in-
fluence on Herder cannot be overstated (236), yet it has only begun to be investi-
gated. Early studies were those of Roy Pascal, “Herder and the Scottish Historical
School,” Publications of the English Goethe Society 14 (1939): 23–42; and Leroy R.
Shaw, “Henry Home Kames. Precursor of Herder,” The Germanic Review 35
(1960): 16–27. More generally, see Norbert Bachleitner, “Die Rezeption von
Henry Homes Elements of Criticism in Deutschland 1763–1793,” Arcadia 20
(1985): 113–33; and Manfred Kuehn, “The Early Reception of Reid, Oswald,
and Beattie in Germany. 1768–1800.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 21.4
(1983): 479–96. There is a burgeoning literature on the Scottish Enlightenment;
see for example Knud Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From
Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996). Further
investigation is needed into the consequences of Herder’s fascination with the
Ossian poems. Ossian’s world is pervaded by the ideals of the Scottish Enlighten-
ment through and through, and those ideals were inseparable from the legacy of
classical humanism.
34
Informative for the German as well as the French situation is Nicholas Greenwood
Onuf, “Civitas Maxima. Wolff, Vattel and the Fate of Republicanism,” The Amer-
ican Journal of International Law 88.2 (1994): 280–303. On Rousseau and virtue,
see Millard Barcay Stahle, “Rousseau’s ‘First Discourse’ and the Defense of Virtue:
An Inquiry into the Meaning of Virtue in Rousseau’s Political Thought,” PhD
dissertation, The Claremont Graduate University, 1982; and Carol Blum, Rousseau
and the Republic of Virtue (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1986). Walter Kuhfuss, Mässigung
und Politik: Studien zur politischen Sprache und Theorie Montesquieus (Munich:
Wilhelm Fink, 1975) stresses the classical origins of “moderation,” central to
Montesquieu’s critiques.
35
See Markku Peltonen, Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political
Thought 1570–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995). Because this constel-
lation of ideas and theories provided the background to the American Revolution
and to the framing of the American constitution, it has been intensely studied in
English. The cornerstone for the discussion is J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian
Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition
(Princeton: Princeton UP, 1975). For the German context, see the insightful
overview by Kurt Wölfel, “Prophetische Erinnerung. Der klassische Republika-
nismus in der deutschen Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts als utopische Gesinnung,”
In Utopieforschung, ed. Wilhelm Vosskamp (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1982), 3:191–
217, with brief reference to Herder (203). The most thorough study on the Ger-
man discourse of virtue is found in Wolfgang Martens, Die Botschaft der Tugend:
Die Aufklärung im Spiegel der deutschen Moralischen Wochenschriften (Stuttgart:

Metzler, 1968).
36
The use of the Germanic word Tugend tends to obscure the connections pos-
sible and frequently made, whether etymologically or as puns, among vir, vis,
virtus and the cognates virtù, vertu, and virtue. Thus the excellent summary by
Robert T. Clark, Jr., “Herder’s Conception of ‘Kraft,’” PMLA 57 (1942): 737–
52, comes up short on the political implications. It may be augmented by Henri
Drei, “Éléments pour une analyse du mot et du concept de vertu chez Machiavel
et Montesquieu,” Rivista di letterature moderne e comparate NS 42 (1988): 309–
27; and Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago and London: U of
Chicago P, 1996), 7–52, with further sources 315–16.
37
On municipal self-government going back to the Middle Ages, see Henri
Pirenne, Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade, trans. Frank D.
Halsey (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1925).
38
See Helen Liebel-Weckowicz, “Nations and Peoples. Baltic-Russian History and
the Development of Herder’s Theory of Culture,” Canadian Journal of History
21.1 (1986): 1–23; and Hans Graubner, “Spätaufklärer im aufgeklärten Riga.
Hamann und Herder,” Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 43.4 (1994): 517–33.
39
For Herder’s reception of Rousseau, see Kim Vivian, “Herder and Rousseau. An
Investigation of Herder’s Relationship with Rousseau during the Years 1761–
1776,” PhD dissertation, University of Santa Barbara, 1978; and Barnard, Herder
on Nationality, 161–82. Ergang notes the importance of Montesquieu’s theory of
climatic influences for Herder (251).
40
Arnold, “Herder’s Interdisciplinary Conjectures,” in Johann Gottfried Herder:
Academic Disciplines and the Pursuit of Knowledge, ed. Wulf Koepke (Columbia,
SC: Camden House, 1996), 100.
41
On virtue in Montesquieu, see David W. Carrithers, “Democratic and Aristo-
cratic Republics: Ancient and Modern,” Montesquieu’s Science of Politics: Essays on
The Spirit of Laws, ed. David W. Carrithers, Michael A. Mosher, and Paul A.
Rahe (Lanham and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 109–58; and Elena
Russo, “Virtuous Economies. Modernity and Noble Expenditure from Montes-
quieu to Caillois,” Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques 25.2 (1999):
251–78.
42
Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness
of the Romans and their Decline, trans. David Lowenthal (New York: Free Press,
1965), 91. See also Elena Russo, “Monstrous Virtue. Montesquieu’s Considéra-
tions sur les Romains,” The Romanic Review 90 (1999): 334–51, especially 340–41.
43
For Montesquieu’s views, see Sharon Krause, “Despotism in the Spirit of Laws,”
in Montesquieu’s Science of Politics, ed. Carrithers, et al., 231–72; for Herder’s, see
Koepke, “Kulturnation,” in Academic Disciplines and the Pursuit of Knowledge,
ed. Koepke, 190–91.
44
See Peltonen, Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought
1570–1640, 201, note 32, for example, on the difficulties Bacon had with a theory
of war.
302 ♦ ARND BOHM
45
Here again the influence on Herder of the Scottish Enlightenment can be
stressed, especially as filtered through the collapse of Ossian’s world. Scots after
the Union were obsessed with analyzing the causes of their own subjugation.
46
Dann, “Drei patriotische Gedichte Herders,” in Zwischen Aufklärung und
Restauration: Sozialer Wandel in der deutschen Literatur (1700–1848). Festschrift
für Wolfgang Martens zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Wolfgang Frühwald and Alberto
Martino, with Ernst Fischer and Klaus Heydemann (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1989),
211–24: “In der Tat ein recht ungewöhnlicher Patriotismus” (222).
47
On Herder and the French Revolution, see G. P. Gooch, Germany and the
French Revolution (1920; rpt. London: Frank Cass, 1965), 160–73; Wilhelm
Dobbek, “Johann Gottfried Herders Haltung im politischen Leben seiner Zeit,”
Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 8 (1959): 321–87; here, 344–58; Günter Arnold,
“Die Widerspiegelung der Französischen Revolution in Herders Korrespondenz,”
Impulse 3 (1981), 41–89; Richard Critchfield, “Revolution and the Creative Arts.
Toward a Reappraisal of Herder’s Defense of the French Revolution,” in Johann
Gottfried Herder: Innovator through the Ages, ed. Wulf Koepke, with Samson B.
Knoll (Bonn: Bouvier, 1982), 190–206; Hans-Wolf Jäger, “Herder und die
Französische Revolution,” in Johann Gottfried Herder: 1744–1803, ed. Sauder
(Hamburg: Meiner, 1987), 299–307; Heinz Stolpe, Aufklärung, Fortschritt, Hu-
manität: Studien und Kritiken (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1989), 213–
53, 468–72; and Frederick C. Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, and Roman-
ticism: The Genesis of Modern German Political Thought, 1790–1800 (Cambridge,
MA and London: Harvard UP, 1992), 215–21.
48
On Herder in office, see Müller-Michaels and Kessler in this volume. See also
Ingo Braecklein, “Zur Tätigkeit Johann Gottfried Herders im Konsistorium des
Herzogtums Sachsen-Weimar,” in Herder im geistlichen Amt: Untersuchungen —
Quellen — Dokumente, ed. Eva Schmidt (Leipzig: Koehler und Amelang, 1956),
54–72; Tadeusz Namowicz, “Der Aufklärer Herder, seine Predigten und Schul-
reden,” in Johann Gottfried Herder: 1744–1803, ed. Gerhard Sauder (Hamburg:
Meiner, 1987), 23–34; and Horst Dreitzel, “Herders politische Konzepte,” also
in Johann Gottfried Herder: 1744–1803, ed. Sauder, 279–85. The general situa-
tion is surveyed by Günter Birtsch, “The Christian as Subject. The Worldly Mind
of Prussian Protestant Theologians in the Late Enlightenment Period,” in The
Transformation of Political Culture: England and Germany in the Late Eighteenth
Century, ed. Eckhart Hellmuth (London: Oxford UP for the German Historical
Institute London, 1990), 309–26.
49
For an overview, see Ulrich Gaier, “Ein unseliges Mittelding zwischen Hofstadt
und Dorf: Herder und Weimar,” Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook (2002): 43–
62. A fuller account is provided by Christoph Fasel, Herder und das klassische Wei-
mar: Kultur und Gesellschaft 1789–1803 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1988).
50
See the case study by Bohm, “Mixing Church and State. Herder’s Sermons on the
Birth of Carl Friedrich (1783),” Herder Jahrbuch/Herder Yearbook (1996):
1–17.
51
For the political implications of the academy projects, see Bohm, “German Poets
and the ‘Republic of Letters’ (Gelehrtenrepublik) to 1850 (Vormärz),” PhD diss.,
Johns Hopkins University, 1984, 102–78. On the politics of the literary republic
of letters down to the present, see Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Let-
ters, trans. M. B. DeBevoise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2004).
52
See Fr[iedrich] v[on] Weech, “Der Versuch der Gründung eines Instituts für
den Allgemeingeist Deutschlands,” Preussische Jahrbücher 21 (1868): 690–97;
Hans Tümmler, “Zu Herders Plan einer deutschen Akademie (1787),” Euphorion
45.2 (1950): 198–211; Dreitzel, “Herders politische Konzepte,” in Johann Gott-
fried Herder: 1744–1803, ed. Gerhard Sauder, 268–70; Conrad Grau, “Herder,
die Wissenschaft und die Akademien seiner Zeit. Hinweise auf ein interdis-
ziplinäres Forschungsthema,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte 19 (1979), 89–114; and
Regine Otto, “Herder’s Academy Conception — Theory and Practice, in Johann
Gottfried Herder: Academic Disciplines and the Pursuit of Knowledge, ed. Koepke,
199–211.
53
Ulrich Im Hof, Das Europa der Aufklärung (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1993), here
96–102; Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French
Enlightenment (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1994), especially 20–28.
54
On the lively discussion about the nature and origin of language sponsored by
the Berlin Academy, see Hans Aarsleff, From Locke to Saussure: Essays on the Study of
Language and Intellectual History (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1982), 176–99.
55
Christopher Wolfe, “The Confederate Republic in Montesquieu,” Polity 9.4
(1977): 423–45, reviews the strengths and flaws of Montesquieu’s advocacy of
federalism.
56
There has been surprisingly little work done on Herder and the peace move-
ment, even though important irenicists such as Penn, Grotius, Leibniz, St. Pierre,
and Rousseau are frequently mentioned by him. General background is provided
by F. H. Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace: Theory and Practice in the
History of Relations between States (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1963); and by
Sylvester John Hemleben, Plans for World Peace through Six Centuries (1943; rpt.
New York and London: Garland, 1972). Also useful is Jürgen Schröder, “G. E.
Lessing: Zwischen Krieg und Frieden,” in Das Subjekt der Dichtung: Festschrift für
Gerhard Kaiser, ed. Gerhard Buhr, Friedrich A. Kittler, and Horst Turk (Würz-
burg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1990), 53–64.
57
On Herder’s connection to cosmopolitanism, see Ion Contiades, ed., Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing, Ernst und Falk: Mit den Fortsetzungen Johann Gottfried Herders
und Friedrich Schlegels (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1968).
58
See Russell Arben Fox, “J. G. Herder on Language and the Metaphysics of Na-
tional Community,” The Review of Politics 65 (2003): 237–62; Damon S. Linker,
“Can Communitarians Live Their Communitarianism? The Case of J. G. Herder,”
PhD diss., Michigan State University, 1998; and Linker, “The Reluctant Pluralism
of J. G. Herder,” Review of Politics 62 (Spring 2000): 267–93.
59
Herder is still being invoked in current public debates: Taylor, “The Importance
of Herder,” in Taylor, Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP,
2000), 79–99; and Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism:
Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton
UP, 1994), 25–73; Ray Conlogue, Impossible Nation: The Longing for Homeland
in Canada and Quebec (Stratford, ON: Mercury, 1996). On Herder and multi-
304 ♦ ARND BOHM
culturalism now, see also Spencer, “Difference and Unity: Herder’s Concept of
Volk and its Relevance for Contemporary Multicultural Societies,” in Nationen
und Kulturen: Zum 250. Geburtstag Johann Gottfried Herders, ed. Regine Otto
(Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1996), 295–305; and Spencer, “Herder
and Nationalism, Reclaiming the Principle of Cultural Respect,” Australian Journal
of Politics and History 43 (1997): 1–13.
60
See Pierre Birnbaum, “From Multiculturalism to Nationalism,” trans. Tracy B.
Strong, Political Theory 24.1 (1996): 33–45; and Pierre-André Taguieff, “Com-
munity and ‘Communitarianism’ in France. Republican Perspectives,” trans. Julia
Kostova and Boris Vuiton, Telos 128 (Summer 2004): 65–102.
61
Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment against Empire (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton
UP, 2003), 210–58.
62
The attempt to find an alternative to state representation in a world parliament
is by no means dead; see Richard Falk and Andrew Strauss, “Toward Global
Parliament,” Foreign Affairs 80.1 (2001): 212–20.
63
Herder scholars will want to follow the discussions around John Rawls’s The
Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999). These include contributions
by Gillian Brock, “Egalitarianism, Ideals, and Cosmopolitan Justice,” The Philo-
sophical Forum 36.1 (2005): 1–30; David Fagelson, “Two Concepts of Sove-
reignty. From Westphalia to the Law of Peoples?” International Politics 38 (2001):
499–514; and Onora O’Neill, “Bounded and Cosmopolitan Justice,” Review of
International Studies 26 (2000): 45–60. Although he does not deal with him,
there is much to be gained for understanding Herder from Mark F. N. Franke’s
Global Limits: Immanuel Kant, International Relations, and Critique of World
Politics (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001). Very much in the spirit of Herder, without
referring to him, is Richard Falk’s “False Universalism and the Geopolitics of
Exclusion. The Case of Islam,” Third World Quarterly 18.1 (1997): 7–23. Herder
does get explicit, and positive, attention from Avishai Margalit, “The Moral
Psychology of Nationalism,” in The Morality of Nationalism, ed. Robert McKim
and Jeff McMahan (New York/Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997), 74–87.
64
See Penrose, “Nations, States and Homelands,” Nations and Nationalism 8.3
(2002): 277–97, with reference to Herder (286–89).
65
See for example Reinhard Mehring, “Macht im Recht. Carl Schmitts Rechts-
begriff in seiner Entwicklung,” Der Staat 43.1 (2004): 1–22; and Falio Vander,
“Kant and Schmitt on Preemptive War,” Telos 125 (2002): 152–66. But there are
critical voices, e.g., William E. Scheuerman, “International Law as Historical Myth,”
Constellations 11.4 (2004): 537–50; and Richard Wolin, “Carl Schmitt. The
Conservative Revolutionary Habitus and the Aesthetics of Horror,” Political
Theory 20.3 (1992): 424–47.
13: Herder’s Poetic Works, His Translations,
and His Views on Poetry
Gerhard Sauder
I N HISTORIES OF GERMAN LYRIC POETRY, Herder has no place. Also, his

narrative and dramatic works are rarely mentioned in histories of Ger-
man literature. It is true that he contributed in an extraordinary way to the
evolution of a “new” poetry in the 1770s, but through theoretical stimu-
lation rather than in his own creative practice. Herder started early to write
poems, and cultivated the genre his entire life. The fact that he did not
publish volumes of his own poetry seems to indicate his own doubts about
its quality. Only toward the end of his life did he plan to collect his lyric
output and to edit and publish it, a plan that he was never to realize.
During the early nineteenth century, Herder’s readers were unable to
get an idea of his lyrical oeuvre. In the comprehensive edition of his works
published after his death, no poetry was included until the 15th and 16th
volumes, which appeared in 1817. The selection was by no means com-
prehensive. After that, selections or single poems continued to appear from
time to time in anthologies. To name an example: the anthology Deutsche
Dichter by Ernst Götzinger, published in several editions, included some
of Herder’s poems. Götzinger selected twenty-six texts from throughout
Herder’s oeuvre, with commentary. Here, negative judgments are already
prevalent: according to Götzinger, Herder had little “schaffende Phanta-
sie” (creative imagination, 434); many of his poems looked like “dilettan-
tische Versuche” (attempts of a dilettante, 436). Although Hempel’s 1867
National-Bibliothek sämmtlicher deutscher Klassiker included in its selec-
tions from Herder’s early works a large number of poems, edited by
Heinrich Düntzer, by the turn of the century the verdict on Herder as a
lyrical poet seemed to be definitively set: the twentieth-century editor and
critic Emil Ermatinger also used the term “dilettante”: “Herder gehört zu
jenen großen Dilettanten, die der menschliche Geist von Zeit zu Zeit be-
darf, um jenen starken Schritt vorwärts zu tun, den der trippelnde Gang
oder das Am-Ort-Gehen der zünftigen Wissenschaft oft nicht zu tun ver-
mag” (20; Herder belongs to those great dilettantes whom the human
mind from time to time needs to make that strong step forward, that the
306 ♦ GERHARD SAUDER
faltering step or the running-in-place of professional science is often not

able to do).
The comprehensive edition of Herder’s works edited by Bernhard
Suphan (1877–1913) is a welcome improvement in that it offers an ap-
propriate edition of the poems in volume 29, edited by Carl Redlich and
published in 1899. It includes in two sections all of Herder’s poems that
had been published up to that time: the smaller part (pages 1–222) in-
cludes the texts published by Herder himself, either individually or in his
Zerstreute Blätter; the larger part (pages 223–713) includes all the poems
from Herder’s posthumous papers that had already been published. The
editor divided these posthumously published poems into three main
groups: poems from his youth in Mohrungen, Königsberg, and Riga;
poems of the Sturm und Drang and from Herder’s voyage and his years
in Bückeburg; and poems from the decades in Weimar. The editorial deci-
sion to publish the poems in two separate series made sense at the time,
since it provided a first overview of Herder’s posthumous poetry as a
whole, but a modern edition would probably eliminate the separation of
the poems printed in Herder’s lifetime from poems from his manuscript
papers in order to offer the entire oeuvre in its temporal evolution.
Although Herder was most of his life hesitant to publish collections of
his poetry, as mentioned before, he did not always feel that way. In 1770
he told his fiancée Caroline Flachsland that he wanted to publish a col-
lection of his few poems, together with those of contemporary authors
that he valued. If she had not dedicated herself to seeing that this col-
lection of manuscripts, which later became known as “das Silberne Buch,”
was kept together, a large part of Herder’s early texts would not have
been preserved. The “Silberne Buch” has never been published as such;
an edition of its seventy-five poems would help remedy the absence of
philologically reliable editions of Herder’s early poetry. It would also dem-
onstrate how Herder’s lyrical production evolved in parallel to his transla-
tions and adaptations. The fact that two thirds of the poems included in
the “Silbernes Buch” are Herder’s translations of foreign originals docu-
ments Herder’s manifold efforts to offer a new foundation for German
lyric poetry. They include poems from Thomas Percy’s Reliques of An-
cient English Poetry (1765), excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays in German
translation, and four texts from Ossian. With these new paradigms Herder
set the course for renewal of the lyrical discourse, as he discussed these
texts in his conversations in Strasbourg in 1770 with the young student
from Frankfurt, Johann Wolfgang Goethe. That is also the consensus of
literary historians, but the appropriate evaluation of Herder’s own lyric
within the context of his reception of the English models has been mostly
neglected. In twentieth-century surveys of eighteenth-century lyrical poe-
try, for instance in the contribution by August Closs to the reference work
HERDER’S POETIC WORKS, TRANSLATIONS, AND VIEWS ON POETRY ♦ 307
Deutsche Philologie im Aufriss (2nd ed. [1960], 189), Herder is celebrated

as one of the great pathfinders who saw poetry as the center of literature.
According to Closs, lyrical poetry was for Herder the core of all art. How-
ever, Closs fails to mention Herder’s own poetry, crediting him only as
stimulator, translator, and collector.
Entire generations of Germanists and interested readers have grown
up without easy access to Herder’s lyric poetry. The five-volume Herder
edition first published in 1957 by the Volksverlag Weimar under the edi-
1
torship of Wilhelm Dobbek represents an improvement in this respect: its
first volume includes a selection of the poems (including epigrams and
translations) and of fables. This edition provided for the first time an over-
view of Herder’s poetry, and it found wide distribution, not least among
students because of its affordable price. Still, the preservation and dissemi-
nation of Herder’s poetry has seen setbacks as well as progress, as is docu-
mented by the meager selection of poems included by Ulrich Gaier in the
third volume of the Frankfurt Herder edition. Thirteen of the twenty-four
poems are from the time before 1770, five from the decade between 1770
and 1780, the remaining four from the years 1787, 1797, and 1803.
Gaier terms this a “qualified” selection. He calls Herder’s poems “Refle-
xionsdichtung,” since they are mostly written as a poetic reflection of his
ideas, and says that in the poems he selects, Herder often risks a more
colorful image, a bolder vision than he does in the “bedeutsameren Prosa”
(more significant prose, FA 3:1444). Another reason for the designation
“Reflexionsdichtung,” Gaier argues, is the dominance of self-reflection and
self-assurance: the poems frequently deal with Herder’s own ego rather
than other human beings. Gaier’s final reason for choosing the term is that
Herder’s poems treat themes typical of traditional didactic poetry empha-
sizing subjective experience. It is striking that Gaier leaves out poems con-
sidered to be eminent by earlier Herder scholarship, such as “Die Lerche,”
“Die Wassernymphe,” and “Das Flüchtigste” (The Lark, The Water-
nymph, and The Most Fleeting Thing).
Herder’s merit was above all his comprehensive influence on the liter-
ature of his day and its theory. This seems to be taken for granted by
scholarship, since there is little research on the topic. The only survey of
Herder’s early poetry is the 1997 study by Hans Dietrich Irmscher, which
concentrates on the period from 1764 through 1770. Irmscher rightfully
bemoans the fact that Herder’s lyric poetry has hardly been noticed by
scholarship. It is true that the neglect of the early poetry might be justi-
fied by its poetic weaknesses. Kant, Herder’s teacher, recommended to his
student during the Königsberg years 1762 to 1764 that he limit himself
to didactic poetry. Herder’s early poetry before 1770 exhibits many ap-
proaches side by side, so that no clear lyrical profile can be discerned.
There are poems on Christian themes, occasional poetry including eulo-
gies, attempts to emulate Pindaric odes or dithyrambs, and many didactic

poems. Already in this early phase one finds numerous poems that are
structured like monologues in which the ego, questioning itself, stands in
the center — a structure identified by Gaier in his edition, as mentioned
above. Irmscher calls these “Entscheidungsmonologe” (decision-mono-
logues), since in them the questioning ego attempts to gain clarity about
its place in the world. Formally, these texts usually adhere to the genre of
the ode. In this phase, as later, Herder preferred free rhythms, although
he also wrote poems that are more simply structured, with several stanzas,
after the model of the folk song or in imitation of the Italian genre of the
Stanza. Irmscher has pointed out the frequent occurrence of themes such
as night, melancholia, self-alienation, and inner conflict. It is not sur-
prising, therefore, that he chooses to interpret the same poems that Gaier
selected for his edition.
In his survey of the history of Germany lyric poetry from the Refor-
mation until the Sturm und Drang, published in 2004, Hans-Georg
Kemper attempts to evaluate Herder’s voluminous lyrical oeuvre. He ar-
gues that the 350 poems Herder published independently during his life-
time prove his considerable lyrical talent; there are another 180 poems
from the 1770s that were not published during Herder’s lifetime. Kemper
observes frequent evidence of a certain license in Herder’s adaptation of
traditional genres, which leads, especially in the realms of reflexive poetry
and the mytho-poetry so esteemed by Herder to very original creations.
Kemper also emphasizes the frequency of monological poems beginning
with the time in Riga. Herder continued to lack poetic “Selbstermächti-
gung,” the confidence to use his own original language and forms. Ulrich
Gaier has rightly pointed out that although he was one of the theorists of
the Sturm und Drang, in his own poetry Herder moderated the “Genie-
Töne” (strains of genius) typical of that movement. There is no doubt
that, although he was a theoretician of poetic genius and an exponent of
original poetry according to the model of Shakespeare and the Scots,
Herder had more impact later through his prose.
As we have seen, both recent editions of and interpretive monographs
on Herder’s poetry have limited themselves to a relatively few poems,
most of them from his early period. Interpretations of individual poems
have also not been plentiful and have tended to concentrate on a few
selections. A collection of all such interpretations from the last thirty years
would not even amount to a volume of respectable length. Irmscher’s
long analysis, published in 1983, of Herder’s poem “Der Genius der
Zukunft” (The Genius of the Future, 1769) is an exception in Herder
scholarship.
In 1989, Otto Dann wrote on three patriotic poems by Herder, point-
ing out a neglected aspect of Herder’s poetry: “Deutschlands Genius”
(Germany’s Genius, 1770), “An den Kaiser” (To the Emperor, 1780), and
“Der deutsche Nationalruhm” (The National Fame of Germany, 1797).
These poems can be seen as documenting decisive phases in the national
attitude of the Bildungsgesellschaft (educated society) of the Reich, the
Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, in its last decades. For Herder
the path to nationhood was a process of disillusionment and suffering that
also demanded from him the renunciation of many false concepts. In this
context we can also read the 1997 study by Jost Schneider, “Herder und
der deutsche ‘Kriegsgesang,’” which, taking its departure from the poetry,
deals with Herder’s theoretical pronouncements within the framework of
his philosophy of history.
Herder was the most important theorist in the field of lyric poetry in
the 1770s and beyond. His criticism of the decadence of much of the
day’s poetry did not lead him to resignation or blanket condemnation,
but here, as often elsewhere, he used his analogies of life-stages. He puts
forth his own age as the fourth stage, characterized by thinking “durch
Freiheit” (through freedom, FA 1:92), and hopes for the present, which
he sees as an age of prosaic modernity, a resurgence of poetry. As a ther-
apy for the present age he prescribes an integration of pictorial and sen-
suous elements harking back to the sensuous abundance and affective
force of early languages. Herder points to early genres, such as odes and
dithyrambs, whose origins in “den Zeiten der Wildheit und Trunkenheit”
(the times of wildness and intoxication, FA 1:327) cannot be reconstruc-
ted, but perhaps approached through accents, gestures, and a synthesis of
“menschliche Sprache” and “Natursprache” (human language and the lan-
guage of nature). Only a few years after the fragment “Über die Ode”
(On the Ode, written 1764–65) and the collections Über die neuere
deutsche Literatur (On Recent German Literature, 1766–67), Herder
defined his concept of lyric poetry more explicitly in his essay on
MacPherson’s Ossian (written 1771–72, published 1773): it should not
imitate forms of the past, but should emulate their spirit. Here he ex-
pounds the formula of “Würfe” and “Sprünge” that he adopted from early
criticism of Ossian, meaning abrupt turns and interrupted argumentation,
unmediated transitions from one subject to another.
Throughout his life, Herder worked toward a theory of lyric poetry,
in addition to his not always convincing lyrical production. At the end of
part 2 of his three-volume edition of German adaptations of the Neo-
Latin poetry of Jakob Balde, entitled Terpsichore (1795–96), he included
the essay “Die Lyra” of 1795. Once more Herder begins with the difficult
situation of poetry in the present, asking fundamental questions about the
nature and purpose of poetry at the end of the century. He now inte-
grates the “Empfindung” that had been so important for him previously
into a triad of preconditions for lyric poetry. He does not repeat his
poetics of the Sturm und Drang, as expressed in the “Ossian” essay, but
instead now presents the linguistic possibilities of poetry in a more dif-
ferentiated manner. He speaks of the voice and the requirements of breath-
ing, the expectations of the ear, about paragraphs, periods, colons, stan-
zas, feminine and masculine endings, repetition of tones; generally about
a “Zug der Worte” (procession of words; FA 8:123). What is new in this
late essay is the attention paid to singing, which Herder understands as a
“Musik der Empfindungen, der Bilder, der Sprache” (music of feeling, of
images, of language, 124). He now conceives of lyric poetry as a perfect
expression of “einer Empfindung oder Anschauung im höchsten Wohl-
klange der Sprache” (a sensation or a conception of the highest melodi-
ous sounds of language). If with every word, accent, and image a “lyrisches
Ganzes” (lyrical unity, 129) is to emerge, the poet has to bring to bear
“Energie” from the beginning of his poem to its end.
Individual Genres
The Epigram
Herder occupied himself repeatedly and intensively with the epigram. His
first attempts to translate the Anthologia Graeca, a rich source book for
classical Greek epigrams and other short poems, date to the time in Riga
from 1764 to 1769. In Bückeburg he returned to this almost inex-
haustible source. During the conception of Plastik (Sculpture, 1778) the
genre became important to him again, and his translating activities in-
creased. Confronting Lessing’s 1771 essay on the epigram, “Zerstreute
Anmerkungen über das Epigramm [und einige der vornehmsten Epigram-
misten]” (Scattered Remarks on the Epigram [and Some of the Foremost
Writers of Epigrams]), Herder tried to arrive at a new definition of the
genre. Herder stressed the difference between a mere epigrammatic in-
scription on a sculpture and a pointed epigram. Another less evident dif-
ference is between a “Sinngedicht” and an epigram proper. The Greek
“Sinngedicht” and epigram can be understood as a medial genre, a transi-
tional stage between a mere inscription on a sculpture to a fully developed
form. Both “Erwartung” (expectation) and “Aufschluss” (explanation) are
centrally important to the genre in Herder’s view. He published his trea-
tise “Anmerkungen über die Anthologie der Griechen, besonders über
das griechische Epigramm” (Remarks on the Anthologia Graeca, especial-
ly on the Greek epigram) with a selection of translated epigrams in the
collection Zerstreute Blätter. There were 164 of them in the first collec-
tion of 1785, and 160 in the one that followed in 1786. Herder did not,
however, limit himself to translating, although he did a great deal for the
reception of the Anthologia in Germany. He intended to transplant the
original form of the Greek epigram into the German language. He pre-
ferred its “Natürlichkeit” (naturalness) and became the advocate of the
“epigramma simplex,” while Lessing pleaded for the argumentative epi-
gram in the tradition of the first-century Roman poet Martial. Herder re-
ferred to Friedrich von Logau (1604–55), who had also adapted the Greek
epigram for German literature.
Herder’s own epigrams attempt to mediate between the Greek and
Roman epigram traditions, but they have not received the same degree of
acclaim as his translations from the Anthologia. He still exercised an inno-
vative influence through his preference for the Greek epigram. Goethe’s
interest in epigrams would probably not be conceivable without Herder,
and the fascination with the epigram during that era owed much to his art
of translation. He could be modestly content, as he writes in the intro-
duction to Zerstreute Blätter, “durch seine Versuche wenigstens zu der
Form beigetragen zu haben, die einen Gedanken, eine Empfindung so
schön fasset, so zart ausdrückt, und die unserer deutschen Sprache [. . .]
so gemäß erscheint” (FA 3:763; to have at the least contributed through
his efforts to the form, which so beautifully captures and so tenderly ex-
presses a thought, a feeling, and which appears to be so in accordance
with our German language). In Lessing’s essay on the epigram, however,
Herder discovered the proximity of the epigram and the Lied: the epigram
“nähert sich sogar, wenn es Empfindung zu sagen hat, dem erquickenden
Ton eines Liedes” (FA 4:532; even comes near, if it expresses feeling, to
the refreshing sound of a Lied). An indication of this is that Johann
Friedrich Reichardt, the former Prussian court conductor fired by Frederick
William II in 1794 as a potential enemy of the state and supporter of the
ideas of the French Revolution and aquainted with Herder since 1780, set
2
forty-nine of Herder’s texts to music, among them eight of his epigrams.
The Didactic Poems

Herder engaged with didactic poetry from his youth onward. In this genre
too he tried his hand; more frequently he had occasion to deal with it theo-
retically. His judgments on the didactic poems of his contemporaries were
mostly negative. He measured them against the great poem by Lucretius,
De rerum natura. For him, the most important subject was the micro-
cosm of the human being as a mirror of the world and as creator of a
world. He demanded a great poem on nature, and lamented that there
was no perfect didactic poem in German that expressed the status of the
natural sciences of his day. In the 1790s and after the turn of the century,
his interest in the genre grew. He rejected the abstract didactic poetry of
Albrecht von Haller and Friedrich Carl Casimir von Creutz. As late as in
his periodical Adrastea (1801–4) he sketched his conception of the genre,
in which poetry and philosophy could not be kept separate; the dearth of
didactic poetry at the time was due, he said, to the existence of such an
artificial separation.
Herder was unable to realize his ideal conception in his own didactic
poems. He was probably aware that he himself was not capable of writing
the great poem that would reconcile science and poetry. He made several
attempts in this direction, but they were not published during his lifetime.
In this area, as in other areas of poetry, Herder’s attempts failed to gain
the attention that a collection of his own poems might have brought.
Early on he planned a didactic poem that remained a fragment: “Der
Mensch” (The Human Being, SWS 29:254–58). Another attempt at a di-
dactic poem, “Gottes Rat und Tat über das Menschengeschlecht” (God’s
Advice and Actions Concerning the Human Race, SWS 29:556–65), was
completed only up through its second section. “Arist am Felsen” (Arist
on the Cliffs, SWS 29:204–9) and “Parthenope. Ein Seegemälde bei
Neapel” (Parthenope: A Painting of the Sea near Naples, SWS 29:170–
74) come much closer to paramythic poetry. The two interconnected frag-
ments “Das Ich” and “Selbst” (SWS 29:131–44) are more significant.
Here he confronts Fichte and especially Fichte’s epigons who derive all
human knowledge from the awareness of the ego, beginning with the for-
mula “Ich gleich ich.” Herder wanted to replace what he saw as Fichte’s
exaggerated doctrine of the ego with a self that receives its destiny from
God. But Herder failed also with these two poems, and he never reached
his goal of writing an integrative didactic poem about the concrete human
being.
The Paramythien
Herder’s playful handling of Greek and Oriental mythology led to a new
prose genre of his own invention, the Paramythien, that was surprisingly
close to the Prosagedicht, the poem in prose of the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries: the Paramythien (Paramythical Poems) and Blätter der Vor-
zeit (Pages of Ancient Times) appeared in 1785 and 1787 in the first and
third collections of Zerstreute Blätter. Other examples, written in 1781,
were included in the Journal von Tiefurt, a private periodical of the Weimar
court circle. Written for social entertainment and relaxation, they are, ac-
cording to Herder, “mythologische Idyllen oder Fabeln, Dichtungen über
Gegenstände der Natur, dergleichen wir ohne den Namen der Para-
mythien schon mehrere in unserer Sprache haben” (P, FA 3:698–99;
mythological idylls or fables, poetic works about objects of nature, several
of which we already have in our language, though without the name
paramythical poems). Herder had realized in the 1760s that Greek my-
thology had originated in an age that was irretrievably past; the power to
create myths had long degenerated into a playful dealing with mythic ele-
ments. According to Ulrich Schödlbauer, the attraction of the paramythic
poems lies in the poetic prose, the informal prosaic form of communi-
cation of new aspects of the myth, an “Auslegung des Mythos als Mythos,
als erzählte Weisheit und als anfängliches Sprechen” (257; interpretation
of myth as myth, as narrated wisdom and initial speech). Such poems offer
a view of the world that is both moral, factual, and mythological and thus
offer a new view of natural phenomena and their significance.
The Idylls
The five “Neger-Idyllen” (Negro Idylls) that Herder inserted into the
Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität (10th collection, 114th letter), found
an intense reception only in the last half of the twentieth century. Herder’s
name for the genre has been understood as ironic — in fact, “Die Frucht
am Baume” (Fruit on the Tree), “Die rechte Hand” (The Right Hand),
and “Die Brüder” (The Brothers) do not seem to be idylls. But they are
not simply “Anti-Idyllen” either. Herder’s short considerations of the genre
in the third section of the second volume of Adrastea suggest a concep-
tion that leaves behind what had traditionally been seen as the idyllic.
Nevertheless, according to Herder, the genre retains in this new concep-
tion its status as the “Frühlings- und Kinderpoesie der Welt” (world’s
poetry of spring and childhood) as well as the quality of “Glückseligkeit”
(happiness), and the “Ideal menschlicher Phantasie in ihrer Jugendun-
schuld” (ideal of human imagination in its youthful innocence) (Adrastea,
FA 10:277). Instead of fixating on imagery of herdsmen and shepherds,
Herder focuses on the human ways of life of each social group, which are
in accordance with nature, and elevates them to “einem Ideal von Glück
und Unglück” (an ideal of happiness and unhappiness, FA 10:281, 283):
“Also in allen Situationen, in allen Geschäften des Lebens, wenn sie nicht
wider die Natur sind, lebe man ihr gemäß und verschönere sein Leben.
Allenthalben blühe Arkadien, oder es blüht nirgend” (FA 10:282–83; Thus
one lives in harmony with all situations, in all the business of life, if they
are not contrary to nature, and brightens up one’s life. Everywhere there
bloom Arcadias, or else they bloom nowhere). In this manner, the realm
of the idyll is made great and new by the new situations and accents of the
different social groups. Herder realized in the “Neger-Idyllen” the true
tendencies of the idyll that he had sketched (283).
The first three idylls illustrate how the white colonizers deal with their
slaves — in an otherwise idyllic landscape, they are “Räuber, Störer, Auf-
wiegler und Verwüster aller Welt” (Hum, FA 7:673; robbers, trouble-
makers, agitators, and devastators of all the world). The protagonists of
the idylls are innocent, noble human beings morally superior to their white
masters. In “Zimeo,” blacks, kidnapped in Benin, are reunited with each
other again on Jamaica in the care of a humane white man; in the end
there is hope that they will return together to “Den Ort der ersten Liebe,
:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff on Thu, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC

in die Luft / Des süßen Vaterlandes Benin” (FA 7:683; The place of first
love in the air / of the sweet fatherland of Benin). “Der Geburtstag” is
celebrated by a Quaker from Delaware by granting his slave Jakob liberty
and the capital that he earned in nine years of work. Jakob remains in the
service of his master, and works now, after his “Freiheitsfest,” for a good
wage. The ending shows the possibility of a “Lebens-Idyllion” (Adrastea,
FA 10:283). Given the context of the five idylls, the end of Herder’s 114th
letter of the Humanitätsbriefe points to the problematic of European colo-
nization, in which human peoples deal with one another like wolves, and
the beginning of the 115th letter identifies the “moralische Verfallenheit
unseres Geschlechts” (the moral decay of our race) as the source from
which all evil originates (Hum, FA 7:686).
The Legends
Herder’s “Legenden” are among those texts of his creative oeuvre that
have hardly been noticed. With one exception, they were all completed
between 1796 and 1803. The largest number (twenty-two texts) ap-
peared in the sixth collection of Zerstreute Blätter, although versions of
3
some of them were written much earlier. In his short characterization of
the genre, Herder starts with its history. In earlier times, a Legende, in the
sense of a Heiligenlegende, or legend of the saints, was necessarily sup-
posed to be read as part of one’s religious education, but since the En-
lightenment the genre had begun to be derided as hardly worth reading,
and was despised. There were three main reasons for this: it violated his-
torical truth, genuine morality, and the purposes of humanity. From a
formal point of view, it disregarded the rules of a “guten Einkleidung und
Schreibart” (good composition and writing style, “Legende,” FA 8:173).
But for Herder there is a core of truth even in legends. They originated in
an attitude of attentive devotion, an “Aufmerken auf das Göttliche rings-
umher” (FA 8:177; attentiveness to the divine all around one). Therefore,
legends should be read with devotion and bring about an attitude of de-
votion. Herder wanted to rejuvenate the genre of the legend, and thus
make it again something “zu Lesendes, eine Legende” (180), something
that had to be read, a real “legend.” He claimed that this new form of
legend could contain more psychological insight, warning, and consola-
tion than “ein ganzes System kalter pharisäischer Sittenlehre” (180; a
whole system of cold pharisaical moral teachings). Herder, ascribing the
legend an important function in an early period of a faith, assumes the
position of the hermeneutically analyzing historian. He says that legends
originally arise from what he calls a “Gesichtskreis,” a specific point of view,
a limited perspective from which the world is seen (183). His fear that his
own legends would not be read, has become reality, but now would be an
opportune time to rediscover them. Herder chooses with few exceptions
the lives of saints who exerted their influence through everyday caritas.
No miracles or omens are needed to demonstrate their exemplary nature.
These are secular legends, though they can certainly be read with a devo-
tion that is appropriate for important figures of history. Herder did not
wish for a return of old-style legends. But one can find, he says, “in diesem
Staube reine Goldkörner” (SWS 28:169; in this dust pure nuggets of gold).
The beautiful does not have to be useless; it can also become, in the form
of legends, “stärkend, erquickend” (strengthening, refreshing, 170).
The Fables
Herder’s fables are somewhat better known than his legends. There are
some examples even in the Frankfurt edition, selected by Ulrich Gaier. In
1773 Herder gave a manuscript to his friend and member of the
Darmstädter Kreis literary circle Johann Heinrich Merck containing fifty-
two “Alte Fabeln mit neuer Anwendung” (Old Fables with New Uses),
which are printed in Sämmtliche Werke volume 29:379–407. His papers
contained more fables (ibid., 408–16). But during Herder’s lifetime only
nine of his fables were published: three in the Teutscher Merkur in 1776
and six in Pfenninger’s Sammlungen zu einem christlichen Magazin in
1781. Already in his early text “Aesop und Lessing” from 1768, Herder
offered the outline of a theory of the fable. His chief concern was with the
justification of the animals and mythological figures in fable. His central
point was that animals were necessary in fables because of their “poe-
tischen Bestandheit” (poetic consistency) and for the perception of the
reader, who needs a concrete image for the didactic message (see Gaier,
FA 3:1408). In his own fables Herder seeks the connection with their
“hieroglyphischen Ursprung” (hieroglyphic origin) and uses a tripartite
structure of meaning similar to that of emblems, consisting of inscription,
picture, and subscription. With this, there are always two different inter-
pretations possible, so that the narrative of the fable itself needs to be
interpreted twice. As Ulrich Gaier expresses it, “Die Technik der zwei
einander aufhebenden Deutungen eines und desselben Bildes garantiert
[. . .] die Lesbarkeit der Welt, die auf einer tiefen Verwandtschaft von
Mensch und Natur, Subjekt und Objekt der Erkenntnis beruht” (FA
3:1413; The technique of two mutually cancelling interpretations of one
and the same image guarantees the readability of the world, which is based
on a deep relationship of human being and nature, subject and object of
cognition).
Herder commented on the fable once again in the third section of the
second volume of Adrastea. By then he had come to understand it as the
presentation of a sequence of actions that speaks through itself. Anyone
can derive the moral independently. Animals make sense in fables because
the “Haushaltung der Natur” (balance of nature) proceeds according to
eternal laws and in an “unveränderlichem Charakter” (unchangeable char-

acter; Volkslieder 2, FA 3:235). In this late theorizing on the fable Herder
concentrates on the cognition of the “Ordnung der Dinge” (order of
things) the fable makes possible, which render each collection of fables a
“Lehrbuch der Natur” (FA 3:236). Only in the more recent literature, for
instance through La Fontaine, had the fable given up the “überzeugende
Ansicht der großen Naturordnung” (convincing view of the great natural
order) and had become the object of speculation: “Ihrer Naturwelt ent-
nommen, ist die Fabel eine feingeschnitzte, tote Papierblume worden; in
der lebendigen Naturwelt war sie ein wirkliches Gewächs voll Kraft und
Schönheit” (FA 3:239; Removed from its natural world, the fable has be-
come a delicately cut, dead paper flower; in the living natural world it was
a real plant full of power and beauty). Herder corrects Lessing’s theory by
repeating his thesis of the “unveränderlichen Bestandheit” and “Naturver-
ordnung der Tiercharaktere” (unchangeable consistency and natural place-
ment of animal characters). In this way animals as characters are better
than the ever-changing human being at making visible an “Ansicht der
Naturordnung in ihrer Permanenz und Folge [. . .]. Pflanzen und Bäume
desgleichen, ja alles was zu sprechenden Naturtypen gehöret” (FA 3:244;
view of the natural order in its permanence and consequences. . . . Plants
and trees likewise, indeed all that belongs to speaking types of nature).
The Dramatic Works

Herder’s dramatic works have been largely forgotten. Therefore it is not
surprising that neither the five-volume edition of Dobbek nor the ten-
volume Frankfurt edition contain a single text from his dramatic pro-
duction. Thankfully, the fourth of five volumes in Suphan’s edition of
Sämmtliche Werke that are devoted to Herder’s “Poetic Works” (vol. 28,
1884) contains his dramatic and epic works. Besides Herder’s translation
of the Spanish poem El Cid, which appears at the end of this collection of
texts, and would have been the final item in a new collection of folk songs
by Herder, the volume include cantatas, oratorios, libretti, a melodrama,
and dramatic scenes. Herder’s paramythical works and legends found their
place here as well.
The cantatas were, without exception, written for religious purposes
and for presentation during church services. They may be mostly of inter-
est for musicologists and theologians. They include “Kantate zur Ein-
weihung der Katharinen Kirche auf Bickern” (Cantata for the Dedication
of the Church of Catherina in Bicker, 1767); “Die Kindheit Jesu. Ein
Oratorium” (The Childhood of Jesus. An Oratorio, 1772); “Die Aufer-
weckung Lazarus. Eine biblische Geschichte zur Musik” (The Resurrec-
tion of Lazarus. A Biblical Story Set to Music, 1773); “Pfingstkantate”
(Whitsun Cantata, 1773); “Michaels Sieg. Der Streit des Guten und Bösen
in der Welt. Eine Kirchenkantate” (Michael’s Victory. The Struggle of

Good and Evil in the World. A Church Cantata, 1775); “Der Fremdling
auf Golgatha. Eine biblische Geschichte in Gesang” (The Stranger on
Golgatha. A Biblical Story in Song, 1776); “Kantate beim Kirchgange der
regierenden Herzogin Hochfürstl. Durchlaucht” (Cantata for the Church-
going of Her Ruling Highness the Royal Duchess, 1779); “Oster-Kantate”
(Easter Cantata, 1781); “Kantate bei dem Kirchgange der regierenden
Herzogin von Sachsen-Weimar und Eisenach Hochfürstl. Durchlaucht
nach der Geburt des Erbprinzen” (Cantata for the Churchgoing of Her
Highness the Ruling Duchess of Saxony-Weimar and Eisenach after the
Birth of the Crown Prince, 1783).
The following dramatic scenes, all intended for musical composition
but never set to music, have almost totally disappeared today: “Philok-
tetes. Szenen mit Gesang” (Philoctetes. Scenes with Song, 1774); “Aeon
und Aeonis. Eine Allegorie” (Aeon and Aeonis. An Allegory, 1801);
“Pygmalion. Die wiederbelebte Kunst” (Pygmalion. The Revivified Art,
1801/03); “Ariadne-Libera. Ein Melodrama” (Ariadne-Libera. A Melo-
drama, 1802); “Admetus Haus. Der Tausch des Schicksals. Ein Drama
mit Gesängen” (Admetus’s House. The Exchange of Fate. A Drama with
Songs, 1803).
There are two texts, however, that have found recently some interest
among musicologists and theater historians. Jörg Krämer has devoted in
his long and very thorough monograph Deutschsprachiges Musiktheater im
späten 18. Jahrhundert (1998) an extensive analysis to Herder’s Brutus.
Ein Drama zur Musik (Brutus. A Drama Set to Music, 1774). This work
was very important for Herder. He wrote many versions of it — seven
manuscript versions are extant. Even the definitive version of the text,
which was set and performed by the Konzertmeister in Bückeburg, Johann
Christoph Friedrich Bach, was revised once more by Herder, who then
tried to have Christoph Willibald Gluck set it. Herder follows the opera
seria of Metastasio (1698–1782), however, he deviates from Metastasio in
the composition of the material and in the relation of text and music, and
orients himself on Shakespeare. The Sturm-und-Drang style is striking:
imperatives, elliptic sentences, and “Kraftwörter” abound. As Krämer puts
it, “Herders Brutus bietet einen in seiner Zeit singulären, eigenständigen
und unkonventionellen Entwurf; es ist ein Text, der sowohl von den
Traditionen und Normen der Opernlibrettistik abweicht als auch einen
4
völlig neuartigen Ansatz im Verhältnis von Text und Musik ausprobiert”
(Herder’s Brutus is a independent and unconventional draft, unique for
its time; it is a text that not only deviates from the traditions and norms of
the opera libretto, but also tests a completely new approach to the rela-
tion of text and music).
Herder’s dramatic piece Der entfesselte Prometheus. Scenen, which ap-

peared in 1802 in the fourth volume of Herder’s journal Adrastea, has
most recently found some notice, at least in a musicological context,
because of the composition of the overture and the chorus texts by Franz
Liszt. In these “scenes” Herder attempted to transform the Prometheus
myth into an Enlightenment myth connected with Christian motifs. For
Herder, the revolutionary act of stealing fire proves to be as necessary as
the steadfastness exercised by his hero that leads to a state of “Mensch-
lichkeit” (humaneness). It is true that the work’s action lacks causal neces-
sity — Herder introduces different groups of characters with no apparent
purpose, and their “affects” are limited to extreme states of emotion (“Weh
Dir — Heil Dir”). In the end Heracles appears as a deus ex machina — no
dramatic conflict has occurred. The overture and the choruses by Liszt
present in their both archaic and innovative traits an important example of
a composer seeking new possibilities of musical expression beyond the tra-
dition. From a musicologist’s perspective he was not afraid of daring here.
He revised this composition several times; evidently he considered it very
important. Carl Dahlhaus counts Liszt’s “Prometheus” among the most
important documents of the history of composition in the nineteenth
5
century. This is an indication of the potential of Herder’s texts for musical
composition, which owes much to the musical qualities of his style.
The Translations
Andreas F. Kelletat has justifiably written in his Herder und die Weltlitera-
tur: Zur Geschichte des Übersetzens im 18. Jahrhundert (1984) of Herder’s
extraordinary spirit of discovery, which inspired him between 1770 and
his death in 1803 to translate numerous texts that had hitherto been
unknown in Germany or had been badly translated. Such positive verdicts
on Herder as translator were widespread during the nineteenth century.
Wilhelm Scherer, in his Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (1883), repeats
the customary downgrading of Herder’s own literary production, but he
counts the translations among “den klassischen Erscheinungen unserer
Literatur” (the classical phenomena of our literature; 523). The signi-
ficance of Herder for the history of translation in Germany is indicated by
a formulation of Edna Purdie, who wrote in 1965 of a turning point with
regard to adherence to form in the tradition of German translation (124).
As he did in other areas of his literary production, Herder was not
only active as a translator but also made theoretical contributions. The main
principle of his theory is to be found even in his early writings such as
“Ueber den Fleiß in mehreren gelehrten Sprachen” (On Diligence in
Several Learned Languages, 1764) and the Über die neuere deutsche Lite-
ratur (On Recent German Literature, 1766–67), especially in the third

collection, in the insight that in poetry, sensation and thought are in-
separably connected with expression. Herder was critical of translations
that did not render the spirit and form of the original. A case in point is
his detailed critique of the Ossian translation in hexameters by Michael
Denis (cf. Schmidt 1, 545ff.)
Herder also intended his translations to educate toward the use of lan-
guage. In accordance with his theory of the life stages of languages, he
saw the modern European languages as far beyond the period of their
youth. The German language had meanwhile reached the age of adult-
hood, where lyric poetry is no longer possible, but only beautiful prose.
The language can be brought back to the youthful stage only through re-
flection and translation, for instance translations from Hebrew and Greek,
both of which Herder characterizes as languages in the stage of their youth
at the time the originals were composed. Herder understands translation
as a means to restore a lost quality of language, to rediscover its linguistic
sensuality. Among the modern languages, English is closer to the poetic
age of youth than for instance French, however, the German language
could learn from the French harmony and flexibility, elements of a “leb-
hafte Prosa,” lively prose. Herder was convinced that the German language
could learn something from other languages, even from Latin. Among his
early principles is the idea of three steps in translation: “zuerst ganz er-
klären, dann übersetzen, zuletzt nachahmen” (F2, SWS 1:261; first wholly
explain, then translate, and lastly imitate). Ulrich Gaier has conceived this
principle on a higher level as “triceps,” in the sense of “dreiköpfig,”
three-headed: the translator as philosopher, poet, and philologist (FA
3:910). Herder’s kind of translating requires from the translator the liter-
ary talent of a poet. His theory of translation is hardly conceivable with-
out the aesthetics of genius of the Sturm und Drang. On the other hand,
his theory is still useful for the Romantics’ conception of translation.
Herder demanded, as did Friedrich Schlegel after him, that the temporal
and spatial distance from the original work be taken into account. An
eminent translator must at the same time be able to explain “die Ge-
schichte, die Religion und die Sitten eines Landes” (F2, SWS 1:273–74;
history, religion, and the customs of a country). For Herder, both aware-
ness of the distance from and “Einfühlung” (empathy) with the work to
be translated are needed:
so lange ich nicht mit den Ebräern ein Ebräer [. . .] mit den Barden
ein Barde, wesentlich und durch meine Umwandlung meiner selbst
geworden bin, um Moses und Hiob, und Ossian in ihrer Zeit und
Natur zu fühlen: so lange zittere ich vor ihrem Urtheile. (KW2, SWS
3:202)
[as long as I don’t become, essentially and through my transformation

of myself, a Hebrew among the Hebrews . . . a bard among bards, in
order to empathize with Moses and Job and Ossian in their time and
in their natures: just as long do I tremble before their judgments.]
Herder applied his theory of translation chiefly to lyric poetry. Poetry is for
him original song, and translation is “Nachgesang,” imitation of original
song (Singer, 5–6). This makes the concentration of his theoretical think-
ing on the “Ton” (tone) of the songs comprehensible. Following on from
his early thoughts on translation at the end of the 1760s, this concept came
to be of prime importance with the folk songs. Now he was no longer con-
cerned about a correct imitation of the original, but with an adequate
replication of the tone, or, as he sometimes referred to it, the “poetische
Modulation” or “Hauptton” (poetic modulation, chief tone). As Kelletat
points out, however, the tone cannot simply be reduced to the “sinnliche
Qualitäten” (50). These sensuous qualities are significant only insofar as
they express content or emotions in an immediate manner (cf. Gaier, FA
3:909) Herder’s concept of tone embraces form and content and implies
the possibility that a translation may need to sound foreign; the strange-
ness of such a “verfremdenden Übersetzung” must, however, correspond
to the foreign tone (Singer, 71). Ulrich Gaier has applied the phrase “re-
staurative Übersetzung” (restorative translation) to Herder’s attempts to
reach “behind” the original texts — for example, when he tries to discover
behind Macpherson’s Ossian the “palimpsest” of ancient and undocu-
mented folk poetry (FA 3:917). Herder’s method of artificial restoration
of lost poetry is one of the most interesting aspects of his folk-song
project (FA 3:917).
Regardless of the praise that has been heaped on Herder’s work as a
translator, one should not fail to mention that in some foreign languages
Herder lacked the competence to do justice to his own demands. A num-
ber of detailed studies have demonstrated defects in his translations, for
instance in his translation of The Cid, while his translations from English
have generally been judged positively.
The Song of Songs

Herder’s earliest documented attempts to translate Solomon’s biblical Song
of Songs or, as it was traditionally known in German, “Salomons Hohes
Lied” are from 1776, but he had probably made efforts in this direction
even earlier. In 1778 he completed several versions of the translation, one
of which was published that same year on the occasion of the engagement
of his brother-in-law, the tax secretary Sigmund Flachsland in Darmstadt.
The volume consists mainly of the translation of the Song of Songs with
commentary, but Herder also added his translations of German medieval
love songs, Minnelieder, modestly referring to their generic author as

“einen Minnesinger, der an Süßigkeit und Einfalt die Mängel meiner
Sprache ersetzte, bei mir siehe nur auf Sinn, Seele, Zweck, und Ort dieses
Buchs” (LL, SWS 8:xiv; a Minnesinger who made good the faults of my
language with his sweetness and simplicity; in my version one can only
look for meaning, soul, aim, and place of this book).
While for Herder, texts from Greek and Hebrew literature were docu-
ments of languages in the lyrical stage of youth, he read and translated the
Song of Songs with the eyes of a modern poet, yet in his commentaries he
points repeatedly to imagery that evokes the “Landeseinfalt,” the pastoral
simplicity and innocence of Solomon’s time. The images are strange but
beautiful and warm, depicting living nature in an elevated style akin to
Pindar. Some of the poems sounded to Herder like dancing songs, with
their images of women in motion. Taken together, the songs of love
demonstrated for him an ancient Hebrew simplicity of nature and gra-
ciousness: they celebrate the present moment and present a whole world
despite the limitation of the subjects, and oriental love expresses itself in a
clear “Wortverstand,” a clear verbal expression.
In his translation and commentary Herder contradicts the centuries-
long theological tradition of interpreting the songs allegorically. He also
criticizes the rationalistic interpretation of the Bible translator Johann David
Michaelis, who read the Hebrew text as an Oriental marriage song from
the harem. Herder read the songs as an anthology and made no attempt
to construe a continuous story out of it. He was concerned to present the
poetic quality of the individual pieces, which he considered examples of
original nature poetry, as exemplified in his own time by Ossian and the
folk songs. His commentary, which in parts takes the form of paraphrase,
offers an erudite contextualization of the texts with facts from the Orient.
Herder is striving for a translation that is at the same time both “einbür-
gernd” and “fremd haltend” (naturalizing and keeping foreign, Bohnen-
kamp-Renken, 21), contrasting qualities that are supposed to complement
each other mutually. Herder’s translation of the Song of Songs makes sense
in connection with his work Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie (On the
Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, 1782–83) and his interpretation of the “hiero-
glyph of creation” of Genesis in his Älteste Urkunde des Menschenge-
schlechts (Oldest Document of the Human Race, 1774–76). In the texts
of the ancient Hebrew poetry of the Bible he sees models for an exem-
plary folk poetry. The natural imagery of the Hebrew text, which accord-
ing to Burkhard Dohm contains “eine Art empirischer Typologie des
Liebesphänomens” (a kind of empirical typology of the phenomenon of
love, 363), is a model that the modern poet can hardly surpass.
The Folk Songs

Without Herder the knowledge of folk songs in Germany would probably
not have spread until the early nineteenth century — the collection Des
Knaben Wunderhorn (The Child’s Magic Horn, 1805–8) by Achim von
Arnim and Clemens Brentano was already a productive imitation of Her-
der’s activities of collecting. Herder’s “Auszug aus einem Briefwechsel
über Ossian und die Lieder alter Völker” (Excerpt from a Correspondence
on Ossian and the Songs of Ancient Peoples), which was published in
1773 in the manifesto-like volume Von deutscher Art und Kunst (Of Ger-
man Kind and Art), was an initiative for a new appreciation of the folk
song that had many positive consequences. The trend of contributing to a
strengthening or a renaissance of national identities through the collec-
tion of “ancient” texts was a European phenomenon, the first impulses of
which came from Scotland through the Ossian collections and editions of
James Macpherson. It was connected with criticism of modern civilization
and feudal social structures. Ossian was an important figure of identifica-
tion throughout Europe. In Von deutscher Art und Kunst, Herder writes:
In mehr als einer Provinz sind mir Volkslieder, Provinziallieder,
Bauerlieder bekannt, die an Lebhaftigkeit und Rhythmus, und Naive-
tät und Stärke der Sprache vielen derselben [schottische Romanzen]
gewiß nichts nachgeben würden; nur wer ist der sie sammle? Der sich
um sie bekümmre? Sich um Lieder des Volks bekümmre? Auf Straßen,
und Gassen und Fischmärkten? Im ungelehrten Rundgesange des
Landvolks? (DAK, FA 2:480)
[In more than one province there are known to me folk songs, pro-
vincial songs, farmer’s songs that in liveliness and rhythm and naïveté
and strength of language certainly wouldn’t give away anything to
many of those [Scottish romances]; but where is he who collects
them? Who bothers himself about them? Who bothers himself about
songs of the people? On streets, in alleys, and in fish markets? In the
uneducated round-singing of the country folk?]
In this passage, the term Volkslied appears for the first time. In order to
meaningfully discuss Herder’s concept of the Volkslied, we must first ex-
amine his extraordinarily complex understanding of the term Volk. For
him it is an “Ursprungskategorie” (category of origin). It contains both an
ethnic meaning in the sense of a community of people with identical an-
cestry and common culture and history, and a sociological meaning, des-
ignating for instance a group of people and their productive activity in the
material realm as well as their originality of expression through their way
of life, culture, and language (Cf. Gaier, FA 3:865–66). As Franz-Josef
Deiters has pointed out, there is also an anthropological meaning of the
6
term for Herder: the totality of the human gender. The term is related to
Ganzheit (wholeness): everything that is uttered with “ganzer Seele” be-

longs to the Volk. Therefore folk songs are the “Stimme des Volks, der
zerstreueten Menschheit” (FA 3:429; the voice of the people, of scattered
humanity).
Herder found himself confronted with the problem that old folk
traditions can be known only in oral form, but that in order to present
and preserve them for the present they must be transposed into the me-
dium of writing. Therefore he had to find methods to imitate or simulate
the “Volkston” and make possible an understanding of the authentic
documents.
Herder’s collecting of folk songs was not “scientific”: he looked for
them in his own reading, and from early on he asked friends and col-
leagues for help: Goethe and his sister Cornelia, Johann Heinrich Merck,
and Andreas Peter von Hesse, in addition to his wife Caroline. Later he
asked such a figure as Lessing whether there were any folk songs in his
Wolfenbüttel archives. Herder’s collecting can be documented through
several phases. First there was the aforementioned “Silberne Buch,” which
initially included a collection of Herder’s own poems and translations,
copied by Caroline Flachsland from Herder’s letters to her during their
courtship. There was no plan to publish a selection of folk songs from this
initial collection. The “Alte Volkslieder” were planned for publication in
1774, but because of the negligence of the printer Herder withdrew the
manuscript from publication in February of that year. In reaction to the
negative comments of Johann Georg Sulzer, August Ludwig Schlözer, and
Karl Wilhelm Ramler to the announcement of the publication and es-
pecially after Friedrich Nicolai’s derisive comments, Herder became so
angry that he put off publication until 1778–79, when the folk songs ap-
peared in two volumes, under the title Volkslieder. The first volume con-
tained three sections of twenty-four songs each, and the second three
sections of thirty. Herder translated most of the songs himself: fifty-three
from England and Scotland, thirty-eight from Germany, twenty-six from
Spain, France, and Italy, fourteen from the Scandinavian countries, thir-
teen from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and four from Lapland, Green-
land, and Peru.
With these translations Herder wanted to demonstrate, against the
canonical and classicist understanding of literature of the time, that sig-
nificant poetic works had originated outside the traditions of classical
Greece and Rome (cf. Kelletat, 70). As mentioned above, in matters of
translation Herder was above all concerned with preserving or at least in-
dicating the tone of the original work, and for that purpose he developed
his method of “restaurative Übersetzung” (Ulrich Gaier’s phrase, as men-
tioned above; FA 3:917). Until the end of his life Herder kept on
collecting folk songs, and in his papers there were numerous translations
from all around the world.
Herder knew that his collection of folk songs found a larger reader-
ship than did his philosophical, aesthetic, critical, and theological works.
Therefore he kept thinking of an expanded edition, to be published to-
gether with his adaptation of El Cid as an example of Spanish Romance
poetry. An announcement of this edition was published in 1804, after
Herder’s death, in the tenth section of the fifth volume of Adrastea:
In Deutschland wagte man im Jahr 1778, 1779 zwei Sammlungen
Volkslieder verschiedner Sprachen und Völker herauszugeben; wie ver-
kehrt die Aufnahme sein würde, sah der Sammler vorher. Da er indes
seine Absicht nicht ganz verfehlt hat, so bereitet er seit Jahren eine
palingenisierte Sammlung solcher Gesänge, vermehrt, nach Ländern,
Zeiten, Sprachen, Nationen geordnet und aus ihnen erklärt, als eine
lebendige Stimme der Völker, ja der Menschheit, selbst vor, wie sie in
allerlei Zuständen sich mild und grausam, fröhlich und traurig, scherz-
haft und ernst, hie und da hören ließ, allenthalben für uns belehrend.
(FA 10:804)
[In Germany it was dared in the years 1778, 1779 to publish two col-
lections of folk songs of different languages and peoples; the collector
saw beforehand how wrongly received it would be. Since he didn’t
completely fail in his intention, he has been preparing for years a rein-
carnating collection of such songs, expanded, organized by country,
era, language, and nation and explaining them as a living voice of the
peoples, indeed of the human race itself, as it can be heard here and there
in all different situations speaking gently and cruelly, happily and sadly,
jokingly and seriously, everywhere instructive for us.]
It is questionable whether the title Stimmen der Völker in Liedern
(Voices of the Peoples in Songs), chosen by its editor Johannes von Müller
for the 1807 edition of the Volkslieder, would have found the agreement
of Herder. Recently Günter Arnold discovered in Müller’s papers in the
municipal library of Schaffhausen Herder’s own table of contents for the
edition he was planning, and included it with his commentary to Adrastea
in the Frankfurt Edition (10:1386). It shows that Herder also wanted to
include poetry from China, Japan, and India, and, in contrast to the anti-
classicist stance of the 1778–79 Volkslieder, a selection of Greek poetry.
There would probably have been a higher proportion of African and
American songs as well. The last section was to have been called “Allge-
meine Stimme der Menschheit. Moralische Lieder/Gesänge fürs Volk”
(General Voices of the Human Race. Moral Songs/Songs for the People).
The Volkslieder of 1778/79 had followed an anthropological point of view,
emphasizing the common human element in all folk songs. The 1807
Stimmen der Völker edition stresses national and cultural differences, so

that the ethnographic aspect dominates. Herder would have hardly ac-
cepted this shift in emphasis. The editor of Herder’s poetic writings in
Suphan’s edition, Carl Redlich, considered the Stimmen der Völker edi-
tion a complete failure and lamented that it came to be seen as one of the
most significant works of Herder. One may assume, with Ulrich Gaier,
that Herder would have provided in a preface a “synthetische Konzeption
der einen Stimme aus den Liedern wohlunterschiedener Nationen” (FA
3:905; synthetic conception of the one voice from the songs of the diverse
nations). As Ulrich Gaier comments in his commentary to the folk songs,
this collection as well should have made audible in the sense of the text
from Adrastea the “Stimme des Volks, der zerstreueten Menschheit”
(KW4, FA 3:429; voice of the people, the scattered human race).
The Volkslieder collection is still considered one of Herder’s pioneer-
ing achievements, even though scholars in the early nineteenth century,
during the German nationalist struggle against Napoleon’s France, arrived
at new concepts of the folk song and criticized Herder’s selection of texts.
A few decades later scholars seem to have forgotten that the collection had
had the goal of overcoming the dominance of the poetry of Greek and
Roman antiquity.
A related accomplishment of considerable merit was Herder’s found-
ing of a new tradition of the ballad, the so-called Volksballade, without
which the later ballad would hardly have been so enthusiastically accepted
by the educated public as it was. His Ossian essay of 1773 introduced the
concept of the Kunstballade, with Bürger’s Lenore as its prototype. His
translations of Edward from Percy’s collection and of the Danish folk ballad
“Erlkönigs Tochter” are documents of the history of the genre. Herder’s
concept of Volkslied and of the ballad was accepted in Eastern Europe,
where it led to the collection of folk songs from various peoples and a new
flourishing of national poetry.
The Cid
Herder’s Cid is a kind of epic poem consisting of a cycle of romances on
the life and deeds of the Spanish national hero Cid Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar
(1043–99). Herder did not go back to the early Spanish national epic
poem, El Cantar de Mio Cid (1307), but to later versions of the story, in-
cluding a French version, as discussed below. Herder’s adaptation is there-
fore seen by today’s philologists in a rather critical light, although through-
out the nineteenth century it was second in popularity among his poetic
works, behind only the folk songs, and it was also used in German schools.
Herder made use of three sources. First, a French prose version that
was published anonymously by an author named Couchut in 1783 in the
Bibliotheque universelle des romans and was based on a source not ac-
cessible to Herder. Second, a collection of romances of ancient Spanish

history by Lorenzo de Sepulveda with the title Romances nuevamente
sacados de historias antiguas de la cronica de Espana compuestos (1551).
Third, a “Cancionero de Romances” (collection of romances), attributed
to an author by the name of Nutius, which first appeared in an edition of
7
1547/48. Herder began by following the French version, apparently not
noticing that Couchut had written some of the romances (numbers 12–
14, 27, 40 and parts of number 7) himself. He took the romances 54–61,
64–66, and 68–70 from Sepulveda’s collection. He used the “Can-
cionero” for some supplements and some harmonizing of contradictions.
Herder began during the winter of 1777 to learn Spanish, and copied
thirty-eight romances from the 1568 edition of the “Cancionero,” among
them ten romances on the Cid. Only at the beginning of the 1790s did
he began his translation of El Cid. His work was actually less a translation
than an adaptation, with all the liberties that term implies. His attempt to
familiarize the Germans with Spanish poetry can therefore be appreciated
only with qualifications. By devising German verse forms that correspon-
ded to the Spanish original, Herder succeeded at least in part in trans-
ferring elements of the Spanish tradition into German. Der Cid was to
serve as another example of Herder’s poetics of the folk songs. The form
and content of the translation also implied a criticism of the Kunstballade,
as practiced in the later 1790s by Schiller and Goethe, although Herder
had previously welcomed Gottfried August Bürger’s “Lenore” (1773).
Der Cid, like the Volkslieder, is aimed against classicism, and with its un-
rhymed trochaic verses it had a strong influence on the nineteenth cen-
tury — for instance, Heine’s love of the romance and its Spanish meter is
unthinkable without Herder.
Terpsichore
Jacob Balde (1604–68) was one of the great Neo-Latin poets of the seven-
teenth century. In Herder’s time, he had been almost completely for-
gotten since the eighteenth century. Writing to his friend J. W. H. Gleim
on April 4, 1794, Herder touted Balde as “a German Horace” (SWS
27:ix). He published his adaptations of Balde’s poetry, under the title
Terpsichore, the muse of dancing, in three volumes that appeared in 1795
and 1796 in Lübeck. The first volume contained thirty-nine poems, the
second three sections with twenty-six, twenty-seven, and thirty-two poems
respectively, the third at its beginning a “Kenotaphium” (cenotaph), that
is, a written self-portrait of the poet with the intention of gaining the good
will of the reader by apologizing for his imperfections. This part is fol-
lowed by an appendix of thirty-nine further poems, a postscript, and a
partial translation of Balde’s “Poema de vanitate mundi” under the title
“Ruinen.” The majority of the poems were from Balde’s four books of
“Lyrica” plus the “Silvae.”
Herder kept the name of the poet secret at first. He feared criticism
of his project of presenting a seventeenth-century poet — and member of
the Society of Jesus — to an audience of the 1790s. It is only in his “ceno-
taph” that he mentions Balde’s name. As is the case in most of his adap-
tations, Herder did not render the originals exactly, but abridged them
and reduced the numerous learned allusions. In his preface, he justifies
the abridgments (FA 3, 527). The poems had gained through the fact
dass sie uns jetzt in unsrer Sprache näher ans Herz treten, und eines
Deutschen Dichters Deutsche Gedichte sind. [. . .] Jetzt erwacht unser
Landsmann aus seinem lateinischen Grabe; die Lyra in seinen Händen
klingt mit neuen Tönen. (Terpsichore, FA 3:526)
[that they now, in our language, come nearer to the heart, and are the
German poems of a German poet. . . . Now our countryman awakes
from his Latin grave; the lyre in his hands rings with new tones.]
Herder called Balde “his” poet; his motivation to bring Balde to the
attention of a public that witnessed the French Revolution, came from the
fact that the poet was in several ways a “Dichter Deutschlands für alle
Zeiten” (poet of Germany for all times) and that “manche seiner Oden sind
von so frischer Farbe, als wären sie in den neuesten Jahren geschrieben”
(FA 3:526; some of his odes are of such fresh color as if they had been
written in the last few years). Recently, Barbara Bauer has offered the the-
sis that Herder’s Balde translations contained a criticism of Goethe’s
Römische Elegien, which Herder believed did not measure up to the de-
mands of the day.
With Terpsichore Herder recovered a significant area of the literature
of the seventeenth century for contemporary readers. The individual and
free manner of Herder’s translations — he did not adhere slavishly to the
form of Balde’s originals, but adapted them to suit his idea of the content
and poetic tone — is secondary in importance when considering the pro-
ject’s merits.
Translations from Greek, Roman, and Oriental Literatures

By around 1780, Herder felt he had mastered the verse forms of antiquity
sufficiently to dare to attempt faithfulness to the original meter when
translating poems from ancient Greece and Rome. In his early days as a
translator of poetry he had not bothered with it. Now he understood that
the tone of ancient poetry was also determined by its meter. It is aston-
ishing that his attempts to render classical literature began around 1765
and reached until the last years of his life. His main interest was in the
“Greek Anthology,” a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, from the
classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature. He published his trans-

lations in his Zerstreute Blätter under the sections titled “Blumen aus der
griechischen Anthologie gesammlet” (Flowers Collected from the Greek
Anthology, eight books), “Nachlese aus der griechischen Anthologie”
(Further Selection from the Greek Anthology), and “Hyle,” and after-
wards continued to publish groups of them in various journals. The col-
lection of Herder’s translations from Greek literature in Redlich’s edition
(volume 26 of the Sämmtliche Werke) concludes with “Pindars Siegsge-
sänge” (Pindar’s Songs of Victory).
From Roman literature Herder translated numerous odes and “Ser-
monen” (long lectures) of Horace, but also satires of Persius and fables of
Phaedrus. The “Dichtungen aus der morgenländischen Sage” (Poetic
Works from the Oriental Legends), texts from Arabic, Persian, and
Hebrew, appeared in three collections. Among them are also what Herder
called the “Jüdische Parabeln” (Jewish Parables). Herder’s collection
“Blumen aus morgenländischen Dichtern gesammlet” (Flowers Collected
from Oriental Poets, four volumes) contains mostly Arabic texts, together
with some Greek poems. They were followed by the “Gedanken einiger
Bramanen” (Thoughts of a Few Brahmins) and various pieces from “ver-
schiedenen morgenländischen Dichtern” (various oriental poets). In his
translations from the Greek, Herder focused above all on the epigram, as
discussed above. He translated, however, only those epigrams that corre-
sponded to his ideal view. This caused some later criticism: the selection
was not representative, and they were not literal translations; philological
exactness was missing. Herder’s aim was not philological, but “literaturstra-
tegisch” (literary-strategic); he wanted to make the Greek style and verse
form accessible to epigrammatic poets. He succeeded in this at least with
regard to Goethe’s reception of his translations; Goethe found inspiration
in them both for his own epigrams and later, for the Oriental forms of the
West-östlicher Divan. Herder’s translations of Oriental poets are, however,
generally considered a step backward. He went too far here in his lack of
consideration for textual interconnections (see Kelletat, 71–72, 85ff.).
Conclusion
At the end of a survey of Herder’s poetry and translations one must ask
how such a discrepancy could have arisen between the judgment of worth
of Herder the philosopher, theoretician, and theologian on one hand and
Herder the poet on the other. Herder’s prose was superior to that of most
of his contemporaries in terms of geniality and critical originality. But he
himself — being rather self critical — apparently did not have a very high
opinion of his own poetic efforts. The difference in quality between his
literary-theoretical insight and his own poetic practice becomes especially
striking in the case of his dramatic sketches: in Entfesselte Prometheus

(Prometheus Unbound), for instance, there is no dramatic conflict. The
musical quality of his style has nevertheless caused composers to choose
his texts.
He commanded the typical form of expression of the masculine cul-
tural age: belles lettres rather than lyric poetry with its capturing of the
moment. But among his many attempts at lyric there are nevertheless a
few that capture the “Ton” (sound) and “poetic modulation” that were
so important to him. Yet as a lyric poet he is often in the awkward position
of a writer in a state of reflection who wants to appear spontaneous.
The self-possessed and incisive literary theoretician is as a poet not al-
ways true to his own premises. But his openness to the newest trends in
European and world literature and his persistent striving to make this ex-
perience of the new present in the German language as rapidly as possible,
as well as his translations and adaptations, helped poetry in Germany
achieve a variedness that, looked at in detail, is not traceable to him. In
genres that he himself partly invented — for instance the paramythical
poem — or radically updated to the present — for instance the Legende —
in translations from the Old Testament or the Spanish romance tradition,
and above all in his collections of folk songs and ballads, he earned his
place of honor in the history of European literature. The literary-strategic
goals that he pursued not only by way of genre histories or contributions
to the theory of lyric poetry but also through translations of non-classical
literature should occupy future research. Like Lessing, Herder wrote “Ret-
tungen,” rescues, of forgotten poets and texts.
The last word on Herder’s own poetic works, his poems, legends, and
fables, has not yet been spoken. The paramythical poems are finding no-
tice. Without Herder’s versatile and innovative power, German literature
would not have been as rich and vital as it actually came to be.
Translated by Wulf Koepke
Notes
1
Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke in fünf Bänden, selected and introduced by
Wilhelm Dobbek, 5 vols., Bibliothek deutscher Klassiker (Weimar: Volksverlag,
1957). There were three later editions under Dobbek’s editorship, published by
Aufbau, and then another edited by Regine Otto: 5th revised edition (Berlin,
Weimar: Aufbau, 1978).
2
On this point, see Roman Hankeln, “Johann Friedrich Reichardts (1752–1814)
Vertonungen von Herder-Epigrammen: Zur Komposition antikenorientierter
Metren um 1790,” in Ideen und Ideale: Johann Gottfried Herder in Ost und West,
ed. Peter Andraschke and Helmut Loos, 125–51 (Freiburg: Rombach, 2002).
3
The publication history of the legends is described in volume 28 of the Sämmtliche
Werke, published in 1884 (559–60); the legends themselves are found on pages
167–246 of the same volume. In modern editions — that is, editions published
since the middle of the twentieth century, the legends are absent. Evidently, they
have been considered negligible by literary scholars from the beginning: as is often
the case with Herder, his theoretical utterances are considered more important than
his own works.
4
Jörg Krämer, Deutschsprachiges Musiktheater im späten 18. Jahrhundert: Typologie,
Dramaturgie und Anthropologie einer populären Gattung, vol. 1 (Tübingen:
Niemeyer, 1996). See also Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller, “Drama in musikalischen
Hieroglyphen. Johann Gottfried Herders Brutus und Philoktetes, vertont von
Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach als Antikerezeption,” in Ideen und Ideale: Johann
Gottfried Herder in Ost und West, ed. Peter Andraschke and Helmut Loos, 153–65
(Freiburg: Rombach, 2002).
5
See Rainer Kleinertz, “Liszts Ouvertüre und Chöre zu Herders Entfesseltem
Prometheus,” in Liszt und die Weimarer Klassik, ed. Detlef Altenburg (Laaber:
Laaber, 1997), 172, 178. See also Roland Borgards, “Herders Philoktet. Schmerz
zwischen Physiologie und Ästhetik,” in Ideen und Ideale: Johann Gottfried Herder
in Ost und West, ed. Peter Andraschke and Helmut Loos, 89–121 (Freiburg:
Rombach, 2002) and Niemöller, “Drama in musikalischen Hieroglyphen.”
6
Franz-Josef Deiters, “Das Volk als Autor? Der Ursprung einer kulturgeschicht-
lichen Fiktion im Werk Johann Gottfried Herders,” in Autorschaft: Positionen und
Revisionen, ed. Heinrich Detering (Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 2002), 196.
7
The first edition contained twelve Cid romances; a second edition appeared in
1550 containing fourteen. Herder used the later edition of 1568.
14: Herder’s Style
Hans Adler
I. Style as a Problem
I T IS NOT EASY TO READ HERDER’S TEXTS, and many scholars past and
present have complained about this aspect of Herder’s work. The same,
however, is true for texts by, say, Kant, Fichte, or Schelling. One important
and hitherto neglected difference between Herder’s way of thinking and
writing on the one hand and Kant’s and Fichte’s on the other seems to lie
less on the level of content but more on the level of how the ideas and
reflections are presented. There is a crucial difference of thinking and
expression between Herder and many other philosophers. This difference is a
difference of style, style of thinking and style of writing. Metaphors and
tropes have their legitimate argumentative function within the semantic uni-
verse of Herder’s texts, so that we should take care to scrutinize these fea-
tures fair-mindedly before dismissing them as idiosyncratic quirks, as Rudolf
Haym did in criticizing Herder’s “ruffled figures” and Immanuel Kant did in
damning his philosophy as border-crossing “poetic philosophy.” For Herder,
there was no such thing as “naked truth,” just as there was for him no (im-
material) soul without a (material) body. Human truth is “leibhafte Wahr-
1
heit,” embodied truth: it is always bound up with the body and the senses,
otherwise it would not be “menschliche Wahrheit.” Herder’s theoretical
reflections on aesthetics, literary theory, translation, philosophy — in par-
ticular, philosophy of language and history — pedagogy, theology, and so
on are all oriented toward aisthesis — sensate cognition — as the funda-
mental part of human cognition in general. Even insights into the most
abstract ideas are grounded in corporeal experience — which, for Herder,
shaped human understanding and its organs — or they are “Nebelträume”
(foggy dreams). In Herder’s work and thinking, this grounding is extended
to the material appearance of the text.
Being confronted for the first time with texts by Johann Gottfried
Herder, university students commonly follow either one of the following
two patterns of reaction. Some of them display bewilderment without being
able to give reasons for that type of response. Some of them react with an
332 ♦ HANS ADLER
almost rapturous welcome, without, however, being capable of providing a

plausible explanation for their enthusiasm. Both reactions parallel patterns
that have developed during the reception of Herder’s works over the past
250 years. Both reactions are equally problematic, and it is the instructor’s
responsibility to turn the students’ attention to an important aspect of
Herder’s texts, which nowadays is part of quite an unfashionable realm of
attention in literary scholarship in general: style.
Since the last quarter of the twentieth century, stylistics as a discipline has
been seen as outdated, and even the names of famous scholars in the field
such as Leo Spitzer, Oskar Walzel, Zygmunt Lempicki, Pierre Guiraud, Emil
Staiger, Stephen Ullmann, Michel Riffaterre, Raymond Chapman, are almost
forgotten. We are used to reducing texts either to “what they say,” what
they “refer to,” or to the idea that they cannot “say” anything because of the
alleged incapability of language as such to stabilize the relationship between
the signifier and the signified. The phenomenon of style eludes all of those
reductions. The style of a text consists in its secondary linguistic form that
resides on top of the grammatically determined form of the everyday lan-
guage, the how of expression, this “how” taking on semantic qualities. Style
comes into being through recurrent elements on various levels. In short:
Where there is text, there is style.
The description of style is often accompanied by a value judgment, and
sometimes it is not easy to tell the difference between the two. Kant and
Fichte, for example, are considered difficult to read, but in the end that does
not detract from their achievements or their reputation. With Herder it has
been different. Both his texts, if they have been read in their entirety at all,
and his thinking have been considered obscure. Style has thus been a decisive
factor in inhibiting a sustained reception of his works and ideas.
Direct attention to Herder’s style is helpful for our understanding of his
works as well as his position within the discourses of his time. Until recently
2
there has been no serious scholarship on this aspect of his work. Today, we
seem to be better prepared to understand him, because we take phenomena
such as intertextuality, interdisciplinarity, and interdiscursivity almost for
granted and know to appreciate different types of “hybrid” discourses, thus
leaving behind somewhat dubious claims of “purity.” As has been done with
Herder’s own ideas in the field of epistemology and philosophy from the
1980s on, it is now worth making an effort to assess Herder’s form of pre-
senting his ideas, his style, in its own right and no longer consider it a result
of mere negligence or incapacity on Herder’s part. It does not make much
sense to patronize an author only because he does not meet certain allegedly
valid standards. Instead of judging his so-called deviations, it is more pro-
ductive to look at and describe their function and ask questions such as: Is
Herder’s style in keeping with his goals and basic philosophical assump-
3
tions? Does Herder go beyond hybrid forms, and do we witness with
HERDER’S STYLE ♦ 333
Herder’s writing style the emergence of a new type of discourse that is more
than just an aggregate or the sum of its source discourses? Along with
philosophical analysis and contextualization of Herder’s writings, style is an
equally important trace to follow here in order to find answers to those
questions. Since the 1980s, Herder research has played a considerable role in
revising and reshaping not only our ideas of this author, but also our con-
ception of the German Enlightenment. Future research on Herder’s style
will contribute to this revision of our ideas and understanding of the En-
lightenment, both in Germany and elsewhere.
It is striking to see that for more than two hundred years criticism of
Herder’s style was a dominant strand in the criticism of his works. Two dif-
ferent aspects of the understanding of style were prominent. On the one
hand, style was considered an attribute of the author’s character: Buffon’s
remark was that “le style est l’homme meme,” and Schopenhauer later
succinctly termed it the “physiognomy of the mind” (“Physiognomie des
4
Geistes”). On the other hand, style was considered the “Kleid der Ge-
5
danken” (dress of thought) in the longstanding tradition of rhetorical
decorum and the “incarnation of thought and mind.” Within the context of
style as veiling or beautifying the signifier, the Puritan idea of “naked” truth
arose, the presumption that truth does not need any artificial form of
semiotic mediation. The British Royal Academy aspired to “a close, naked,
6
natural way of speaking.” For Christian Wolff, the most influential German
philosopher of the first half of the eighteenth century, the dividing lines
between philosophy, rhetoric, and poetry were clear. He wrote, “Der Phi-
losoph schreibt, um zu nützen, nicht, wie der Redner, um zu überreden
7
oder, wie der Dichter, um zu erfreuen” (The philosopher writes to be of
use, not, like the orator, to convince, or, like the poet, to please). He con-
cluded his reflections on philosophical style by saying that the philosopher
must reject “den Schmuck der Worte [. . .], der den Rednern hilft. Denn
dieser Schmuck besteht entweder in unpassenden Worten oder in mehr-
deutigen Worten; beides ist der Einfachheit des philosophischen Stils
8
zuwider” (the dressing-up of words, which helps the orator. For this dress-
ing-up consists either in words that are unfitting or that have multiple mean-
ings; both are antithetical to the simplicity of the philosophical style).
This ideal of a simple and unambiguous language mediating simple and
unambiguous truths is based on the assumption that truth is something that
exists outside of language. The less style a philosophical text has, the closer it
comes to truth and the more it “fits.” Philosophy is supposed to be prose in
both meanings of the word: as a genre (in contradistinction to poetry) and as
a “factual” discourse. Wolff had no doubt that the “naked” discourse of
philosophy prevails over any form of rhetoric or poetry: “Nicht durch die
Macht der Worte, sondern durch das Gewicht der Argumente erzwingen wir
9
seine [sc. des Lesers] Zustimmung” (Not through the power of the words
334 ♦ HANS ADLER
but through the weight of our arguments do we force his [the reader’s]
agreement). Here we have language as an inevitable but negligible element
of the philosophical discourse; in short: The less language, the clearer the
philosophy.
Herder chastised this ideal of clarity and unambiguity as “zum Gähnen
10
deutlich” (so clear as to make one yawn). His understanding of human
language precluded any facile assumption of a one-to-one relationship be-
tween signifier and signified. For Herder, the rationalist ideal of mathe-
matical quantification as the highest level of cognition represented an
anthropologically inappropriate reductionism. He approached the issues of
truth, cognition, and communication not from the point of view of formal
logic but from an anthropological one. For Herder, human language was the
most powerful and intrinsically complex cultural tool that humanity ever
11 12
developed. Hence, style as a “secondary semiotic structure” based on
everyday language was for Herder a crucial factor in the attempt to make
one’s ideas “visible” in the arbitrary medium of language.
II. Criticism of Herder’s Style

It is amazing to see how often and unabashedly Herder has been criticized
and condescended to for his style of writing. This criticism is enlightening in
two ways. On the one hand, critics of Herder’s style provide us with details
that we may use as a valuable source of samples of Herder’s stylistic par-
ticularities. On the other hand, we can learn how criticism of style serves as
one of the main ways to marginalize Herder. This sort of criticism was —
and still is — not just an affair of idiosyncratic taste. If “le style est l’homme
même,” then it is but one step from “bad” style to a “bad” person or a
“bad” mind. It was Herder’s teacher Kant who triggered a polemic against
his former disciple, setting the tone for the reception of Herder’s works for
two centuries and making it almost impossible to approach Herder as a
13
serious author in categories of scholarly rationality, let alone to fairly assess
the legitimacy of his style.
In two reviews of Herder’s first two parts of the Ideen zur Philosophie der
Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Hu-
mankind, 1784–91), and a comment on a defender of Herder’s position,
Kant attacked Herder in an extremely harsh way, as a writer, as a philoso-
pher, and, finally, as a person. He wrote:
Der Geist unsers sinnreichen und beredten Verfassers zeigt in dieser
Schrift seine schon anerkannte Eigentümlichkeit. Sie dürfte also wohl
eben so wenig, als manche andere aus seiner Feder geflossene, nach dem
gewöhnlichen Maßstabe beurteilt werden können. Es ist, als ob sein
[Herders] Genie nicht etwa bloß die Ideen aus dem weiten Felde der
Wissenschaften und Künste sammelte, um sie mit andern der Mitteilung

fähigen zu vermehren, sondern als verwandelte er sie (um ihm den
Ausdruck abzuborgen) nach einem gewissen Gesetze der Assimilation,
auf eine ihm eigene Weise, in seine spezifische Denkungsart, wodurch sie
von denjenigen, dadurch sich andere Seelen nähren und wachsen (S.
292.), merklich unterschieden, und der Mitteilung weniger fähig werden.
Daher möchte wohl, was ihm Philosophie der Geschichte der Mensch-
heit heißt, etwas ganz anderes sein, als was man gewöhnlich unter diesem
Namen versteht: nicht etwa eine logische Pünktlichkeit in Bestimmung
der Begriffe, oder sorgfältige Unterscheidung und Bewährung der
Grundsätze, sondern ein sich nicht lange verweilender viel umfassender
Blick, eine in Auffindung von Analogien fertige Sagazität, im Gebrauche
derselben aber kühne Einbildungskraft, verbunden mit der Geschick-
lichkeit, für seinen immer in dunkeler Ferne gehaltenen Gegenstand
durch Gefühle und Empfindungen einzunehmen, die, als Wirkungen von
einem großen Gehalte der Gedanken, oder als vielbedeutende Winke,
mehr von sich vermuten lassen, als kalte Beurteilung wohl gerade zu in
14
denselben antreffen würde.
[The mind of our profound and eloquent author shows in this work his
already acknowledged peculiarity. It can just as little be judged according
to conventional standards as some others that have flowed from his pen.
It is as if his genius hasn’t just collected ideas from the broad fields of the
sciences and arts, in order to accumulate them with others capable of
communication, but instead as if he transformed them (to borrow the
expression from him) according to a certain law of Assimilation, in a
unique way of his, into his specific way of thinking, through which they
noticeably differentiate themselves from ideas which other souls live on
and grow. Therefore it may be that what he calls philosophy of history of
mankind is something completely different from what one usually
understands under that topic: not for example a logical meticulousness in
defining concepts or careful differentiation and corroboration of princi-
ples, but instead a viewpoint that takes in much but doesn’t linger for
long, a sagacity gifted in the discovery of analogies, in use of the same a
bold power of imagination combined with a dexterity in captivating
through feelings and emotions for his topic that is always kept in an ob-
scure distance. These feelings and emotions, as effects of a great content
of thought or as meaningful hints, allow for more speculation than cold
judgment would discover in them.]
This was much more than just a scholarly review of the work of a col-
league. It denied Herder the status of a colleague and the capacity of clear
thinking. Kant accused him of intentionally obfuscating the issue of philoso-
phy of history. Kant has Herder as incapable of thinking with methodo-
logical rigor, and even accuses him of multiplying problems by attempting to
explain “das, was man nicht begreift, aus demjenigen [. . .], was man noch
336 ♦ HANS ADLER
15
weniger begreift . . .” (that which one doesn’t understand, with that which one
still less understands).
For Kant, this methodological flaw became visible in stylistic features.
He pointed out that Herder presented in his Ideen “so manche schöne
16
Stellen voll dichterischer Beredsamkeit” (so many beautiful passages full of
poetic eloquence) and then pretended to leave open whether Herder illegiti-
mately infringed the border between poetic and philosophical discourse; but
the way Kant characterized the problem clearly shows that he was indicting
Herder of violating the rules of philosophical style:
. . . wir [wollen] hier [nicht] untersuchen, ob nicht der poetische Geist,
der den Ausdruck belebt, auch zuweilen in die Philosophie des Vf.
eingedrungen; ob nicht hier und da Synonymen für Erklärungen, und
Allegorien für Wahrheiten gelten; ob nicht, statt nachbarlicher Über-
gänge aus dem Gebiete der philosophischen in den Bezirk der poetischen
Sprache, zuweilen die Grenzen und Besitzungen von beiden völlig ver-
rückt sein; und ob an manchen Orten das Gewebe von kühnen Meta-
phern, poetischen Bildern, mythologischen Anspielungen nicht eher dazu
17
diene, den Körper der Gedanken wie unter einer Vertügade zu ver-
stecken, als ihn wie unter einem durchscheinenden Gewande angenehm
18
hervorschimmern zu lassen.
[. . . we [do not want] to investigate here whether the poetic spirit that
enlivens the expression did not also penetrate into the philosophy of the
author; whether here and there synonyms are not passed off as ex-
planations and allegories for truths; whether instead of neighborly cross-
ings from the realm of the philosophical into the region of poetic
language at times the borders and estates of both are not fully displaced;
and whether in some places the web of bold metaphors, poetic images,
mythological allusions does not more nearly hide the body of thoughts as
if beneath a robe à vertugadin than let it shine forth agreeably as if from
under a diaphanous gown.]
Kant does not say that metaphors, poetic images, etc. should altogether
be excluded from philosophical discourse, but that they must be confined to
their illustrative function and not used as constitutive elements of such dis-
course. That sounds as easy as Wolff’s idea that philosophical discourse
should be simple and unambiguous, unlike oratory and poetry — as long as
language is considered only to serve as a medium of truth or of a message, a
medium that vanishes once the message has been received, which presup-
poses the possibility that the signifier can be erased after it has served as a
carrier of meaning. The way Herder wrote was due not to a lack of intellec-
tual discipline — as Kant and many others in his wake insinuated — but to a
different and very modern understanding of the function of language and
style. For Kant, style was a triviality if not an obstacle; for Herder style mat-
tered. For Kant, language was a necessary evil serving as a means of trans-
portation; for Herder language was inseparably tied to that which it refers to
— an indispensable “veil” of truth because for him there would be no access
to truth without this “veil.” For Herder a separation of discourses did not
correspond to the structure of human understanding, and language in itself
is a genuine element of understanding. Hence, metaphors have their legiti-
mate place wherever human beings pursue their quest for truth and knowl-
edge. From Kant’s review on, however, Herder was stigmatized and banned
from the guild of the philosophers, based on his style of writing and
thinking.
Rudolf Haym, who wrote the most comprehensive biography on Herder
to date, may serve here as an example for the way Herder’s style has been
perceived and assessed after Kant. Haym considered Herder an author
incapable of understanding or following Kant’s move into transcendental
philosophy. Given such a view, there was no chance that Haym would rec-
ognize Herder as an author with an epistemological position of his own that
19
could compete with Kant’s. Whereas Haym praised Herder on the one
hand for having broken the “Fesseln der Periodologie, die der scholastische
20
Verstand, die Schul- und Kanzleigewohnheit geschaffen” (shackles of peri-
odology that gave rise to scholastic reason and the habits of school and of-
ficialdom) and for being a “kühner Wortbildner” and a “verwegener Satz-
steller” (bold wordsmith; daring creator of sentences; 1:211) — the last two
assessments already walking the line between praise and criticism — he ex-
coriated Herder on the other hand in genderized terms when comparing his
style to Lessing’s:
— wenn nur sein Gefühl nicht so leicht mit seiner Logik durchginge.
[. . .] Bei Herder [. . .] ist jedes Wort gleichsam am lebhaft arbeitenden
Herzen vorbeigekommen, die Sätze kräuseln sich zu unruhigen Figuren,
auch wo es nicht durch die Natur des Gedankens gerechtfertigt ist.
Daher nicht bloß übermäßig viel Frage- und Ausrufungszeichen, sondern
auch pleonastische Wendungen, Selbstunterbrechungen, Gedanken-
striche als Zeichen des stockenden oder des abgebrochenen Gedankens.
[. . .] Die Lessingsche Lebendigkeit ist immer männliche, die Herdersche
ist mehr von der weiblichen Art. (287)
[— if only his feeling didn’t so easily run off with his logic. . . . With
Herder . . . every word passes so to speak through the vividly-working
heart, the sentences ruffle themselves up into restless figures, even when
it is not justified by the nature of the thought. Therefore not only
excessively many question marks and exclamation points, but also pleo-
nastic usages, self-interruptions, long dashes to indicate halting or in-
terrupted thoughts. . . . The liveliness of Lessing is always masculine, that
of Herder more of the feminine kind.]
338 ♦ HANS ADLER
Despite the general tendency to criticize Herder’s style as inappropriate,

Haym obviously felt compelled to concede exceptions to this verdict, because
at least occasionally it seemed appropriate to him that Herder’s “sentences
ruffle themselves up into restless figures,” which actually is a fine way to
characterize Herder’s style, although one’s conclusions can also be opposite
to Haym’s, as we will see later. But this requires a case-by-case analysis that
Haym does not provide. Haym is quick to switch from stylistics to a medical
or psychological diagnosis that we (and Haym) already know from Kant: “Ja,
nur zu oft drängt sich in die Darstellung die ganze nervöse Erregtheit, der
pathologische Zustand des Schreibenden hinüber” (286; Yes, only too often
the whole nervous excitability, the pathological condition of the author im-
poses itself on the representation).
It seems as if Kant and Haym were presupposing a psychopathology of
style, thus intertwining their critique of style with their assessment of Herder’s
mental disposition. The aggressiveness of their critique seems to correspond
to an unwillingness to reveal their own standards, hence to admit the pos-
sibility that Herder’s philosophical position might represent a valid alter-
native. Moreover, there have been critics from Herder’s time to the present
who bemoan his style, yet there has been no serious attempt to invalidate his
works because of their stylistic shortcomings. Even though Kant regarded
himself as a poor writer, claiming time and again that he wanted to revise his
texts stylistically in order to render them more popular, he never did so,
because for him — as Jean-Luc Nancy puts it — “style itself is popular style”
21
and popularity is antithetical to reason. Thus, a philosopher can take pride
in having no style or bad style.
22
III. Stylistic Isotopies, Metaphors
In a 1982 article, Walter Moser outlined some of the most productive se-
mantic fields from which Herder drew his similes and metaphors for his
Ideen. Moser names five fields that may serve as a starting point for future
research, namely
1) Organic structure and growth (especially of plants). . . . 2) Political
and social organization (especially structures of domination). . . . 3)
23
Architecture. . . . 4) Light and visual perception. . . . 5) Machines.
Moser’s list of metaphoric fields still waits to be substantiated through
meticulous analysis of Herder’s writings, and it is not certain whether the list
is exhaustive. Within the framework of this Companion I want to add an ex-
ample that might illustrate in a more general way how Herder has not been
taken seriously as a philosopher, writer, and stylist, while at the same time,
paradoxically, he has been acknowledged as one of the important thinkers of
the German eighteenth century.
In the fourth chapter of the fifteenth book of his Ideen, Herder tries to
demonstrate that all arts and sciences in the end contribute to promoting
“die praktische Vernunft und Billigkeit, mithin die wahre Cultur und Glück-
24
seligkeit des Menschengeschlechts” (practical reason and fairness, therefore
the true culture and happiness of the human race) — “in the end” meaning
that despite humans’ ignorance of the “meaning” of the world and its de-
velopment, their experiences teach them what is right or wrong. Thus,
through trial and error, humanity is finally provided insight into the exis-
tence of moral laws that are as rigid as the laws of the physical world, and
into the fact that following those laws not only assures survival but also leads
to an understanding of Vorsehung, Providence, that is, the plan for evolution
of a higher intellect. Violation of these laws will bring retribution by
Nemesis/Adrastea, meting out justice according to divine necessity. “Ver-
nunft und Billigkeit” — reason and fairness — are core concepts of Herder’s
philosophy of history that translate principles from the divine realm of
Providence into the realm of human history, and they provide the regulative
norms for the process of human history. What is new here is the fact that
human beings themselves are responsible for their actions, that they are no
25
longer just subject to “fate,” and that with this freedom of decision, which
is proportional to their knowledge, they are morally free. Human beings
learn slowly to take responsibility for their actions — human history and world
history thus become the work of humanity itself. Herder uses a simplifying
metaphor for this highly complex set of philosophical assumptions: the
epicycloid. He writes:
Jede ungeschickte Pflugschaar reibet sich durch den langen Gebrauch
selbst ab; unbehülfliche, neue Räder und Triebwerke gewinnen bloß
durch den Umlauf die bequemere, künstliche Epicycloide. So arbeitet
sich auch in den Kräften des Menschen der übertreibende Misbrauch mit
der Zeit zum guten Gebrauch um; durch Extreme und Schwankungen
zu beiden Seiten wird nothwendig zuletzt die schöne Mitte eines
dauernden Wohlstandes in einer regelmäßigen Bewegung. Nur was im
Menschenreiche geschehen soll, muß durch Menschen bewirkt werden;
wir leiden solange unter unsrer eignen Schuld, bis wir, ohne Wunder der
Gottheit, den bessern Gebrauch unsrer Kräfte selbst lernen.
Also haben wir auch nicht zu zweifeln, daß jede gute Thätigkeit des
menschlichen Verstandes nothwendig einmal die Humanität befördern
müsse und befördern werde. Seitdem der Ackerbau in Gang kam: hörte
26
das Menschen- und Eichelnfressen auf.
[Every imperfectly formed plowshare grinds itself down through long
use; lumbering new wheels and gears attain only through rotation the
more fitting, artificial epicycloid. Thus too, in matters of human beings,
exaggerated misuse works itself out into good practice; the beautiful
middle of a persistent prosperity in steady development will in the end
340 ♦ HANS ADLER
necessarily be the outcome of extremes and fluctuations to both sides.

Only that which is supposed to occur in the realm of human beings must
be effected by human beings; we suffer under our own guilt until we,
without miracles from the divine, learn to better use our powers.
Thus we also need not doubt that every good activity of human
reason one day will have to — and will — promote humanity. As soon as
agriculture came into being, cannibalism and the eating of acorns
ceased.]
Commentators of scholarly editions have had difficulties in dealing with
Herder’s use of the metaphor of the epicycloid. Heinz Stolpe in his edition
of the Ideen (1965) wrote:
Epizykloide — Eigentlich “Kurve, die ein auf dem Umfang eines Kreises
liegender Punkt beschreibt, wenn der Kreis auf der Außenseite eines
anderen Kreises abrollt.” Hier [in den Ideen] offenbar nur in der Be-
27
deutung “lockere Kreisumdrehung.”
[Epicycloid — Literally “curve that describes a point lying on the circum-
ference of a circle, when the circle rolls onto the outside of another
circle.” Here [in the Ideen] obviously only in the meaning “slack rotation
of a circle.”]
Martin Bollacher in his edition of 1989 echoes this with a slight variation:
[Epizykloide] Radlinie, ebene Kurve, die von einem Punkt auf dem
verlängerten Radius eines rollenden Kreises beschrieben wird. Hier [in
28
den Ideen] wohl einfach: Kreisbewegung.
[[Epicycloid] line of a wheel, plane curve that is described from one
point on the elongated radius of a rolling circle. Here [in the Ideen]
probably simply: circular movement.]
These two definitions apply to certain types of epicycloids. What is
important in our context here — the legitimacy and function of Herder’s use
of metaphors — is that neither definition grants Herder the capability of cor-
rectly understanding what an epicycloid is and that they accuse him im-
plicitly of not using a valid metaphor at all. These commentators imply,
boldly but without justification, that Herder is negligent in his use of this
esoterically scientific figure and that he might not have understood it at all.
Perhaps the commentators considered this just another example of Herder’s
“flowery” style, perhaps they felt they did not need to justify their views with
an argument because they had Kant’s critique of Herder’s style in the back-
ground. Be that as it may, their criticism is inappropriate. Herder’s use of the
epicycloid, as closer inspection shows, is an example of how metaphors can
have a “logical meticulousness” of their own, being equal to concepts if not
surpassing them in precision.
Epicycloids played a role in computing the shape and interaction of cog-

wheels as early as in the seventeenth century when the Danish Ole (Olaus)
Römer (1644–1710) coined the term and focused on the mathematical
formulation of the problem of the smooth meshing of cogwheels that adapt
to an optimal transmission of power by reducing the frictional loss to a
minimum. This is what Herder is alluding to by analogy in transferring the
technical properties of smoothly cooperating cogwheels in a machine to
human history, thus at the same time understanding human history as a well-
functioning, hence well-constructed mechanism designed by an “engineer,”
a demiurge who masters the complexity of this “machine,” Herder’s meta-
29
phor for the universe. Herder’s epicycloid visualizes in the realm of im-
agination or intuition (Anschauung) something that cannot be otherwise
experienced in a written text. The epicycloid, thus, is not just a decorative
“aside”; it is a way to connect understanding, imagination, and intuition.
Any reading of Herder’s works needs a thorough theoretical foundation
and a meticulous inventory of their metaphorical layers. Instead of only
going back to the inventory of “dead” metaphors and taxonomies of rhe-
30
toric it would be more promising to look for advice in Hans Blumenberg’s
31 32
Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie, his “Theorie der Unbegrifflichkeit”
(theory of non-conceptual thinking), and in Paul Ricœur’s ideas about the
33
“living metaphor.”
IV. Written Style

In its oral form human language is — with very few exceptions — a semiotic
practice that provides sensate cognition on several levels. A successful orator
gives his or her speech momentum that is likely to win the audience’s
attention instead of presenting “dry” demonstrations and descriptions. He
or she will use metaphors, images, similes, allusions, and the like, and will
accompany the speech with gestures, facial expressions, and body language
that reinforce the power of the spoken language. In addition to that, the
speaker will modulate his or her voice, volume, and tone. Herder knew well
how to use these techniques, since he was a gifted and widely acclaimed
preacher.
Considered from this comprehensive rhetorical perspective, written
language is less flexible. It is evident, though, from Herder’s liberal use of
typographical emphasis in his written and printed texts — by way of spacing,
dashes, question marks, exclamation marks, semicolons, emphatic upper-case
spelling (“Ein” for “ein einziger”), and so on, as well as his use of rhetorical
devices such as anaphora, aposiopesis, anacoluthon, ellipsis — that he is aim-
ing at a form of the written text that comes closer to oral presentation in
order to reach the same level of rhetorical effectiveness. Similarly, the tradi-
tional dialogue form that he often chose — reminiscent of Plato, Fontenelle,
342 ♦ HANS ADLER
Fénelon, and Lessing — aims at making the audience an active participant in

the process of reception by allowing them to follow the development of
ideas and arguments as they are constructed. Given the fact that morphemes,
words, phrases, and sentences are arbitrary signs, it is evident that the reader
of a text has to go a long way from what he or she actually perceives on a
page of a book to what he or she understands or “gets out of” the text.
Herder made a conscious effort to bridge the gap between the signifier, ref-
34
erent, signified, and the designated “object.” His obsession with the origin
of language was not least a quest for the experience of the identity of the
signifier with the object. But Herder was not a nostalgic dreamer who
yearned for a lost golden age of simplicity and wholeness. He was fully aware
of his own epoch as a “philosophical,” “prosaic” age, deprived of any im-
mediate, direct access to nature and religion.
In the first collection of his fragments Über die neuere deutsche Literatur
(On Recent German Literature, 1766), Herder developed a theory of the
ages of a language, a model that was analogous to his conception of the
broad cycles of human history. His four stages of language are (1) “Kindheit,”
childhood, which he characterizes as a “Sprache des Affekts,” language of
feelings or emotions, which is made up of “Töne” (tones); (2) “jugendliches
Sprachalter,” the adolescent period of language, which he also calls the
“poetische Periode” (poetic period); (3) “männliches Alter,” the masculine
age, characterized by “schöne Prose” (beautiful prose); and (4) “Greisen-
35
alter,” old age, characterized by “Richtigkeit” or correctness. Herder
considers the late eighteenth century, the time in which he lived, to be the
epoch of “schöne Prose.” This style of “beautiful prose” balances the poetic
expression of the youth of humankind against the rigorous conceptual cor-
rectness of humanity’s old age, taking advantage of the poetic beauty of the
former and of the perfection of language of the latter. Beautiful prose is the
“mittlere Größe” (median dimension): precisely what Herder aimed at sty-
listically in his own writings and preaching. The ideal was to address the
senses and at the same time be clearly and distinctly correct, in short: to be a
poetic philosopher. A term for the style Herder adopted is “Denkbild”
36
(thought image), later developed by Walter Benjamin into a literary genre.
Herder was a representative of the modern — “sentimentalisch” as
Schiller termed it — emerging middle-class intellectual, and it was as such
that he wrote and formulated his texts against the grain of the stylistic and
discursive tendencies of his time, including those of the formalist/rationalist
Enlightenment, transcendentalism, the Sturm und Drang, and Romanticism,
though certainly being himself one of the initiators of the last two.
Let us take an example from Herder’s 1774 treatise on the philosophy
of history, Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit
(Another Philosophy of History for the Education of Humankind):
Niemand in der Welt fühlt die Schwäche des allgemeinen Charakterisierens

mehr als ich. Man malet ein ganzes Volk, Zeitalter, Erdstrich — wen hat
man gemalt? Man fasset auf einander folgende Völker und Zeitläufte, in
einer ewigen Abwechslung, wie die Wogen des Meeres zusammen — wen
hat man gemalt? wen hat das schildernde Wort getroffen? — Endlich man
faßt sie doch in Nichts, als ein allgemeines Wort zusammen, wo jeder
vielleicht denkt und fühlt, was er will — unvollkommenes Mittel der
Schilderung! wie kann man mißverstanden werden! —
Wer bemerkt hat, was es für eine unaussprechliche Sache mit der
Eigenheit eines Menschen sei, das Unterscheidende unterscheidend sagen
zu können? wie Er fühlt und lebet? wie anders und eigen Ihm alle Dinge
werden, nachdem sie sein Auge siehet, seine Seele mißt, sein Herz
empfindet — welche Tiefe in dem Charakter nur Einer Nation liege, die,
wenn man sie auch oft genug wahrgenommen und angestaunet hat,
doch so sehr das Wort fleucht, und im Worte wenigstens so selten einem
jeden anerkennbar wird, daß er verstehe und mitfühle — ist das, wie?
wenn man das Weltmeer ganzer Völker, Zeiten und Länder übersehen,
in einen Blick, ein Gefühl, ein Wort fassen soll! Mattes halbes Schattenbild
vom Worte! Das ganze lebendige Gemälde von Lebensart, Gewohn-
heiten, Bedürfnissen, Landes- und Himmelseigenheiten müßte dazu
kommen, oder vorhergegangen sein; man müßte erst der Nation sympa-
thisieren, um eine einzige ihrer Neigungen und Handlungen, alle
zusammen zu fühlen, Ein Wort finden, in seiner Fülle sich alles denken —
37
oder man lieset — ein Wort.
[No one in the world feels the shortcomings of generalized characteriza-
tions more acutely than I do. One portrays an entire people, epoch,
region of the earth — whom has one portrayed? One compiles people and
ages that follow one another in an eternal alternation, like the waves of the
sea — whom has one portrayed? Who has been caught by the portraying
word? — In the end, the many are still summed up in nothing but a
general term, with each person perhaps thinking and feeling what he will
— how imperfect a means of portrayal, how much one may be mis-
understood! —
Whoever has noted, given the uniqueness of one human being, how
inexpressible a matter it is to be able to express in a differentiating way
what differentiates? How he feels and lives? How different and unique all
things become for him, after his eye sees them, his soul takes their measure,
his heart feels them — how much depth there is in the character of even
one nation that — no matter how often one has perceived and admired it
— nevertheless flees from that characterization and to say the least, in that
characterization is so rarely recognizable to everyone to be grasped and
truly felt — he will ask, is that the same as envisioning the ocean of entire
peoples, ages and countries, of capturing them in one glance, one senti-
ment, one word! Faint, broken phantom of a word! The entire living
344 ♦ HANS ADLER
portrait of the way of life, customs, needs, the characteristics of land and
climate would have to be added or would have to be provided beforehand;
one would first have to sympathize with the nation in order to feel a
singular one of its inclinations and actions, or all of them together, to find
one word, to conceive everything in the richness of that one word — or
one will continue to read . . . merely a word. (OWH 35–36)]
What is glaringly obvious at first glance when reading this text (and
many of Herder’s other texts) is the unusual number of typographically em-
phasized words, originally printed in Sperrdruck, that is, with a space be-
tween the letters. With this use of typographical emphasis and its numerous
dashes and question marks, the text displays a certain restlessness or, from
another perspective, liveliness. Fully a quarter of the above-cited text, 61
words out of a total of 243, are italicized in the most recent edition, and this
is not accidental, due to a whim of the typesetter, but was intentional on
38
Herder’s part. Only two sentences — the first and the last — are closed with
a period; all others end with question marks or exclamation marks; eight
dashes divide the text. The questions and exclamations indicate a high de-
gree of dialogicity and rhetorical framing of the text. Herder is not just
developing an argument, he is appealing to the reader for consent. He wants
his readers not only to understand his ideas but to move and motivate them
to form a group of like-minded people: Herder “speaks” to a public and
simultaneously forms it while speaking. The liveliness of the text does not
appeal to the reader’s calculating reason, but to his or her enthusiasm, voli-
39
tion, and emotional consent.
The sample text above concerns the philosophy of history, and Herder
obviously broke one of the basic rules for philosophical texts, namely that
40
one must not appeal to the reader’s emotions. However, that rule has never
been an uncontested one; among the reasons are that it does not explain
how a philosophical text can avoid all ambiguity, emotional overtones, or
associations and connotations. There are also the questions whether “truth”
is only a matter of reason and whether thinking is exclusively mediated by or
identical with language. It is precisely for this reason that language matters
for Herder as a form of expression of reason, and it becomes again clear
within this context why style as a form of Herder’s texts as well as his think-
ing is important for Herder and the full understanding of his philosophy.
Herder did not submit to the alleged requirements of established dis-
courses. Instead, he embraced language with all its possibilities and risks.
The only thing he was afraid of as a writer or speaker was producing an
“empty” text or speech that does not refer to anything “real” and thus does
not have any effect on the reader or listener. Herder’s criticism of “Wort-
welten” — philosophies consisting only of (empty) words — was at the core
of his entire work. For Herder no philosophy was possible without linguistic
presentation, but that presentation had to take into consideration its own
materiality and make use of all of its facets, for language is the most sophis-
ticated way to “embody” ideas about reality that has ever been developed by
mankind.
The historian of rhetoric Klaus Dockhorn has done much to recover the
rhetorical dimension of Herder’s writing and thinking, but it is interesting
that he ignored the rhetorical aspect of typography in Herder’s texts. Dock-
horn even mostly ignored the issue of emphasis on words through letter-
41
spacing (Sperrdruck) in Herder’s texts. This aspect of stylistics eluded
Dockhorn due to his assumption that style and stylistic formation tend to
oppose res and verbum, respectively, the topic and issue of the text and its
42
form of expression, language. The different ways of marking certain words
or phrases in printing, such as using italics, letter-spacing, boldface type, and
so on are not linguistic features. These elements of design belong to the
realm of the paralinguistic typographic representation of a text and do not
affect the linguistic sign as such. Whether a word is italicized or spaced using
Sperrdruck does not affect its phonological, morphological, or syntactic quali-
ties. The typographic marking serves as a secondary semantic modifier in that
it affects the contextual value of the word, and if more than just a single
word is emphasized, a new textual layer (semantic isotopy) is being built up
by the fact that all emphasized elements have something in common that
justifies their being emphasized. Emphasizing these elements creates a
grouping internal to the text that is distinguished from the part of the text
they help to constitute. This “grouping” does not create a new text, but an
additional semantic layer of the text. The emphasized words and phrases do
not acquire a different lexical meaning but gain a different value within the
text, and taken together they provide an additional perspective on the text,
not only in the sense that the typographically emphasized elements are “some-
what more important,” but because they provide an overarching and orient-
ing structure that guides the reader by reminding him/her constantly of the
text’s fundamental discursive assumptions. In the passage quoted above,
Herder deals with the problem of generalization and specificity. He ad-
dresses a linguistic and philosophical problem in particular: on the one hand,
he problematizes the capability of language to produce useful general-
izations, pointing out that generalizations lead nowhere because they do not
refer to anything in the world. On the other hand, Herder thematizes the
problem of the linguistic (and, more broadly, semiotic) representation of in-
dividuality, one of his most important concerns throughout his life: How is
abstract conceptualization possible without sacrificing the individuality of
entities that, taken in the abstract, constitute the generality of a concept?
Abstraction as a procedure consists in the reduction of semantic features,
whereas individualization means increasing the number of semantic features
to the point where one particular sign is unmistakably different from any
other sign. As a rule: the more semantic features, the farther away from ab-
346 ♦ HANS ADLER
stract terms, thus, the closer to individuality on the one hand, and: the fewer
semantic features, the closer to an abstract term and the farther away from
individuality on the other. The most disturbing problem for Herder (and
later, by the way, for Goethe) was that for the rationalist Enlightenment the
individual had to vanish in order to make space for the general class, hence,
the individual, the unique being came to be in a certain way an obstacle for
43
the progress of philosophy.
In order to confirm the significance of typographic representation in
Herder’s text, I suggest that we look at it not “from above” (as if looking at
a page of a book on the desk in front of us) but “from the side” (as if look-
ing at a chain of mountains from the distance) and imagine the passages
printed in italics as standing out above the roman-type passages. What would
we see? A “rippled” surface, the “outstanding” elements connected inten-
tionally by Herder through typographic emphasis in a way comparable to
Ferdinand de Saussure clandestinely developing his idea of “anagrams”
(words, names that emerge, without being intended by their authors, when
44
selecting individual letters out of words of a text). Herder’s “anagrams”
represent a condensed version of the underlying assumptions.
Not every marking of words or phrases, however, fulfills the same func-
tion in Herder’s text; there is no “anagrammatic purity.” Referring back to
the last-quoted passage from Auch eine Philosophie, the three instances of
“wen” (whom), for example, serve to build up a climax through repetition,
as do the “sein[e]” (his) in the second paragraph. All other italicized words
in the first paragraph focus on the problems and risks of abstraction and
generalization. All the italicized words besides the “sein[e]” in the second
paragraph, focus on the problem of linguistic representation of individuality
and the hermeneutics of alterity. Since every individual — be it a person, a
culture, or a nation — is, according to Herder, unique and as such seman-
tically fully determined (“omnimode determinatum,” as Christian Wolff put
it), only complex words, phrases, and sentences will be appropriate as its
linguistic representatives. “Das Unterscheidende unterscheidend sagen” is
Herder’s literal understanding of “critique” or “criticism,” etymologically
deriving from the Greek κρίvειv (krínein), to separate, distinguish, differ-
entiate, judge. The linguistic unit that consists of a simple signifier with an
almost inexhaustible amount of signifieds is best suited to represent an in-
dividuality or singularity. “Ein Wort” — as Herder writes it with the accent on
the grammatically incorrect emphatic upper case “Ein” — is “pregnant” with
a multitude of semantic features, whereas “ein Wort” — with the accent on
“Wort” — is almost nothing but an empty signifier. The marked words and
phrases in Herder’s text constitute the “theme” of the text and indicate its
axiomatic foundations. It is this layer that constitutes the text’s marrow.
As we have seen, typographical emphasis through letter-spacing (ren-
dered in modern editions as italics) are paralinguistic elements of Herder’s
style, and the reliability of editions can be measured according to how accu-
45
rately they render this aspect. To contend that this aspect of Herder’s style
is equally present in all of his texts would be to exaggerate and trivialize
these observations. It cannot be denied, though, that they are a salient fea-
ture in his writings. The use of such typographical emphases abounds in his
Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts (Oldest Document of the Human
Race, 1774) and in An Prediger. Funfzehn Provinzialblätter (To Preachers:
Fifteen Provincial Messages, 1774), while it is absent from the dialogue Vom
Geist der Ebräischen Poesie (On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, 1782–83) with
the exception of the introductory “Entwurf des Buchs . . .”; in his Ideen zur
Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, Herder makes very cautious use of
the technique; yet he makes ample use of it in his Briefe, das Studium der
Theologie betreffend (Letters Concerning the Study of Theology, 1780–81),
Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität (Letters for the Advancement of Hu-
manity, 1793–97), and his late polemics against Kant, Eine Metakritik zur
Kritik der reinen Vernunft (A Metacritique of Pure Reason, 1799) and
Kalligone (1800); even his last comprehensive project of a retrospective on
the eighteenth century, the periodical Adrastea (1801–3) is full of spaced
passages, and so is the majority of his letters. We can see from this enumer-
ation that Herder’s stylistic device of typographic emphasis cannot be limited
to the young and allegedly “wild” and “irrational” Herder of the Sturm und
Drang. Such typography is an integral and constitutive part of Herder’s style
throughout his work, and merits as much scholarly attention as do other
stylistic devices in Herder’s work. The way in which Herder expresses him-
self as well as the way he presents his texts in printing are not just results of
erratic and whimsical decisions. The choice of his means of expression and
presentation is constitutive for the semantics of his writings. In short: form
bears meaning, hence Herder’s style matters.
Notes
I want to thank my colleague Sabine Gross and Jim Walker for their advice and help
in translating the article.
1
Plastik, SWS 8:84.
2
An exception is the programmatic study by Walter Moser, “Herder’s System of
Metaphors in the Ideen,” in Johann Gottfried Herder — Innovator Through the Ages,
ed. Wulf Koepke with Samson B. Knoll (Bonn: Bouvier, 1982), 102–24. See also the
research review on Herder’s style in Verena Albus, Weltbild und Metapher: Un-
tersuchungen zur Philosophie im 18. Jahrhundert (Würzburg: Königshausen und
Neumann, 2001), 115–20 (which, however, does not mention Moser). Cf. the
overview in Sabine Gross, “‘Vom Körper der Seele’ zum ‘Damm der Affekte’: Zu
Johann Gottfried Herders Metaphorik,” in Der frühe und der späte Herder: Kon-
tinuität und/oder Korrektur / Early and Late Herder: Continuity and/or Correction,
ed. Sabine Gross and Gerhard Sauder (Heidelberg: Synchron, 2007), 369–83.
348 ♦ HANS ADLER
3
Even to qualify a discourse or text as “hybrid” presupposes that elements from
different pre-existing discourses or text genres have been merged in a way that still
permits them to be identified as separate parts.
4
Cf. Wolfgang G. Müller, “Stil,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed.
Joachim Ritter and Karlfried Gründer (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-
schaft, 1998), 10:150–59, here: 152.
5
Müller, “Stil,” 152.
6
Müller, “Stil,” 152.
7
Christian Wolff, Discursus praeliminaris de philosophia in genere [1728], ed. and
trans. Günter Gawlick and Lothar Kreimendahl (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog,
1996), 181.
8
Wolff, Discursus praeliminaris, 181.
9
Wolff, Discursus praeliminaris, 165.
10
F1, FA 1:235.
11
See Jürgen Trabant’s essay on Herder’s concept of language in this volume.
12
I am modifying here Jurij Lotman’s idea of “art as secondary model-forming sys-
tem,” cf. Jurij M. Lotman, Die Struktur literarischer Texte, trans. (from the Russian)
Rolf-Dietrich Keil (Munich: Fink, 1972), 22 passim.
13
See Hans Adler, “Ästhetische und anästhetische Wissenschaft. Kants Herder-Kritik
als Dokument moderner Paradigmenkonkurrenz,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für
Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 68 (1994): 66–76.
14
Immanuel Kant, Werke in sechs Bänden, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998 [first ed. 1964]), 6:781. In the following
quoted as: Kant, Herder review.
15
Kant, Herder review (see note 14 above) 791; see also [Etienne Bonnot, Abbé de]
Condillac, Traité des sensations [1754] (Paris: Fayard, 1997), 20: “Par analogie nous
supposons dans tous les objets qui produisent quelque changement, une force que
nous connoissons encore moins . . .”
16
Kant, Herder review (see note 14), 799.
17
The “robe à vertugadin” hid the lower part of the (female) body under a bulge of
fabric. Kant uses the term here in the sense of “hiding one’s bottom.”
18
Kant, Herder review (see note 14), 799–800.
19
See Zammito’s re-evaluation of Herder’s position and role in John H. Zammito,
The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992, and
Zammito, Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology (Chicago: U of Chicago P,
2002).
20
Rudolf Haym, Herder. [New edition of Rudolf Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben
und seinen Werken. 1877–1885.] (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1958), 1:211. Subsequent
references will be in the text with page numbers in parentheses.
21
Jean-Luc Nancy, Le discours de la syncope. I. Logodaedalus (Paris: Aubier-
Flammarion, 1976), 58, 59.
22
The structuralist semiotician Algirdas Julien Greimas borrowed this term from
nuclear physics and applied it to the description of the coherence and homogeneity of
texts. Recurrent elements within the different strata of texts build up isotopies (from
Greek isos, “the same” and topos, “place”). See Algirdas Julien Greimas and Joseph
Courtés, Sémiotique: Dictionnaire raisonné de la théorie du langage (Paris: Hachette,
1979), 197–99, and Winfried Nöth, Handbook of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana
UP, 1990), 319–20.
23
Moser, “Herder’s System of Metaphors in the Ideen,” in Johann Gottfried Herder
— Innovator Through the Ages, ed. Wulf Koepke with Samson B. Knoll (Bonn:
Bouvier, 1982), 106 n. 2.
24
Ideen, SWS 14:241.
25
For Herder’s critique of the concept of “fate,” see Hans Adler, “Schiller and
Herder,” Monatshefte 97.3 (2005): 408–16, esp. 412.
26
Ideen, SWS 14:241–42.
27
Johann Gottfried Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, in
Herder, Ausgewählte Werke in Einzelausgaben, ed. Heinz Stolpe (Berlin, Weimar:
Aufbau-Verlag, 1965), 2:557.
28
Johann Gottfried Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, ed.
Martin Bollacher (= Herder, Werke in zehn Bänden, ed. Martin Bollacher, et al.)
(Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1989), 6:1078.
29
It should be mentioned here that this positively connoted metaphor from the realm
of mechanics is rather rare in Herder’s Ideen (and in his work in general). He usually
uses metaphors from the realm of natural organisms such as plants, flowers, etc.
30
Providing such taxonomies is a strength of Verena Albus’s Weltbild und Metapher
(see note 2 above), 288–399.
31
Cf. Hans Blumenberg, Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie (1960; Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1998).
32
Hans Blumenberg, “Ausblick auf eine Theorie der Unbegrifflichkeit,” in H. B.,
Schiffbruch mit Zuschauer. Paradigma einer Daseinsmetapher (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1997), 85–106.
33
See Paul Ricœur, La métaphore vive (Paris: Seuil, 1975).
34
In his notes for his advanced graduate seminar of 1939 on Herder’s Abhandlung
über den Ursprung der Sprache, Heidegger jotted down, “Die Besinnung auf die
Sprache gilt hier als ein entscheidender Weg zum Einsprung in das ganz andere,
nämlich seynsgeschichtliche Denken.” (The reflection on language here can be
considered a decisive step toward embarking on the wholly different way of thinking
a fundamental ontology.) Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 85: Vom Wesen der
Sprache, ed. Ingrid Schüssler (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1999), 85:5.
35
F1, FA 1:181–84.
36
See Harro Müller-Michaels, “Herder — Denkbilder der Kulturen. Herders poe-
tisches und didaktisches Konzept der Denkbilder,” in Naturen und Kulturen: Zum
250. Geburtstag Johann Gottfried Herders, ed. Regine Otto (Würzburg: Königs-
hausen und Neumann, 1996), 65–76. Walter Benjamin, Denkbilder, in Gesammelte
Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser. IV.1, ed. Tillman
Rexroth (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991, 305–438.
37
AePh, FA 4:32–33.
350 ♦ HANS ADLER
38
See Hans Adler, “Herders Stil als Rezeptionsbarriere,” in Herder im Spiegel der
Zeiten: Verwerfungen der Rezeptionsgeschichte und Chancen einer Relektüre, ed.
Tilman Borsche (Munich: Fink, 2006), 15–31.
39
Klaus Dockhorn provides us with profound insights into Herder’s understanding of
rhetoric in his essay “Epoche, Fuge und ‘imitatio,’” in Dockhorn, Macht und Wir-
kung der Rhetorik: Vier Aufsätze zur Ideengeschichte der Vormoderne (Bad Homburg:
Gehlen, 1968), 105–24.
40
The hostility between rhetoric and philosophy is an old one, going back to Plato’s
feud with the sophists whom he accused of using language without referring to
eternal truths.
41
See Dockhorn, “Epoche, Fuge und ‘imitatio,’” 105–6.
42
See Dockhorn, “Epoche, Fuge und ‘imitatio,’” 115.
43
Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno in their Dialektik der Aufklärung
ignored these attempts of Aufklärung at discursive individualization because they
equated Enlightenment with a certain type of rationality, that is, “instrumental
reason.” Both Horkheimer and Adorno compensate for their historical negligence
with generalizations such as: “Die Abstraktion, das Werkzeug der Aufklärung, verhält
sich zu ihren Objekten wie das Schicksal, dessen Begriff sie ausmerzt: als Liquida-
tion.” (Abstraction, the tool of the Enlightenment, relates toward its objects like the
fate whose concept it wipes out: as liquidation.) Or: Aufklärung “schneidet das
Inkommensurable weg” (cuts away the incommensurable). Max Horkheimer and
Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente, in Adorno,
Gesammelte Schriften (1944; Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), 3:28–29.
44
De Saussure assumed hidden elements in given texts on the submorphemic level
that add up to morphemes, whereas Herder produced linguistic entities on the sub-
syntactic level that contribute at the same time to the constitution of a new semantic
and discursive isotopy.
45
Michael N. Forster renders our sample text accurately in his edition: Johann
Gottfried von Herder, Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans. Michael N. Forster
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002), 29–30. The bilingual French-German edition
by Max Rouché reproduces the emphases in the German text but not in the French
translation: J. G. Herder, Une autre philosophie de l’histoire [. . .] Auch eine Phi-
losophie der Geschichte, trans. Max Rouché (1964; Paris: Aubier, 1992), 166–68. The
Portuguese translation by José M. Justo ignores almost all of the emphases: Johann
Gottfried Herder, Também uma filosofia da história para a formação da humanidade
[. . .], trans. José M. Justo (Lisbon: Antígona, 1995), 34–35. The German editions
in FA 4 and SWS 5 are reliable in this respect, whereas Johann Gottfried Herder,
Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit, ed. Hans Dietrich
Irmscher (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1990) is not.
15: Herder as Critical Contemporary
Robert E. Norton
T O AN EXTRAORDINARY and perhaps even singular degree, Herder’s life

and work are defined by the practice, function, and meaning of
criticism. Despite the numerous other roles he occupied — and there were
many: theologian, philosopher, linguist, historian, ethnographer, to name
only a few — it was in his activity as a critic that Herder revealed his great-
est strengths and arguably produced his most lasting achievements. Indeed,
one might reasonably argue that Herder approached virtually everything
he did as a critic, that his thinking and expression as a whole are a reflec-
tion or product of a fundamentally critical habit of mind. It was so much
a part of his basic constitution that even Herder’s personal relationships
were inevitably affected by it, often negatively. Although Herder could be,
and often was, generous, kind, and helpful to those around him, he was
also capable of meting out biting sarcasm and caustic humor to an equal
degree. Goethe, who first met Herder in Strasbourg in 1770 and was in-
strumental in bringing him to Weimar six years later, was often on the
receiving end of Herder’s prickliness, and once remarked in a private con-
versation many years after his death that “je mehr man Herdern geliebt, je
mehr habe man sich von ihm entfernt, entfernt halten müssen, um ihn
1
nicht totzuschlagen” (the more one loved Herder, the more one had to
move away from him and keep one’s distance, in order not to strike him
dead). More diplomatically, in a written reminiscence of his friend, Goethe
pointed to the inner contradictions that lay at the heart of Herder’s
personality:
Herder war von Natur weich und zart, sein Streben mächtig und groß.
Er mochte daher wirken oder gegenwirken, so geschah es immer mit
einer gewissen Hast und Ungeduld; sodann war er mehr von
dialektischem als constructivem Geiste. Daher der beständige ἓτερος
λόγος gegen alles, was man vorbrachte. Ja, er konnte einen bitter
auslachen, wenn man etwas mit Überzeugung wiederholte, welches er
etwas kurz vorher als seine eigene Meinung gelehrt und mitgetheilt
2
hatte.
[Herder was by nature soft and tender, his striving mighty and great.
So whether he wanted to do something positive or work against some-
352 ♦ ROBERT E. NORTON
thing, it occurred with a certain haste and impatience; in that way he

was more of a dialectical than a constructive spirit. Therefore the con-
stant ἓτερος λόγος against everything that one proposed. Yes, he could
ridicule one bitterly if one repeated something with conviction that he
had taught and communicated shortly before.]
Over the nearly three decades that Herder spent in Weimar, he managed
to hurt, offend, and alienate almost everyone in that small, self-contained
world. It is true that Herder was plagued all his life by a variety of health
problems, including but not limited to liver and gall bladder disease, gout,
rheumatism, hemorrhoids, chronic constipation, frequent bronchial infec-
3
tions, as well as a chronic condition arising from a blocked lachrymal duct.
And while such afflictions would make anyone grumpy, Herder repeatedly
displayed an aggressiveness and hostility to those closest to him that even
they could not bear. Indeed, six months before Herder died in December
of 1803, he so wounded Goethe with a cutting remark about his son in
connection with his new play Die natürliche Tochter that Goethe refused to
4
see him again.
This tendency, expressed both in Herder’s temperament and in his
writings, might also partly explain why he has been misunderstood, ignored
or forgotten since even before his death — but only partly. One banal but
important reason for his neglect in the English-speaking world is the dearth
of translations of Herder’s works. The critical edition of Herder’s works in
German comes to thirty-three volumes and there are in addition ten vol-
5
umes of letters. Only a small fraction of his writings exists in English.
Compounding the difficulty of sheer volume is that Herder was not a
gifted writer: he was immensely learned, perceptive, impassioned, and tire-
6
lessly industrious, but his writing often lacks clarity, precision, and grace.
In addition, a large number of his works remained in some fashion un-
finished or incomplete — as indicated by the inclusion of the designations
“Fragment,” “Torso,” “Outline,” etc. in many of their titles — and few of
them achieved the closed and rounded form we normally expect in a work
we consider a classic text. And, precisely because many of Herder’s writ-
ings are, in one form or another, works of criticism and are thus a re-
sponse to the works or ideas of others, they frequently presuppose a great
deal of familiarity with the context in which they were written. Thus even
for those who know some German, reading Herder is a formidable task
indeed, and it is no wonder that many have turned to expert guides — the
present volume is a symptom of that need — to help them make sense of
this protean and refractory thinker.
But the biggest obstacle in the Anglo-American realm to an adequate
appreciation of Herder and his significance has been the gross distortions
promulgated by Isaiah Berlin, who is still, more than a decade after his
7
death, the most influential expositor of Herder’s ideas in English. Ironic-
HERDER AS CRITICAL CONTEMPORARY ♦ 353
ally, as the title of one of his books about Herder indicates — Three Critics
of the Enlightenment (the other two critics are Vico and Hamann) — Berlin
recognized the characteristic tenor of Herder’s thought, but he mistook its
direction. “Herder,” Berlin assures us, “was, all his life, a sharp and re-
8
morseless critic of the Encyclopaedists” It would exceed the limits of this
essay to show how this misreading of Herder as an opponent, or critic, of
the Enlightenment first arose and how it made its way into the English-
speaking academic and intellectual mainstream. Suffice it to say here that
Herder’s ostensible opposition to the values of the Enlightenment was in
reality an ideologically driven interpretive construct created at the turn of
the twentieth century by conservative and nationalist German scholars in-
tent on eliminating the political legacy of the Enlightenment, particularly
in its French guise — the so-called “ideas of 1789”—from German public
9
and intellectual life. This falsification has had dire consequences: it has as-
sociated Herder with everything from the rise of nationalism in the nine-
teenth century to the radical rejection of Western civilization as a whole,
even linking Herder’s name most recently with the advent of modern
10
militant Islamists. The image of Herder that makes such a juxtaposition
possible is the product of a historiographical myth, but it is a myth that
has proved to be astonishingly potent and long-lived.
In reality, far from disagreeing with the principal ideas of the Enlight-
enment, Herder in fact spent his life arguing for their value and necessity
in a country — and a time — he thought sorely lacked them. As early as
1769, in his autobiographical Journal meiner Reise, chronicling his trip to
France, he envisioned a “Jahrbuch der Schriften für die Menschheit,” call-
ing it “ein grosser Plan! ein wichtiges Werk!” that would offer “nur das,
was für die Menschheit unmittelbar ist; sie aufklären hilft; sie zu einer
neuen Höhe erhebt, sie zu einer gewissen neuen Seite verlenkt; sie in
einem neuen Licht zeigt.” (A great plan! an important work! [that would
offer] only that which is immediate to mankind; helps to enlighten it; raises
it to a new height, steers it in a certain new direction; shows it in a new
11
light.) As Herder elaborates this “plan” further, it becomes clear that he
already has in mind a conception of humanity that embraces, but simulta-
neously transcends national and confessional borders, indeed encompasses
both civilized and “primitive” peoples within the broad family of man:
Welch ein Großes Thema, zu zeigen, daß man, um zu seyn, was man
seyn soll, weder Jude, noch Araber, noch Grieche, noch Wilder, noch
Märtrer, noch Wallfahrter seyn müsse; sondern eben der aufgeklärte,
unterrichtete, feine, vernünftige, gebildete, Tugendhafte, geniessende
12
Mensch, den Gott auf der Stuffe unsrer Cultur fodert.
[What a great subject, to show that a person, in order to be what a
person should be, need neither be Jew nor Arab nor Greek nor savage
nor martyr nor pilgrim, but instead just the enlightened, trained, re-
fined, reasonable, educated, virtuous, enjoying human being that God
demands at the level of our culture.]
Whatever else these words convey, they do not betray a “critic of the
Enlightenment,” but just the opposite.
Yet Herder was critical of a great many things. Indeed, he considered
the critical faculty — its development, refinement, and constant applica-
tion to all aspects of thought and experience — to be essential to the “great
plan” and “important work” of the Enlightenment. Even more, it was
generally agreed that without criticism Enlightenment is meaningless, as
implied by the first sentence of the famous essay by Immanuel Kant, “Was
ist Aufklärung?” There, Kant states that Enlightenment occurs when man
abandons his “selbst verschuldete Unmündigkeit” (self-imposed immatur-
ity) and gains the courage to make use of “seines Verstandes ohne Leitung
13
eines anderen” (of his understanding without the direction of another).
And this activity, which Kant says initiates Enlightenment — thinking inde-
pendently, forgoing unquestioning reliance on external authority, sub-
mitting everything to the tribunal of one’s own judgment — is also the
essence of the critical act. In fact, since Enlightenment was the goal to be
attained at some point in the future but not a description of contem-
porary reality, the Age of Enlightenment might be more aptly named the
Age of Criticism.
But just as Herder himself also emphasized, “alle Aufklärung ist nie
Zweck, sondern immer Mittel” (enlightenment is never the purpose, but
14
instead always the means), so too he viewed criticism merely as a means
or tool of the Enlightenment, an expression of independent understand-
ing at work, and not simply an end in itself. As a fervent adherent to the
Enlightenment, Herder was always, perhaps principally, concerned with the
moral, and not just intellectual, improvement of humanity. Criticism, for
Herder, thus took on the value of an intellectual and moral duty: to criti-
cize meant to search actively for the truth, and without truth there could
be no real or lasting virtue.
“Criticism” can, and does, of course, mean a number of things, and
perhaps it is best to define our terms before continuing. The word derives
from the Greek κρινειν, to discern or judge, and its narrow application to
the practice of carefully evaluating and analyzing works of literature and art
15
began in antiquity as well. However, the broader, less formal (and usu-
ally negative) meaning of tending to find faults and imperfections in things
or other people plays a different, but no less important role in under-
standing Herder’s activity as a “critic.” From the beginning of his career,
when he published the Über die neuere deutsche Literatur. Fragmente (On
Recent German Literature. Fragments, 1766–67), to the end, when he
engaged in an extended and bitter polemic with Kant, his former teacher,
Herder’s preferred mode of engaging with the world was “critical” in both
of these broad senses of the word.
In order to show how this activity expressed itself over the course of
his career, one may usefully organize Herder’s intellectual life, and thus his
critical labors, in three principal phases: the first might be called the theo-
retical phase, in which he drew the broad contours of what became his
lasting preoccupations; the second was what might be labeled a period of
application and synthesis of the many plans he rapidly sketched out in the
first; and in the third, least successful phase, Herder’s critical powers be-
came increasingly trained on the philosophy of his erstwhile teacher, now
bitter enemy, Kant.
I. Making Plans for the Future

Appropriately enough, Herder’s very first publication was, in the narrow
sense, a work of criticism: in 1764, when he was twenty years old, he pub-
lished a book review in the Königsbergsche Gelehrten Zeitungen. But it al-
ready showed unusual promise. In the words of Herder’s biographer
Rudolf Haym, “so kündigte diese erste kritische Leistung sofort den ein-
sichtigen, feinfühlenden, in die Seele blickenden Beurtheiler — den ge-
borenen Aesthetiker und Litteraturhistoriker an” (thus this first critical
achievement announced immediately the insightful, sensitive judge who
16
looks into the soul — the born aesthetician and literary historian). Sig-
nificantly, Herder’s points of departure as an intellectual are literature and
its medium, language. Not surprisingly, Herder’s first book also grew out
of his preoccupation with the same concerns, and is itself a reflection or
outgrowth of the critical enterprise as a whole. Über die neuere deutsche
Literatur. Fragmente was conceived in direct response to the Briefe, die
neueste Literatur betreffend, which had been initiated by Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing and continued by Moses Mendelssohn and Friedrich Nicolai. Wulf
Koepke calls Herder’s effort “something like a review on reviews, a com-
17
mentary on commentaries,” and given the vigor with which Herder ex-
pressed some of his views, it is perhaps understandable that he published
the book anonymously. Rudolf Haym says that Herder’s aim was to use
the Fragmente to erect an “Ideal der wahren Kritik” (ideal of true criti-
cism). Concretely, this means that the critic’s task is not to judge books,
but the spirit (Geist) of the author and, even more important, of the time
18
and society in which the work was created. Most important, Herder felt,
was that the critic should be led by the work and not impose his own
norms or values onto it, he must “place himself into the intellectual sphere
of his author and read out of his spirit”; he should read “nicht als Despot,
sondern als Freund und Gehülfe des Verfassers,” indeed he should seek to
become “ein Pygmalion seines Autors.” (not as a despot, but instead as a

19
friend and helpmeet of the author . . . a Pygmalion of his author). These
precepts then became guiding principles not just in Herder’s literary criti-
cism, but in his philosophical and historical labors as well.
Two principal themes dominate the Fragmente, and indeed would pre-
occupy Herder for several years to come: the nature, function, and role of
language in general and as the basis and medium of literature, and the
relationship between German literature and foreign literatures that might
20
serve as models for German writers. But Herder always sees his task as
critic in educative, national-pedagogical terms. As he writes at one point
in the Fragmente:
Nicht um meine Sprache zu verlernen, lerne ich andre Sprachen, nicht
um die Sitten meiner Erziehung umzutauschen, reise ich unter fremde
Völker; nicht um das Bürgerrecht meines Vaterlandes zu verlieren,
werde ich ein naturalisirter Fremder: denn sonst verliere ich mehr, als
ich gewinne. Sondern ich gehe blos durch fremde Gärten, um für
meine Sprache, als eine Verlobte meiner Denkart, Blumen zu holen:
ich sehe Fremde Sitten, um die meinigen, wie Früchte, die eine fremde
21
Sonne gereift hat, dem Genius meines Vaterlandes zu opfern.
[I don’t learn other languages in order to lose my own, don’t travel
among foreign peoples in order to exchange the customs I was
brought up with; I don’t become a naturalized foreigner in order to
lose my citizenship in my fatherland: for otherwise I lose more than I
gain. Instead I walk through foreign gardens only in order to gather
flowers, as one betrothed to my way of thinking, for my language: I
observe foreign customs in order to be able to sacrifice my own to the
genius of my fatherland, like fruits that have been ripened by a foreign
sun.]
Even more explicitly, Herder wrote in the introduction to the Fragmente
that true criticism should seek to be “eine Stimme Patriotischer Weisheit,
die Verbesserin des Volkes” (a voice of patriotic wisdom, the benefactress
22
of the people). Remarkably, Herder also sketched out here, in his earliest
sizable publication, the scope and range of his subsequent intellectual
career. Herder planned to divide the Fragmente into four distinct parts,
each one treating one of the “four provinces of literature”: “Language,
aesthetics, history and philosophy . . . which reinforce each other mutu-
23
ally, and which are all but inseparable.”
Herder’s next major work is no less a work of practical criticism, as
even its rather cumbersome title announces: Kritische Wälder: Oder Be-
trachtungen die Wißenschaft und Kunst des Schönen betreffend nach
Maßgabe neuerer Schriften (Critical Forests, Or Observations on the Sci-
ence and Art of the Beautiful with Reference to Recent Writings). There
24
are four parts, or “Wäldchen,” to the Kritische Wälder and in each one
Herder develops his own ideas in response to those laid forth in the texts
he critically analyzes. The Kritische Wälder represent Herder’s most exten-
sive engagement with contemporary aesthetic theory, complemented later
only by his treatise on sculpture, Plastik, which appeared in 1778, and
Kalligone, his point-by-point response to Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft,
which was published in 1800. Unfortunately, only the first “Wäldchen,”
which is devoted to an examination of Lessing’s Laokoon, and the fourth,
which was published posthumously, still reward a patient reading. The
middle two “Wäldchen” discuss and demolish, at tedious length, the the-
ories of Christian Adolf Klotz, a now forgotten professor of classics at the
University of Halle. As always, however, Herder does manage to develop
a positive argument while engaging in what would otherwise be an es-
sentially negative, or at least derivative, critical enterprise. But what is per-
haps most remarkable about all four of the Kritische Wälder, however, is
not so much what Herder positively achieves in them; rather, it is the very
fact that he invested so much importance in aesthetics itself as an avenue
for understanding essential aspects of human experience. (See the essay by
Stefan Greif in this volume.) Aesthetics, as an independent philosophical
discipline, had come into being only a decade earlier, created by the sys-
tematic philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. In essence, Baumgar-
ten wanted to complement the study of logic, which analyzed knowledge
we gain through abstract reasoning, with a parallel study of the knowl-
edge we acquire through the senses. Without going into the particulars of
Baumgarten’s theory, or indeed of Herder’s discussion of it, what is truly
original in Herder’s approach is that, for the first time, he proposed that
in addition to merely providing us with pleasure and instruction, works of
art could yield important information about the culture and historical
period in which they were created.
The work for which Herder is now perhaps best known, the Abhand-
lung über den Ursprung der Sprache (Treatise on the Origin of Language),
which he wrote in 1770 in response to a prize contest sponsored by the
Prussian Academy of Sciences, is also in its conception and execution a
vehemently critical essay. (See the essay by Jürgen Trabant in this vol-
ume.) To make his own case, Herder considers and then finds wanting
the proposals on the origin of language put forth by some of the leading
thinkers of his day, principally the French philosophers Maupertuis and
Condillac. This fact has led some later commentators to see further evi-
dence of Herder’s anti-Enlightenment or anti-French attitude in the
Abhandlung. But Herder’s insistence on one of the central points of his
argument — that language and reason are inseparably linked, that one
without the other is not possible — places him squarely within main-
stream Enlightenment thinking. Indeed, Herder himself acknowledged
that it was not so much the substance of his ideas that was new, but rather
25
the way he expressed them. And that may be the truly significant achieve-
ment of the essay: that it brought contemporary thinking on an important
subject to the attention of a broader audience in Germany.
But it was the work Herder that wrote in 1772 and 1773 — and which
again, given its strong polemics, he published anonymously — that cemen-
ted his reputation as a critic of his own time. Auch eine Philosophie der Ge-
schichte zur Bildung der Menschheit (Another Philosophy of History for the
Education of Humankind) has also been frequently misunderstood. It is in
many respects a blistering indictment of the hypocrisy, blindness, dupli-
city, and cruelty that Herder saw in many of his contemporaries. But it is
not, as is frequently imagined, a wholesale condemnation of his age or the
26
ostensibly “rationalistischen Zeitgeist” (rationalistic spirit of the times). It
is, rather, an impassioned expression of Herder’s frustration and bitterness
over the obvious fact that the most important intellectual, social, and po-
litical movement of his time — namely, the Enlightenment — had failed to
live up to its own ideals. But it does not represent a rejection or even a
fundamental doubting of those ideals themselves. Instead, it is a vigorous
and principled endorsement of them sent out to a world that had not
sufficiently heeded them.
On the one hand, Herder clearly recognized and lauded the undeni-
able accomplishments of his time:
Ich sehe alles Grosse, Schöne, und Einzige unsres Jahrhunderts ein, und
habe es bei allem Tadel immer zum Grunde behalten Philosophie! aus-
gebreitete Helle! Mechanische Fertigkeit und Leichtigkeit um Erstaunen!
27
Mildheit!
[I look at all the great, beautiful, and unique things of our century,
and along with all censure I have always held as foundation philosophy!
unfolded brightness! Astonishing mechanical skill and ease! Mildness!]
Yet, on the other hand, he also becomes bitingly ironic when he notes
how often people attempt to cloak greed, religious fanaticism, and the raw
hunger for power in noble ideals. Here Herder uses this insight to make
what is in essence an anti-colonialist (as well as anti-Papist) argument:
Wo kommen nicht Europäische Kolonien hin, und werden hin-
kommen! Überall werden die Wilden, je mehr sie unsern Brandtwein
und Üppigkeit liebgewinnen, auch unsrer Bekehrung reif! Nähern sich,
zumal durch Brandtwein und Üppigkeit, überall unsrer Kultur —
werden bald, hilf Gott! alle Menschen wie wir seyn! gute, starke, glück-
liche Menschen!
Handel und Pabstthum, wie viel habt ihr schon zu diesem grossen
Geschäfte beigetragen! Spanier, Jesuiten und Holländer: ihr Mensch-
freundlichen, uneigennützigen, edlen und Tugendhaften Nationen!

wie viel hat euch in allen Welttheilen, die Bildung der Menschheit nicht
28
schon zu danken?
[Where are European colonies not cropping up, and where won’t they?
Everywhere the savages, the more they learn to love our alcohol and
our ease of life, will become ripe for our conversion! Will come closer,
again through alcohol and ease, to our culture — all people will soon,
help us God, be like us! good, strong, happy people!
Trade and the papacy, how much you have already contributed to
this great business! Spaniards, Jesuits, and Hollanders: you philan-
thropic, unselfish, honorable and virtuous nations! doesn’t the ad-
vancement of mankind have you to thank in all parts of the world?]
Throughout Auch eine Philosophie, Herder is concerned with pointing out
the chasm that still existed not just between the high hopes and the hard
realities of his own time, but also between what people say and what they
actually do, between empty words and concrete deeds:
Statt grober, unmenschlich grausamer Tollheit könnten freilich Krank-
heiten herrschen, die eben so drückend und schädlicher sind, weil sie
schleichen; gepriesen und nicht erkannt werden, und bis Mark und Bein
in die Seele freßen. Das allgemeine Kleid, von Philosophie und Men-
schenliebe kann Unterdrückungen verbergen, Eingriffe in die wahre,
Persönliche Menschen- und Landes-, Bürger- und Völkerfreiheit, wie
Cäsar Borgia sie nur wünschte: alle das den angenommenen Grund-
sätzen des Jahrhunderts gemäß mit einem Anstande von Tugend, Weis-
heit, Menschenliebe und Völkervorsorge: da’s also geschehen kann und
29
fast muß — Lobredner dieser Hüllen seyn, als ob sie Thaten wären.
[Instead of crude, inhumanly cruel madness, diseases could rule that
are just as oppressive and even more damaging, because they are creep-
ing; praised and not recognized, and devour the soul to marrow and
bone. The general appearance of philosophy and love of mankind can
hide oppression, attacks on the true personal freedom of people and
countries, citizens and nations, like Caesar Borgia only dreamed of: all
of that in line with the accepted foundations of the century with a sem-
blance of virtue, wisdom, love of mankind, and concern for nations: since
it therefore can happen and almost has to — those who praise these
pretexts do so as if they were deeds.]
Again, the argument here is sophisticated, if rendered somewhat obscure
by Herder’s indirect manner of expression (made perhaps necessary since
this passage also contains an only slightly veiled attack on the Prussian
king, Frederick II, whose Antimachiavelli of 1740 Herder specifically, and
negatively, mentions). But he is essentially pointing out the insidious na-
ture of propaganda, which corrupts not just language but also thought and
society as a whole by disguising its actions with words that mean some-
thing else or the very opposite of what is being said. Thus, wars can be
launched in the name of peace, or the enslavement of peoples enacted in
the name of liberation. But far from condemning the principles of “virtue,
wisdom, love of mankind,” Herder is defending them from their most dan-
gerous foes: deception, deceit, and cynicism. Thus, even when Herder is
most scathing in his criticism of his contemporaries, it is not because he
thinks they are too enlightened; it is because they are not enlightened
enough. It is a message Herder sent to his contemporaries all his life and
one that continues to have relevance today.
II. Works and Days

As I have suggested, one might describe the second, central phase of
Herder’s activity as one of synthesis and consolidation, a period in which
he tried to fulfill some of the various goals he had set for himself as a young
man. He never abandoned the “four provinces” he had originally identi-
fied as belonging to “literature” broadly conceived. But he realized that
each one of these provinces was vast and almost infinitely complex, that
each one posed enormous historical and systematic challenges, and that
each required intensive, separate study. Attempting to meet those chal-
lenges occupied Herder for the better part of two decades.
Given the nature of this more constructive activity, it would seem
reasonable that the “critical” aspect of Herder’s work might recede into
the background somewhat. But the critical spirit was so much a part of his
character, and its purpose so much a part of his conception of himself as
public intellectual, that its presence is felt even if it is in the more positive
guise of the choices he made in the subjects he treated. That is, by de-
voting his efforts to defining “Humanität” and showing how it could be
achieved and maintained, Herder was also arguing that it was something
that once gained, could also be lost.
Many of the works Herder wrote during the 1770s were essays promp-
ted, like the Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache, by prize contests
sponsored by various academies, but Herder always approached them in
eminently recognizable fashion by considering the social, political, and
moral consequences of the questions raised. He did so in 1773 in Ursachen
des gesunkenen Geschmacks bei den verschiedenen Völkern, da er geblühet
(Causes of Sunken Taste of the Different Nations, Where It Once Flou-
rished), and five years later in Ueber die Würkung der Dichtkunst auf die
Sitten der Völker in alten und neuen Zeiten (On the Effect of Poetry on
the Customs of Peoples in Ancient and Recent Times). In 1779 he wrote
Ueber den Einfluß der schönen in die höhern Wissenschaften (On the Influ-
ence of the Beautiful in the higher Fields of Knowledge) and in the fol-
lowing year Vom Einfluß der Regierung auf die Wissenschaften, und der
Wissenschaften auf die Regierung (Of the Influence of the Government on
Scholarship, and of Scholarship on the Government). Common to all is
Herder’s belief that a society is an integrated whole and that each part of
that society has a share in, and a responsibility toward, the rest.
Out of this belief arose what became Herder’s most ambitious and
arguably his most important book. The Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte
der Menschheit (Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Humankind),
which appeared between 1784 to 1791 — almost contemporaneous with
the publication of Kant’s three Kritiken — are filled with, indeed are an
expression of, Herder’s principled historical optimism in the face of all evi-
dence that such hope may be misplaced or in vain. One of Herder’s aims
in the Ideen, that is, was to show “daß mit dem Wachsthum wahrer Hu-
manität auch der zerstörenden Dämonen des Menschengeschlechts wirklich
weniger geworden sei; und zwar nach den innern Naturgesetzen einer sich
30
aufklärenden Vernunft und Staatskunst” (that with the growth of true
humanity the destructive demon of the human race has also diminished;
and indeed according to the natural laws of a reason and statecraft that
are becoming enlightened). It is a tremendous undertaking — Herder was
attempting no less than a complete description of the biological, geo-
graphical, historical, social, political, and even artistic experiences of hu-
manity as a whole — and it was impossible for one person to manage,
much less complete, such a task. But it was a burden Herder assumed in
large part because of his faith in the utility of the knowledge his book
might impart to its readers, that it might contribute to the growth of “true
humanity,” and because he truly believed that knowledge could promote
virtue and prevent vice. As it turned out, despite the warm reception the
Ideen enjoyed from many quarters — Goethe himself praised the book
effusively in his Italienische Reise and acknowledged its influence on his
31
own morphological studies — it failed to have the resonance and effect
he had wished for. It was and is admired by those who have actually read
it, but their number always was and remains disappointingly small.
Despite his many other responsibilities and activities — not to men-
tion his ongoing health problems and professional frustrations — Herder
remained tireless in elaborating and refining his vision of the nature, task,
and goal of humanity. On 22 May 1792, Herder wrote to his friend
Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim: “Ich gehe jetzt in Gedanken mit Briefen,
die Fortschritte der Humanität betreffend, oder Humanistischen Briefen,
32
um, in die ich das Beste das ich in Herz u. Seele trage, zu legen gedenke.”
(I have the Letters on the Advancement of Humanity, or Humanistic Let-
ters, on my mind, in which I aim to include the best that I carry in my
heart and soul.) The argument could be made that this is indeed the work
into which Herder poured his best blood. At the center of the letters’
concerns was Herder’s unending interest in the problem of improving the

human condition, which rested on his belief that betterment was not just
desirable but also possible. As he wrote, “die Perfectibilität ist also keine
Täuschung; sie ist Mittel und Endzweck zu Ausbildung alles dessen, was
33
der Charakter unsres Geschlechts Humanität verlanget und gewähret”
(perfectibility is therefore no illusion; it is means and ends for the develop-
ment of all that which the character of our race’s humanity requires and
allows). But Herder was not naïve, and always recognized how far hu-
manity as a whole still was, and was likely to remain, from attaining that
final goal. Herder was always clear-sighted and realistic when it came to
assessing both the progress made so far in advancing the human condition
and the prospects for future improvements:
Der Name Menschenrechte kann ohne Menschenpflichten nicht genannt
werden; beide beziehen sich auf einander, und für beide suchen wir
Ein Wort.
So auch Menschenwürde und Menschenliebe. Das Menschenge-
schlecht, wie es jetzt ist und wahrscheinlich lange noch seyn wird, hat
seinem größesten Theil nach keine Würde; man darf es eher bemit-
leiden, als verehren. Es soll aber zum Charakter seines Geschlechts,
mithin auch zu dessen Werth und Würde gebildet werden. Das schöne
Wort Menschenliebe ist so trivial worden, daß man meistens Menschen
liebt, um keinen unter den Menschen wirksam zu lieben. Alle diese
Worte enthalten Theilbegriffe unseres Zwecks, den wir gern mit
Einem Ausdruck bezeichnen möchten.
Also wollen wir bei dem Wort Humanität bleiben, an welches
unter Alten und Neuern die besten Schriftsteller so würdige Begriffe
geknüpft haben. Humanität ist der Charakter unsres Geschlechts; er ist
uns aber nur in Anlagen angebohren, und muß uns eigentlich ange-
bildet werden. Wir bringen ihn nicht fertig auf die Welt mit; auf der
Welt aber soll er das Ziel unsres Bestrebens, die Summe unsrer
Uebungen, unser Werth seyn: denn eine Angelität im Menschen
kennen wir nicht, und wenn der Dämon, der uns regiert, kein huma-
ner Dämon ist, werden wir Plagegeister der Menschen. Das Göttliche
in unsrem Geschlecht ist also Bildung zur Humanität; alle großen und
guten Menschen, Gesetzgeber, Erfinder, Philosophen, Dichter, Künst-
ler, jeder edle Mensch in seinem Stande, bei der Erziehung seiner
Kinder, bei der Beobachtung seiner Pflichten, durch Beispiel, Werk,
Institut und Lehre hat dazu mitgeholfen. Humanität ist der Schatz
und die Ausbeute aller menschlichen Bemühungen, gleichsam die
Kunst unsres Geschlechts. Die Bildung zu ihr ist ein Werk, das unab-
läßig fortgesetzt werden muß; oder wir sinken, höhere und niedere
34
Stände, zur rohen Thierheit, zur Brutalität zurück.
[The term human rights cannot be uttered without that of human

responsibilities; each seeks the other, and for both we seek after one
word.
So it is also with human dignity and love of mankind. The human
race, as it now is and probably will yet long be, has for the greatest
part no dignity; one may sooner pity it than honor it. But it should be
developed into the character of its race, also to its worth and dignity.
The beautiful word love of mankind has become so trivial that one
mostly loves mankind in order effectively to love no one among men.
All these words contain partial concepts of our goal, which we would
like to designate with one expression.
Thus we prefer to remain with the word humanity, to which the
best writers among ancients and moderns have connected such worthy
concepts. Humanity is the character of our race; it is however only
born to us as an aptitude, and actually has to be developed in us. We
don’t bring it into the world in finished form; but it should be the
goal of our striving in the world, the sum of our practice, our worth:
for the quality of angels is unknown in the human being, and when
the demon that rules us is no humane demon, we become tormentors
of human beings. The divine in our race is therefore development to-
ward humanity; all great and good human beings, lawmakers, inven-
tors, philosophers, poets, artists, every noble human being of every
class, through the raising of their children, through the observation of
their duties, through example, works, institutions, and teaching, have
contributed to it. Humanity is the treasure and the yield of all human
efforts, the art of our race, so to speak. The development toward it is
an effort that must be continued unflaggingly; or we will sink back,
higher and lower classes together, into raw animality, into brutality.]
Humanity is both an innate capacity and an eternal goal, neither fully
present at birth nor ever fully achieved, and as such both a gift and a
promise. That is why Herder always insists on the phrase “Bildung zur
Humanität,” stressing that humanity in his definition is a process as well
as a quality, and that it must always be actively sought and maintained.
Thus even in his most optimistic writings, Herder never fails to see that a
deep chasm existed between the desired outcome of universal humanity
and the present state of affairs, or that a return to viciousness and lawless-
ness was a constant danger that, without vigilance, would threaten the ad-
vances in humanity that had already been achieved.
Herder’s response to the French Revolution entirely reflects these
concerns. As someone who had already spent two decades arguing for the
need to improve humanity, he initially welcomed the revolution as an op-
portunity to realize some of those ambitions. But as the revolution degen-
erated into violence and terror, Herder decried the “Zeichen der Barbarei,
einer frechen Macht, einer tollen Willkür,” preferring instead a “fort-

35
gehende, natürliche, vernünftige Evolution der Dinge” (signs of barbar-
ianism, an impudent power, a wild arbitrariness; continuing, natural,
reasonable evolution of things). For Herder, then, the way to achieve liber-
ty, equality, and fraternity — or, to use Herder’s word, “Humanität” —
was not through revolution, but by evolution.
III. Nemesis
Toward the end of his life, Herder felt increasingly estranged from his
own time and from the endeavors of his contemporaries. Despite the many
claims that have been subsequently made about Herder’s influence on
Romanticism, Herder himself saw no such connection. In 1799, he wrote
to his friend Johann Joachim Eschenburg that “Wir gehören, dünkt mich,
noch zu Einer Zeit, in Eine Welt u. Religion des Geschmacks u. der
36
Literatur; die neue Welt ist eine andre” (We still belong, it seems to me,
to a time, in a world and religion of taste and literature; the new world is
a different one). Eschenburg agreed, saying: “Auch mir ist es ein ange-
nehmer Gedanke, daß wir noch zu einer Zeit und Denkart gehören; und
ich fühl’ es sehr lebhaft, daß die jetzige eine andere ist [. . .] Gut, daß sich
37
die Älteren immer fester aneinanderschließen” (To me too it is a wel-
come thought that we still belong to [another] time and way of thinking;
and I feel it very vividly that the present one is different . . . Good, that
the older ones close ranks more and more).
But it was Herder’s extended quarrel with Kant that both oversha-
dowed his previous achievements and, given the undiminished fame and
respect Kant has enjoyed since his death in 1804, has inevitably tarnished
Herder’s reputation.
It should have been otherwise. As late as 1795, in one of his Briefe zu
Beförderung der Humanität (Letters for the Advancement of Humanity)
he still wrote warmly, even affectionately, of Kant.
Ich habe das Glück genoßen, einen Philosophen zu kennen, der mein
Lehrer war. Er in seinen blühendsten Jahren hatte die fröhliche
Munterkeit eines Jünglings, die, wie ich glaube, ihn auch in sein
greisestes Alter begleitet. Seine offne, zum Denken gebauete Stirn war
ein Sitz unzerstörbarer Heiterkeit und Freude; die Gedankenreichste
Rede floß von seinen Lippen; Scherz und Witz und Laune standen
ihm zu Gebot, und sein lehrender Vortrag war der unterhaltendste
Umgang. [. . .] Er munterte auf, und zwang angenehm zum Selbst-
denken; Despostismus war seinem Gemüthe fremde. Dieser Mann, den
ich mit größester Dankbarkeit und Hochachtung nenne, ist Immanuel
38
Kant; sein Bild steht angenehm vor mir.
[I have enjoyed the happiness to know a philosopher, who was my

teacher. He, in his most blooming years, had the gay cheerfulness of a
youngster, which, as I believe, accompanied him also in his last years.
His open forehead, which was built for thought, was a seat of in-
destructible merriment and joy; the most thought-rich words flowed
from his lips; jokes and wit and whimsy stood at his disposal, and his
teaching lectures were the most entertaining to witness. [. . .] He gave
encouragement, and forced one agreeably to think for one’s self; des-
potism was foreign to his disposition. This man, whom I name with
the greatest thankfulness and respect, is Immanuel Kant; his image
stands pleasingly before me.]
In 1784, the first volume of Herder’s magnum opus appeared, the
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. A year later, Kant ano-
nymously published a devastating review of the work in the Allgemeine
Literaturzeitung (Jena), in which Kant rejected Herder’s claim to be
offering a “Philosophie der Geschichte,” calling it instead “Metaphysik, ja
sogar sehr dogmatische, so sehr sie auch unser Schriftsteller, weil es die
Mode so will, von sich ablehnt” (philosophy of history . . . metaphysics,
yes even a dogmatic one, as much as our author rejects such, because it is
the fashion). No less categorical was Kant’s dismissal of Herder’s concep-
tion of evolutionary progress toward increased humanity, which Kant
judged “zur blos speculativen Philosophie gehört, darin sie denn auch,
wenn sie Eingang fände, große Verwüstungen unter den angenommenen
39
Begriffen anrichten würde” (belongs only to speculative philosophy, in
which it then also, if it became established, would cause great devastation
among accepted concepts).
Once Herder found out who the author was, he was devastated — and
angry. Shortly after the review appeared, he wrote to Hamann, who shared
his misgivings about Kant’s critical enterprise, saying he was surprised to
read
eine Recension der Ideen, so hämisch u. verdrehend u. metaphysisch
u. ganz außer dem Geist des Buches von Anfang bis zu Ende, daß ich
erstaunte, aber an nichts weniger dachte, als daß Kant, mein Lehrer, u.
den ich nie wißentlich mit etwas beleidigt habe, eines so niederträch-
tigen Werks fähig sein könne [. . .] Ich sann hin u. her, wer in
Deutschland so ganz auß dem Horizont Deutschlands u. des Buchs
selbst schreiben könne; bis endlich einer dem andern ins Ohr raunt u.
es jetzt laut gesagt wird: es ist der große Metaphysicus Kant zu Königs-
berg in Preußen. [. . .] es soll mir herzlich lieb seyn, wenn ich sein Idol
der Vernunft zurückschauern mache oder verwüste. Wie ich von
mehrern fremden Orten höre, hat die Recension kein Glück gemacht:
sondern ist mit einer Verwundrung aufgenommen, die H. Kant auch
ein Zurückschaudern der Vernunft nennen wird. Seine letzten Präcep-
torlichen Lehren an mich sind ganz unanständig: ich bin 40. Jahr alt
u. sitze nicht mehr auf seinen metaphysischen Schulbänken. Das Ge-
schwür sitzt aber darinn, daß ich dem Hrn. Professor nicht in seinem
Schlendrian von Wortgaukeleien gefolgt bin, daher er sich über meine
40
Eigenthümlichkeit u. unmäßiges Genie so albern beschweret.
[a review of the Ideas so malicious and distorting and metaphysical and
completely out of the spirit of the book from beginning to end that I
was astonished, but thought least of all things that Kant, my teacher,
and whom I never knowingly insulted, could be capable of such a
despicable work [. . .] I pondered up and down, who in Germany
could write so far out of the horizon of Germany and of the book
itself, until finally one whispers in the other’s ear and it is said aloud: it
is the great metaphysicus Kant of Königsberg in Prussia. [. . .] it is
supposed to be pleasing to me, if I make his idol of reason shrink back
or devastate it. As I hear it from several foreign sources, the review has
brought no joy: instead an astonishment arose, which Mr. Kant will
call a shrinking back of reason. His last preceptorial teachings to me
are pretty rude: I am 40 years old and no longer sit on his meta-
physical school benches. The running sore however consists in the fact
that I didn’t follow Mr. Professor in his slackness of word trickery, so
that he so foolishly complains about my peculiarity and immoderate
genius.]
Another letter, also to Hamann, underscores the chasm that had opened
between Herder and what he regarded as mere metaphysical “Wortgau-
kelein,” word trickeries, a difference he described as that between the fire
of his historical passion and the ice of empty speculation:
Es ist sonderbar, daß die Metaphysiker wie Ihr Kant auch in der
Geschichte keine Geschichte wollen u. sie mit dreuster Stirn so gut als
aus der Welt läugnen. Ich will Feuer u. Holz zusammen tragen, die
historische Flamme recht groß zu machen, wenn es auch abermals wie
die Urkunde der Scheiterhaufe meines philosophischen Gerüchts seyn
41
sollte. Laß sie in ihrem kalten, leeren Eishimmel speculiren!
[It is strange that the metaphysicians, like your Kant, don’t want his-
tory even in history, and with brazen foreheads deny it as if out of the
world. I want to collect fire and wood in order to make the historical
flame right large, even if it once again is like the oldest document of
the burning at the stake of my philosophical reputation. Let them
speculate in their cold, empty heavens of ice!]
In Herder’s view, philosophy, like all other areas of human endeavor,
should be viewed as a secondary activity and not an end in itself; he felt
the goal should be the development of humanity. In explicit rejection of
Kant’s “critical philosophy,” Herder thus advocated a historically ground-
ed, empirically focused study that, because it is based on information

about real people, will be better suited to enabling us to improve the lot
of our fellow human beings than abstract reasoning, which in Herder’s
eyes reduced that vibrant, pulsating reality to nothing more than “verbal
phantoms”:
Wie Nebelsterne durchs Fernrohr sich in Milchstrassen auflösen: so
entwickelt sich uns aus dunkeln Empfindungen eine Welt von Gegen-
ständen, Farben, Tönen, sobald der Verstand sich zu ihrer Erkennung
ein Werkzeug zu verschaffen weiß. Viele Nebel sind aufgelöset, andre
werden aufgelöset werden; die Aussicht muntert auf; ein Unendliches
liegt außer und in uns, zu dem wir kommen mögen; dagegen der
kritischen Philosophie zufolge die uns einwohnende Thörinn Vernunft
42
a priori ewig und ewig nach Wortphantomen jaget.
[Like foggy stars seen through a telescope dissolve into galaxies: thus
we develop out of dark impressions a world of objects, colors, tones, as
soon as reason is able to obtain the tools for its recognition. Many fogs
are dissolved, others will be dissolved; the view is encouraging; an in-
finity lies outside and in us, to which we may come; in contrast, ac-
cording to critical philosophy, the indwelling fool Reason hunts, a
priori, for ever and ever after word phantoms.]
As even these brief passages indicate, Kant and Herder were speaking dif-
ferent languages: Herder uses metaphors, analogies, and poetic language
to make his case, eschewing the technical, abstract terminology of Kant’s
three Kritiken. Not surprisingly, Herder’s long, tortured rejoinders found
little sympathy among Kant’s admirers. Friedrich Schiller, no doubt the
most dedicated Kantian living in Weimar, reacted with predictable deri-
sion and scorn. As he wrote to his friend Christian Gottfried Körner on 1
May 1797: “Herder ist jetzt eine ganz pathologische Natur [. . .] Gegen
Kant und die neusten Philosophen hat er den größten Gift auf dem Her-
zen, aber er wagt sich nicht recht heraus, weil er sich vor unangenehmen
43
Wahrheiten fürchtet, und beißt nur zuweilen einen in die Waden”
(Herder is now a really pathological sort [. . .] For Kant and the newest
philosophers he has the greatest poison in his heart, but he doesn’t really
dare to show himself, because he is afraid of uncomfortable truths, and
only bites at their calves now and again). Given Schiller’s stature during
the following century, as well as the rise of neo-Kantianism toward its end,
it is no wonder that Herder’s reputation never really recovered.
The last major project Herder undertook was to found a journal whose
purpose was to provide a grand survey of the cultural, intellectual, and
social achievements of the past century, or what Günter Arnold has aptly
44
called an “Enzyklopädie der frühen Aufklärung.” Originally to be called
Aurora, presumably to herald the beginning of the new century, the title
was changed to the more ominous Adrastea, derived from one of the group
of mythological figures, including Nemesis, responsible for distributing
rewards and punishments. The work never met with much sympathy and
continues to be treated as something of an embarrassment, standing as an
unfitting, if symptomatic, culmination to Herder’s career. As Wulf Koepke
somewhat ambiguously notes, “Adrastea is not the crowning achievement
45
of a great career.” Herder’s own personal nemesis, Schiller, used the oc-
casion of reading the first number of the journal to call into question
Herder’s entire life’s work. In a letter to Goethe of 20 March 1801, Schiller
again expressed his opinion of Herder’s efforts, and did so in words that
amount to a critical epitaph to Herder’s career: “Herder verfällt wirklich
zusehends, und man möchte sich zuweilen im Ernst fragen, ob einer, der
sich jetzt so unendlich trivial, schwach und hohl zeigt, wirklich jemals
46
außerordentlich gewesen sein kann.” (Herder is really going downhill
visibly, and one wants to seriously ask oneself at times whether one who
now shows himself to be so unendingly trivial, weak, and empty really
could have once been extraordinary.)
Yet, there was much in Adrastea that ought to have recommended it
to Schiller, the German apostle of freedom. Herder thought that the most
notable example of Nemesis’s workings in history was the fate of France
following the reign of Louis XIV. As Günter Arnold wrote in his balanced
commentary on Adrastea, Herder’s analysis is remarkable for demon-
strating how unintended consequences spring from injudicious political
action:
Ludwigs Streben nach der Universalmonarchie, seine endlosen un-
gerechten Kriege, die unermeßliche Verschwendungssucht durch
Repräsentationsbauten, der maßlose Glanz seiner Hofhaltung und die
Hugenottenverfolgung wirkten sich sämtlich zum Nachteil für sein
Land aus und schufen langfristig die Voraussetzung für den Verfall der
absolutistischen Gesellschaft und durch die Verelendung des Volkes
Zündstoff für soziale Spannungen. Der “Sonnenkönig” wurde so
47
wider Willen einer der “Gründer der Französischen Freiheit.”
[Ludwig’s striving after universal monarchy, his endless unjust wars,
his immeasurable love of extravagance through the building of great
edifices, the measureless splendor of his court, and the persecution of
the Hugenots, taken all together, had a negative effect on his country
and in the long term created the preconditions for the decline of the
absolutist society and through the impoverishment of the people pro-
vided a catalyst for social tensions. The “Sun King” thus became
against his will one of the “founders of French freedom.”]
But Herder’s contemporaries were no longer receptive to his message.
The ongoing feud with Kant and Kantianism, Herder’s own querulous
nature, and a waning interest in the events and concerns of the past cen-
tury — not to mention the undesirability of praising “French freedom” at
a time when Napoleon was leading his Grand Army inexorably eastward
— all contributed to the almost unbroken silence and neglect that have
lain over Adrastea to the present day. One might in fact say that this work,
like much of Herder’s legacy as a whole, has succumbed to an unforeseen
and unintended nemesis, that his own highly developed critical faculty was
ultimately, and fatally, turned against its owner.
Notes
All translations from the German are by Jim Walker.
1
From a conversation with F. v. Müller, 8 June, 1821, in Goethes Gespräche, ed.
Flodoard Frhr. von Biedermann (Leipzig: F. W. v. Biedermann, 1909), 2:505.
2
Goethe, “Herder,” WA I, 36:254.
3
See Michael Zaremba, Johann Gottfried Herder: Prediger der Humanität: Eine
Biografie (Cologne: Böhlau, 2002), who places particular emphasis on Herder’s
illnesses.
4
See Nicholas Boyle, Goethe: The Poet and the Age. Revolution and Renunciation
(1790–1803) (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000), 749.
5
See the bibliography at the end of this volume.
6
There has been a great deal of commentary on this aspect of Herder, with some
commentators seeing Herder’s unorthodox and unsystematic manner of writing as
an intentional and crucial part of his argument. The most insistent of these,
though still not thoroughly persuasive, is Michael Morton, Herder and the Poetics
of Thought: Unity and Diversity in “On Diligence in Several Learned Languages”
(University Park: Penn State UP, 1989). See also Hans Adler’s essay on Herder’s
style in this volume.
7
This posthumous vigor can be partially explained by the indefatigable labors of
Henry Hardy, the heir of Berlin’s literary estate, who repackages Berlin’s writings
in volumes with new titles.
8
Isaiah Berlin, Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder, ed.
Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000), 169.
9
The best critical discussion of this development is still Claus Träger’s Die Herder-
Legende des deutschen Historismus (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Marxistische Blätter,
1979). See also my comments on this issue in “Die anglo-amerikanische Herder-
Rezeption. ‘Gegenaufklärung’ und ihre Befürworter,” in Vom Selbstdenken: Auf-
klärung und Aufklärungskritik in Herders “Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der
Menschheit.” Beiträge zur Konferenz der International Herder Society, Weimar 2000,
ed. Regine Otto and John H. Zammito (Heidelberg: Synchron, 2001), 215–21;
and in “Johann Gottfried Herder,” in Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, ed. Alan
Charles Kors, et al. (New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002), 2:205–8.
10
See, most recently, Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: The West
in the Eyes of Its Enemies (New York: Penguin, 2004).
11
Journal, SWS 4:367.
12
Journal, SWS 4:364–65.
13
Immanuel Kant, “Was ist Aufklärung?” AA 8:35.
14
Journal, SWS 4:412.
15
One may still consult with profit the admittedly quirky but informative study by
George Saintsbury, A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the
Earliest Texts to the Present Day, 3 vols. (London: Blackwood, 1900–1904).
16
Rudolf Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken dargestellt (Berlin:
Rudolf Gaertner, 1880), 1:65–66.
17
Wulf Koepke, Johann Gottfried Herder (Boston: Twayne, 1987), 12.
18
Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken dargestellt, 1:134.
19
Cited after Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken dargestellt,
1:134.
20
Cf. Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken dargestellt, 1:137.
21
F3, SWS 1:401.
22
F1, SWS 1:141.
23
Herder, introduction to Fragments. First Collection, SEW, 95.
24
Frans de Bruyn provides useful background information on the literary genre of
“silva,” which Herder rendered in German as “Wald,” and thus “Wälder,” “Wäld-
chen”: “The silva is a ‘collection’ genre, a miscellaneous poetic form of classical
origin which enjoyed a great vogue in the Renaissance and early eighteenth
century. The best-known practitioner of the form in ancient times was the Roman
poet Statius, who produced a collection of thirty-two occasional poems entitled
Silvae. The Latin word silva literally means ‘wood’ or ‘forest,’ but its use as a
literary term plays on several metaphorical meanings the word acquired over time,
especially ‘pieces of raw material’ and ‘material for construction.’ The sanction the
silva provides for literary forms of mixed character and content was to prove of the
greatest importance to those who composed scientific treatises or edited and con-
tributed to early scientific journals.” Frans de Bruyn, “The Classical Silva and the
Generic Development of Scientific Writing in Seventeenth-Century England,”
New Literary History 32 (2001): 347.
25
See Hans Aarsleff, From Locke to Saussure: Essays on the Study of Language and
Intellectual History (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1982), especially the chapter
“The Tradition of Condillac.”
26
Ideen, FA 6:902.
27
AePh, SWS 5:545.
28
AePh, SWS 5:546.
29
AePh, SWS 5:577–78.
30
Ideen; SWS 14:217.
31
J. W. Goethe, Italienische Reise, October 1787, WA I, 32:110 and Hefte zur
Morphologie, HA 13:63.
32
Herder to Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim, 28 May 1792, HB 6:272.
33
Hum, SWS 17:122.
34
Hum, SWS 17:137–38.
35
The quotations are from, respectively, Zerstreute Blätter, fourth collection, 7.
Tithon und Aurora, SWS 16:117, and Briefe, die Fortschritte der Humanität
betreffend. Ältere Niederschriften und ausgesonderte Stücke, second collection, SWS
18:332.
36
Herder to Johann Joachim Eschenburg, 18 April 1799, HB 8:51.
37
Johann Joachim Eschenburg to Herder. Herbert Dinkel, Herder und Wieland,
dissertation, Munich, 1959, 118.
38
Hum, SWS 17:404.
39
Kant, “Recension von Herders Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der
Menschheit. Theil 1.” AA 8: 54.
40
Herder to Johann Georg Hamann, 14 February 1785, HB 5:105–6. The itali-
cized letters represent the editor’s completion of words Herder had abbreviated in
the original manuscript.
41
Herder to Johann Georg Hamann, 28 February 1785, HB 5:111.
42
Herder, Vernunft und Sprache. Eine Metakritik zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft.
Zweiter Teil. SWS 21: 316–17.
43
Schiller to Christian Gottfried Körner, 1 May 1797, Schillers Briefe: Kritische
Gesamtausgabe, ed. Fritz Jonas (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1892), 5:186.
44
Adrastea, FA 10:971.
45
Koepke, Johann Gottfried Herder, 103.
46
Schiller to Goethe, 20 March 1801, Schillers Briefe, ed. Jonas, 6:258.
47
Adrastea, FA 10:976–77.
16: Herder in Office: His Duties as
Superintendent of Schools
Harro Müller-Michaels
Herder was chief court chaplain, general superintendent, chief court
pastor of the municipal church, chief councilor of the consistory, and
superintendent of schools; from 1789 on vice president and from
1801 on actual president of the consistory. After his most immediate
office at the church, the schools were dearest to his heart.
W ITH THIS DESCRIPTION Caroline Herder begins her chapter entitled

“Herder’s Official Duties and Their Execution” in part 2 of her
1
Erinnerungen, published in 1820. She describes the tasks associated with
these offices in greater depth in the biographical notes published in the
1830 edition of the same book (233–34): as a minister he held sermons,
accompanied the members of the parish from baptism to the grave, per-
formed and dissolved marriages, supervised the Weimar schools in his
capacity of superintendent, appointed directors and instructors, jumped in
as substitute teacher when necessary, administered teacher certification
exams, proctored the students’ exams, gave speeches at the end of each
school year, administered salaries and oversaw the continuing education
of teachers (especially those in rural areas), drafted textbooks, syllabi, and
new forms of instruction, prepared (beginning in 1789) the sessions of
the consistory, which he led from that point on, kept track of all the ex-
penses in his diocese, held his colleagues accountable for their actions,
listened to complaints, oversaw the budget for agricultural operations, and
doled out professional advice. He accomplished all of this in a reliable
manner and with great success, as confirmed by his contemporaries.
But Herder himself was dissatisfied: his suggestions for the reorgan-
ization of church, school and state were being implemented too slowly,
half-heartedly, or not at all, and the stress of office deprived him of the
time for necessary reading and his literary and scholarly works. Thus he
complained just two years after his arrival in Weimar about the exhausting
daily duties, imagining himself stretched “auf die hölzerne Folterbank” (on
the wooden torture rack) wallowing “unter dem alten sächsischen Dreck”
(under the old Saxon mess) and, as he wrote in a letter to J. G. Hamann
on March 20, 1778, condemned to the fate of Sisyphus: “Eingeklemmt in
374 ♦ HARRO MÜLLER-MICHAELS
das einsame Wirrwarr und geistliche Sisyphus-Handwerk, in dem ich hier

lebe, ermattet man an Allem und nimmt zuletzt an sich selbst nicht mehr
theil.” (Trapped here in the solitary welter and ecclesiastical Sisyphus-
work in which I live, one becomes exhausted with everything and in the
end doesn’t even care about oneself.) He yearned constantly to be able to
drop out, to be freed from his daily duties at least for a short time, in or-
der to plan and carry out projects and to work on one project continu-
ously over a longer period of time, but up until the time of his death he
would never be granted such an opportunity. He did travel by sea to
France in 1769, undertook a Grand Tour with the hereditary prince of
Holstein-Gottorp through Germany all the way to Strasbourg in 1770,
and finally traveled for his own education to Italy in 1788/89; but free
time for his own work was not to be found on these sojourns. Following
his return from Italy, Herder arranged to be relieved of the everyday
business of church and school, but also found himself confronted with the
growing responsibilities associated with the consistory — leading Caroline
to conclude that his joy over the hoped-for relief quickly faded and that
the new duties “ihn unmuthiger und niedergeschlagener [machten], als er
es noch nie in seinem Leben gewesen war” (Erinnerungen part 2 [1830
ed.], 131; made him more annoyed and despondent than he has ever
been in his life).
Herder’s complaints seem justified when one considers all the differ-
ent aspects of his work in church, school, administration, supervision, and
finance, which presented a formidable daily challenge and consumed so
much of his time. However, the hypothesis that the pressure stemming
from his practical problems helped Herder turn his ideas into long-term
projects such as his theory of language, the Ideen, the Humanitätsbriefe,
as well as to variations on these themes is difficult to refute. Reflection
grows out of experience and seeks solutions for the problems of the day.
In regard to the realm of experience being the foundation of his thinking,
Herder closely resembles Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99); at the
same time, this approach to theory makes more understandable the dif-
ficulties that he experienced with his friends Goethe and Schiller in
Weimar and especially with his former trusted mentor Kant. The hypoth-
esis that Herder’s work in theology, pedagogy, politics, and economics
markedly influenced his theories does not mean his ideas emerged solely
from his official activities, but rather that a squaring of inspiration oc-
curred: problems, their differentiated unfolding, suggestions for solutions
to them, as well as methods of representing them were triggered first by
the reading of older texts such as those of Aristotle, Petrarch, Rousseau,
etc., then through the controversies of the day such as those concerning
theories of knowledge, poetics, and politics, through the independent
thinking and innovative inspirations of a creative mind, and finally through
HERDER’S DUTIES AS SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS ♦ 375
the pressure exerted by everyday problems in Herder’s areas of respon-

sibility, such as preaching, administration, and education. For Herder,
teaching was at the center of all of his endeavors: the spreading of the
ideas of humanity and the inspiring contact with young people, an im-
pression confirmed over and over again by Caroline Herder: “Sein ganzes
Bestreben, schriftlich, mündlich, in Büchern, in Predigten, in seiner gan-
zen Thätigkeit gieng auf Veredelung des Herzens und Charakters, aus
welcher, als aus der lebendigen Quelle des Menschen, das Gute gethan
werden müsse” (Erinnerungen 2, 1820 ed., 283; All his efforts, in written
and oral form, in books, in sermons, in his entire endeavor was aimed at
ennoblement of the heart and character, out of which, like out of the liv-
ing source of the human being, that which is good must be done).
Herder’s work in and reflection on education will serve as the focus
of the following explorations, in which his duties and plans will be illus-
trated in five categories according to his chief official duties, especially in
Weimar. Of interest here is not only the diversity and intensity of the
work, as related by Caroline and illustrated by her example of Herder’s
weekly schedule (quoted here from Erinnerungen 2, 1820 ed., 297–98),
but also the manner in which Herder allowed his fundamental ideas on
education, child-rearing, and Humanität to be inspired by his everyday
duties and experiences, and the way he used those ideas in turn to inspire
practical change in these areas. Finally, I will show how Herder’s ideas on
pedagogy, philosophy, history, and aesthetics have retained their validity
to this day, and how they could provide impulses for a historical foun-
dation of future reform efforts.
Herder’s Work Schedule
His time was divided between his official work and his own work as
follows.
On Saturday afternoon, usually ten boxes of files, sometimes
more, arrived to be read through before the next session of the con-
sistory. He attempted to finish them on Sunday. He could not simply
scan them superficially, since in his capacity as deputy und later as
actual president, he chaired the meetings. To this end, he wrote on a
special sheet the resolution to be taken for each item, to which the
councilors then gave either supporting or opposing opinions, or
modified them.
Monday morning was generally still taken up by consistory-rela-
ted work. Rest in the afternoon; reading; correspondence.
The sessions of the consistory took place every Tuesday morning
at 9, and usually lasted until 12–1 P.M. He could seldom work on his
scholarly projects on Tuesday afternoons, since he was often in a bad

mood by then.
The letters and reports from the rural pastors came in on Wed-
nesday morning, or they turned up in person; usually the rural head-
masters came with their issues as well. Now, on Wednesday afternoon
he had some free hours for his own work, which were, however,
interrupted occasionally by consistorial business of lesser importance.
On Saturday mornings, again, rural letters and visits.
He never had an entire day just for himself.
He always avoided unnecessary visits.
He loved me and the children as much as his own life, indeed
more than his own life, and sacrificed everything for us. The raising
of his children had for him the foremost priority; but he could not
dedicate himself to it wholly: his official duties, his own scholarly work
— indeed, I would even add his too-tender love made it impossible
for him. But he watched carefully over their upbringing. (Maria
Carolina von Herder, Erinnerungen 2, 1820 ed., 297–98, 301)
Herder’s Thought on Education and Its Reform

Over the course of his career, Herder never declined an opportunity to
bemoan the state of the schools and instruction, and to inject his own
ideas and proposals for reform into the public debate. He presented his
first such proposals in Riga beginning in 1766 and laid them out in detail
for the first time in the Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769 (Journal of My
Voyage in the Year 1769). From 1785 on, he formulated them with an
eye to the Weimar Gymnasium, and continually revised and supplemented
them in his end-of-the-year school addresses to the graduating class, which
he continued to give until 1802. Herder’s appeal of December 14, 1785
to Duke Carl August of Weimar and his convocation speech of 1786 were
especially influential on the reform of the Prussian Gymnasium and on the
introduction of the Abitur in 1788.
The most detailed version of Herder’s plan for a new type of secon-
dary school can be found in the Journal, developed during his sea voyage
for the Gymnasium in Riga. Herder had a vision of a school for the Free
and the Equal that would replace the old Latin school and be structured
according to new pedagogical principles. A shorter version of this “Plan
zur Verbesserung der Schule (zwischen Riga und Kopenhagen)” (Plan for
the Improvement of Schools [between Riga and Copenhagen]) was pub-
lished separately, but contains only a listing of instructional content (FA
9/2:197–200). The long version in the Journal is interesting not so much
for its content (FA 9/2:52), but instead for the principles that were to
apply to instruction and education. The topics to be covered were not
simply listed one after another, but were divided into three main areas
(called Klassen): nature, history, and abstraction, which were in turn div-
ided into three levels of difficulty, resulting in a kind of “spiral cur-
riculum” that proceeded from the simple to the complex, from the part to
the whole, from the concrete to the abstract, from the natural to the
ethical, and from analysis of fiction to analysis of science. The students
were gradually to be led to ever-expanding fields of knowledge and ever-
deeper realizations. The three levels would usually each be assigned to
two grades (Sexta/Quinta, Quarta/Tertia, Secunda/Prima), so that the
Gymnasium education would span at least six years.
The new school was to be called a Realschule, because it was to orient
itself on the realia of nature and history rather than on scholastic book-
learning. The following three didactic principles in particular are men-
tioned repeatedly in Herder’s arguments for the content and structure of
the curriculum:
(1) Learning from experience means on the one hand utilizing the
students’ own environment as a source of knowledge, while on the other
hand applying abstract knowledge to their experience of the world: “Die
ganze äußere Gestalt der Welt, in deren Mitte das lernende Kind steht,
wird erklärt” (38; The whole outer form of the world, in whose middle
the learning child stands, is explained). In those instances when more in-
depth explanations are sought in books, this new knowledge is to be in-
tegrated with the knowledge and capabilities already gained through ex-
perience: this, according to Herder, “erweckt die Seele” (awakens the
soul) and facilitates education.
(2) The study of history is necessary for acquainting young people with
the achievements and failures of the peoples of the earth in politics and
culture, so that they may learn from them. History is to be represented
with a “Reihe von Bildern” (array of images) that move, enlighten, and
serve to promote humane actions (44). To this end, Herder intended to
create a “Jahrbuch der Schriften für die Menschheit” (Yearbook of Writ-
ings for Humanity) in order to educate the youth through carefully selec-
2
ted examples. One of the main components of this course of study is
literature that encourages artistic production in the students themselves,
especially in the form of tales. Herder’s first draft of a literary canon can
be found in a sketch for the Jahrbuch (this has been edited separately by
Rainer Wisbert in FA 9/2:223–24).
(3) Self-education: experience-based and historical learning are re-
peatedly linked to this concept. Every young person should develop the
potential that lies within himself. Learning by experience and studying the
great works promotes the special character and identity of each individual.
Youth should learn self-determination and become masters of themselves
(FA 9/2:50). Self-confidence is essential for the ability to free oneself from
the heteronomies of church and state and to confidently act for the good
of humanity, as well as for the pursuit of one’s own happiness. The cur-
riculum must thus be designed so that all of the children’s abilities may be
developed equally: Empfindsamkeit (“sense and feeling”), imagination, and
reason:
So werden die Seelenkräfte in einem Kinde von jung auf gleichmäßig
ausgebessert, und mit Proportion erweitert. Das ist das Kunststück
aller Erziehung und der Glückseligkeit des Menschen auf sein ganzes
Leben! (FA 9/2:51)
[Thus the mental powers of a child are gradually improved from a
young age and broadened proportionally. That is the art of lifelong
education and happiness of the human being!]
Herder’s arguments for the necessity of schools supplying not just
knowledge, but also those powers — emotional, rational, artistic, and moral
— that lead to independence of action and thought are precisely sum-
marized and clearly expressed in his Hodegetischen Abendvorträgen an die
Primaner Emil Herder und Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert (Hodegetic Evening
Lectures for the Seniors Emil Herder and Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert,
1799; FA 9/2:794–808).
This reorganization of the school along with its modern principles
served the goal of educating the free people and active citizens of its com-
munity. Thus, on the one hand, the youth should be “der aufgeklärte,
unterrichtete, feine, vernünftige, gebildete, tugendhafte, genießende
Mensch, den Gott auf der Stufe unserer Kultur fordert” (FA 9/2:30; the
enlightened, trained, fine, reasonable, educated, virtuous, human being
who enjoys life, whom God demands on the level of our culture), and on
the other hand he should also be the “philosophische Bürger,” philo-
sophic citizen, of a free republic, since the school plan was conceived for
Riga, which Herder liked to imagine as a free city in eastern Europe, a
“Geneva on the Baltic” (FA 9/2:36–37).
Fundamental considerations for the curriculum and didactic prin-
ciples of instruction at the Gymnasium remained decisive for Herder after
his appointment to school offices in Bückeburg and Weimar. He was in
an especially influential position regarding curriculum design at the Weimar
Gymnasium, since as Ephorus, the person responsible for the school sys-
tem, he was not only in charge of supervising the schools, but was also a
member of the consistorial leadership of the duchy’s government and
church administration that decided school matters. Additionally, since he
had taught from time to time, Herder was familiar with the day-to-day
problems of schools and teachers. However, the reforms proposed after
he took office on October 1, 1776 did not get off the ground, and Herder
began to despair over the institution’s chronic inertia. It was only when
he was able to replace veteran teachers with younger instructors that the
reform process was set in motion, beginning in 1783. Herder’s afore-
mentioned “Eingabe an den Herzog Karl August” (Memorandum to
Duke Carl August) of December 14, 1785, which was accepted within
the month, provided the impetus for the concrete measures put in place
in August 1786. In the Eingabe, Herder again recapitulates the untenable
status quo with its mechanical learning, automatic recitation of sources,
accumulation of useless knowledge, and lack of intellectual independence.
Herder challenges this with his idea for a new school, in which the lower
grades would become a “Realschule für nützliche Bürger, die obern ein
wissenschaftliches Gymnasium für Studierende werden” (FA 9/2:505;
Realschule for useful citizens; the upper ones will become a scientific Gym-
nasium for those bound for university). The details of the syllabus would
be successively implemented by teachers through cooperation and discus-
sion; Herder points with confidence to his own earlier suggestions, which
had been implemented elsewhere, such as in Prussia and Saxony, years
before. In his convocation address in the summer of 1786, Herder de-
scribed once again the didactic principles that make possible the educa-
tion of future citizens and human beings: “Menschen sind wir eher, als
wir Professionisten werden und wehe uns wenn wir nicht auch in unserm
künftigen Beruf Menschen blieben” (FA 9/2:544; We are human beings
before we become professionals, and woe unto us if we don’t remain hu-
man beings in our future calling too). A good twenty years later, Wilhelm
von Humboldt made this goal the focus of his reform of the Prussian
Gymnasium, which retains its validity to this day.
Herder’s Ideas on and Reform of Teacher Training

Herder was convinced that changes to the school system were only pos-
sible by recruiting new teachers. Thus, right at the beginning of his work
in Weimar, he took up the consistory’s suggestion of developing plans for
a teacher seminar (Schulmeisterseminar). After informing himself about
already established teacher seminars (especially those in Berlin, Breslau,
and Dessau), he put forth an initial plan, entitled Entwurf eines Seminarii
zu Lehrern für Landschulen (Plan for a Teacher Seminar for Rural Schools)
in 1780, which was rejected due to its proposals in matters of personnel.
Such resistance to any changes was not uncommon and a constant prob-
3
lem for Herder. Beginning in 1783 the need for improved teacher train-
ing at the lower schools became ever more patent. In May of 1786,
Herder presented the Entwurf again, changed only in a few details, and
this time it was accepted. The teacher seminar was finally able to open on
March 31, 1788.
The reformatory gusto that we are otherwise accustomed to in Her-

der’s plans is not to be found in the eighteen sections of this one. In
section 1, Herder states in a most defensive manner that future teachers at
rural schools need no instruction in their training that is not of direct use
to them in their work. Herder calls for limited training for teachers of the
lower classes, hardly reconcilable with the Enlightenment idea of the right
of all citizens to equal education. Rainer Wisbert attempts to explain these
restrictions in his commentary of 1997 as the result of a “fürstliches Ver-
bot” (a princely interdiction) by the duke of the common people’s freedom
of expression (FA 9/2:1264), but fails to confront the argument that the
Enlightenment accepted a division between higher and lower classes, and
that Herder should have opposed it. Considerations of separation of social
classes on Herder’s part might well have been opportune, practical, and
purpose-driven, but they contradict Herder’s educational ideals, which
should apply universally.
Herder’s central idea behind this teacher training is that it should be
integrated into the instruction at the Gymnasium and should comprise
two levels or phases. In the first phase, chosen students at the Tertia level
(eighth and ninth grade) would receive additional instruction for teaching
in the rural schools. In the second phase, during the Sekunda (tenth and
eleventh grade), five students (later six) would be sent to schools in order
to gain teaching experience, while at the same time they would be in-
structed in the seminar in the methods of elementary instruction in math,
writing, reading, and music in addition to acquiring general education
and special religious knowledge. Following the completion of their train-
ing, they could enter into positions in the country or in the lower munici-
pal schools for the poor, for the children of soldiers, and for girls. Herder’s
idea of the seminarists’ “self-education” asserted itself prominently in the
training. They were supposed to learn on their own, and not by being
drilled and forced by others. Caroline reports that he constantly took pains
to support the candidates in employing the methods that were appropri-
ate to their own personalities: “Er fand, daß die meisten nach ihrer einmal
angenommenen Methode mehr leisten, als wenn ihnen eine fremde auf-
gezwungen wird. Achtungsvoll und freundschaftlich gieng er mit den
Lehrern und den Geistlichen um” (Erinnerungen 2, 1820 ed., 135; He
found that most accomplished more according to their own adopted
methods than when a foreign method was forced on them. He treated the
teachers and the clergy with consideration and friendliness). Self-forma-
tion (“Selbstbildung”) remained the key to his philosophy of education.
One of Herder’s perennial causes was the improvement of the social
welfare of students and teachers alike. In this context, he took the money
that had been used to provide free meals for poor students and used it for
monetary allowances. He also organized subsidies for improving the sala-
ries of rural teachers, since the teachers trained at the seminar earned ca.
50 talers per year, while the teachers at the Gymnasium received 400
talers. He set up funds to finance scholarships, pay raises, and instruction-
al materials for the schools, to which the duke, the estates, the teachers,
and he himself contributed (15 talers, according to Caroline); he found
additional money by phasing out redundant preacher positions. Since the
budgets were so limited and were hardly ever increased under the abso-
lutist system of government, financing through a permanent fund was in-
genious, since it allowed for a flexible use of means. If those responsible
had kept paying even the smallest amounts into the fund after Herder’s
death in 1803 and none of the subsequent rulers had touched it, the
Weimar Gymnasium would be one of the richest schools in the world.
Learning from History and from Literary Texts

According to Herder, experience is indeed necessary for a lively educa-
tion, but is not sufficient, and must be complemented with knowledge of
the history of one’s own culture as well as that of foreign cultures. In
studying the history of humankind, the individual educates himself to
perfection. The central subjects of historical education, for Herder, are
the great literary works of the past (see Müller-Michaels, 1990 and 1996).
Instruction in history becomes in large part aesthetic education.
Subsequent to the publication of the Journal, Herder repeatedly made
suggestions for the Gymnasium syllabus, for instance in his end-of-the-
school-year convocation addresses under the title “Vom (echten) Begriff
der schönen Wissenschaften” (Of the (True) Concept of the Liberal Arts,
1782 and 1788, FA 9/2:448ff. and 581ff.) or very concretely in the
Instruktionen for the individual grade levels at the Gymnasium (1788, FA
9/2:601ff.). In his previously-cited 1786 address on Schulverbesserungen,
the “schöne Wissenschaften,” that is, the modern versions of the seven
liberal arts, are placed at the center of the Gymnasium’s curriculum: “Die
Schule sollte von jeder Wissenschaft [. . .] das Notwendigste, Wahreste,
Wissenswerteste im schönen und strengen Umriss geben” (FA 9/2:443;
The school should provide in beautiful and rigorous outline the things
that are most essential, most true, and most worthy of knowing from
every field of knowledge). Four years earlier, in 1782, he had argued in
the school address “Vom Begriff der schönen Wissenschaften” (On the
Concept of the Liberal Arts) against attempts to separate the “fine arts”
from the “serious” sciences (grammar, philosophy, mathematics), rather,
it is much more a matter of imparting all relevant areas of knowledge in
such an attractive fashion that the students enjoy learning: “je mehr Seelen-
kräfte sie auf Einmal beschäftigt; desto — bildender ist sie, und jedermann
fühlt und sagt: auch desto schöner (FA 9/2:455; the more mental powers
it involves at one time, the more — educative it is, and everyone feels and
says: also the more beautiful).
Herder repeatedly names classical and modern languages, history,
mathematics, music, geography, philosophy, and literature as the basic
components of the artes-canon. In the objects of study of these disci-
plines, the beautiful is connected with the true and the good in such a
way as to have a truly educating effect. Through daily study, the student
comes to see each of these disciplines as a fine art, since they are made
attractive and interesting, are learned with eagerness and love, and are
taught in a humanistic and positive way (FA 9/2:458).
The “Schriften der Alten und Neuen” (Writings of the Ancients and
Moderns; FA 9/2:588) gain special significance in the field of pedagogy,
Herder says, because they can train all of the young people’s abilities with
the same intensity. Such, historical, political, and, especially, philosophical
writings from the ancient Greeks down to the present “unterrichten den
Verstand, sie bessern das Herz, sie sind und gewähren wirklich studia
humanitatis” (FA 9/2:589; instruct the understanding, they improve the
heart, they are and they provide for a truly humanistic course of study). The
fine arts, first and foremost poetry, achieve this in their own special way.
In his speeches, Herder repeatedly drops the names of poets, quotes
excerpts of literary works, and emphasizes the particular usefulness of
literature for education. One of the first literary canons can be found in a
draft of a “Jahrbuch der deutschen Literatur zum Behuf des Studiums der
Menschheit” (Yearbook of German Literature for the Purpose of the Study
of Humanity), which was connected with the previously mentioned pro-
ject of a Yearbook of Writings for Humanity and in the outline of the
planned book Über die Bildung der Völker (On the Education of Peoples,
1769), which he developed in conjunction with the Journal (FA 9/
2:223–27). In the school address “Vom Begriff der schönen Wissen-
schaften” (1782), Herder points to not only authors of classical antiquity
and modern Europe (for example, Erasmus, Batteux, Milton) but also to
German authors as being particularly suited for school instruction: Opitz
as an expert on antiquity, Haller as a philosopher, Schlegel as a translator,
and Lessing as a critic and poet (FA 9/2:452). In order to develop one’s
own cultural identity in the European context — referred to as “national
character” in the eighteenth century, before the term “nation” came to be
seen as compromised — it is also necessary to study German literature.
Teachers were thus called upon to critically examine eighteenth-century
literature with an eye toward its suitability for instruction:
[. . .] in den Schulen sollte wie auf der Tenne das Korn von der Spreu
gesichtet, jedes edelste und beste laut gelesen, auswendig gelernt, von
Jünglingen sich zur Regel gemacht und in Herz und Seele befestigt
werden. Wer unter euch, ihr Jünglinge kennt Uz und Haller, Kleist
und Klopstock Lessing und Winckelmann wie die Italiener ihren Ariost
und Tasso, die Briten ihren Milton und Shakespeare, die Franzosen so
viele ihrer Schriftsteller kennen und ehren (FA 9/2:727/28).
[. . . in the schools, like on the threshing floor, the wheat is supposed
to be separated from the chaff, the purest and best of it read aloud,
learned by heart, made a habit of by youths and embedded in heart
and soul. Who among you, you youngsters, knows Uz and Haller,
Kleist and Klopstock, Lessing and Winckelmann like the Italians know
and honor their Arios and Tasso, the British their Milton and Shakes-
peare, the French so many of their writers.]
Herder outlines here one of the first canons of modern German lit-
erature for school purposes. What is striking is that he does not include
the works of the most current authors from Weimar and Jena, despite the
fact that Herder had been friends with Goethe for over ten years and later
supplied contributions to Schiller’s Horen. It is understandable that Schiller
complained to Goethe about Herder’s reticence toward the literary events
of the present:
An seinen Konfessionen über die deutsche Literatur verdrießt mich,
noch außer der Kälte für das Gute, auch die sonderbare Art von
Toleranz gegen das Elende; [. . . ] seine Verehrung gegen Kleist, Ker-
stenberg und Geßner — und überhaupt gegen alles Verstorbene und
Vermoderte — hält gleichen Schritt mit seiner Kälte gegen das Leben-
dige. (Letter of June 17, 1796)
[His confessions about German literature irritate me; even in addition
to the coldness to the good, also the strange way of tolerating the
miserable; . . . his veneration of Kleist, Gerstenberg, and Gessner —
and in general for all that is dead and decayed — is in step with his
coldness for the living.]
It is true that the works preferred by Herder belong to the bygone era
of a “sentimental” (empfindsame) Enlightenment and were based on tradi-
tional themes and forms that were associated with a culture of emotion
and permanently conjoined matters of aesthetics and ethics. While render-
ing art functional for didactic, educational purposes is understandable, the
growing distance between Herder and the authors of Weimar Classicism
finally became unbridgeable beginning in 1793 when the latter began to
argue vehemently in their writings on aesthetics for the autonomy of art
and its freedom from all purpose. Schiller’s Über die ästhetische Erziehung
des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen (Letters on the Aesthetic Educa-
tion of Man, 1795) could have helped Herder understand these views
insofar as they declared art the purpose itself and that it can only be
effective in its “Selbstzwecklichkeit” (self-purposefulness) or autonomy.

Following from his increasing impatience, however, Herder no longer
wished (or was no longer able) to accept this kind of dialectic. Upon read-
ing Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, he wrote: “Ich kann es weder in
der Kunst noch im Leben ertragen, dass dem, was man Talent nennt,
wirklich in Sonderheit moralische Existenz aufgeopfert wird” (letter of
May 1795; I can’t bear it, either in art or in life, when moral existence is
sacrificed expressly to what is called talent). A view of art that lacks moral
evaluation was unthinkable for the ardent pedagogue and pastor, since
such a view closes off one’s sense for humanity. For Herder, the contact
with art is crucial for developing all of a young person’s faculties, meaning
also — and especially — the moral.
Herder’s Views on Teaching Method

In bringing the subjects of instruction to the level of the students and,
through the process of knowledge appropriation, directing them toward
increased independence in learning about the world and history, the meth-
ods of teaching and learning became for Herder at least equally as im-
portant as the content. For this reason, in his school addresses, he placed
strong emphasis on illustrating instructional methods and on the meth-
odological education of students. Even as early as in his inaugural address
at Riga’s cathedral school, “Von der Gratie in der Schule” (On Grace in
School, 1765), he emphasized the importance of methods and instruc-
tional style in education. In arguing against the authoritarian, scholastic
instruction of the traditional Latin schools, which kept the student incar-
cerated in a prison of outdated and useless knowledge, Herder proposed
instruction full of grace, in which teacher and student learn side by side.
According to the connotation of the time, an education characterized by
grace would have meant a holistic education in which Empfindsamkeit,
the intellect, and morality join to exert a harmonious effect on the stu-
dents. As Herder wrote: “Die Gratie, von der ich rede, gießt ihre Reize
über jede Materie, die der Lehrer für seine Schüler auswählt; sie bestreut
seine Methode mit Blumen” (FA 9/2:159; The grace of which I speak
pours its charms over all the material that the teacher chooses for his
pupils; it showers his methods with flowers). Calling this an aestheticizing
of education, as Wisbert does in his commentary (FA 9/2:1015), does
not go far enough. It is much more a matter of understanding instruction
as an art in the context of the liberal arts, which, like science, are a means
to knowledge. Grace, as a methodical principle, awakens interest in things,
establishes connections to the world of experience, stimulates the drawing
of comparisons, encourages the activity of the students, and offers a model
for morality and of humane contact between people. The instructional
model is based on Socratic dialogue and attempts to connect modern peda-

gogical trends, including Comenius’s didactic rationalism, Basedow’s sys-
tem of “philanthropinism,” and Rousseau’s natural pedagogy, and to
subsume them under the guiding concept of grace. Herder realized that
the image of the school that he put forth would remain a utopia, but that
it also gave his pedagogical ideas and actions orientation and a goal to
strive for (FA 9/2:168).
In the speeches of his Weimar years Herder laid out the concepts and
practice of a methodology that was connected to the practical and moral
concerns of life. In “Von der verbesserten Lehrmethode unserer Zeit”
(On the Improved Teaching Methods of Our Time, 1780), he argues for
an appropriate method for each subject (languages, mathematics, history)
and for the concept of “ein schweres Lernen” (arduous learning), which
refutes the idea of an easy, natural method, since only from resistance does
the potential develop that is necessary for the mastery of one’s studies and
of life itself. In his school address of the following year, “Von Schulü-
bungen” (On School Exercises, 1781), Herder details some of the indi-
vidual methods by matching them with their proper subjects. The teacher
should stimulate the students’ self learning by, first, getting the students’
attention; second, by having them translate literary works; third, by
stimulating them through reading to engage in free-writing and to each
collect their work in a kind of notebook or literary anthology (“Kollek-
taneen”); and fourth, by encouraging them to engage in debates about
topics and texts, generally in their free time, in order to prepare them-
selves for university. These recommended exercises serve again to show
how working independently and productively with subjects that are intro-
duced in a stimulating way can take the place of the guided memorization
and reproduction of “belanglose,” insignificant and useless knowledge.
More decisive than the acquisition of systematic knowledge and skills,
according to Herder, are the pedagogical principles that determine how
the teacher interacts with the students. In his address entitled “Scheu und
Achtung” (Shyness and Respect, 1790), Herder describes how a teacher
lets tact and respect for the students guide his interactions with them.
This manner of interaction then becomes an example and model for fu-
ture interaction between people in society: approaching one another with
respect, “Liebe erzeigen” (showing love, FA 9/2:650), exercising tact,
practicing justice, and providing encouragement. Rules and laws are only
valid insofar as they are based on “Vernunft und Billigkeit” (reason and
fairness, FA 9/2:655). Herder cites Johann Matthias Gessner’s list of peda-
gogical virtues in detail (FA 9/2:653–54) and renders this style of in-
struction in a very clear manner. All schoolwork revolves around the prem-
ise that “die aufwachsende Jugend [ist] der größte Schatz des Staats” (FA
9/2:651; the maturing youth is the greatest treasure of the state); as such,
young people deserve only the best treatment in order that they may
achieve to the best of their abilities. We can take it from accounts by
Caroline and Herder’s students that he did his best to adhere to these
principles.
In his school address “Von der Integrität und Scham einer Schule”
(On the Integrity and Shame of a School, 1794), Herder adds human in-
tegrity to the catalogue of virtues that are to guide the forms of interac-
tion in the schools and determine the goal of all education. By integrity
he means becoming a whole person: developing all of one’s abilities, having
them achieve a state of harmonious equilibrium, continually working on
them and employing them in the service of the community. The essence
of Herder’s understanding of humanity is:
Bildung der Kinder und Jünglinge zu tüchtigen, fleißigen, arbeit-
samen, moralischen, mithin auch liebenswürdigen, fröhlichen und
dem Staat brauchbaren, wohldenkenden Menschen. (FA 9/2:700)
[Education of children and adolescents into human beings who are
capable, industrious, hardworking, moral, and therefore also charm-
ing, happy, useful to the state, and right thinking.]
The school provides stimulation, materials, and methods for this gra-
dual social perfection of the self, but the process can only fully succeed if
the pupil commits fully to self-education. In another address he gave in
1799 entitled “Von Schulen als Übungsplätzen der Fähigkeiten der Seele”
(On Schools as Practice-Grounds for the Capabilities of the Mind), Herder
terms the mission of young people to become educated both for oneself
and for others Selbstschöpfung (self-creation; FA 9/2:785). In order to
understand Herder’s idea of humanity and the objective of his acts as a
teacher and school supervisor, one should read his school address titled
“Integrität” (Integrity), including his commentary on the history of the
concept (FA 9/2:701–2). One gets here an idea of his striving for Hu-
manität, which implies the pedagogical ideal of “Selbstbildung,” of for-
mation of young minds through independent work and learning.
Herder’s Views on Life beyond School

in a Social and Political Context
Those who, like Herder, teach young people, constantly striving to refine
the goals of education, must consider the extent to which the pupils are
qualified for life after school — whether in their careers or at the univer-
sity. In 1778, in one of his first Weimar school addresses, held in Latin,
Herder advises the graduates that they did not need to go on to uni-
versity, but, if they chose to take that path, they should only do so after
rigorous preparation. In accordance with his pedagogical maxims, he

appeals to the graduates to be accurate in their self-assessments, which
should be established through consultation with their teachers, and ar-
gues against putting too much weight on final examinations, which only
ever demonstrate selective achievements of memory, but not maturity for
life. Herder did not contribute to the ongoing discussion in Prussia con-
cerning the Abitur, which was instituted in 1788. However, he did reflect
further (for instance, on the occasion of the exams in 1791) on the quali-
fications graduates needed to obtain (FA 9/2:675–76). That he did not
join in in demanding the institution of the Abitur could also stem from
the fact that Herder regarded university instruction as a continuation of
the education initiated at the Gymnasium. As laid out in his “Entwurf der
Anwendung dreier Akademischer Jahre für einen jungen Theologen”
(Draft Concerning the Use of Three Academic Years for a Young Theo-
logian, 1782), the first year of higher education is to be expressly a con-
tinuation of the Gymnasium: “Schulwissenschaften, d. i. Sprachen, Künste,
physische Geographie, Physik, Philosophie Geschichte werden in ihm nur
fortgesetzt, erhört, erweitert” (FA 9/2:420; School subjects, that is, lan-
guages, arts, physical geography, physics, philosophy, history, are in [the
first year] merely continued, repeated, expanded). Herder projects a three-
year course of study, but students may remain in the individual levels for
more than a year, if necessary. The first level of university education re-
volves around general introductory study, the second continues the basic
academic education in the given subjects (in this case, theology), and only
in the third does field-specific training follow, in which theory and prac-
tice are joined in the given professional field. It was possible to remain at
each individual level for more than one year. Even today, the virtues of
such a progression of study around the world are being recognized; in the
“Bologna-Process” of unifying higher education, European nations are in
the process of reinventing the sequence of university study, as is custom-
ary in the universities of the United States.
Herder’s plan goes even further in imagining a German academy based
on the Académie française. A report on the prospect of such an academy
was commissioned in 1785 by the margrave of Baden, who wanted to
strengthen the newly-created alliance of sovereigns through the founding
of a centralized institute for the sciences and through the coordination of
research and education in the provincial academies. In his “Idee zum ersten
patriotischen Institut für den Allgemeingeist Deutschlands” (Idea for the
First Patriotic Institute for the Common Spirit of Germany, 1787), Herder
describes the academy as a place of enlightenment, in which the knowl-
edge of all academies and universities is collected and made accessible to
the people of all nations, and where research in modern areas of knowl-
edge such as languages, history, philosophy, and economics is conducted.
“Der Zweck dieser Akademie ist reine unparteiische Wahrheit, das Band
ihrer Mitglieder ist National-Interesse, gegenseitige Achtung und Scho-
nung” (FA 9/2:575; The purpose of this academy is pure, impartial
truth, the bond between its members is national interest, mutual respect
and consideration). Although Herder’s plan recommended a decentral-
ized structure, it was not acceptable to the rulers of the minor states, also
for financial reasons, and Herder gave up on the idea of a national aca-
demy, but did not lose interest in his work at the University of Jena.
Beginning with his official duties in Riga, Herder always strove for
political influence. While it is true that he never experienced great success
in this regard, he did push through important and exemplary reforms in
Weimar after much persistence and effort, for instance, those concerning
the self-administration of churches and schools, teacher training, and meth-
ods of funding. Ever since the Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769, think-
ing about political reforms had been one of his central interests, and he
won the prize of the Prussian Academy with the 100-page-long prize essay
Vom Einfluss der Regierung auf die Wissenschaften, und der Wissenschaften
auf die Regierung (On the Influence of Government on the Sciences and
of Sciences on the Government; 1780). In it, Herder approaches his topic
in ways that are familiar from the school addresses and the Briefe zu Beför-
derung der Humanität:
• He approaches his topic from a historical standpoint by searching for
examples from earlier times (especially from antiquity) and other
cultures.
• He entreats those in power to regard themselves as models: the more
that “Weisheit, Güte und wahre Menschenliebe” (truth, goodness,
and true human love) determine their actions, the more decisive their
influence on the citizenry will become (FA 9/2:340).
• He stresses that the main objective must be to provide freedom to
the people, independence for institutions, and liberty for education
and scientific endeavors.
• He upholds the enlightened, educated, and free citizen as the best
servant of his nation, of the Gemeinwert or common good (FA 9/2:
318).
• He points out that just as the nation must allow room for freedom, it
must also protect its citizens and the arts and sciences from abuses.
He sees that this kind of state supervision could compromise liberty.
However, he sees Frederick II — whose academy he is writing for,
incidentally! — as the prime example of an enlightened monarch (FA
9/2:353) who can serve as a role model by submitting himself to the
laws of the state (FA 9/2:358).
Herder’s influence in the Duchy of Weimar increased with his ap-

pointment in 1789 to the Weimar Consistory, which was not only an ec-
clesiastical but also a government supervisory body. However, he was not
always free to follow his own convictions, being required to act according
to the prerogatives of the state, as he did in around 1790, when, despite
his documented sympathies with the French Revolution in its early stages,
he exhorted the clergy in a pastoral letter to report indications of revolu-
tionary activities, and later decisively distanced himself from the increasing
violence that followed the execution of Louis XVI in January of 1793 (see
Zaremba, 210–11). He now applied his idea of humanity, conceived as
the goal of educating human beings to perfection, to the political arena:
he judged actions of the state according to the extent to which they en-
courage or limit the freedom of the individual. Herder thus condemned
the Terror and welcomed the military resistance of the European powers
4
against France but he was happy that, unlike Goethe, he did not have to
witness the bombardment of Mainz and, before that, the Prussian offen-
sive in the fall of 1792. He longed to travel, but his official duties kept
him tied down in Weimar, where he had to read petitions, write letters,
distribute information, compose resolutions, prepare sessions of the High
Consistory, enact revisions, supervise schools, administer the pastors’ and
teachers’ exams, and teach at the Gymnasium. He was not going to keep
those who depended on him for advice, decisions, or instruction waiting
just so that he could experience first-hand the spectacle that was the bom-
bardment of Valmy.
Herder’s ever-increasing hypochondria, pain, sleeplessness, and melan-
cholia, especially in the last decade of his life, severely limited his capacity
for work; short visits to spas did not provide long-term relief. That he suf-
fered from such maladies makes it all the more astounding that he squeezed
the composition of such influential addresses, letters, treatises, and literary
works into his everyday life. Taken as a body of work, they not only speak
of humaneness, but are also humane in tone, friendly, clear, devoted to his
readers and listeners, challenging them and encouraging their inde-
pendence. In all of his many official duties, Herder tried to uphold and
practice his ideals of Humanität, of “Vernunft und Billigkeit” (reason and
fairness), or in other words, to practice what he preached, to turn his
theories into practical action. This is particularly true for the field of edu-
cation, where Herder has left an important legacy.
Translated by Jennifer L. Jenkins
Notes
1
Erinnerungen aus dem Leben Johann Gottfrieds von Herder, ed. Johann Georg
Müller (Tübingen: Cotta Verlag, 1820), 110. The later edition of 1830 was in
three parts, with some additional material.
2
Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769, FA 9/2, 33.
3
For more on such resistance to change, see the detailed portrayal in Rudolf
Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken, 2:351–55.
4
Letter to Goethe of July 12, 1793 from both Karoline and Herder; Briefe VII,
49–50.
17: Herder’s Reception and Influence
Günter Arnold, Kurt Kloocke, and Ernest A. Menze
T HE STUDY OF THE RECEPTION OF and influences on literature is rela-

tively new and, for the works of many authors, has hardly begun.
Current literature tends to receive the most attention. In the past, literary
works were often co-opted for ideological reasons and in the process mis-
interpreted and distorted; this was the case with Johann Gottfried Herder
through the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century. Ultimately,
Herder was discredited by nationalist perversion of his works during the
National-Socialist era. Whereas there are several studies dealing with
Herder’s early-twentieth-century reception history, little has been done
regarding Herder’s influence in earlier periods and hardly anything per-
taining to the reception of his works during his lifetime. At best, the most
important reviews of his works are noted. Hence, published evidence of
Herder’s largely unacknowledged influence on the work of other authors
and of the broad absorption of his aesthetic and philosophical insights by
the literate public is hard to come by. This chapter can only hint at the
changing conceptions governing the currents of literary influence. But the
magnitude of Herder’s imprint on the past, which will be sketched here,
calls for his prominent inclusion in accounts yet to be written.
1. Herder’s Reception and Influence up to 1830

Herder’s early works, produced in Riga, the fragments Über die neuere
deutsche Literatur (On Recent German Literature, 1766–1767) and the
Kritische Wälder (Critical Forests, 1769) were anonymous occasional writ-
ings with a decided point of view. They discussed critically the most re-
nowned German authors and for that alone aroused great public atten-
tion. The Fragmente and the Kritische Wälder not only affected the literary
life of Germany around 1770, particularly stimulating the young writers of
the Sturm und Drang period, but continued to exert influence at the end
of the century in the works of the early Romantic theorists.
Herder’s most significant attainment in literary history is considered
to be his influence on the young Goethe beginning with their first encoun-
ter in Strasbourg in October of 1770. Goethe’s extensive account in the
392 ♦ GÜNTER ARNOLD, KURT KLOOCKE, AND ERNEST A. MENZE
tenth book of his autobiographical work Dichtung und Wahrheit (1812)

of their time together in Strasbourg, epochal for German literature as the
onset of revolutionary change, soon was widely and lastingly spread abroad
in repeated editions of lexicographical monuments such as the Brockhaus
Realenzyclopaedie, right up into the twentieth century. In Strasbourg
Goethe encountered the seeds of all that was to fill Herder’s later vol-
umes. He read the manuscript of Herder’s 1770 prize essay (published in
1772), the Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache (Treatise on the
Origin of Language), which over the course of time influenced scholars
from Jakob Grimm in his 1851 Akademierede to the Yale University an-
thropologist and scholar of American Indian languages Edward Sapir
(1884–1939) in 1907. (See the essay by Trabant in this volume). Herder
imparted to Goethe the impetus to collect folk songs and pointed him to-
ward the poetry of the Hebrew Bible, Homer, Pindar, the Edda, Ossian,
and Shakespeare. Goethe became familiar with Herder’s apprehension of
art, cast in sensualist and psychological terms, in the essay Plastik (Sculp-
ture, 1778), a work offering ideas far ahead of its time. According to
Goethe’s testimony, the collection of essays Von deutscher Art und Kunst.
Einige fliegende Blätter (Of German Kind and Art, 1773) conveys an
authentic impression of his conversations with Herder in Strasbourg.
Herder’s famed Shakespear[e] essay (1773) strongly influenced the
Shakespeare cult of the Sturm und Drang, the dramatic art of Jakob Michael
Reinhold Lenz, Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, and Friedrich Schiller, and
others. The essay Auszug aus einem Briefwechsel über Ossian und die Lieder
alter Völker (Excerpt from a Correspondence on Ossian and the Songs of
Ancient Peoples, 1773) and Herder’s Volkslieder collection (1778–79)
found great resonance among contemporaries as well as posterity. Young
poets such as Matthias Claudius and the Göttingen Hainbund attuned their
work to the tone of the Volkslied and produced Lieder truly reflective of
folk art. Gottfried August Bürger shaped his ballads in line with Herder’s
translations of Thomas Percy’s Old English ballads from Reliques of An-
cient English Poetry (1765). In so doing Bürger founded the tradition of
the German ballad, leading to Ludwig Uhland and Theodor Fontane.
Herder’s collection of international folk songs, which was rooted in his
anthropological conception of folk poetry — a posthumous edition was en-
titled Stimmen der Völker in Liedern (Voices of the Peoples in Songs) —
was followed in Germany by numerous collections with a preeminently na-
tional (and sometimes nationalistic) tenor, based on German-language ma-
terial. (See the essay by Sauder in this volume.) The best known are Des
Knaben Wunderhorn (The Child’s Magic Horn, 1806–8) by Achim von
Arnim and Clemens Brentano, Uhland’s more academic collection of Alte
hoch- und niederdeutsche Volkslieder (Old High- and Low-German Folk
HERDER’S RECEPTION AND INFLUENCE ♦ 393
Songs, 1844–45) and the Deutscher Liederhort (German Treasury of Songs,

1893–94) by Ludwig Erk and Franz Böhme.
Herder’s call for the collection of folk songs did not merely serve the
goal of fostering a national literature that tied into major works of the past
and surviving folk traditions (see the essay by Karl Menges in this volume);
rather, he saw in these songs authentic sources of cultural history and
ethnic diversity. He cited them in his principal work on the philosophy of
history, the Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas on
the Philosophy of the History of Humankind, 1784–91). Part 3 of the
Ideen, along with Herder’s dialogical Gott. Einige Gespräche (God. Some
Conversations, 1787), which espoused the same type of natural law,
aroused the German and Swiss Pietists to opposition and caused the
Weimar General Superintendent untold grief. As late as 1799, at the time
of Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s dismissal from Jena University on grounds of
alleged atheism, Fichte in turn charged Herder with atheism, referring
back to the views expressed in Gott. On the other hand, the materialist
philosopher Wilhelm Ludwig Wekhrlin (1739–1792), in his Hyperbo-
reische Briefe (Hyperborean Letters, 1788), criticized Herder’s symbiosis
of philosophy and theology in Gott as “Superintendent-Spinocism.” The
idealist philosophers Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Immanuel Kant, and
Christian Jakob Kraus — and even the natural scientist Georg Forster,
who was otherwise often sympathetic to Herder — also found fault with
the “syncretism of Spinocism and deism” in Herder’s essay, questioning
his ability to think clearly and rigorously. Kant had already been critical of
Herder in his 1785 reviews of the first two parts of the Ideen. In the sec-
ond part of Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790), Kant, in a polemic vein, con-
tinued to take issue with the Ideen and also with Gott. And yet, the
reflection of Herder’s “dynamic Pantheism” in Goethe’s later writings
aside, Gott is significant for the history of philosophy. Its equation of God
and nature, or of Spinoza’s related equation of God and Being, was elab-
orated by F. W. J. Schelling in his Darlegung meines Systems der Phi-
losophie (Explanation of My System of Philosophy, 1801) into the identity
philosophy of German Idealism (the identity of spirit and nature, of sub-
ject and object, consciousness and matter). And Hegel cites Herder’s
definition of organic powers in Gott in his treatise Glauben und Wissen
oder die Reflexionsphilosophie der Subjektivität (Belief and Knowledge, or
the Reflexive Philosophy of Subjectivity, 1803). According to Hegel,
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819) presented Herder’s definition in
obscure terms, rendering it incomprehensible.
Following the devastating critique of Herder’s sharply anti-Kantian
Metakritik by August Ferdinand Bernhardi, which was published in the
periodical Athenäum in 1800, and numerous reviews and rebuttals else-
where by Kant’s adherents, Herder was no longer taken seriously by the
representatives of Jena Romanticism. The accusation by Friedrich Theodor

Rinck that Herder had plagiarized a passage from his dear and long de-
parted friend Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) added insult to injury.
But in reference to Kant’s critiques of Herder’s Ideen and the generally
negative assessment of the late anti-Kantian writings, new directions in
philological research have evolved in the last three decades that find merit
in Herder’s position on both counts. The scholars who have developed
these views, including Ralph Häfner, Marion Heinz, Wolfgang Pross, and
John Zammito, discern in historical anthropology and in the history of
the natural sciences lines of development from Herder to the present that
were previously obscured by the dominant Kantian tradition in the history
of literature and philosophy, and even in biographies of Herder.
Before he was turned into a persona non grata in the eyes of the
Romantics, who were influenced by Kant, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, and
Fichte, Herder had greatly inspired them. Schelling’s Ideen zu einer Philo-
sophie der Natur (1797) was based on Herder’s and Goethe’s philosophy
of nature. Both the naturalist and physician Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert,
author of Ansichten von der Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaften (Views from
the Night-side of the Natural Sciences, 1808) and the physicist Johann
Wilhelm Ritter were frequent guests in Herder’s house. Ritter asserted in
his Aphorismen that he owed him “infinitely much that was new.” August
Wilhelm Schlegel presented Herder with the first volume of his Shakes-
peare translation (1797) and reverentially declared himself Herder’s pupil
who had taken his translations of the great English dramatist as his model.
Friedrich Schlegel was deeply impressed by Herder’s apprehension of myth
as ancient history, religion, and philosophy. In his major treatise Über das
Studium der griechischen Poesie (On the Study of Greek Poetry, 1798), he
singled out Herder among those who had introduced into Germany “an
entirely new and disproportionately higher level of Greek studies.” Both
of the Schlegels lauded Herder’s extensive learning and his ability to grasp
intuitively the poetry of all ages and peoples. In their renowned lecture
series on literary history held in Berlin and in Vienna the brothers fol-
lowed Herder’s universalist and comparative approach. And yet, in his Vor-
lesungen über Enzyklopädie (Lectures on the Encyclopedia, 1803), August
Wilhelm Schlegel referred to Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte
der Menschheit in extremely negative terms, saying they contained “neither
ideas, nor philosophy, nor history, nor humankind.”
Schlegel’s view is indicative of the general ingratitude and injustice that
were the lot of Herder’s principal work. He was accused by natural scien-
tists as well as historians, philologists, and philosophers of lacking scienti-
fic rigor and employing a metaphoric-belletristic style unbecoming their
respective fields of study. In the methodological dispute between the em-
pirical and the philosophical schools of German historiography (led by
Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren and Karl Heinrich Ludwig Pölitz, re-
spectively) that broke out around 1800, the same assessment of Herder’s
work emerged. The liberal historian Friedrich Christoph Schlosser (1776–
1861), a Late Enlightenment figure whose moralistic, political, and world-
historical mid-nineteenth-century outlook still reflected Herder’s approach,
nevertheless deprecated Herder’s Ideen in his Geschichte des 18. Jahrhun-
derts. Nor did Hegel give Herder his due. When, in his Vorlesungen über
die Philosophie der Geschichte (Lectures on the Philosophy of History), he
managed to join the speculative premise entailed by Kant’s Idee zu einer
Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht (Idea toward a History in the View
of a World-Citizen, 1784) to the individualizing historical approach de-
veloped by Herder, he did not even mention Herder’s name. But there
cannot be any doubt that Hegel owed essential insights to Herder. It was
left to Eduard Gans, in his introduction to Hegel’s Geschichtsphilosophie,
to give credit to Herder as one of Hegel’s predecessors, along with
Giovanni Battista Vico and Friedrich Schlegel.
In theological matters (see the essays by Bultmann and Kessler in this
volume) Herder occupied an authentic position between the warring fronts
of Lutheran orthodoxy, Neologismus and Pietismus. Due to his polemical
writings, he was involved in various controversies and, through his intem-
perate attacks, he created for himself a number of formidable enemies.
Among them were the renowned Göttingen Protestant theologian and
Orientalist Johann David Michaelis (1717–1791) and the leading Berlin
neologist Johann Joachim Spalding (1714–1804), both eminent in their
fields and supported by large numbers of followers. Because of his meta-
phoric style, Herder was often misunderstood by other theologians and
taken for a gushing enthusiast or heretic. This in the main was due to
Herder’s Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts (Oldest Document of the
Human Race, 1774–76) which was reputed to be excessively mystical or
even the work of a dilettante. Yet even with its flaws, the work had an
influence on Romantic mythology studies such as Schelling’s Über Mythen,
historische Sagen und Philosopheme der ältesten Welt (On Myths, historical
Sagas, and Philosophemes of the Most Ancient World, 1793), Joseph
Görres’s Mythengeschichte der asiatischen Welt (History of Myth of the
Asiatic World, 1810), and Friedrich Creuzer’s Symbolik und Mythologie der
alten Völker (Symbolism and Mythology of the Ancient Peoples, 1810–23).
The Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend (Letters Concerning the
Study of Theology, 1780–81), in which Herder described the Bible as “a
book written by humans for humans,” brought about his break with the
miracle-seeking physiognomist Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801). These
“letters,” an introduction to the study of theology, were reviewed largely
positively (see Bultmann, FA 9/1:987–98) and they enhanced Herder’s
reputation among theologians. A lifelong personal friendship tied him to
the Old Testament scholar Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752–1827), and

Herder’s Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie (On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry,
1782–83), Old Testament exegesis presented in a poetic vein as literary
history, and Eichhorn’s rigorously “scientific” Einführung (Introduction)
to the Hebrew Bible complemented one another, with each of the authors
profiting from the other’s work. Quite in contrast with the reception of
the Älteste Urkunde, but like the Theologische Briefe, Herder’s Ebräische
Poesie received highly favorable reviews, especially in reference to the com-
petently translated passages from the Bible, which were part of a transla-
tion of Holy Writ Herder planned for decades but never completed.
Many protestant theologians of the nineteenth century felt themselves
enriched by the “spirit of the Orient” that emanated from Herder’s pages.
Some fanciful Herderian hypotheses concerning the presumed ancient
oriental antecedents of earliest Christianity could only be tested and cor-
rected or dismissed after the deciphering of cuneiform and hieroglyphics
enabled biblical scholars such as Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette
(1780–1849), Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918), and Hermann Gunkel
(1862–1932) to do so. Nevertheless, as a theologian in general, and par-
ticularly in his role as interpreter of the New Testament (Christliche
Schriften, 1794–98), Herder remained deep in the shadow of Friedrich
Schleiermacher throughout the nineteenth century.
Upon the appearance of Edgar Quinet’s French translation of the
Ideen in 1827, Goethe wrote that Herder’s most significant insights had
already entered the public consciousness without being attached to his
name. Nameless also remained his contributions to education and reli-
gious life, since his lack of support by the ducal government did not allow
for fundamental and lasting reforms during his lifetime. By the end of the
nineteenth century, historians of pedagogy gave credit to Herder for the
flourishing of a revived humanistic culture in the schools and reforms in
elementary, secondary, and teacher education. Herder’s pedagogical agenda
may be likened to that of the great Swiss reformer Johann Heinrich
Pestalozzi (1746–1827), with whom he entertained a correspondence. In
Weimar Herder’s efforts were continued by the social reformer and
pedagogue Johannes Daniel Falk (1768–1826). Jean Paul, the most be-
loved novelist of the early nineteenth century, remained for his entire life
under Herder’s influence. His views on politics, the general conduct of
life as well as his philosophy of history were shaped in a Herderian cast,
and in the concluding chapter of his Vorschule der Ästhetik (Pre-school of
Aesthetics, 1804) he left his revered friend and mentor a glowing testi-
monial. However, the greatest and most lasting memorial to Herder was
the edition Johann Gottfried von Herders Sämtliche Werke, published by
Cotta in Stuttgart and Tübingen between 1805 and 1820. It was initiated
by Herder’s widow Caroline, who edited it along with their eldest son
Gottfried (1774–1806), Christian Gottlieb Heyne (1729–1812), and the

brothers Johannes von Müller (1752–1809) and Johann Georg Müller
(1759–1819). Organized in three parts, Zur Religion und Theologie, Zur
schönen Literatur und Kunst, and Zur Philosophie und Geschichte (Religion
and Theology, Belles Lettres and Art, Philosophy and History), the forty-
five volumes, often alluded to as the “Vulgata,” reflect in their very
plenitude Herder’s universality. This edition remained for much of the
nineteenth century the most widely used edition of Herder’s works. Its
place was taken gradually by Bernhard Suphan’s critical edition, published
by Weidmann in Berlin between 1877 and 1913.
2. From the Vormärz to the End

of the Nineteenth Century
Though coined early in their relationship (in 1774, in a letter), and ad-
dressing only one of his works, the much maligned Älteste Urkunde,
Goethe’s memorable reference to Herder’s Weitstrahlsinnigkeit, to the
“widely cast rays” emanating from him, uniquely and lastingly captured
Herder’s universality. The often anonymous influence his works exerted
over time on a most diverse reading public in Germany and abroad can be
sketched here only by a few of the most striking examples. Only a much
more elaborate Wirkungsgeschichte will illustrate the full extent of Herder’s
many-sided interests, their reach and duration within the unfolding of
German and world history. If there was a lull in Herder’s influence, it came
about gradually during the decades of transformation culminating in the
First World War.
It may be that Herder’s occupation as the Generalsuperintendent of a
small German duchy’s religious and educational establishments resulted in
a measure of stereotyping. At any rate, prominent commentators such as
Friedrich Sengle have tended to present Herder’s impact on the age in
somewhat one-dimensional terms, lumping him with Romanticism and
conservative values. A closer look, however, at figures such as Heinrich
Heine, Karl Gutzkow (a proud owner of the “Vulgata”), and some other
members of the Young German movement, who, on the face of it, should
not have been susceptible to a conservative Herder, reveals them as much
beholden to him. Heine warmly testified to his great esteem for Herder,
1
and modern researchers have taken note of his influence on Heine.
Heine’s familiarity with Herder’s principal works, including his borrowings
as a youngster in Düsseldorf and as a student in Bonn and Göttingen,
2
have been documented. With Heine’s reception of and elective affinity to
Herder now firmly established, the analysis of Heine’s appropriations of
Herder has begun. Manfred Windfuhr’s call for structural comparison of
Heine’s and Herder’s works holds also for the examination of Herder’s
influence on other Young Germans and a broad range of Biedermeier and
Vormärz authors.
Herder’s appeal was not limited to Protestant Germany. There is sig-
nificant evidence that Herder was highly regarded by Austrian literary
circles of the Restoration epoch. The details of Herder’s reception and
influence were increasingly obscured by the veneration of Weimar Clas-
sicism; he was often considered part of it, so that the mantle of greatness
hid his actual influence. The full bloom of this worshipful public percep-
tion came with the German Confederation’s “failure to turn” in 1848/49
(the phrase is Theodore S. Hamerow’s). As the bitter divisions among the
great men of Weimar were gradually lost sight of, Herder became a cap-
tive in a nationalist Pantheon of public opinion despite the increasing avail-
ability of the full scope of his writings. However, there were individual
readers who grasped his uniqueness and universality, such as the Austrian
writers Franz Grillparzer and Adalbert Stifter. Whereas the examination of
Herder’s influence on Grillparzer’s dramas has only begun, the case for
Stifter’s quasi-dependence on Herder is well advanced. Almost a century
ago, in his introduction to Stifter’s collection of stories Bunte Steine
(Colored Stones, 1853), Gustav Wilhelm established the link between
Stifter’s “sanftes Gesetz” (gentle law, the symbiosis of natural law and the
mandates of morality) — in which Stifter emphasizes the importance of the
seemingly small and insignificant occurrences in human life and history
over those commonly seen to be “great,” claiming that they are expres-
sions of a more constant, general force and indicative of man’s urge to
maintain a state of harmony and balance — and Herder’s Ideen and the
3
Nemesis essay. Peter Schäublin’s exemplary interpretation, in “Stifter’s
Abdias, von Herder aus gelesen” (Stifter’s Abdias, Read by Way of Herder)
marshals convincing evidence that Herder directly influenced Stifter.
Stifter’s most recent biographers discuss his relationship to Herder at
length. By including forty-six pages of carefully selected Herder texts in
his pet project, a reader for the public schools of Linz, Stifter gave testi-
4
mony of his devotion to his Weimar mentor.
The magnitude of the task of doing justice to the reception of Herder’s
works during the Second Empire (1871–1918) is revealed by Bernhard
Becker’s conclusion: “The Herder-Renaissance of the Wilhelminian empire
without question is a symptom of the rising excessive Patriotism and
5
nationalism” of the time. Herder was now celebrated as the prophet of
Bismarck’s Reich. Elements of his writings that lent themselves to nation-
alist and even imperialist-racist distortions were stressed at the expense of
his undeniable advocacy of an encompassing Humanität, which tempered
his views of the nation. His nationalist critics enjoyed casting him as the
6
“Erzpriester der Menschheit” (the archpriest of humankind). The distor-
ted reading of Herder as nationalist mirrors the deterioration of political

discourse in the Second Empire. The reception on the Left is insufficient-
ly explored. While Herder’s adaptation of El Cid was published repeatedly
and enjoyed great popularity, the gems of his progressive essayistic work
remained largely unknown even though Suphan’s thirty-three-volume cri-
tical edition was progressing and Rudolf Haym’s monumental two-volume
biography, published in 1880 and 1885 and unequaled in scope and re-
finement, was perfectly suited to facilitate a more balanced assessment. It
is not so much that there weren’t any discerning readers. But, as in the
rest of Europe, refinement was subdued by the nationalist tide. Even
thoughtful historians, philosophers, and theologians, not to speak of no-
velists and poets, found it difficult to remain aloof from the patriotic fervor.
A few examples will suggest, however, that a full record of reception and
influence eventually will correct the prevalent one-sided image of Herder
as the prophet of national power and imperial expansion.
To be sure, the fact that Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s best seller
Die Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts (1899; translated as The Foundations
of the Nineteenth Century, 1912), again demonstrated how Herder could
be twisted in order to appeal to the Right, appears to weaken the case for a
more diversified influence. Based on a fairly extensive reading in Herder’s
writings, Chamberlain stressed elements in them that reinforced his own
völkisch, nationalist, and racist views, disregarding entirely, for example,
Herder’s profound admiration of and respect for the ancient Hebrews.
Moreover, Chamberlain did not hesitate to voice his disagreement with
Herder’s universalist ideals, thereby confirming them to the attentive
reader.
When, in November of 1870, not long before his death, the literary
historian Georg Gottfried Gervinus (1805–1871) refused to support a uni-
fication effort paid for by a liberal sellout and Prussian annexations, he
raised a voice that soon was to be drowned out by the nationalist chorus
of the Gründerzeit. As early as 1837, in his Grundzüge der Historik,
Gervinus had called Herder “. . . essentially the founder of a new way to
7
treat history.” And Gervinus is only one link in the long chain of Her-
derian influence from Wilhelm von Humboldt to Friedrich Meinecke that
strengthened the never-broken core of German liberalism under duress. A
closer study of the diverse strands of this core, sometimes referred to as
Realidealismus, reveals parallels to Herder’s thought. A man such as the
Munich philosopher and aesthetician Moritz Carriere (1807–1895), who
has been described as having “. . . carried the main burden in the struggle
against pessimism and materialism in the debate over aesthetics during the
8
Gründerzeit,” conveys echoes of Herder’s Ideen. Germany’s coming to
terms with Darwinism also involved a harkening back to Herder, using
him to facilitate a difficult symbiosis between lingering idealism and evolu-

9
tion, with its harsher reality.
Theodor Fontane, praising in 1896 the “magnificent plainness” of
Herder’s Edward translation vis-a-vis his own monotonous “tam-tam” ren-
dering of fifty years earlier, expressed his fondness for “the old General-
10
superintendent.” Nietzsche’s pitying assessment of Herder in Menschliches,
Allzumenschliches (Human, All Too Human, 1878–80) as governed by
envy and ambition, unable to attain his lofty goals, cannot conceal the
measure of his respect. The degree of Nietzsche’s appreciation of Herder’s
writings is only gradually becoming apparent. The same is true for Jakob
Burckhardt, the Mann brothers, and Rilke, another proud owner of the
11
“Vulgata.”
3. The Twentieth Century

During the Weimar Republic, German intellectual life was dominated by
newly established currents of thought. Intellectual historians employed
methods drawing on vitalist thought, formalist aesthetic typologies, and
structural analysis. The positivist philology of the last third of the nine-
teenth century, the source of exemplary accomplishments such as the
Suphan edition, which led to a Herder Renaissance, hardly influenced the
hermeneutic historical approach governing the 1920s. The studies now
appearing on Herder were based only minimally on the original sources;
their authors deliberately misused quotations from Herder, distorting the
historical context in which they arose. Alongside the national-liberal ten-
dencies carried over from the pre-war period, völkisch-nationalist trends
fed by resentment of the Versailles Treaty were gathering strength. These
movements culminated in the rise of the National Socialists under Hitler
and the destruction of the democratic state. In terms of Herder’s recep-
tion and influence, however, there is no need to regard the year 1933 as a
sharp turning point. The National Socialist period essentially carried on
trends initiated in the 1920s and earlier.
Rudolf Unger’s major Hamann monograph, Hamann und die Auf-
klärung: Studien zur Vorgeschichte des romantischen Geistes im 18ten Jahr-
hundert (1911), the title of which indicates its agenda, was reissued
unchanged in 1925. Displaying stupendous learning, Unger endeavored
to justify his fateful pre-Romantic thesis, declaring Hamann and his pupil
Herder opponents of the Enlightenment and forerunners of Romantic
irrationalism. In a shorter treatise published in 1922, he attempted, with-
out providing textual evidence, to show commonalities among Herder,
Novalis, and Kleist regarding the problem of death. Discussing the philo-
sophy of history, Rudolf Stadelmann’s Der historische Sinn bei Herder
(1928) elevated the young Herder’s preliminary efforts produced in
Bückeburg far above the mature Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der
Menschheit; Friedrich Meinecke followed suit in his standard treatise Die
Entstehung des Historismus (1936). Regarded from a patriotic point of
view, Herder’s negative approach to the state and his cosmopolitan con-
cept of Humanität were assessed by nationalist critics as symptoms of
weakness. Comparing Kant and Herder in the light of contemporary affairs
in his book Kant und Herder als Deuter der geistigen Welt (1930), the
idealist philosopher Theodor Litt called for a synthesis of their thought as
a precondition for the mastery of contemporary problems, in particular
for the shaping of the state on the foundation of a moral community. In
the first two volumes of his far-reaching history of ideas, Geist der Goethe-
zeit: Versuch einer ideellen Entwicklung der klassisch-romantischen Litera-
turgeschichte (1923, 1930), Hermann August Korff explicated Herder’s
role in laying the theoretical foundations for the Sturm und Drang period
and traced, in an analysis that is still instructive, the Klassik’s philosophy
of nature as it was worked out jointly by Herder and Goethe. For his
monumental Geschichte der Menschheit (1907–55; vol. 1: Die Völker ewiger
Urzeit, 1907), the cultural historian Kurt Breysig took Herder’s Ideen as
his model; by emphasizing the unity of natural and human history, join-
ing through the wholeness of his conception anthropological aspects with
those of cultural morphology, and including primitive peoples — all of
which was in line with Herder’s thinking — Breysig contrasted the uni-
versalist approach to history with the prevailing Eurocentric one. The
philosophical anthropology of Helmuth Plessner, as presented in Die Stufen
des Organischen und der Mensch (1928) and of Arnold Gehlen, as presen-
ted in Der Mensch: Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt (1940), was
influenced by Herder’s assessment in the Abhandlung über den Ursprung
der Sprache of the flawed human being (Mängelwesen). Gehlen con-
cluded: “Philosophical anthropology since Herder has not progressed a
single step.”
Whereas these authors, during the early decades of the twentieth
century, adhered to traditional liberal positions, scholars engaged in lit-
erary studies such as Josef Nadler, with his Goethe und Herder (1924) and
Literaturgeschichte des deutschen Volkes (1912, 1931–1941), Heinz
Kindermann, with his Von deutscher Art und Kunst (1935), Benno von
Wiese, with his Herder: Grundzüge seines Weltbildes (1939), Reta Schmitz,
with her Das Problem “Volkstum und Dichtung” bei Herder (1937), and
Wolfdietrich Rasch, with his Herder: Sein Leben und Werk im Umriß,
1938) offered a different image. Joined by advocates of a Germanized
Christianity — “Deutsche Christen” — such as Martin Redeker in his Hu-
manität, Volkstum, Christentum in der Erziehung (1934) and Friedrich
Weinrich in his Herders deutsche Bezeugung des Evangeliums in den
“Christlichen Schriften” (1937) — they presented Herder in “völkisch”
terms. The representative of the Enlightenment, cosmopolitanism, and

humanism was turned into a man hostile to the Age of Reason, standing
for nationalism, racism, and the “Blood and Soil” ideology; eventually he
was twisted into the “Prophet of Greater Germany,” of the people’s and
the Führer’s state, the precursor of “völkisch awakening,” and the “pa-
triarch of ‘völkisch’ national education.” All of this was facilitated by the
progressive de-emphasis of the historicist approach to literary studies after
1918 and the steadily growing subjectivist and biologist tendencies in the
field.
Nevertheless, there was a measure of continuity in Herder’s reception
from the 1860s to 1945, as is indicated by the record of German publica-
tions. The gradual distortion of Herder’s views reflected the increasingly
nationalistic trends of the times. After 1945 there was a noticeable break
of continuity in the Western Zones of Occupation and the state that was
formed in them, the Federal Republic. The sustained domination of West-
German Germanistik by conservative scholars such as Benno von Wiese
prevented a critical discussion of the discipline’s ignoble past until the time
of the 1968 student uprising.
Represented ably by scholars such as Wilhelm Dobbek, Heinz Stolpe,
and Regine Otto, Herder research in the German Democratic Republic
tied into the historical writing of pre-First World War Social Democracy,
in particular Franz Mehring’s 1904 essay in Die Neue Zeit commemora-
ting the 100th anniversary of Herder’s death. In 1954 the Marxist philoso-
pher Wolfgang Harich reissued Rudolf Haym’s Herder biography. Harich’s
introduction, suppressed in the 1958 edition, discussed the historical con-
text of the work, finding fault with both the National-Liberal Haym and
the Czech Marxist Paul Reimann. A more traditional humanistic position
in Herder research was represented by Dobbek, whose numerous publica-
tions appeared in both parts of Germany. In 1957 he also issued the first
new edition of selected works, overdue for decades, which was broadly dis-
tributed and reached four printings by 1969. In addition, he prepared the
critical edition of Herder’s letters, of which twelve volumes have appeared
to date, including texts, encyclopedic index, and commentary. Stolpe’s edi-
tions of the Ideen (1965) and the Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität
(1971) laid the foundations for commentaries that appeared much later in
the Federal Republic of Germany. Contrasting with the earlier image of
Herder’s place in intellectual history, these studies were characterized by
an encompassing consideration of historical context of Herder’s time and
the underlying political and social factors. Among other aspects of Herder’s
thought, his predominantly positive reaction to the French Revolution
was subjected to a differentiated examination. The manifold approaches to
Herder’s oeuvre were demonstrated in a 1980 volume titled Herder-Kollo-
quium 1978: Referate und Diskussionsbeiträge, documenting a major inter-
national colloquium held in Weimar in 1978 to commemorate the 175th

anniversary of Herder’s death. The conference was attended by par-
ticipants from almost all socialist countries. The general bibliography of
Herder literature, under the title Herder-Bibliographie and edited by
Gottfried Günter, Albina Volgina, and Siegfried Seifert, was published in
1978 and continued in a 1994 supplement edited by Doris Kuhles, pub-
lished in the third volume (1996) and subsequent volumes of the Herder
Yearbook under various editors. A multitude of GDR publications on Her-
der were critically reviewed in 1982 in the former Weimar annual Impulse.
In the Federal Republic of Germany the bishop of the Evangelical-
Lutheran Church of Schaumburg-Lippe together with Hans Dietrich
Irmscher organized the Bückeburg Herder colloquia featuring discussions
among smaller groups of scholars, whose proceedings were published in
several conference volumes under the title Bückeburger Gespräche über
Johann Gottfried Herder from 1971 through 1988. In 1984 a major
Herder conference took place in Saarbrücken, with the conference pro-
12
ceedings published in 1987. This conference marked the rebirth of aware-
ness of and scholarship on Herder in the West, resulting in numerous
projects and collaborations. At this time prolonged efforts, foremost by
Hans Dietrich Irmscher and Emil Adler, were also under way to catalogue
the handwritten Nachlass (Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Katalog
1979), while Irmscher’s critical studies of the Suphan edition were gradu-
ally bearing fruit. Beginning in 1984, two extensively commentated new
editions of selected works began to appear: the Werke in zehn Bänden,
edited by Günter Arnold and others for Deutscher Klassiker Verlag (10
volumes in 11 books, 1985–2000), and the Werke, edited by Wolfgang
Pross for the Carl Hanser Verlag (3 volumes in 4 books, 1984, 1987,
2002). Based on representative selections of texts, they richly supplement
Suphan’s edition and will for most purposes take its place. By the end of
the twentieth century ideologically based interpretations of Herder’s works
had given way to more objective textual scholarship as the basis of future
research.
Many years of activity by a group of Herder scholars in North America
culminated in the first Herder symposium in Monterey, California in 1985
and the founding of the International Herder Society (Internationale
Herder Gesellschaft). Joined by scholars from various countries and aca-
demic disciplines, the biennial meetings of the society and its yearbook
became forums for the interdisciplinary discussion of Herder’s works and
time. Notwithstanding the diversity of themes discussed, there appears to
be consensus in contemporary international Herder research that he must
be regarded as a man of the European Enlightenment and not as the initi-
ator of an irrational “German Movement.” Scholars agree that his works
must be viewed in the context of the time during which they were written
and that they should not be allowed to be ideologically co-opted and dis-
torted, an occurrence that, as described above, has marred nearly their en-
tire Wirkungsgeschichte.
4. Herder’s Reception and Influence in

Great Britain and North America
As part of a Companion to Herder addressing an English-speaking reader-
ship, an account of Herder’s reception and influence in Great Britain and
North America occupies a special place. The list of noteworthy Anglo-
13
American Herder scholars is extensive.
Few chapters in intellectual history reveal crosscurrents of thought as
powerful as those that connected and mutually enriched the British Isles
and Germany during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Herder was
shaped as a thinker and writer in this context. While his name is a familiar
one on both sides of the North Atlantic, usually appended to Goethe’s in
the popular and reference literatures, the distinctiveness and primacy of his
many contributions have, generally speaking, been underappreciated in
the English-speaking world. The differences between reception and in-
fluence in mature national cultures resting secure in the awareness of their
attainments and in nations newly united and in the grip of nationalist
aspirations need to be considered. A closer look reveals that neither the
language barrier and dearth of translations nor the vagaries of taste and
public opinion have prevented discerning minds from receiving Herder
on his own terms, even if he came to them as read by others. This is
borne out in particular by the periodical literature. American and British
journals, now conveniently indexed and accessible in electronic databases,
provide a broad range of pertinent information on Herder. Over twenty-
five years ago, John Boening documented multiple reviews of Herder’s
most significant works in numerous British journals covering the years
from 1789 until 1857, basing his work on the labors of the Morgan/
Hohlfeld “Wisconsin Anglo-German Project,” and a corresponding survey
of the American periodical literature, facilitated by computer technology,
is now gathering momentum. Nevertheless, a thorough examination of
Herder’s reception and influence in the English-speaking world has not
yet been written (see note 15).
A still very useful survey and bibliography of Herder’s reception and
influence in England, France, America, and the Slavic countries is found
14
in Alexander Gillies’s 1945 monograph Herder, even if some of his con-
clusions have been superseded. John Boening’s observations that “Herder’s
fortune in England may have been up to this point significantly under-
estimated,” and that the weight given to the literary dimension in the
conventional wisdom “may present an incomplete, if not mistaken as-

15
sessment” are well taken. Walter F. Schirmer’s general survey of German
literary influence on England duly acknowledged the significance of
Herder’s historical, theological, and philosophical writings. Schirmer took
16
note particularly of Matthew Arnold’s esteem for Herder.
Frederik M. Barnard’s translations of and writings on Herder’s social
and political thought, appearing over a lifetime of scholarship, performed
great service in providing a record of Herder’s reception and influence in
the English-speaking world after the Second World War, correcting dis-
tortions and enhancing the appreciation of the consistent democratic and
ethical values underlying all of his thought. The writings of Robert T.
Clark and Isaiah Berlin remain standard in the canon of Herder scholar-
ship in English. Whereas Clark’s biography is generally respected for
providing a full and fair account of Herder’s life and works at a time when
it was much needed, Berlin’s long-reigning interpretation of Herder as rep-
17
resentative of a “Counter Enlightenment” has been seriously questioned.
In retrospect, the Jacksonian political and economic transformation of
America has tended to obscure the extent and depth of the religious and
intellectual upheaval that consumed the Northeastern United States dur-
ing the period from 1820 to 1850, including the German components that
energized the Transcendentalist movement. If there was a central concern
of Herder’s reception, as part of the overall German influence during the
first half of the nineteenth century, it was over his role in the revolution-
ary transformation of religious life. For better or for worse, that concern
speaks to the reader out of the works of Coleridge, Carlyle, and Emerson.
Interacting with one another as well as with their immediate environ-
ments, each of them read Herder in his own way as part of their reception
and channeling of German thought and letters. Of interest to posterity
are Coleridge’s devastating marginalia in some of Herder’s works, which,
however, cannot conceal Coleridge’s overall intellectual indebtedness to
him. In considering Carlyle’s vigor as “purveyor of German culture” to
England and subsequently to America, Scottish hostility toward England
and “possessiveness” in respect to things German must be taken into ac-
18
count. Carlyle’s reading of Herder reflects his acute perception of Her-
der’s philosophy of history and of his intuitive grasp of human roots in
nature, complementing Coleridge’s deeper insight into the religious di-
mension of Herder’s creative thought. In America, Ralph Waldo Emerson
and Margaret Fuller were the representatives of letters who attained the
most rounded and most fruitful appreciation of Herder’s thought. But
they owed their increasing awareness of Herder to the religious upheaval
19
that energized the “American Renaissance.”
Translations of some of Herder’s principal writings on religion and
theology published during the 1820s, culminating in the completion of
James Marsh’s English version of Vom Geist der ebräischen Poesie in 1833,
broadened Herder’s appeal to all sides in the tri-cornered conflict among
New England’s orthodox Calvinists, its Unitarians, and the Transcenden-
talists. The fact that Herder came to be known best by the latter was due
to the efforts of George Ripley and Theodore Parker, who both owned
his complete works. Pivotal in putting Herder’s name on the Transcen-
dentalist agenda were Ripley’s extensive reviews of Herder’s life and
works in the May and November 1835 issues of The Christian Examiner,
the Unitarian journal of record. Ripley’s mastery of Herder’s voluminous
writings on religion and theology, together with his perceptive reading
of Caroline von Herder’s Memoirs, resulted in an image of Herder that
was attractive to the Transcendentalists and in tune with their objectives.
Although the immediacy and prominence of Schleiermacher’s and
20
de Wette’s influence during these years, inflaming passions on all sides of
the conflict, tended to obscure Herder’s role as the senior member of
what Samuel Osgood called an “illustrious trio,” his influence continued
to be reflected in American publications. The pervasiveness of his influ-
ence revealed itself also in areas other than religion and theology. T. O.
Churchill translation of Herder’s most important work, the Ideen (1800;
2nd ed. 1803; reprint 1966), was widely read and cited, in addition to
being the basis for also Edgar Quinet’s French translation of 1827/28
(reviewed 1831). From the 1820s to the end of the century, there were a
plethora of references to Herder in American periodical literature, ranging
from singular mentions to extensive reviews of his writings. Aside from
the attention given him in the pages of The Christian Disciple, The Chris-
tian Examiner, The Christian Register, The Biblical Repertory, The Biblical
Repository, and The Dial in the years leading up to and during the Tran-
scendentalist controversy (ca. 1830–50), Herder’s name and works gained
broader currency in journals such as The North American Review, The
Living Age, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New England and Yale Review.
Though evidently not forgotten, he frequently was referred to as neglec-
ted or not sufficiently appreciated. Beginning with the young George
Bancroft’s 1825 review of the “Vulgata” volumes on literature and the
fine arts, American commentators acknowledged various editions of the
works and selected correspondence, including a glowing welcome in 1878
to Suphan’s first two volumes of the Sämmtliche Werke, and displayed
significant awareness of Herder’s oeuvre. Read in this context, Karl
Hillebrand’s celebration of Herder in three extensive contributions to the
North American Review in 1872 and 1873, demonstrating Herder’s over-
arching importance for the nineteenth century as a whole, is less of a
surprise. This appeal by a truly cosmopolitan German essayist to an Amer-
ican readership to appreciate Herder’s “immense influence,” including his
mythopoetic attainment, continues to ring true. This becomes increasingly
clear in Hillebrand’s review of Herder’s role, in which he asserts, in re-

lation to the rise of modern mythology in the United States, that myth
must be seen in its historical context.
“Herder is always in danger of vanishing among those he influ-
enced,” observed the late Burton Feldman as he included notable selec-
tions of writings from Herder on mythology in the classic anthology
21
edited by him and Robert D. Richardson more than thirty years ago.
The multiple references to Herder by both editors in numerous head
notes to the selections of texts covering almost two centuries confirm him
as a central figure in the elucidation of mythology.
If it is true that “by the late 1850s [. . .] enough of the transcen-
dental world view had filtered into the popular imagination that one can
say [. . .] that the culture absorbed it,” as the 2001 Oxford Companion to
United States History has it, the striving for self-formation toward greater
Humanität advocated by Herder was part of that worldview. Just as some
of Emerson’s most enduring essays such as “The American Scholar,”
“The Poet,” and “The Divinity School Address” evoke Herderian lines of
thought, Walt Whitman’s notion of folk heritage as essential to a national
tradition in literature, and of national culture as part of a universal whole,
22
were clearly derived from Herder.
Notwithstanding the damage done to the image of German culture in
the English-speaking world by the disastrous consequences of two great
conflicts, serious scholars continued to testify to the fruitfulness of the ex-
change. The rich harvest of scholarship brought to North America by
refugees from Hitler’s terror and immigrants of the postwar epoch re-
sulted in a renewed flowering of the exchange. It is entirely fitting that
the impressive growth of Herder scholarship in Germany after 1945 was
matched in the United States and that it brought about the establishment
of the International Herder Society here.
5. Herder’s Reception and Influence in France

The reception of Herder’s oeuvre and thought in France has not so far
been the subject of a specific and thorough examination. The observa-
tions offered below do not change this situation, but merely summarize
what may be gathered from the existing literature. It is hoped and ex-
pected that more penetrating research, taking into account sources not
previously considered, will alter the picture sketched here.
For practical reasons, two modes of reception will be separately dis-
cussed: the reception of Herder’s thought in France due to the translation
of his works, and the reception due to the mediation of authors who,
competent in German, drew on Herder’s writings in their own work or
endeavored to bring his life and works closer to the French public by
means of publications devoted to Herder’s work. Since the end of the

Second World War, a considerable contribution to the awareness of
Herder’s thought and achievement has been made by French scholars of
German literature and comparative studies.
It may be that the antireligious posture of the French Enlightenment
beginning in about 1765 created an unfavorable climate for the reception
of Herder’s thought in France. He was not even taken note of in that
period. Thus it is not surprising that the first translation of a Herder text,
23
that of the profound essay Liebe und Selbstheit (Love and Selfhood,
1781), addressed to Frans Hemsterhuis, did not appear as an autonomous
publication, but as part of volume 1 of Hemsterhuis’s Œuvres philoso-
24
phiques; here it was explicitly welcomed as complementing and supple-
menting Hemsterhuis’s “Lettre sur les désirs” (Letter Regarding the
Desires), as the “réflexions d’un des plus excellens écrivains dont l’Alle-
magne puisse se glorifier” (the reflections of one of the most excellent
writers that Germany can glory in). However, nothing is known about the
impact of this text.
Additional translations followed, but they were few in number, with
25
the time between appearances increasing: these included the Paramythes
and the translation of Herder’s draft of a response to the prize question
posed by the Institut national de France: “Quelle a été l’influence de la
Réformation de Luther sur la situation politique des Etats de l’Europe et
sur le progrès des Lumières?” (5 April, 1802; What influence did Luther’s
Reformation have on the political situation of the European states and on
the progress of the Enlightenment), which was incorporated by Charles
de Villers into the third edition of his Essai sur l’esprit et l’influence de la
26
réformation de Luther, based on Herder’s manuscript made available to
him by Johannes von Müller. Also to be noted are excerpts from Herder’s
Cid translated by Simonde de Sismondi in De la littérature du Midi de
27
l’Europe, first published in 1813 (this despite the fact that Sismondi took
Herder’s romances for poetic emulations of original texts). Another four-
teen years elapsed before Edgar Quinet’s French translation of Herder’s
28
Ideen, under the title Idées sur la philosophie de l’histoire de l’humanité,
appeared in 1827/28. Quinet added a significant and lastingly influential
essay on Herder to his translation, which was based on the English transla-
tion by T. O. Churchill because he then still lacked command of German.
Also to be mentioned is Aloise Christine de Carlowitz’s 1844 translation
29
of the Ebräische Poesie as Histoire de la poesie des Hébreux, which brought
to the French public a dimension of Herder’s writings that at the time was
largely overlooked: his simultaneously poetic and theological analysis of
Old Testament texts. The work was immediately well received: Michel Berr,
a learned and well-known representative of the French Jewish community,
30
admired the book and initially planned to translate it himself.
French interest in Herder’s works increased during the second half of

the nineteenth century, resulting in the publication of new translations of
31 32
the Ideen by Emile Tandel in 1861–62, of the Cid in 1874, and of his
33
selected stories in translation, Feuilles de palmier, also in 1874. Increas-
ingly serious academic study of Herder’s oeuvre during the 1930s, taking
issue with the pointedly nationalistic Herder research being conducted in
Germany at the time, resulted in a number of significant new translations:
the Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769 was translated by Max Rouché in
34
1942, who also translated Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung
der Menschheit under the title Une autre philosophie de l’histoire pour con-
35
tribuer à l’éducation de l’humanité in 1943. In 1962 Rouché issued
36
translations of selections from the Ideen. Translations of the essay Über
37
den Ursprung der Sprache appeared in 1978 and 1992, respectively. Fi-
nally, mention should be made of Myriam Bienenstock’s 1996 translation
38
of Herder’s Spinoza book Gott. Einige Gespräche. Though somewhat
late to appear, Herder is an author of rank in French academic discourse,
no longer to be overlooked, and his texts are issued by highly regarded
publishers.
Herder’s appearance in the writings of French intellectuals is a different
issue. Aside from a few early notices of his writings in newspapers, which
according to Alexander Gillies had already brought him a measure of ack-
39
nowledgment during the eighteenth century, De Gérando’s 1804 obitu-
ary of Herder should be mentioned as the first publication of substance on
40
Herder in France, revealing outstanding familiarity with his oeuvre. Given
the prevailing political circumstances in 1804 in Napoleon’s France, the
obituary might well be read as an expression of political opposition. It was
republished in 1817 as part of the entry in the Biographie universelle anci-
41
enne et moderne. More extensive and not less informed was the Herder en-
42
try by Saint-René Taillandier in the Nouvelle Biographie générale of 1858.
Notwithstanding their disagreements, De Gérando and de Villers were
friends of Mme de Staël and Benjamin Constant. Even though Villers
neither wrote about Herder himself nor published anything about Herder
in his journal Spectateur du Nord, he held him in high esteem, and he
would certainly have informed Mme de Staël and Constant about Herder
when he met with them in Metz from October 26 to November 8, 1803.
It may be assumed, therefore, that de Staël’s sympathetic characterization
43
of Herder in her De l’Allemagne — which suggests extensive familiarity
with the texts — was probably influenced by Villers’s ideas as well as the
assessments of Constant and August Wilhelm Schlegel. Her representa-
tion, although not entirely free of infelicities, sketches an essentially ac-
curate image of Herder, fully grasping his immense erudition, originality,
and uniqueness of judgment, his poetic sensibility, theological earnest-
ness, and moral commitment, even if a superficial reader might misunder-
stand her description of him as a cliché. While in Weimar in 1804, Constant

read the Ideen intensively and as indicated in his diary, drew from the
work crucial methodological and theoretical impulses governing his views
of religion; in later years, while preparing his De la Religion (1824–31),
he repeatedly referred to the book, complementing the insights he had
gained from it with references to other Herder texts. How highly Constant
valued the Ideen is made clear by the fact that in 1805 he offered Villers,
who was planning a journal, an essay on perfectibility which was explicitly
conceived as an introduction to Herder’s Ideen, even though they at the
time had not been published in French. Constant’s recourse to Herder
represents the first well-documented instance of the penetrating influence
on France of Herder’s mature thought. Karl Viktor von Bonstetten (1745–
1832), who also regarded himself as part of the self-described “cosmo-
politan” Coppet Circle, was familiar with Herder’s writings and cited them
in his Études sur l’homme, a highly rated, grandly conceived philosophical
treatise that was published in a German version in addition to the French
44
original. François Guizot’s enthusiastic reception of Herder’s Ideen, dat-
ing back to the years 1807 to 1810, is of similar significance. At that time
the young Guizot served as tutor in the home of Phillip A. Stapfer, the
former Swiss ambassador to France, who was, in a broader sense, part of
the Coppet Circle; Guizot found and studied Herder’s work in Stapfer’s
private library.
Edgar Quinet’s translation of the Ideen and the appended essay “Étude
45
sur le caractère et les écrits de Herder,” introduced Herder’s philosophy
of history and his vision of perfectibility into the French discourse. Their
reception in the nineteenth century by Quinet’s mentor, the philosopher
Victor Cousin, by the philosopher Théodore Jouffroy, by the historian
Jules Michelet, and lastly by the historian and philologist Ernest Renan,
give testimony to the notable presence of Herder’s philosophy of history
and his discourses on poetics and religion, even though details have not
yet been rigorously researched. An increasingly enduring engagement
with Herder is to be noted in France after 1870, beginning with Charles
Joret’s Herder et la renaissance littéraire en Allemagne au XVIIIe siècle
46
from 1875, and even more emphatically since the beginning of the twen-
tieth century. Thoroughly documented, as a rule, along the lines of the
47
finest tradition of the Thèses d’état, the studies of Henri Tronchon, Max
48 49
Rouché, and, more recently, Pierre Pénisson, as well as the special jour-
50
nal issues devoted to Herder, testify to an intensive Herder reception in
France, engaged with international Herder scholarship and doing full jus-
tice to his position in the history of ideas.
6. Herder’s Reception and Influence

in Slavic Countries
The striving of the smaller Slavic peoples for national cultural autonomy
toward the end of the eighteenth and during the first half of the nine-
teenth century, as part of the European Enlightenment, was also affected
by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. This “Slavic Renais-
sance” was conditioned by diverse social, political, and economic premises
and goals. At the same time these national movements were subject to
Western European literary impulses, especially from Germany; among the
latter the reception of Herder’s works occupies a prominent position.
The reception of Herder’s individual works in the various countries
depended on those countries’ divergent needs at different times. More
important in this process than the immediate impact of the works was the
prevalent and reciprocal cultural transfer among progressive intellectuals
of the various Slavic peoples; in many instances, commonalities became
apparent that reflected the overriding political interests of all Slavs.
The Czechs, who next to the Sorbs (or Wends) were most closely situ-
ated to the West, were the first to be stimulated by Herder’s thought on
nationality; they also accomplished the most in the establishment of Slavic
studies as an academic discipline. Czech intellectuals read Herder’s works
in German, especially the “Slavenkapitel” (“Chapter on the Slavs”), the
most influential historical chapter of Herder’s Ideen, which foretells the
liberation and self-determination of the oppressed Slavic peoples; it heralds
a philosophy of history rooted in Herder’s quest for Humanität, for the
peaceful cultural development of all peoples. The founder of Czech Slavic
studies, Joseph Dobrovský, used the “Slavenkapitel” as the introduction
to his almanac Slavin: Botschaft aus Böhmen an alle slavischen Völker oder
Beiträge zur Kenntnis der slavischen Literatur nach allen Mundarten
(Slavin: A Bohemian Appeal to All Slavic Peoples or: Contributions to the
Knowledge of Slavic Literature in All Dialects, reissued by Václav Hanka,
1834). Proceeding from Dobrovský’s publication, Herder’s famous text
made its way into most Slavic languages. His understanding of the ancient
Slavs became so current among the educated that his name was often no
longer explicitly mentioned. In 1823 Jan Kollár translated the “Slaven-
kapitel” which he in turn gave a poetic rendering in the 1817 prelude to
his sonnet cycle Die Tochter der Slava (The Daughter of the Slavs, 1821).
In a sonnet published much later, in 1852, Kollár celebrates Herder as
“the priest of Humanität” and “foremost defender of the Slavs.” The Slo-
venian linguist Bartholomäus Kopitar came to Herder’s Ideen by way of
Dobrovský. With the growing spread of Slavic self-awareness, whether
stimulated by Herder or merely attributed to him, these aspirations took
on a life of their own, so that, due to “Slavic reciprocity,” and specifically

the influence of West Slavic sources on Southeastern Europe, there are af-
ter 1830 only indirect ties to Herder’s works in the Slavic discourse on
these topics.
Herder’s call, at the end of the “Slavenkapitel,” for the collection of
their “ever more vanishing customs, songs, and tales” touches on the
second major segment of Herder reception by the Slavic peoples, Herder’s
Volkslieder collection and his theories pertaining to folk poetry. Here it
should be noted that the influence of Herder and of German Roman-
ticism overlap in time, and that the collection of folk songs had already
begun earlier in several Slavic countries. Whereas Poland and Russia al-
ready had flourishing national literatures, the folk-song collections, along
with educational reforms, became the basis for the literary languages and
literatures of the smaller nations. In regard to the existential significance
of national language for self-awareness and sustained national life, Herder’s
works from the Fragmente to the Humanitätsbriefe (especially the tenth
letter) provided food for thought. In the quest for cultural autonomy,
Herder was cited as an authority and ultimate judge rather than a mere
stimulator.
Of almost equal significance in the history of Slavic poetry are Herder’s
poetic evocations (Nachdichtungen) of classical, Hebrew, and more recent
European poetry and his own mythic fables. The Enlightenment culture
of Polish and Russian nobility at the beginning of the nineteenth century
was still dominated by the literary currents of French classicism and its
mode of literary production, in Russia right up to the period of Senti-
mentalism. At the same time both countries were already displaying the
folk-oriented tendencies of emerging national Romantic movements.
Herder’s influence in Russia diverges sharply from his reception among
the West and South Slavs. Two significant examples of Herder’s early re-
ception are found in Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin’s Briefe eines russischen
Reisenden (1799–1802) and Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev’s Reise
von Petersburg nach Moskau (1790). Perhaps the most intensive reader of
Herder’s works was Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky, the founder of Russian
Romanticism.
The translation of the Ideen into Russian was marked by the most un-
fortunate delays. Whoever could not read German, English, or French
had to wait almost two hundred years, until 1977, when a complete Rus-
sian edition appeared at last. In order to give his epic War and Peace con-
temporary color, Tolstoy made reference to this text. Positive comments
about Herder or evidence of his influence is found in Nikolai Gogol’s
Arabesken (Arabesques, 1835) and Alexander Herzen’s Über die Stellung
des Menschen in der Natur (On the Position of the Human Being in Na-
ture, 1832).
f:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff on Thu, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC

Herder’s philosophy of history also played an important role in the

controversies between the proponents of Western culture and the Slavo-
philes in Russia. Both the extreme Westerner Peter Tschaadajev and the
Slavophile Ivan Vasilievich Kireevsky were influenced by Herder’s Ideen
and the Christliche Schriften. Their central differences of view with each
other concerned the role of Christianity and of antiquity in the history of
humankind and in particular of Russia. The issue at hand was Russia’s re-
lation to European culture, that is, according to Tschaadajev, Russia’s back-
wardness due to the schism of 1054 between the Byzantine Church and
Roman Christianity. Kireevsky saw the legacy of the break as an advantage
for Russia, since its Christian faith was not corrupted by classical Roman
customs and it was therefore endowed with a historical mission. In the
end, Great Russian nationalism and the Greek Orthodox faith gained the
upper hand. In his speech at the dedication of the Pushkin Memorial in
Moscow in June of 1880, Feodor Dostoevsky proclaimed the doctrine of
the Slavophiles, calling the Russian people to unite, through love and in
the name of a brotherhood destroyed by Western individualism, a human-
ity torn apart. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Russia took
the place of Austria as the protector of the Slavic peoples, as was pro-
claimed by Palacký as president of the June 1848 Slavic Congress in
Prague. Whereas Herder exerted sustained influence on the development
of Austro-Slavism by way of Friedrich Schlegel’s Viennese lectures, “Ge-
schichte der alten und neuen Literatur” (History of Ancient and Modern
Literature, 1812), this was not the case in regard to imperial Great Russian
Pan-Slavism. Moreover, during the second half of the nineteenth century
Herder’s works were read less and less in Russia. When the Russian trans-
lation of Haym’s Herder biography appeared in 1888, A. N. Pypin pre-
sented him in Der Europäische Bote as an almost forgotten author. In his
exposition Pypin relied, as did K. Arabashin in the Herder entry of the
51
Encyclopedic Dictionary, on Hermann Hettner’s Geschichte der deutschen
Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert (1870). There are, however, also explicit
references to Herder’s reception during the Slavic Renaissance and by the
Russian Narodniks. The many smaller peoples of the Danubian monarchy
gained their national sovereignty after the First World War, rendering the
idea of Pan-Slavism outdated. The first president of the Czechoslovakian
Republic, the philosopher T. G. Masaryk (governed from 1918 to 1935),
was deeply influenced by Herder’s concept of nation and Humanität; he
saw the nation and humankind as a whole in a dialectical relationship.
As a matter of fact, Herder’s “Slavenkapitel” had nothing to do with
the leadership role of the Slavs claimed by the ideologues of Pan-Slavism.
Nevertheless, after the two world wars, German nationalists, extreme rep-
resentatives of German Landsmannschaften (regional associations) and
Vertriebenenverbände (associations of expellees) assigned Herder responsi-
bility for the political consequences of the wars. During the twentieth cen-
tury, much was done for Herder’s reputation in the Slavic countries by
scholars of German literature and philosophy. He was honored as a pro-
gressive man of the Enlightenment, friend of the Slavs, and advocate of
peaceful coexistence among nations.
Concluding Remarks
While it is outside the scope of this essay to deal in detail with Herder’s re-
ception and influence in all of the countries where it has been significant
and is growing, a few must be mentioned here. At the same time, readers
reflecting on the broader context of the subject discussed here must keep
in mind the changing perceptions of Wirkungsgeschichte accelerated by
52
the writings of Hans Robert Jauss, Hinrich C. Seeba, and others. Along-
side the various smaller European nations, some of them briefly sketched
in the sub-chapter on Slavic countries, Herder research conducted in Italy
and the Spanish-speaking world merits attention.
Tilman Borsche has observed that, specifically in Italy, ever since the
Romanticism and historicism of the nineteenth century held sway, “an
uninterrupted and independent tradition of Herder reception has evolved,
which attained a climax of national significance in the philosophical-
53
aesthetic-literary discourse of the twentieth century shaped by Croce.”
The volume edited by Borsche contains the contributions of an interna-
tional group of scholars to a conference held in October 2003 in the Villa
Vigoni at Lake Como, including papers by several Italian scholars. Initi-
ated by Aldo Venturelli of Urbino, the conference and its proceedings,
including additional contributions solicited by the editor after the event,
impressively reflect the contemporary trends of international Herder scho-
larship focusing on his reception and influence. The fact that the most
comprehensive assessment, so far, of Wolfgang Pross’s monumental Ideen
edition was published in Italy gives an indication of the acute scholarly
54
interest in Herder there.
With respect to the Spanish-speaking world, Herder’s reception and
influence are most readily sketched in the context of Latin America, with
particular attention to the nineteenth-century political independence move-
ments and the emergence of the Latin American nations. Here the achieve-
ments of Alexander von Humboldt in the exploration and transformation
of Latin America overlap with the influence of Herder’s thought. Scholars
of Latin American civilization such as Ottmar Ette, Eberhard Knobloch,
and Heinz Krumpel have long known that Humboldt, enormously popu-
lar in the Southern Hemisphere, carried much of Herder in his backpack,
and that Herder’s thought was conveyed there also by French sources and
by direct contact of Latin American intellectuals with Weimar. Both
Knobloch and Krumpel have been explicit in pointing to Humboldt’s de-

pendency on Herder and to Herder’s significant direct impact on Latin
55
American civilization.
A very active locus of Herder research is found in Japan, where the
Herder Gesellschaft Japan holds regular meetings, sponsors international
conferences, and publishes its own journal, the Herder Studien (13 vols.
to date), with contributions by its members and scholars residing in other
countries. Members of the Herder Gesellschaft Japan regularly attend the
biennial meetings of the International Herder Society and present papers,
as do representatives of African universities.
The forthcoming volume Herder und seine Wirkung / Herder and His
Impact, edited by Michael Maurer and containing the proceedings of the
2008 Jena conference devoted to that topic (full citation at end of note
55 above), will present approximately fifty papers discussing Herder’s re-
ception and influence. The topical organization of the sessions and the
variety of approaches displayed will give readers a good idea of the present
state of Herder scholarship on reception and influence and richly supple-
ment this survey. The intensive study of sources used by Herder, often
unacknowledged by him (as demonstrated by Wolfgang Pross in his ex-
tensive commentary to the Ideen and by other scholars in the past), is
making tools available for a new look at Herder’s impact on the emerging
natural science disciplines and their relations to the humanities and social
sciences during the second half of the nineteenth century and beyond, in
Germany and abroad. Forthcoming issues of the Herder Jahrbuch / Herder
Yearbook and the biennial conferences of the IHS / IHG will surely reflect
these developments.
Notes
Günter Arnold contributed sections 1, 3, and 6; Kurt Kloocke contributed section
5; Ernest Menze contributed sections 2 and 4 and translated sections 1, 3, 5, and 6.
1
See Ernest A. Menze, “Herder and Heine. Reflections on Affinities,” Heine Jahr-
buch 43 (2004): 150–71; especially 150, 153n16, 154nn22 & 23, 159n41.
2
Menze, “Herder and Heine,” 152n11.
3
Stifters Werke in sechs Bänden, ed. Gustav Wilhelm (Berlin: Bong, 1911), 4:7–
36. See also Moriz Enzinger, Adalbert Stifters Studienjahre (1818–1830) (Inns-
bruck: Österreichische Verlagsanstalt, 1950), 170–71, and Menze, “Johann
Gottfried Herder, ‘Young Germany,’ and Beyond: Problems of Reception,” in
Der frühe und der späte Herder: Kontinuität und/oder Korrektur / Young Herder,
Old Herder: Continuity and Correction, ed. Sabine Gross and Gerhard Sauder
(Heidelberg: Synchron, 2007), 450–57.
4
Friedrich Sengle, Biedermeierzeit (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1971–1980), 3:974.
Sengle cites Peter Schäublin, whose two extensive essays in Vierteljahresschrift des
Adalbert Stifter Instituts des Landes Oberösterreich (aka Vasilo) link Stifter to Herder.
Vasilo 23/24 (1974–1975): 101–13, 87–105. Two recent biographies confirm
Stifter’s ties to Herder: Wolfgang Matz, Adalbert Stifter oder diese fürchterliche
Wendung der Dinge (Munich: Hanser, 1995); Peter A. Schoenborn, Adalbert
Stifter: Sein Leben und Werk (Tübingen, Basel: Francke, 1992). Stifter’s reader for
the Linz schools is reprinted as Lesebuch zur Förderung humaner Bildung, ed.
Adalbert Stifter and Johannes Aprent (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1938). Heidi Owren,
in the chapter “Adalbert Stifter” in her Herders Bildungsprogramm und seine
Auswirkungen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Heidelberg: Winter, 1983), 197–215,
comprehensively reviews Stifter’s indebtedness to Herder and specifically analyzes
the rationale for the Herder selections included in Stifter’s Lesebuch.
5
Bernhard Becker, Herder-Rezeption in Deutschland: Eine ideologiekritische Unter-
suchung (St. Ingbert: Röhrig, 1987), 118.
6
Becker, Herder-Rezeption in Deutschland, 88.
7
For Gervinus and Herder, see Jochen Johannsen, “Der Erfahrungswandel der
Moderne und die Ästhetisierung der Geschichte: Aspekte der historischen Erfah-
rung bei Herder,” Monatshefte 95.2 (2003): 264. Gervinus is cited in Max Bucher
et al., eds., Realismus und Gründerzeit (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1976), 1:98.
8
Bucher, et al., Realismus und Gründerzeit, 1:117.
9
Bucher et al., Realismus und Gründerzeit, 1:131; see also Friedrich von Baeren-
bach, Herder als Vorgänger Darwins und der modernen Naturphilosophie (Berlin:
T. Grieben, 1877).
10
Theodor Fontane, Werke (Nymphenburger Fontane Ausgabe) 21.2:577.
11
For Nietzsche and Thomas Mann, see Menze, “Johann Gottfried Herder —
Nationsbegriff und Weltgefühl,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 1/86: 31–46, 43.
For forthcoming publications see the conclusion of this chapter. Rainer Maria
Rilke, Briefwechsel mit Anton Kippenberg (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1995),
2:110, 470.
12
Gerhard Sauder, ed., Johann Gottfried Herder: 1744–1803. Proceedings of the
Ninth Annual Meeting of the German Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies/
Deutsche Gesellschaft für die Erforschung des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts (Ham-
burg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1987).
13
See for the United States: Henry A. Pochmann with Arthur R. Schultz et al.,
German Culture in America: Philosophical and Literary Influences. 1600–1900
(Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1957), and Henry A. Pochmann, Bibliography of
German Culture in America to 1940, ed. Arthur R. Schultz (Madison: U of Wis-
consin P, 1954; Reprint Millwood, NY: Kraus International Publications, 1982).
14
Alexander Gillies, Herder (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1945): trans. by Wilhelm
Loew as Herder: Der Mensch und sein Werk (Hamburg: Schröder, 1949).
15
John Boening, “Herder and the White Man’s Burden. The Ideen zur Geschichte
der Philosophie der Menschheit and the Shaping of British Colonial Policy,” in
Johann Gottfried Herder: Language, History, and the Enlightenment, ed. Wulf
Koepke (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1990), 236–45, 237. See also J. Boening,
The Reception of Classical German Literature in England, 1760–1860 (New York:
Garland, 1978), 10 vols., vol. 5 (1977): 111–235.
16
Walter F. Schirmer, Der Einfluss der deutschen Literatur auf die englische im
neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Halle: Niemeyer, 1947), 28–29, 115.
17
Frederic M. Barnard, Herder’s Social and Political Thought: From Enlightenment
to Nationalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967); Herder on Nationality, Human-
ity, and History (Montreal: McGill UP, 2003). Robert T. Clark, Jr., Herder: His
Life and Thought (Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1955; 2nd ed.
1969). Isaiah Berlin, “Herder and the Enlightenment,” in Aspects of the Eighteenth
Century, ed. Earl R. Wasserman (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1965), 46–
104; reprinted in I. Berlin, Three Critics of the Enlightenment, ed. Henry Hardy
(London: Pimlico, 2000), 168–242; Berlin, Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the
History of Ideas (London: Hogarth, 1976). For Berlin see also Robert E. Norton,
“Anglo-Amerikanische Herder Rezeption,” in Vom Selbstdenken: Aufklärung und
Aufklärungskritik in Herders “Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit,”
ed. Regine Otto and John Zammito (Heidelberg: Synchron 2001), 215–21. See
also Norton, “The Myth of the Counter-Enlightenment,” Journal of the History of
Ideas 68/4 (Oct. 2007): 635–38; Steven Lestition’s reaction to Norton’s essay,
“Countering, Transposing, or Negating the Enlightenment? A Response to Robert
Norton,” in the same issue, 659–76, and Norton’s rebuttal, “Isaiah Berlin’s ‘Ex-
pressionism,’ or ‘Ha du bist das Blökende,’” 69/2 (April 2008): 339–47.
18
Thomas McFarland, Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1969), 7, 27, 333–34.
19
For details see Ernest A. Menze, “Johann Gottfried Herder and the American
Transcendentalists. The Religious Dimension,” In Herder Jahrbuch/Yearbook 8
(2006): 27–41; see also Menze, “Herder’s Reception and Influence in the U.S.A.:
Exploring Transcendentalism,” in Herder als Herausforderung, ed. Sabine Gross
(Heidelberg: Synchron, forthcoming).
20
W. M. L. deWette (1780–1849), prominent German theologian, widely known
and highly respected in the U.S.A.
21
Burton Feldman and Robert D. Richardson Jr., The Rise of Modern Mythology
1680–1860 (Bloomington-Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1972), 224–40; here, 225.
22
Gene Bluestein, “The Advantages of Barbarism: Herder and Whitman’s Nation-
alism,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 24.1 (1963): 115–26; here 126. Whitman
discusses Herder as Goethe’s teacher in “A Backward Glance O’er Travel’d
Roads,” in Whitman, Prose Works 1892, ed. Floyd Stovall (New York: New York
UP, 1964), 2:711–32.
23
Teutscher Merkur, December 1781; Zerstreute Blätter, 1785.
24
(Paris: H. J. Jansen, 1792), 87–123.
25
Paramythes. Imitées de Herder (Saarbrücken: n.p., 1794).
26
(Paris: Didot, 1808), 389–94.
27
Sismondi, De la littérature du Midi de l’Europe, 2nd ed. 1819, vol. 3:168–200.
28
Idées sur la philosophie de l’histoire de l’humanité, translated and with an intro-
duction by Edgar Quinet, 3 vols. (Paris, [Strasbourg]: F. G. Levrault, 1827–1828;
2nd ed. Paris, 1834).
29
Histoire de la poésie des Hébreux, translated and with an introduction by A[loise
Christine] de Carlowitz (Paris: Didier, 1844; 2nd ed. 1845; 3rd ed. 1846; new
ed. 1855).
30
See Pierre Pénisson, J. G. Herder: La raison dans les peuples (Paris: Éditions du
Cerf, 1992), 210.
31
Philosophie de l’histoire de l’humanité, trans. Emile Tandel, 3 vols. (Paris: Firmin
Didot; Brussells, Leipzig: Lacroix, Verboeckhoven, 1861–62; 2nd ed. Paris: A.
Lacroix, 1874).
32
Le Cid. Poème par Herder, edited and translated by H. Grimm [pseud. Louis-
Eugène Hallberg] (Paris: J. Delalain, 1874).
33
Feuilles de palmier. Contes orientaux par J. G. Herder et A. J. Liebeskind, ed. H.
Grimm [pseud. Louis-Eugène Hallberg] (Paris: J. Delalain, 1874; reprinted 1879,
1883, 1884).
34
Journal de mon voyage en l’an 1769, trans. Max Rouché (Paris: Aubier, 1942).
35
Une autre philosophie de l’histoire pour contribuer à l’éducation de l’humanité.
Bilingual edition. (Paris: Aubier, 1943; 2nd ed. 1964).
36
Idées pour la philosophie de l’histoire de l’humanité. Ideen zur Philosophie der
Geschichte der Menschheit, selections translated with an introduction and notes by
Max Rouché (Paris: Aubier, 1962).
37
Traité sur l’Origine de la Langue: Suivi de l’analyse de Mérian et des textes
critiques de Hamann, trans. Pierre Pénisson (Paris: Aubier; Flammarion, 1978);
Traité de l’origine du langage, trans. Denise Modigliani (Paris: Presses Uni-
versitaires de France, 1992).
38
Dieu. Quelques entretiens, trans. Myriam Bienenstock (Paris: Presses Univer-
sitaires de France, 1996).
39
Alexander Gillies, Herder: Der Mensch und sein Werk, 202. It could be added to
Gillies’s remarks that Aubin-Louis Millin (1759–1818), curator of the cabinet of
coins and antiques of the Bibliothèque Nationale as well as editor of the Magasin
encyclopédique, admired Herder as an archaeologist (!) to whom he sent (via
Böttiger) plaster casts of a particular type of Mesopotamian seal as well as written
documents, and gratefully received books that Herder sent to him.
40
J. M. Dégérando, “Nécrologie de Herder,” Archives littéraires de l’Europe 1
(1804): 137–43.
41
Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne (Paris: Michaud, 1817), 20:241–46.
42
Nouvelle Biographie générale (Paris: Didot, 1858), 24:308–19.
43
Mme. la baronne de Staël-Holstein, De l’Allemagne (Paris: H. Nicolle, 1810;
London: John Murray, 1813). The first edition of this work was destroyed on
Napoleon’s orders while in press with H. Nicolle in 1810, only a few copies
remain; the first London edition was revised by the author from a proof copy of
the original edition.
44
A new, critical edition of Bonstetten’s works is now available: Bonstettiana,
Philosophie (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006).
45
Idées sur la philosophie de l’histoire de l’humanité, trans. and intro. Edgar Quinet,
3:493–543.
46
Joret, Herder et la renaissance littéraire en Allemagne au XVIIIe siècle (Paris:
Hachette, 1875).
47
Tronchon, La fortune intellectuelle de Herder en France (Paris: F. Rieder, 1920;
reprint Geneva: Slatkine, 1971).
48
Rouché, La philosophie de l’histoire de Herder (Paris, Strasbourg: Belles-Lettres,
1940).
49
Pénisson, J. G. Herder: La raison dans les peuples.
50
Les études philosophiques (Juillet-Septembre 1998): Herder. Textes réunis et
présentés par Marc Crépon; Horizons philosophiques 13.2 (2003): Herder (1744–
1803): Le clair-obscur; Revue germanique international 20 (2003): Herder et les
Lumières: L’Europe de la pluralité culturelle et linguistique, ed. Pierre Pénisson and
Norbert Waszek.
51
Encyclopedic Dictionary, ed. I. E. Andrejevskij and K. K. Arsenjev, 41 vols.
(Petersburg, 1890–1904).
52
See Hans Robert Jauss, Literaturgeschichte als Provokation, edition Suhrkamp
418 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970) and Toward an Aesthetic of Reception
(Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1982); Hinrich C. Seeba, “Wirkungsgeschichte
der Wirkungsgeschichte,” in Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik 1 (1971):
145–67. See also the excellent bibliography in Helmut Peitsch, Georg Forster: A
History of His Critical Reception (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 324–33. The
increased attention given to the researcher’s “horizon of expectations” initiated by
these scholars and the decreasing emphasis on difficult-to-document direct filia-
tion continues to change reception and influence studies. See Kurt Kloocke,
“Johann Gottfried Herder et Benjamin Constant,” Annales Benjamin Constant
29 (2005): 17–18.
53
Tilman Borsche, ed., Herder im Spiegel der Zeiten: Verwerfungen der Rezeptions-
geschichte und Chancen einer Relektüre (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2006), 9.
54
Giovanni Bonacina, “Una nuova edizione delle Ideen di Herder,” in Giornale
Critico della Filosofia Italiana. Settima Serie Volume II. Anno LXXXV (LXXXVII)
fasc. I (Firenze: Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 2006), 157–70.
55
For Ottmar Ette and Eberhard Knobloch, see their multiple contributions to
“Humboldt im Netz” [HiN, readily available in pdf]. For Heinz Krumpel, see his
Aufklärung und Romantik in Lateinamerika: Ein Beitrag zu Identität, Vergleich
und Wechselwirkung zwischen lateinamerikanischem and europäischem Denken
(Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2004), his Philosophie und Literatur in Lateinamerika: 20.
Jahrhundert. Ein Beitrag zu Identität, Vergleich, und Wechselwirkung zwischen
lateinamerikanischem und europäischem Denken (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2006),
and his essay “Acera de la importancia intercultural de Herder,” in Humboldt im
Netz. HiN V, 8 (2008) 2–9. The latter essay gives an exemplary exposition of
Herder’s pervasive influence on Latin American civilization. For details on the
Humboldt-Herder relationship see Menze, “Alexander von Humboldt and
Johann Gottfried Herder: Affinities and Influence,” in Herder und seine Wirkung /
Herder and His Impact, Proceedings of the Biennial Conference of the Interna-
tional Herder Society, Aug. 18–22, 2008, ed. Michael Maurer (Heidelberg:
Synchron, forthcoming).
Bibliography
Herder’s Works and Letters

(In alphabetical order)
T HE STANDARD EDITIONS IN GERMAN are the Sämmtliche Werke, or SWS

(the most encompassing edition); the extensively annotated Werke in
zehn Bänden or Frankfurter Ausgabe, abbreviated as FA; and the Werke,
abbreviated as HW (also extensively annotated). The Briefe. Gesamtausgabe,
abbreviated as HB, is the standard edition of Herder’s letters.
Briefe. Gesamtausgabe 1763–1803. Ed. Nationale Forschungs- und Gedenkstät-
ten der klassischen Literatur in Weimar. (Later: Stiftung Weimarer Klassik.
Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv.) 11 vols. to date. Ed. Wilhelm Dobbek † and
Günter Arnold. (From vol. 9 on Günter Arnold only.) Weimar: Hermann
Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1984–. (Vols. 1–9: Briefe; vol. 10: Index; vol. 11:
Commentary to vols. 1–3.) (HB)
———. Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität. (Ausgewählte Werke in Einzel-
ausgaben.) 2 vols. Ed. Heinz Stolpe in cooperation with Hans-Joachim
Kruse and Dietrich Simon. Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1971. (BBH)
———. Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit.(Ausgewählte Werke
in Einzelausgaben.) Ed. Heinz Stolpe. 2 vols. Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag,
1965.
———. Italienische Reise. Briefe und Tagebuchaufzeichnungen 1788–1789. Ed.
Albert Maier and Heide Hollmer. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag,
1988.
———. Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769. Ed. Katharina Mommsen. Stutt-
gart: Reclam, 1976.
———. Kritische Wälder. (Ausgewählte Werke in Einzelausgaben. Schriften zur
Literatur 2.) 2 vols. Ed. Regine Otto. Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau Verlag, 1990.
———. Sämmtliche Werke. 33 vols. Ed. Bernhard Suphan, Carl Redlich, and
Reinhold Steig. Berlin: Weidmann’sche Buchhandlung, 1877–1913. (3rd
reprint as Sämtliche Werke, Hildesheim: Olms, 1994–95.) (SWS)
———. Über die neuere deutsche Literatur. Fragmente. (Ausgewählte Werke in
Einzelausgaben. Schriften zur Literatur 1.) Ed. Regine Otto. Berlin, Weimar:
Aufbau Verlag, 1985.
422 ♦ BIBLIOGRAPHY
———. Werke. 3 vols. in 4 books. Ed. Wolfgang Pross. Munich: Hanser,

1984–2002. (HW)
———. Werke in fünf Bänden. Selected and introduced by Wilhelm Dobbek. 5
vols. Bibliothek deutscher Klassiker. Weimar: Volksverlag Weimar, 1957. 5th
revised edition selected and introduced by Regine Otto. Berlin, Weimar:
Aufbau, 1978.
———. Werke in zehn Bänden. 10 vols. in 11 books. Ed. Günter Arnold et al.
Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985–2000. (FA)
Herders Reise nach Italien. Herders Briefwechsel mit seiner Gattin. Ed. Heinrich
Düntzer and Ferdinand Gottfried von Herder. Hildesheim: Olms, 1977.
Herder’s Works in English Translation

Against Pure Reason. Writings on Religion, Language, and History. Trans., ed.,
and with an introduction by Marcia Bunge. Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1993. (APR)
Another Philosophy of History and Selected Political Writings. Trans., ed., and
with introduction and commentary by Ioannis D. Evrigenis and Daniel
Pellerin. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 2004.
Essay on the Origin of Language. Trans. John H. Moran and Alexander Gode.
New York: Frederic Ungar, 1967.
God: Some Conversations. Trans. Frederic H. Burckhardt. 1940. Reprint,
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962.
J. G. Herder on Social and Political Thought. Trans. and ed. F. M. Barnard.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1969.
“Journal of My Travels in the Year 1769.” Trans. Francis Harrison. PhD diss.,
University of South Carolina, 1953.
On World History: Johann Gottfried Herder. An Anthology. Ed. Hans Adler and
Ernest A. Menze. Trans. Ernest A. Menze with Michael Palma. Armonk:
M. E. Sharpe, 1997. (OWH)
Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man. Trans. T. Churchill. London:
Printed for J. Johnson by Luke Hansard, 1800. (Repr. New York:
Bergman’s, 1966?).
Philosophical Writings. Trans. and ed. Michael N. Forster. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge UP, 2002. (PhW)
Sculpture: Some Observations on Shape and Form from Pygmalion’s Creative
Dream. Ed. and trans. Jason Gaiger. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P,
2002.
BIBLIOGRAPHY ♦ 423
Selected Early Writings 1764–1767. Addresses, Essays, Drafts. Fragments on

Recent German Literature. Ed. Ernest A. Menze and Karl Menges. Trans.
Ernest A. Menze with Michael Palma. University Park: The Pennsylvania
State UP, 1992. (SEW)
The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry. 2 vols. Trans. James Marsh. Burlington VT: Smith,
1833. (Repr. Naperville: A. R. Allenson, 1971.)
Yet Another Philosophy of the History for the Education of Humanity. Trans. Eva
Herzfeld. PhD diss., Columbia University, 1968.
Bibliographies
(In chronological order)
Herder-Bibliographie. Ed. Gottfried Günter, Albina Volgina, Siegfried Seifert.
Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1978. (Covers the years up to 1976.)
Herder-Bibliographie 1977–1992. Ed. Doris Kuhles. Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler,
1994.
Kuhles, Doris. “Herder-Bibliographie 1993–1994.” Herder Jahrbuch / Herder
Yearbook 1996, 111–88.
———. “Herder-Bibliographie 1995–1996.” Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Year-
book 1998, 191–253.
———. “Herder-Bibliographie 1997–1999.” Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Year-
book 2000: Studien zum 18. Jahrhundert, 145–208.
Zeilinger, Heidi. “Herder-Bibliographie 2000–2002.” Herder Jahrbuch /
Herder Yearbook VI/2002: Studien zum 18. Jahrhundert, 129–59.
———. “Herder-Bibliographie 2002/2003.” Herder Jahrbuch/Herder Year-
book VII/2004: Studien zum 18. Jahrhundert, 137–75.
Wojtecki, Wolfram. “Herder Bibliographie 2004–2006.” Herder Jahrbuch /
Herder Yearbook IX/2008, 157–208
Shimada, Yoichiro. “Johann Gottfried Herder in Japan. Eine Bibliographie mit
einem Überblick.” In Neue Beiträge zur Germanistik, vol. 3, 2. Ed. Japa-
nische Gesellschaft für Germanistik, 159–256. Munich: Iudicium, 2004.
Biographies and Introductions to Herder’s Works

Adler, Emil. Herder und die deutsche Aufklärung. Vienna: Europa Verlag,
1968. (Polish original, Herder: Oświecenie niemickie. Warsaw: Państwowe
Widawnictwo Naukowe, 1965.)
Bäte, Ludwig. Johann Gottfried Herder: Der Weg. Das Werk. Die Zeit. Stuttgart:
S. Hirzel, 1948.
Clark, Robert T. Herder: His Life and Thought. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of
California P, 1955. (2nd ed. 1969.)
Gillies, Alexander. Herder. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1945. German translation:
Herder: Der Mensch und sein Werk. Trans. Wilhelm Loew. Hamburg:
Schröder, 1949.
Haym, Rudolf. Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken. 2 vols. Berlin:
Rudolph Gaertner, 1877–1885. (Numerous reprints and editions.)
Heise, Jens. Johann Gottfried Herder zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius, 1998.
Herder, Emil Gottfried von. Johann Gottfried Herders Lebensbild: Sein chrono-
logisch geordneter Briefwechsel. 3 vols. in 6 books. Erlangen: Theodor Bläsing,
1846.
Herder, Maria Carolina von. Erinnerungen aus dem Leben Johann Gottfrieds von
Herder. Ed. Johann Georg Müller. 2 vols. Tübingen: Cotta, 1820 and 1830.
Hillebrand, Karl. “Herder.” The North American Review, vol. 115, no. 236
(July 1872): 104–38; vol. 115, no. 237 (Oct. 1872): 235–87; vol. 116, no.
239 (April 1873): 389–424.
Irmscher, Hans Dietrich. Johann Gottfried Herder. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2001.
Johann Gottfried Herders Lebensbild. Ed. Emil Gottfried von Herder. Erlangen:
Theodor Bläsing, 1846
Kantzenbach, Friedrich Wilhelm. Johann Gottfried Herder in Selbstzeugnissen
und Bilddokumenten. 7th ed. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1999.
Koepke, Wulf. Johann Gottfried Herder. Boston: Twayne, 1987.
Kühnemann, Eugen. Herders Leben. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1895.
Müller, Johann Georg. Aus dem Herder’schen Hause: Aufzeichnungen. 1780–82.
Ed. Jakob Baechtold. Berlin: Weidmann, 1881.
Pénisson, Pierre. Johann Gottfried Herder: La raison dans les peuples. Paris: Les
Éditions du Cerf, 1992.
Richter, Lutz, ed. Johann Gottfried Herder im Spiegel seiner Zeitgenossen.
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1978.
Schirmunski, V. M. Johann Gottfried Herder: Hauptlinien seines Schaffens.
Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1963. (Russian orig. 1959.)
Zaremba, Michael. Johann Gottfried Herder: Prediger der Humanität. Eine
Biographie. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 2002.
Herder Yearbook / Herder Jahrbuch; Herder-Studien;

Recent Special Issues on Herder
Since 1992, the International Herder Society has published the Herder
Jahrbuch/Herder Yearbook biennially. We register in the following the full
bibliographical references for each volume because title and publisher have
changed several times.
[Vol. 1] Herder Yearbook. Publications of the International Herder Society. Ed.
Karl Menges, Wulf Koepke, and Wilfried Malsch. Columbia, SC: Camden
House, 1992.
[Vol. 2] Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook 1994. Ed. Wulf Koepke and
Wilfried Malsch. Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 1994.
[Vol. 3] Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook 1996. Ed. Wilfried Malsch, Hans
Adler, and Wulf Koepke. Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 1997.
[Vol. 4] Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook 1998. Ed. Hans Adler and Wulf
Koepke with Samson B. Knoll, guest editor. Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler,
1998.
[Vol. 5] Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook 2000: Studien zum 18. Jahr-
hundert. Ed. Karl Menges, Regine Otto, and Wulf Koepke with Hans Adler,
guest editor. Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 2000.
[Vol. 6] Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook VI/2002: Studien zum 18. Jahr-
hundert. Ed. Karl Menges, Wulf Koepke, and Regine Otto. Stuttgart,
Weimar: Metzler, 2002.
[Vol. 7] Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook VII/2004: Studien zum 18. Jahr-
hundert. Ed. Wulf Koepke and Karl Menges. Heidelberg: Synchron, 2004.
[Vol. 8] Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook VIII/2006. Ed. Wulf Koepke and
Karl Menges. Heidelberg: Synchron, 2006.
[Vol. 9] Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook IX/2008. Ed. Karl Menges and
Wulf Koepke. Heidelberg: Synchron, 2008.
Since 1995, the Japanese Herder Society has published the Herder-Studien
annually:
Herder-Studien. Vols. 1 (1995) –7 (2005) ed. Yoshinori Shichiji; vols. 8
(2002) –11 (2005), ed. Takahiro Shibata. Tokyo: Keio University Depart-
ment of German.
The following special Herder issues of periodicals were published within the
last decade:
Les études philosophiques. (Paris) July-September 1998: Herder. Ed. Marc
Crépon.
Horizons philosophiques. (Longueuil, Québec) 13.2 (2003): Herder (1744–

1803): Le clair-obscur. Ed. Roch Duval.
Revue germanique internationale. (Paris) 20 (2003): Herder et les Lumières:
L’Europe de la pluralité culturelle et linguistique. Ed. Pierre Pénisson and
Norbert Waszek.
Monatshefte für deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur. (Madison, Wisconsin)
95.2 (2003) Special Issue: Johann Gottfried Herder 1744–1803. Ed. Hans
Adler.
Conference Proceedings, Collected Essays on Herder

(In chronological order)
Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder 1971. Ed. Johann
Maltusch. Bückeburg: Grimme, 1973.
Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder 1975. Ed. Johann
Gottfried Maltusch. Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1976.
Herder-Kolloquium 1978: Referate und Diskussionsbeiträge. Ed. Walter Dietze,
with Hans-Dietrich Dahnke, Peter Goldammer, Karl-Heinz Hahn, and
Regine Otto. Weimar: Verlag Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1980.
Johann Gottfried Herder: Innovator through the Ages. Ed. Wulf Koepke with
Samson B. Knoll. Bonn: Bouvier, 1982.
Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder 1983. Ed. Brigitte
Poschmann. Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1984.
Hamann — Kant — Herder: Acta des 4. Internationalen Hamann-Kolloqiums
im Herder-Institut zu Marburg/Lahn 1985. Ed. Bernhard Gajek. Frankfurt
am Main: P. Lang, 1987.
Johann Gottfried Herder 1744–1803. Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Meeting
of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für die Erforschung des achtzehnten Jahr-
hunderts. Ed. Gerhard Sauder. Hamburg: Meiner, 1987.
Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder 1988: Älteste Urkunde des
Menschengeschlechts. Hans Dietrich Irmscher zum 60. Geburtstag gewidmet.
Ed. Brigitte Poschmann. Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1989.
Herder Today: Contributions from the International Herder Conference Nov. 5–
8, 1987, Stanford. CA. Ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer. New York, Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1990.
Johann Gottfried Herder: Language, History, and the Enlightenment. Ed. Wulf
Koepke. Columbia SC: Camden House 1990.
Johann Gottfried Herder: Geschichte und Kultur. Ed. Martin Bollacher. Würz-
burg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1994.
Nationen und Kulturen: Zum 250. Geburtstag Johann Gottfried Herders. Ed.
Regine Otto. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1996.
Johann Gottfried Herder: Academic Disciplines and the Pursuit of Knowledge.
Ed. Wulf Koepke. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1996.
Vom Selbstdenken: Aufklärung und Aufklärungskritik in Herders “Ideen zur
Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit.” Beiträge zur Konferenz der Inter-
national Herder Society, Weimar 2000. Ed. Regine Otto and John H.
Zammito. Heidelberg: Synchron, 2001.
Ideen und Ideale: Johann Gottfried Herder in Ost und West. Ed. Peter
Andraschke and Helmut Loos. Freiburg: Rombach, 2002.
Hebräische Poesie und jüdischer Volksgeist: Die Wirkungsgeschichte von Johann
Gottfried Herder im Judentum Mittel- und Osteuropas. Ed. Christoph
Schulte. Hildesheim: Olms, 2003.
Johann Gottfried Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes. Ed. Martin Kessler and
Volker Leppin. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005.
Herder im Spiegel der Zeiten. Verwerfungen der Rezeptionsgeschichte und Chan-
cen einer Relektüre. Ed. Tilman Borsche. Munich: Fink, 2006.
Der frühe und der späte Herder: Kontinuität und/oder Korrektur/Young
Herder, Old Herder. Continuity and Correction. Ed. Sabine Gross and
Gerhard Sauder. Heidelberg: Synchron, 2007.
Other Primary Sources

Böttiger, Karl August. Literarische Zustände und Zeitgenossen: Begegnungen und
Gespräche im klassischen Weimar. Ed. Klaus Gerlach and René Sternke. 2nd
ed. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1998.
Buffon, Conte de. Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière. Paris: Imprimerie
royale, 1812.
Condillac, Etienne Bonnot de. Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines.
Ed. Charles Porset. (1746) Auvers-sur-Oise: Galilée, 1973.
Descartes, René. Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison et chercher
la vérité dans les sciences. Œuvres de Descartes (1637). Ed. Charles Adam, Paul
Tannery, 6:1–78. Paris: Vrin, 1973.
Du Bellay, Joachim. La deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse (1549; ed.
Henri Chamard). Paris: Fontemoing, 1904.
Goethe. Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Bänden. Ed. Erich Trunz. Ham-
burg: Wegner, 1948–1964; Munich: Beck, 1952ff. (There have been several
reprints and updated editions.) (HA)
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Dichtung und Wahrheit. 3 vols. Ed. Jörn Göres.
Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1975. (DW)
Goethes Gespräche. Ed. Flodoard Frhr. von Biedermann. 10 vols. Leipzig: F. W.
v. Biedermann, 1889–1896. 2nd ed., 5 vols. 1909–1911; re-ed. by Wolfgang
Herwig. 3rd ed., 5 vols. Zurich: Artemis 1965–1987.
Goethes Werke. Weimarer Ausgabe. Herausgegeben im Auftrage der Groß-
herzogin Sophie von Sachsen. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger,
1887–1919. (Reprint Munich: dtv, 1987.) (WA)
Hamann, Johann Georg. Sämtliche Werke. Ed. Josef Nadler. 6 vols. Vienna:
Thomas Morus Presse im Verlag Herder, 1949–1957 (reprint, Wuppertal
1999).
———. Schriften zur Sprache. Ed. Josef Simon. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1967.
Hederich, Benjamin. Gründliches mythologisches Lexicon (1724). Revised by
Johann Joachim Schwabe (1770). Reprint, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1967.
Heidegger, Martin. Gesamtausgabe. Part 4, vol. 85: Vom Wesen der Sprache. Ed.
Ingrid Schüssler. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1999.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Ed. C. B. Macpherson (1651). Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1985.
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philo-
sophische Fragmente. (1944) In Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3.
Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997.
Humboldt, Wilhelm von. Gesammelte Schriften. 17 vols. Ed. Albert Leitzmann
et al. Berlin: Behr, 1903–36.
Kant, Immanuel. Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781, 1787). In Kant, Werke in
sechs Bänden, vol. 2. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998.
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain (1765;
Ed. Jacques Brunschwig). Reprint, Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1966.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. Ernst und Falk. Mit den Fortsetzungen Johann
Gottfried Herders und Friedrich Schlegels. Ed. Ion Contiades. Frankfurt am
Main: Insel, 1968.
———. Philosophical and Theological Writings. Ed. Hugh Barr Nisbet. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge UP, 2005.
———. Werke und Briefe. Vol. 10: Werke 1778–1781. Ed. Arno Schilson and
Axel Schmitt. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2001.
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain. (1765;
ed. Jacques Brunschwig). Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1966.
Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 2 vols. (1690) Ed.

John W. Yolton. London: Dent; New York: Dutton 1971–74.
Michaelis, Johann David. De l’influence des opinions sur le langage et du langage
sur les opinions. Bremen: Förster, 1762. (Reprinted in Corpus 30, 1996).
Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat. Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness
of the Romans and Their Decline. Trans. David Lowenthal. New York: Free
Press, 1965.
Novalis. Die Christenheit oder Europa. 1826.
Port-Royal. (Antoine Arnauld, Claude Lancelot) Grammaire générale et raison-
née. (1660). (Reprint Paris: Paulet, 1969).
Rousseau, J. J. A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, The Social Contract and the
Discourses. Ed. G. D. H. Cole. New York: Dutton, 1973.
———. Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992.
Schiller, Friedrich. Briefe. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Ed. Fritz Jonas. 7 vols.
Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1892.
Spener, Philipp Jacob. Pia Desideria. Ed. Kurt Aland. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1964.
Vico, Giambattista. Princípi di scienza nuova d’intorno alla comune natura delle
nazioni. (1744) Opere. Vol. 1. Ed. Andrea Battistini, 411–971. Milan:
Mondadori, 1990.
Whitman, Walt. “A Backward Glance O’er Travel’d Roads.” In Whitman, Prose
Works 1892, edited by Floyd Stovall, vol. 2, 711–32. New York: New York
UP, 1964.
Wolff, Caspar Friedrich. Theorie von der Generation. (1764) Reprint, Stuttgart:
Fischer, 1966.
Wolff, Christian. Discursus praeliminaris de philosophia in genere. (1728).
Trans., ed. Günter Gawlick and Lothar Kreimendahl. Stuttgart: Frommann-
Holzboog, 1996.
Other Secondary Sources

Aarsleff, Hans. From Locke to Saussure: Essays on the Study of Language and
Intellectual History. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1982.
Abdel Rahim, Ahmet Kamel. “Volksballade und Kunstballade am Beispiel von
Herders ‘Erlkönigs Tochter’ und Goethes ‘Erlkönig.’” Kairoer germanis-
tische Studien 6 (1991), 281–92.
Adam, Reinhard. “Wesen und Grenzen der organischen Geschichtsauffassung
bei Joh. Gottfried Herder.” Historische Zeitschrift 155 (1937), 22–50.
Adler, Emil. Herder und die deutsche Aufklärung. Trans. Irena Fischer. Vienna:
Europa Verlag, 1968.
Adler, Hans. “Ästhetische und anästhetische Wissenschaft. Kants Herder-Kritik
als Dokument moderner Paradigmenkonkurrenz.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift
für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 68 (1994): 66–76.
———. “Aisthesis und Totalität im 18. Jahrhundert: Johann Gottfried
Herder.” Synästhesie: Interferenz — Transfer — Synthese der Sinne. Ed. Hans
Adler with Ulrike Zeuch, 205–12. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann,
2002.
———. “Autonomie versus Anthropologie: Schiller und Herder.” Monatshefte
97.3 (2005): Special issue: Begegnungen mit Schiller/Encounters with Schiller,
408–16.
———. “Die Bestimmung des Menschen. Spaldings Schrift als Ausgangspunkt
einer offenen Anthropologie.” Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert 18.2 (1994):
125–37.
———. “Denker der Mitte. Johann Gottfried Herder.” Monatshefte 95.2
(2003): Special issue: Johann Gottfried Herder 1744–1803, 161–70.
———. “Fundus animae — Der Grund der Seele. Zur Gnoseologie des Dunk-
len in der Aufklärung.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft
und Geistesgeschichte 62.2 (1988): 197–220.
———. “Grenzen des historischen Denkens oder Wie historisch ist Herders
Geschichtsphilosophie?” In Ideen und Ideale: Johann Gottfried Herder in Ost
und West, edited by Peter Andraschke and Helmut Loos, 33–43. Freiburg:
Rombach, 2002.
———. “Herders Ästhetik als Rationalitätstyp.” In Johann Gottfried Herder:
Geschichte und Kultur, edited by Martin Bollacher, 131–39. Würzburg:
Königshausen und Neumann, 1994.
———. “Herders Holismus.” In Herder Today, edited by Kurt Mueller-
Vollmer, 31–45. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1990.
———. “Herders Stil als Rezeptionsbarriere.” In Herder im Spiegel der Zeiten:
Verwerfungen der Rezeptionsgeschichte und Chancen einer Relektüre, edited
by Tilman Borsche, 15–31. Munich: Fink, 2006.
———. “Humanität — Autonomie — Souveränität. Bedingtheit und Reich-
weite des Humanitätskonzepts J. G. Herders.” In Akten des VII. Internatio-
nalen Germanisten-Kongresses Göttingen 1985, edited by Walter Haug and
Wilfried Barner, 161–66. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1986.
———. “Johann Gottfried Herder’s Concept of Humanity.” Studies in
Eighteenth-Century Culture 23 (1993): 55–74.
———. “Monumentalfragment und Totalität. Johann Gottfried Herders Stel-

lung zum diskursiven Konstrukt der Geschichtsphilosophie.” Monatshefte
90.1 (1998): 5–16.
———. “‘Nation.’ Johann Gottfried Herders Umgang mit Konzept und Be-
griff.” In Unerledigte Geschichten: Der literarische Umgang mit Nationalität
und Internationalität, edited by Gesa von Essen and Horst Turk, 39–56.
Göttingen: Wallstein, 2000.
———. “Politik und Wissenschaft. Herders Preisschrift Vom Einfluß der Regie-
rung auf die Wissenschaften und der Wissenschaften auf die Regierung.” In
Transactions of the Ninth International Congress on the Enlightenment / Actes
du Neuvième congrès international des Lumières, Münster 23–29 July 1995.
Vol. 3. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1314–18.
———. Die Prägnanz des Dunklen. Gnoseologie — Ästhetik — Geschichts-
philosophie bei Johann Gottfried Herder. Hamburg: Meiner, 1990.
———. “Weltliteratur — Nationalliteratur — Volksliteratur. Johann Gottfried
Herders Vermittlungsversuch als kulturpolitische Idee.” In Nationen und
Kulturen, edited by Regine Otto, 271–84. Würzburg: Königshausen und
Neumann, 1996.
———. “Wunschzettel der Aufklärung. Wissenschafts-Desiderata in Herders
Ideen.” In Vom Selbstdenken, Aufklärung und Aufklärungskritik in Herders
“Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit,” edited by Regine Otto
and John H. Zammito, 99–114. Heidelberg: Synchron, 2001.
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel
Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998.
Albus, Verena. Weltbild und Metapher: Untersuchungen zur Philosophie im 18.
Jahrhundert. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2001.
Ameln, Konrad. “Johann Gottfried Herder als Gesangbuch-Herausgeber.”
Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie 23 (1979): 132–44.
“Anfangsgründe des Unterrichts in der Religion. Johann Gottfried Herders
Familienkatechismus.” Ed. Thomas Zippert. Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologie-
geschichte 11 (2004): 246–78.
Arato, Franco. “Herder traduttore di Campanella.” Giornale storico della let-
teratura Italiana 176 (1999): 87–98.
Aris, Reinhold. History of Political Thought in Germany from 1789 to 1815.
(1936) Reprint London: Frank Cass, 1965.
Arnold, Günter. “Geschichte und Geschichtsphilosophie in Herders Adrastea.”
In Impulse. Aufsätze, Quellen, Berichte zur deutschen Klassik und Romantik,
edited by Walter Dietze and Werner Schubert, 7:224–61. Berlin, Weimar:
Aufbau-Verlag, 1984.
———. “Herder Editionen.” In Editionen zu deutschsprachigen Autoren als

Spiegel der Editionsgeschichte, edited by Rüdiger Nutt-Koforth and Bodo
Plachta, 163–78. Bausteine zur Geschichte der Edition 2. Tübingen: Nie-
meyer, 2005.
———. “Herder’s Interdisciplinary Conjectures on the Origin of Human His-
tory.” In Johann Gottfried Herder: Academic Disciplines and the Pursuit of
Knowledge, edited by Wulf Koepke, 98–105. Columbia, SC: Camden House,
1996.
———. “Herders Nachdichtung ‘Aufschriften auf den Königsgräbern bei
Persepolis.’” In Das Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv 1896–1996: Beiträge aus dem
ältesten deutschen Literaturarchiv, edited by Jochen Golz, 281–91. Weimar:
Böhlau, 1996.
———. “Von den letzten Dingen — eschatologische Elemente in Herders
Werk und ihre Quellen.” In Kessler and Leppin, Johann Gottfried Herder.
Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, 383–411.
———. “Die Widerspiegelung der Französischen Revolution in Herders Korre-
spondenz.” Impulse 3 (1981): 41–89.
———. “Zur Leibniz-Rezeption Herders: Das biographische Exzerpt HN
r
XXVIII, 17, 1–7 .” Nachrichten der Philologisch-historischen Klasse der Göttin-
ger Akademie 2003/5: 311–45.
Auerbach, Erich. “Vico und Herder.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Litera-
turwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 10 (1932): 671–86.
Aufklärung und Geschichte: Studien zur deutschen Geschichtswissenschaft im 18.
Jahrhundert. Ed. Hans Erich Bödeker, Georg Iggers, Jonathan Knudsen, and
Peter Reill. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1986.
Baerenbach, Friedrich von. Herder als Vorgänger Darwins und der modernen
Naturphilosophie. Berlin: T. Grieben, 1877.
Baildam, John D. “‘Im vollen Kreise des Volks entsprungen’? Kultur, Nation
und Herders Lieder der Liebe.” In Nationen und Kulturen, edited by Regine
Otto, 435–47. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1996.
———. Paradisal Love: Johann Gottfried Herder and the Song of Songs.
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999.
Baird, William. History of New Testament Research. Vol. 1: From Deism to
Tübingen. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992.
Bancroft, George. Review of Johann Gottfried von Herders sämtliche Werke. Zur
schönen Kunst und Literatur. The North American Review 11.46 (1825):
138–47.
Barnard, F. M. Herder on Nationality, Humanity, and History. Montreal and
Kingston: McGill UP, 2003.
———. Herder’s Social and Political Thought: From Enlightenment to National-

ism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.
———. “Herder’s Treatment of Causation and Continuity in History.” Journal
of the History of Ideas 24 (1963): 197–212.
———. Introduction to J. G. Herder on Social and Political Culture, edited by
F. M. Barnard, 3–60. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1969.
———. Self-Direction and Political Legitimacy: Rousseau and Herder. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1988.
Bauer, Barbara. “Intertextualität und das rhetorische System der frühen Neu-
zeit.“ In Intertextualität in der Frühen Neuzeit. Studien zu ihren theoretischen
und praktischen Perspektiven, edited by Wilhelm Kühlmann and Wolfgang
Neuber. Frankfurt, New York: P. Lang, 1994.
Baum, Manfred. “Herder’s Essay on Being.” In Herder Today, edited by Kurt
Mueller-Vollmer, 126–37. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1990.
Baur, Jörg. “Religion pur — Herders Meinungen ‘Von Religion, Lehrmei-
nungen und Gebräuchen’ (1798) als Exempel einer problematischen Ent-
gegensetzung von Religion und Dogmatik.” In Religion und Wahrheit:
Religionsgeschichtliche Studien. Festschrift für Gernot Wiessner, edited by
Bärbel Köhler, 195–215. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998.
Becker, Bernhard. Herder-Rezeption in Deutschland: Eine ideologiekritische
Untersuchung. St. Ingbert: Röhrig, 1987.
Becker, Uwe. “‘Die älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts.’ J. G. Herders
Auslegung der Urgeschichte und die Frage nach dem Spezifikum der
israelitisch-jüdischen Religion.” In Gott und Mensch im Dialog, edited by
Markus Witte, 919–41. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004.
Beiser, Frederick. Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism: The Genesis of
Modern German Political Thought, 1790–1800. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
UP, 1992.
Benveniste, Émile. “Catégories de pensée et catégories de langue.” In Problèmes
de linguistique générale, 63–74. 1958; reprint, Paris: Gallimard, 1966.
Berlin, Isaiah. “Herder and the Enlightenment.” In Aspects of the Eighteenth
Century, edited by Earl R. Wasserman, 46–104. Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins UP, 1965; reprinted in I. Berlin, Three Critics of the Enlightenment:
Vico, Hamann, Herder, edited by Henry Hardy, 168–242. Princeton/
London: Princeton UP/Pimlico, 2000.
———. Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder. Ed. Henry
Hardy. Princeton/London: Princeton UP/Pimlico, 2000.
———. Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas. London: Hogarth,
1976.
Bien, G., and K. H. Sladeczek. “Billigkeit.” In Historisches Wörterbuch der

Philosophie, edited by Joachim Ritter, 1:939–43. Darmstadt: Wissenschaft-
liche Buchgesellschaft, 1971.
Bienenstock, Myriam. “Herder und Spinoza. Einige Bemerkungen zum heuti-
gen Herder-Bild.” In Humanität in einer pluralistischen Welt? Themen-
geschichtliche und formanalytische Studien zur deutschsprachigen Literatur.
Festschrift für Martin Bollacher, edited by Christian Kluwe and Jost
Schneider, 57–71. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2000.
Bluestein, Gene. “The Advantages of Barbarism. Herder and Whitman’s Na-
tionalism.” Journal of the History of Ideas 24.1 (1963): 115–26.
Blumenberg, Hans. Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie. Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1998 (first ed. 1960).
Blumenthal, Hermann. “Adalbert Stifters Verständnis zur Geschichte.”
Euphorion 34.1 (1933): 72–110.
Bockwoldt, Gerd. “‘Mein Prinz’ — Johann Gottfried Herders Mission in
Eutin. Mit drei bislang unbekannten Briefen im Anhang.” Herder Jahrbuch /
Herder Yearbook VI/2002, 21–42.
Bödeker, Hans Erich. “Menschheit, Humanität, Humanismus.” In Geschicht-
liche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in
Deutschland, edited by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Kosel-
leck, 3:1063–1128. (1982). Studienausgabe. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2004.
Boening, John.“Herder and the White Man’s Burden. The Ideen zur Geschichte
der Philosophie der Menschheit and the Shaping of British Colonial Policy.” In
Johann Gottfried Herder: Language, History, and the Enlightenment, edited
by Wulf Koepke, 236–45. Columbia SC: Camden House 1990.
———. The Reception of Classical German Literature in England, 1760–1860.
10 vols. New York: Garland, 1978.
Bohm, Arnd. “German Poets and the ‘Republic of Letters’ (Gelehrtenrepublik)
to 1850 (Vormärz).” PhD diss., The Johns Hopkins University, 1984.
———. “Mixing Church and State. Herder’s Sermons on the Birth of Carl
Friedrich (1783).” Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook 1996, 1–17.
Bohnenkamp-Renken, Anne. “‘Salomons Hohes Lied.’ Die Übertragung
Johann Gottfried Herders im Vergleich mit Hamann und Goethe.” In Akten
des X. Internationalen Germanistenkongresses Wien 2000: “Zeitenwende —
Die Germanistik auf dem Weg vom 20. ins 21 Jahrhundert,” vol. 11, Trans-
lation and Literary Scholarship, edited by Peter Wiesinger with Hans Derkits,
17–22. Bern: P. Lang, 2003.
Bollacher, Martin. “‘Aufgeklärter Pantheismus.’ Die Deutung der Geschichte in
Heines Schrift Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland.”
Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 49.2
(1975): 265–314.
———. “‘Feines, scharfsinniges Volk, ein Wunder der Zeiten!’ Herders Ver-
hältnis zum Judentum und zur jüdischen Welt.” In Hebräische Poesie und
jüdischer Volksgeist: Die Wirkungsgeschichte von Johann Gottfried Herder im
Judentum Mittel- und Osteuropas, edited by Christoph Schulte, 17–33.
Hildesheim, Olms, 2003.
———. “‘Natur’ und ‘Vernunft’ in Herders Entwurf einer Philosophie der
Geschichte der Menschheit.” In Sauder, Johann Gottfried Herder 1744–1803,
114–24.
Borgards, Roland. “Herders Philoktet. Schmerz zwischen Physiologie und
Ästhetik.” In Ideen und Ideale: Johann Gottfried Herder in Ost und West,
edited by Peter Andraschke and Helmut Loos, 89–121. Freiburg: Rombach,
2002.
Boyle, Nicholas. Goethe: The Poet and the Age. Revolution and Renunciation
(1790–1803). Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.
Braecklein, Ingo. “Zur Tätigkeit Johann Gottfried Herders im Konsistorium
des Herzogtums Sachsen-Weimar.” In Herder im geistlichen Amt: Unter-
suchungen — Quellen — Dokumente, edited by Eva Schmidt, 54–72. Leipzig:
Koehler und Amelang, 1956.
Brandt, Reinhard. “Kant — Herder — Kuhn.” Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philo-
sophie 5 (1980): 27–36.
Brewer, John. “Conjectural History, Sociology and Social Change in
Eighteenth-Century Scotland. Adam Ferguson and the Division of Labour.”
In The Making of Modern Scotland: Nation, Culture and Social Change,
edited by David McCrone, Stephen Kendrick, and Pat Straw, 13–30.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1989.
Brummack, Jürgen. “Herders Theorie der Fabel.” In Sauder, Johann Gottfried
Herder 1744–1803, 251–63.
Bucher, Max, et al., eds. Realismus und Gründerzeit. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1976.
Büttgen, Philippe. “Philosophie, théologie, luthéranisme. Le projet religieux de
Herder.” Les Études philosophiques 3 (1998): 327–55.
Bultmann, Christoph. “Bewunderung oder Entzauberung? Johann Gottfried
Herders Blick auf Mose.” In Kessler and Leppin, Johann Gottfried Herder:
———. Die biblische Urgeschichte in der Aufklärung: Johann Gottfried Herders
Interpretation der Genesis als Antwort auf die Religionskritik David Humes.
Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999.
———. “Dichtung und Wahrheit der Blütezeit. Zum Salomobild im 18.
Jahrhundert.” In Ideales Königtum: Studien zu David und Salomo, edited by
Rüdiger Lux, 153–74. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2005.
———. “Early Rationalism and Biblical Criticism on the Continent. Reimarus,

Voltaire, Lessing.” In Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Inter-
pretation, edited by Magne Sæbø. Vol. 2, chap. 36. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
und Ruprecht, 2008.
———. “Herderforschung 1985–2000.” Theologische Rundschau 67.1 (2002):
35–60.
Bunge, Marcia. “Herder’s View of the Gospels and the Quest of the Historical
Jesus.” In Johann Gottfried Herder: Geschichte und Kultur, edited by Martin
Bollacher, 257–73. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1994.
———. Introduction to Johann Gottfried Herder, Against Pure Reason: Writ-
ings on Religion, Language, and History, edited by Marcia Bunge, 1–37.
Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993. (APR)
———. “Johann Gottfried Herder — ‘Reason’ and ‘Equity.’” In Mind, Reality
and Values: Proceedings of the International Advanced Research Workshop
Shabla/Bulgaria 1996, edited by Institute for Philosophical Studies, 165–77.
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences: Sofia, 1996.
———. “Johann Gottfried Herders Auslegung des Neuen Testaments.” In
Historische Kritik und biblischer Kanon in der deutschen Aufklärung, edited
by Henning Graf Reventlow, Walter Sparn, and John Woodbridge, 249–62.
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1988.
Buntfuss, Markus. Die Erscheinungsform des Christentums: Zur ästhetischen Neu-
gestaltung der Religionstheologie bei Herder, Wackenroder und de Wette.
Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2004.
Byrne, Peter. Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion: The Legacy of Deism.
London: Routledge, 1989.
Cassirer, Ernst. Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff: Untersuchungen über die
Grundfragen der Erkenntniskritik. Reprographic reprint of the 1st edition of
1910. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980.
Chomsky, Noam. Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist
Thought. New York, London: Harper and Row, 1966.
———. New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind. Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge UP, 2000.
Cillien, Ursula. Johann Gottfried Herder: Christlicher Humanismus. Ratingen:
Aloys Henn Verlag, 1972.
Clairmont, Heinrich. “‘Die Leute wollen keinen Gott, als in ihrer Uniform, ein
menschliches Fabelthier.’ Herders anthropologisch fundierte Gnoseologie
und seine Spinozadeutung in Gott.” In Spinoza im Deutschland des
achtzehnten Jahrhunderts: Zur Erinnerung an Hans-Christian Lucas, edited
by Eva Schürmann, Norbert Waszek, and Frank Weinreich, 329–55.
Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2002.
———.“‘Metaphysik ist Metaphysik.’ Aspekte der Herderschen Kant-Kritik.”

In Idealismus und Aufklärung: Kontinuität und Kritik der Aufklärung in
Philosophie und Poesie um 1800, edited by Christoph Jamme and Gerhard
Kurz, 179–200. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1988.
Clark, Robert T. Jr. “Herder’s Concept of ‘Kraft.’” PMLA 57 (1942): 737–
52.
Closs, August. “Die neuere Lyrik.” In Deutsche Philologie im Aufriss, 2nd rev.
ed., edited by Wolfgang Stammler, 2:186–91. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1960.
Critchfield, Richard. “Revolution and the Creative Arts. Toward a Reappraisal
of Herder’s Defense of the French Revolution.” In Johann Gottfried Herder:
Innovator through the Ages, edited by Wulf Koepke with Samson B. Knoll,
190–206.
Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge UP, 1987.
Dann, Otto. “Drei patriotische Gedichte Herders.” In Zwischen Aufklärung
und Restauration: Sozialer Wandel in der deutschen Literatur (1700–1848).
Festschrift für Wolfgang Martens zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Wolfgang
Frühwald and Alberto Martino, with Ernst Fischer and Klaus Heydemann,
211–24. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1989.
———. “Herder und die Deutsche Bewegung.” In Sauder, Johann Gottfried
Herder 1744–1803, 308–40.
———. “Herders Weg nach Deutschland.” Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook
1994, 1–16.
Deiters, Franz-Josef. “Das Volk als Autor? Der Ursprung einer kulturge-
schichtlichen Fiktion im Werk Johann Gottfried Herders.” In Autorschaft:
Positionen und Revisionen, edited by Heinrich Detering, 181–202. Stuttgart,
Weimar: Metzler, 2002.
Deneken, Michel. “Quand Dieu apprend à parler aux hommes. Herder et la
Bible.” Recherches de science religieuse 90 (2002): 487–508.
DeSouza, Nigel. The Philosophical Anthropology of the Young Herder (1763–
1780). PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2006.
Dilthey, Wilhelm. Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geistes-
wissenschaften. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 7. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und
Ruprecht, 1968.
Dobbek, Wilhelm. “Johann Gottfried Herders Haltung im politischen Leben
seiner Zeit.” Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 8 (1959): 321–87.
———. Johann Gottfried Herders Jugendzeit in Mohrungen und Königsberg
1744–1764. Würzburg: Holzner, 1961.
Dockhorn, Klaus. “Epoche, Fuge und ‘imitatio.’” In Macht und Wirkung der
Rhetorik: Vier Aufsätze zur Ideengeschichte der Vormoderne, 105–24. Bad
Homburg: Gehlen, 1968.
Dohm, Burkhard. Poetische Alchimie: Öffnung zur Sinnlichkeit in der Hohelied-
und Bibeldichtung von der protestantischen Barockmystik bis zum Pietismus.
Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000.
Dray, William. “Philosophy of History.” In Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Vol. 5, 6.
New York, London: Macmillan, 1967, 247–54.
Dreike, Beate Monika. Herders Naturauffassung in ihrer Beeinflussung durch
Leibniz’ Philosophie. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1973.
Dreitzel, Horst. “Herders politische Konzepte.” In Sauder, Johann Gottfried
Herder 1744–1803, 267–98.
Drews, Peter. Herder und die Slaven: Materialien zur Wirkungsgeschichte bis zur
Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Munich: Otto Sagner, 1990.
Dürbeck, Gabriele. Einbildungskraft und Aufklärung: Perspektiven der Philo-
sophie, Anthropologie und Ästhetik um 1750. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1998.
Düsing, Wolfgang. “Die Gegenwart im Spiegel der Vergangenheit in Herders
Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte.” In Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann
Gottfried Herder 1983, edited by Brigitte Poschmann, 33–49. Rinteln:
Bösendahl, 1984.
Eberhardt, Hans. “Johann Gottfried Herder in Weimar.” Amtsblatt der Evan-
gelisch-Lutherischen Kirche in Thüringen 31 (1978): 198–207. Reprint in
Fundament: Dreißig Beiträge zur Thüringischen Kirchengeschichte. Berlin:
Evangelische Verlagsansgtalt, 1987, 155–68.
Emerson, Roger. “American Indians, Frenchmen, and Scots Philosophers.”
Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 9 (1979): 211–36.
Ergang, Robert Reinhold. Herder and the Foundations of German Nationalism.
(1931) Reprint New York: Octagon Books, 1966.
Ermatinger, Emil. Die deutsche Lyrik in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung von
Herder bis zur Gegenwart. Part 1: Von Herder bis zum Ausgang der Ro-
mantik. Leipzig: Teubner, 1921.
Ernst, Fritz. “Herder und die Humanität: Aus einer Antrittsvorlesung [1944]
an der E[idgenössischen] T[echnischen] H[ochschule].” In Essais, 3:287–
306. Zurich: Fretz und Wasmuth, 1946.
Fasel, Christoph. Herder und das klassische Weimar: Kultur und Gesellschaft
1789–1803. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1988.
Federlin, Wilhelm-Ludwig. “Das Problem der Bildung in Herders Humanitäts-
briefen.” In Sauder, Johann Gottfried Herder 1744–1803, 125–40.
Ferguson, Adam. Essay on the History of Civil Society. Ed. Fania Oz-Salzberger.
Cambridge, New York: Cambridge UP, 1995.
Flavell, M. Kay. “Winckelmann and the German Enlightenment. On the Re-

covery and Uses of the Past.” Modern Language Review 74 (1979): 79–96.
Forster, Michael N. “Johann Gottfried Herder.” Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/herder/.
Fox, Russell Arben. “J. G. Herder on Language and the Metaphysics of Na-
tional Community.” The Review of Politics 65 (2003): 237–62.
Francke, Otto. “Herder und das Weimarische Gymnasium.” (Address of 12
Feb. 1892.) Sammlung gemeinverständlicher wissenschaftlicher Vorträge. New
series 8, issue 183. Hamburg: Verlags Anstalt u. Druck A. G., 1893.
Frank, Manfred. Der kommende Gott: Vorlesungen über die Neue Mythologie.
Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1982.
Frenz, Peter. Studien zu traditionellen Elementen des Geschichtsdenkens und der
Bildlichkeit im Werk Johann Gottfried Herders. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang,
1983.
Frey, Jörg. “Herder und die Evangelien.” In Kessler and Leppin, Johann
Gottfried Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, 47–91.
Frothingham, Octavius Brooks. Transcendentalism in New England. New York:
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1876. Reprint, New York: Harper Brothers, 1959.
Gaier, Ulrich. “Formen und Gebrauch neuer Mythologie bei Herder.” In
Herder Jahrbuch 2000, edited by Karl Menges, Regine Otto, and Wulf
Koepke, 111–33. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000.
———. Herders Sprachphilosophie und Erkenntniskritik. Stuttgart-Bad Cann-
statt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1988.
———. “Herders systematologische Theologie.” In Kessler and Leppin,
Johann Gottfried Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, 203–18.
———. “Hölderlin und der Mythos.” In Terror und Spiel: Probleme der
Mythenrezeption, edited by Manfred Fuhrmann, 295–340. Munich: Fink,
1971.
———. “Kommentar.” In Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke, vol. 1: Frühe
Schriften 1764–1772. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985.
———. “Kommentar.” In Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke, vol. 3: Volkslieder,
Übertragungen, Dichtungen, 839–1486. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher
Klassiker Verlag, 1990.
———. “Mythos und Mythologie.” In Kritische Revisionen: Gender und Mythos
im literarischen Diskurs, edited by Japanische Gesellschaft für Germanistik,
185–204. Munich: Iudicium, 1998.
———. “Poesie als Metatheorie. Zeichenbegriffe des frühen Herder.” In
Sauder, Johann Gottfried Herder 1744–1803, 202–24.
———. “Poesie oder Geschichtsphilosophie? Herders erkenntnistheoretische

Antwort auf Kant.” In Johann Gottfried Herder: Geschichte und Kultur,
edited by Martin Bollacher, 1–17. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann,
1994.
———. “The Problem of Core Cognition in Herder.” Monatshefte 95.2
(2003): 294–309.
———. “Ein unseliges Mittelding zwischen Hofstadt und Dorf. Herder und
Weimar.” In Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook VI/2002, 43–62.
Gamm, Gerhard. Flucht aus der Kategorie: Die Positivierung des Unbestimmten
als Ausgang der Moderne. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994.
Gaskill, Howard. “Ossian, Herder, and the Idea of Folk Song.” In Literature of
the Sturm und Drang, edited by David Hill, 95–116 (= The Camden House
History of German Literature, vol. 6). Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2003.
Gooch, G. P. Germany and the French Revolution. 1920. Reprint. London:
Frank Cass, 1965.
Götzinger’s Deutsche Dichter. 5th edition. Ed. and revised by Ernst Götzinger,
1:431–507. Aarau: H.R. Sauerländer, 1878.
Graevenitz, Gerhart von. Mythos: Geschichte einer Denkgewohnheit. Stuttgart:
Metzler, 1987.
Grau, Conrad. “Herder, die Wissenschaft und die Akademien seiner Zeit. Hin-
weise auf ein interdisziplinäres Forschungsthema.” Jahrbuch für Geschichte 19
(1979): 89–114.
Greif, Stefan. “‘Wer kann Farben tönen?’ Schöpfung, Wahrnehmung und
Landschaft in Herders Hieroglyphen-Ästhetik.” Herder Jahrbuch / Herder
Yearbook VII/2004, 31–44.
———. “‘. . . wie ein Engel in Licht gekleidet’ — Herders Bild- und Beschrei-
bungsästhetik im Kontext des späten 18. Jahrhunderts.” Monatshefte 95.2
(2003): 207–16.
Grosby, Steven. “Herder’s Theory of the Nation.” In Encyclopedia of
Nationalism, edited by Athena S. Leoussi, with Anthony D. Smith, 121–24.
New Brunswick, NJ/London: Transaction Publishers, 2001.
Gross, Sabine. “‘Vom Körper der Seele’ zum ‘Damm der Affekte’. Zu Johann
Gottfried Herders Metaphorik.” In Der frühe und der späte Herder / Young
Herder, Old Herder, edited by Sabine Gross and Gerhard Sauder, 369–83.
Heidelberg: Synchron, 2007.
Häfner, Ralph. Johann Gottfried Herders Kulturentstehungslehre: Studium zu
den Quellen und zur Methode seines Geschichtsdenkens. Hamburg: Meiner,
1995.
———. “Die Weisheit des Ursprungs. Zur Überlieferung des Wissens in

Herders Geschichtsphilosophie.” Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook 1994,
77–101.
Hallberg, Peter. “The Nature of Collective Individuals. J. G. Herder’s Concept
of Community.” History of European Ideas 25.6 (1999): 291–304.
Hankeln, Roman. “Johann Friedrich Reichardts (1752–1814) Vertonungen
von Herder-Epigrammen. Zur Komposition antikenorientierter Metren um
1790.” In Ideen und Ideale. Johann Gottfried Herder in Ost und West, edited
by Peter Andraschke and Helmut Loos, 125–51. Freiburg: Rombach, 2002.
Harrison, Peter. “Religion” and the Religions in the English Enlightenment.
Heidkemper, Hermann. “Herder in Bückeburg.” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für
niedersächsische Kirchengeschichte 16 (1911): 1–42.
Heinz, Marion.“Existenz und Individualität. Untersuchungen zu Herders
Gott.” In Kategorien der Existenz: Festschrift für Wolfgang Janke, edited by
Klaus Held, 159–78. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1993.
———. “Genuß, Liebe und Erkenntnis. Zur frühen Hemsterhuis-Rezeption
Herders.” In Frans Hemsterhuis (1721–1790): Quellen, Philosophie und Re-
zeption, edited by Marcel F. Fresco, Loek Geeraedts, and Klaus Hammacher,
433–44. Münster, Hamburg: Lit, 1995.
———. “Herders Metakritik.” In Herder und die Philosophie des deutschen
Idealismus, edited by Marion Heinz, 89–106. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi,
1997.
———. Sensualistischer Idealismus: Untersuchungen zur Erkenntnistheorie und
Metaphysik des jungen Herder (1763–1778). Hamburg: Meiner, 1994.
Hensel, Paul. “Herders Humanitätsbegriff in seinem Verhältnis zur Methoden-
lehre der Geschichte.” (1903) In Kleine Schriften und Vorträge, 41–50.
———. Kleine Schriften und Vorträge. Ed. Ernst Hoffmann and Heinrich
Rickert. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1930.
Herder im “Dritten Reich.” Ed. Jost Schneider. Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 1994.
Herms, Eilert. “Bildung des Gemeinwesens aus dem Christentum. Beobach-
tungen zum Grundmotiv von Herders literarischem Schaffen.” In Kessler and
Leppin, Johann Gottfried Herder. Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, 309–25.
———. “Herder, Johann Gottfried von (1744–1803).” Theologische Realen-
zyklopädie. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1986. 15:70–95.
Herz, Andreas. Dunkler Spiegel — helles Dasein: Natur, Geschichte, Kunst im
Werk Johann Gottfried Herders. Heidelberg: Winter, 1996.
Hintzenstern, Herbert von. Herder in Weimar: Biographische Informationen
über den Schriftsteller und Generalsuperintendenten mit Auszügen aus seinen
Werken. Weimar, Jena: Wartburg, 1994.
Höpfl, H. M. “From Savage to Scotsman. Conjectural History in the Scottish

Enlightenment.” Journal of British Studies 17 (1978): 19–40.
Huber, Thomas. Studien zur Theorie des Übersetzens im Zeitalter der deutschen
Aufklärung 1730–1770. Meisenheim am Glan: A. Hain, 1968.
Hübner, Kurt. Die Wahrheit des Mythos. Munich: Beck, 1985.
Iggers, Georg. The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of
Historical Thought from Herder to the Present. Revised edition, Middletown,
CT: Wesleyan UP, 1983.
Irmscher, Hans Dietrich. “Aneignung und Kritik naturwissenschaftlicher Vor-
stellungen bei Herder.” In Texte, Motive und Gestalten der Goethezeit:
Festschrift für Hans Reiss, edited by John L. Hibberd and H. B. Nisbet, 33–
63. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1989.
———. “Beobachtungen zur Funktion der Analogie im Denken Herders,”
Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 55
(1981), 64–97.
———. “Ein Blick auf Herders frühe Lyrik (1764–1770).” In Traditionen der
Lyrik. Festschrift für Hans-Henrik Krummacher, edited by Wolfgang Düsing
with Hans-Jürgen Schings, Stefan Trappen and Gottfried Willems, 47–58.
———. “Die Geschichtlichkeit des menschlichen Daseins. Johann Gottfried
Herder ‘Der Genius der Zukunft.’” In Gedichte und Interpretationen. Vol. 2:
Aufklärung und Sturm und Drang, edited by Karl Richter, 276–93. Stutt-
gart: Reclam, 1983.
———. “Die geschichtsphilosophische Kontroverse zwischen Kant und Her-
der.” In Hamann — Kant — Herder: Acta des 4. Internationalen Hamann-
Kolloqiums im Herder-Institut zu Marburg/Lahn 1985, edited by Bernhard
Gajek, 111–92. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1987.
———. “Goethe und Herder — eine schwierige Freundschaft.” In Kessler and
Leppin, Johann Gottfried Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, 233–70.
———. “Grundfragen der Geschichtsphilosophie Herders bis 1774.” In
Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder 1983, edited by Brigitte
Poschman, 10–32. Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1984.
———. “Grundzüge der Ästhetik Herders.” In Ideen und Ideale: Johann
Gottfried Herder in Ost und West, edited by Peter Andraschke and Helmut
Loos, 45–60. Freiburg: Rombach, 2002.
———. “Grundzüge der Hermeneutik Herders.” In Bückeburger Gespräche
über Johann Gottfried Herder, 1971, edited by Johann Maltusch, 17–57.
Bückeburg: Grimme, 1973.
———. “Kommentar.” Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität, Werke in zehn
Bänden, 6:899–1155.
———. “Poesie, Nationalität und Humanität bei Herder.” In Nationen und

Neumann, 1996.
———. “Zur Ästhetik des jungen Herder.” In Sauder, Johann Gottfried Herder
1744–1803, 43–76.
Jäger, Hans-Wolf. “Herder und die Französische Revolution.” In Sauder,
Johann Gottfried Herder 1744–1803, 299–307.
Johann Gottfried Herder: Ahndung künftiger Bestimmung. Ed. Stiftung
Weimarer Klassik, Goethe-Nationalmuseum. Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler,
1994. (Catalogue of the Weimar exhibition on the occasion of Herder’s
250th birthday.)
Johannsen, Jochen. “Der Erfahrungswandel der Moderne und die Ästhetisie-
rung der Geschichte. Aspekte der historischen Erfahrung bei Herder.”
Monatshefte 95.2 (2003): 250–72.
Joret, Charles. Herder et la renaissance littéraire en Allemagne au XVIIIe siècle.
Paris: Hachette, 1875.
Jørgensen, Sven Aage. “‘wenn Sie wüsten, wie ich Sie buchstabire’. Herder als
Dolmetscher Hamanns in der ‘Aeltesten Urkunde.’” In Bückeburger Ge-
spräche über Johann Gottfried Herder 1988: Älteste Urkunde des Menschen-
geschlechts, edited by Brigitte Poschmann, 98–107. Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1989.
Jørgensen, Sven Aage, Klaus Bohnen, and Per Øhrgaard. Aufklärung, Sturm
und Drang, frühe Klassik, 1740–1789, vol. 6 of Geschichte der deutschen
Literatur, edited by Helmut de Boor and Richard Newald. Munich: Beck,
1990.
Juranek, Christian. “Welterfahrung und Selbstfindung. Seereise, Frankreich,
Darmstadt, Straßburg 1769–1771.” In Johann Gottfried Herder: Ahndung
künftiger Bestimmung, edited by Stiftung Weimarer Klassik, Goethe-
Nationalmuseum, 47–80. Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 1994.
Kamenetsky, Christa. “Political Distortion of Philosophical Concepts. A Case
History — Nazism and the Romantic Movement.” Metaphilosophy 3.3
(1972): 198–218.
Kantzenbach, Friedrich Wilhelm. “Die Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts
— Herders Schrift im theologiegeschichtlichen Zusammenhang.” In
Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder 1988: Älteste Urkunde
des Menschengeschlechts, edited by Brigitte Poschmann, 292–320. Rinteln:
Bösendahl, 1989.
Kelletat, Andreas F. Herder und die Weltliteratur: Zur Geschichte des Übersetzens
im 18. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main, New York: P. Lang, 1984.
Kemper, Hans-Georg. “Von der Reformation bis zum Sturm und Drang.” In
Geschichte der deutschen Lyrik, by Franz-Josef Holznagel, Hans-Georg
Kemper, Hermann Korte, Mathia Meyer, Ralf Schnell, and Bernhard Sorg,
96–260. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2004.
Kessler, Martin. Johann Gottfried Herder: Der Theologe unter den Klassikern —
Das Amt des Generalsuperintendenten von Sachsen-Weimar. 1 vol. in 2 parts.
Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2005.
Kessler, Martin, and Volker Leppin, eds. Johann Gottfried Herder: Aspekte seines
Lebenswerkes. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2005.
Kleinertz, Rainer. “Liszts Ouvertüre und Chöre zu Herders Entfesseltem
Prometheus.” In Liszt und die Weimarer Klassik, edited by Detlef Altenburg,
155-78. Laaber: Laaber, 1997.
Kloocke, Kurt. “Johann Gottfried Herder et Benjamin Constant.” Annales
Benjamin Constant 29 (2005): 55–72.
Knoll, Renate. “Herder als Promoter Hamanns. Zu Herders früher Literatur-
kritik.” In Herder Today, edited by Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, 207–27. Berlin,
New York: de Gruyter, 1990.
Knoll, Samson. “Herder’s Concept of Humanität.” In Johann Gottfried
Herder: Innovator through the Ages, edited by Wulf Koepke with Samson B.
Knoll, 9–19.
———. “Herders Nationalismus — Debatte ohne Ende.” In Nationen und
Neumann, 1996.
Koepke, Wulf. “Goethe and the Aesthetic Education of the Germans.” In
Goethe as a Critic of Literature, edited by Karl J. Fink and Max L. Baeumer,
96–109. Lanham, MD: UP of America, 1984.
———. “Herder and the Sturm und Drang.” In Literature of the Sturm und
Drang, edited by David Hill, 69–93 (= The Camden House History of Ger-
man Literature, vol. 6). Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2003.
———. “Die höhere Nemesis des Christentums.” In Der frühe und der späte
Herder / Young Herder, Old Herder, edited by Sabine Gross and Gerhard
Sauder, 211–20. Heidelberg: Synchron, 2007.
———. Johann Gottfried Herder. Boston: Twayne, 1987.
———. “Johann Gottfried Herder’s Concept of ‘Nation.’” Studies on Voltaire
and the Eighteenth Century 265 (1989): 1656–59.
———. “Klarheit und Wahrheit. Herders ‘Wende’ nach 1787.” Monatshefte
95.2 (2003): 273–93.
———. “Kulturnation and its Authorization through Herder.” In Johann
Gottfried Herder: Academic Disciplines and the Pursuit of Knowledge, edited
by Wulf Koepke, 177–98. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1996.
———. “Nemesis und Geschichtsdialektik?” In Herder Today, edited by Kurt

Mueller-Vollmer, 85–96. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1990.
———. “Der Staat — die störende und unvermeidliche Maschine.” In Natio-
nen und Kulturen, edited by Regine Otto, 227–38. Würzburg: Königs-
hausen und Neumann, 1996.
———. “Truth and Revelation. On Herder’s Theological Writings.” In Johann
Gottfried Herder: Innovator through the Ages, edited by Wulf Koepke and
Samson B. Knoll, 138–56.
———. “Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie. Biblisch-orientalische Poesie als
alternatives Vorbild.” In Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook VII/2004,
89–101.
———. “Das Wort ‘Volk’ im Sprachgebrauch Johann Gottfried Herders.”
Lessing Yearbook 19 (1987): 207–19.
Koopmann, Helmut. Das junge Deutschland: Analyse eines Selbstverständnisses.
Stuttgart: Metzler, 1970.
Koselleck, Reinhart. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985.
———. Kritik und Krise: Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt.
(1959). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973.
———. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts.
Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002.
Krämer, Jörg. Deutschsprachiges Musiktheater im späten 18. Jahrhundert:
Typologie, Dramaturgie und Anthropologie einer populären Gattung. Vol 1.
Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001.
La Vopa, Anthony. “Conceiving a Public. Ideas and Society in Eighteenth-
Century Europe.” Journal of Modern History 64 (1992): 79–116.
———. “Herder’s Publikum. Language, Print, and Sociability in Eighteenth-
Century Germany.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 29.1 (1995): 5–24.
Leppin, Volker. “Für ‘junge Lehrer der Religion.’ Theologische und religions-
philosophische Klarstellungen in Herders Schrift ‘Von Religion, Lehrmei-
nungen und Gebräuchen’ (1798).” In Religion und Aufklärung: Studien zur
neuzeitlichen “Umformung des Christlichen,” edited by Albrecht Beutel and
Volker Leppin, 123–30. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2004.
Leuser, Claudia. Theologie und Anthropologie: Die Erziehung des Menschen-
geschlechts bei Johann Gottfried Herder. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1996.
Leventhal, Robert S. The Disciplines of Interpretation: Lessing, Herder, Schlegel
and Hermeneutics in Germany, 1750–1800. New York: de Gruyter, 1994.
Linker, Damon S. “Can Communitarians Live Their Communitarianism? The

Case of J. G. Herder.” PhD diss., Michigan State University, 1998.
———. “The Reluctant Pluralism of J. G. Herder.” Review of Politics 62
(Spring 2000), 267–93.
Löwith, Karl. Meaning in History. Chicago, London: U of Chicago P, 1949.
Lovejoy, Arthur. “Herder. Progressionism without Transformism.” In Fore-
runners of Darwin. 1745–1859, edited by Bentley Glass, Owsei Temkin, and
William L. Straus Jr., 207–21. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1959.
Lyon, Judson M. “The Herder Syndrome. A Comparative Study of Cultural
Nationalism.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 17.2 (1994): 224–37.
Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.
Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984.
Malsch, Wilfried. “Nationen und kulturelle Vielfalt in Herders Geschichts-
philosophie.” Nationen und Kulturen, edited by Regine Otto, 121–30.
Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1996.
Markworth, Tino. Unsterblichkeit und Identität beim frühen Herder. Pader-
born: Schöningh, 2005.
McDermott, Gerald R. Jonathan Edwards Confronts the Gods: Christian The-
ology, Enlightenment Religion, and Non-Christian Faiths. New York: Oxford
UP, 2000.
Megill, Allen. “Aesthetic Theory and Historical Consciousness in the Eight-
eenth Century.” History and Theory 17 (1978): 29–62.
Meinecke, Friedrich. Historism: The Rise of a New Historical Outlook. (Original
German edition 1936) London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972.
Menges, Karl. “‘[. . .] daß der Gedanke am Ausdruck klebe’: Vom Sprechen
und Schreiben bei Herder.” In Johann Gottfried Herder: Geschichte und
Kultur, edited by Martin Bollacher, 153–66. Würzburg: Königshausen und
Neumann, 1994.
———. “Hebräische Poesie, Rabbinisches Judentum, Haskala: Perspektiven
jüdischer Identität bei Herder.” In Der frühe und der späte Herder / Young
Herder, Old Herder, edited by Sabine Gross and Gerhard Sauder, 229–41.
———. “Herder and the ‘Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes.’” In
Eighteenth-Century German Authors and their Aesthetic Theories: Literature
and the other Arts, edited by Richard Critchfield and Wulf Koepke, 147–83.
Columbia: Camden House, 1988.
———. “Identity as Difference: Herder’s ‘Great Topic’ and the ‘Philosophers
of Paris.’” Monatshefte 87/1 (1995): 6–18.
———. “Integration oder Assimilation: Herders Äußerungen über die Juden

im Kontext der klassischen Emanzipationsdebatte.” Euphorion 90.4 (1996):
394–415.
———. Introduction to Johann Gottfried Herder: Selected Early Works 1764–
1767, edited by Ernest A. Menze and Karl Menges, 1–25. University Park,
PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 1991.
———. “‘Seyn’ und ‘Daseyn’, Sein und Zeit. Zu Herders Theorie des Sub-
jekts.” In Herder Today, edited by Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, 138–57. Berlin,
———. “‘Sinn’ und ‘Besonnenheit’”: The Meaning of ‘Meaning’ in Herder.”
Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook 1998, 157–75.
———. “Vom Nationalgeist und seinen ‘Keimen’. Zur Vorurteils-Apologetik
bei Herder, Hamann und anderen ‘Patrioten.’” In Die Dichter und ihre
Nation, edited by Helmut Scheuer, 103–20. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1993.
———. “Was leistet pragmatische Geschichtsschreibung? Zur Aktualisierung
der Historiographie bei Abbt und Herder.” In Humanität in einer
pluralistischen Welt? Festschrift für Martin Bollacher, edited by Christian
Kluwe and Jost Schneider, 185–201. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann,
2000.
Menze, Ernest A. “‘. . . For Catholicism, too, is Christendom.’ Johann Gott-
fried Herder’s Views of Catholicism, Catholics, and the Catholic Church.” In
Literatur und Geschichte: Festschrift für Wulf Koepke zum 70. Geburtstag,
edited by Karl Menges, 83–96. Amsterdam, Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1998.
———. “Herder and Heine: Reflections on Affinities.” Heine Jahrbuch 43
(2004): 150–71.
———. “Johann Gottfried Herder and the American Transcendentalists. The
Religious Dimension.” Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook VIII/2006,
27–41.
———. “Johann Gottfried Herder, ‘Young Germany,’ and Beyond. Problems
of Reception.” In Der frühe und der späte Herder / Young Herder, Old
Herder, edited by Sabine Gross and Gerhard Sauder, 449–57. Heidelberg:
Synchron, 2007.
Modigliani, Denise. “Zur moralisch-gesellschaftlichen Funktion der Dichtkunst
bei Herder im Licht seiner Shaftesbury-Lektüre.” Herder Jahrbuch / Herder
Yearbook 2000, 57–77.
Möller, Michael F. Die ersten Freigelassenen der Schöpfung: Das Menschenbild
Johann Gottfried Herders im Kontext von Theologie und Philosophie der
Aufklärung. Ed. Ulrich Kühn. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1998.
Moltmann, Jürgen. Theologie der Hoffnung: Untersuchungen zur Begründung

und zu den Konsequenzen einer christlichen Eschatologie. Munich: Chr. Kaiser,
1965.
Moser, Walter. “Herder’s System of Metaphors in the Ideen.” In Johann Gott-
fried Herder — Innovator Through the Ages, edited by Wulf Koepke with
Samson B. Knoll, 102–24.
Müller-Michaels, Harro. “‘For His Own Self-Formation’ — On the Educa-
tional Effect of Autobiography about 1800.” In Johann Gottfried Herder:
Academic Disciplines and the Pursuit of Knowledge, edited by Wulf Koepke,
220–31. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1996.
———.“Herder — Denkbilder der Kulturen. Herders poetisches und didak-
tisches Konzept der Denkbilder.” In Nationen und Kulturen, edited by
Regine Otto, 65–76. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1996.
———. “Literatur und Abitur. Über die Zusammenhänge zwischen Literatur-
theorie und Bildungspraxis in Herders Schulreden.” In Herder Today, edited
by Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, 228–45. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1990.
Muthu, Sankar. Enlightenment against Empire. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton
UP, 2003.
Namowicz, Tadeusz. “Anthropologie und Geschichtsphilosophie in Herders
Ältester Urkunde in ihrem Verhältnis zum Menschenbild des Sturm und
Drang.” In Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder 1988, edited
by Brigitte Poschmann, 245–67. Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1989.
———. “Der Aufklärer Herder, seine Predigten und Schulreden.” In Sauder,
Johann Gottfried Herder 1744–1803, 23–34.
———. “Pietismus und Antike als Komponenten des Herderschen Frühwerks.”
In Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder 1975, edited by
Johann Gottfried Maltusch, 1–21. Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1976.
Neis, Cordula. Anthropologie im Sprachdenken des 18. Jahrhunderts: Die
Berliner Preisfrage nach dem Ursprung der Sprache (1771). Berlin, New York:
de Gruyter, 2003.
Niemöller, Klaus Wolfgang. “Drama in musikalischen Hieroglyphen. Johann
Gottfried Herders Brutus und Philoktetes, vertont von Johann Christoph
Friedrich Bach als Antikerezeption.” In Ideen und Ideale: Johann Gottfried
Herder in Ost und West, edited by Peter Andraschke and Helmut Loos, 153–
65. Freiburg: Rombach, 2002.
Nisbet, H. B. “Herder and Francis Bacon.” Modern Language Review 62
(1967): 267–83.
———. Herder and the Philosophy and History of Science. Cambridge, UK:
Modern Humanities Research Association, 1970.
———. “Die naturphilosophische Bedeutung von Herders Ältester Urkunde

des Menschengeschlechts.” In Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried
Herder 1988: Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts, edited by Brigitte
Poschmann, 210–26. Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1989.
Norton, David. A History of the Bible as Literature. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge UP, 1993.
Norton, Robert E. “Die anglo-amerikanische Herder-Rezeption: ‘Gegenauf-
klärung’ und ihre Befürworter.” In Vom Selbstdenken: Aufklärung und
Aufklärungskritik in Herders “Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der
Menschheit,” edited by Regine Otto and John H. Zammito, 215–21.
———. Herder’s Aesthetics and the European Enlightenment. Ithaca: Cornell
UP, 1991.
———. “Johann Gottfried Herder.” In Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment,
edited by Alan Charles Kors, 2:205–8. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP,
2002.
Nübel, Birgit. Autobiographische Kommunikationsmedien um 1800: Studien zu
Rousseau, Wieland, Herder und Moritz. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994.
O’Flaherty, James C. The Quarrel of Reason with Itself: Essays on Hamann,
Michaelis, Lessing, Nietzsche. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1988.
Otto, Regine. “Herder’s Academy Conception — Theory and Practice. In
Johann Gottfried Herder. Academic Disciplines and the Pursuit of Knowledge,
edited by Wulf Koepke, 199–211.
———. “Zur Herder-Forschung in der DDR — Resultate, Tendenzen, Auf-
gaben.” In Herder Today, edited by Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, 433–45. Berlin,
Owren, Heidi. Herders Bildungsprogramm und seine Auswirkungen im 18. und
19. Jahrhundert. Heidelberg: Winter, 1983.
Palti, Elias. “The ‘Metaphor of Life’. Herder’s Philosophy of History and Un-
even Developments in Late Eighteenth-Century Natural Science.” History
and Theory 38 (1999): 322–47.
Pascal, Roy. “Herder and the Scottish Historical School.” Publications of the
English Goethe Society N.S. 14 (1939): 23–42.
Pénisson, Pierre. J. G. Herder. La raison dans les Peuples. Paris: Editions du
Cerf, 1992.
———. “Michelet, Quinet et l’Allemagne.” Revue de Synthèse 109 (1988):
247–63.
Penrose, Jan. “Nations, States and Homelands. Territory and Territoriality in
Nationalist Thought.” Nations and Nationalism 8.3 (2002): 277–97.
Penrose, Jan, and Joe May. “Herder’s Concept of Nation and Its Relevance to
Contemporary Ethnic Nationalism.” Canadian Review of Studies in Nation-
alism 18.1–2 (1991): 165–78.
Peyer, Heinz. Herders Theorie der Lyrik. Winterthur: P. G. Keller, 1955.
Poltermann, Andreas. “Antikolonialer Universalismus. Johann Gottfried Her-
ders Übersetzung und Sammlung fremder Volkslieder.” In Übersetzung als
Repräsentation fremder Kulturen, edited by Doris Bachmann-Medick, 217–
59. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1997.
Poschmann, Brigitte. “Herders Tätigkeit als Konsistorialrat und Superintendent
in Bückeburg.” In Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder 1983,
edited by Brigitte Poschmann, 190–213. Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1984.
Prickett, Stephen. Words and The Word: Language, Poetics and Biblical Inter-
pretation, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986.
Pross, Wolfgang. “Herder und Vico. Wissenssoziologische Voraussetzungen
des historischen Denkens.” In Sauder, Johann Gottfried Herder 1744–1803,
88–113.
———. “Spinoza, Herder, Büchner. Über ‘Gesetz’ und ‘Erscheinung.’” Georg-
Büchner-Jahrbuch 2 (1982): 62–98.
Purdie, Edna. “Some Problems of Translation in the Eighteenth Century in
German.” In Purdie, Studies in German Literature of the Eighteenth Century:
Some Aspects of Literary Affiliation, 111–31. London: Athlone Press, 1965.
Race and Enlightenment: A Reader. Ed. Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1997.
Ranitzsch, Hermann. Das Grossherzogliche Lehrerseminar zu Weimar in dem
ersten Jahrhundert seines Bestehens: Eine Gedenkschrift. Weimar: Böhlau,
1888.
Rasch, Wolfdietrich. Herder: Sein Leben und Werk im Umriß. Halle: Niemeyer,
1938.
Redekop, Benjamin W. Enlightenment and Community: Lessing, Abbt, Herder,
and the Quest for a German Public. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s
UP, 2000.
Reill, Peter Hanns. The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism.
Berkeley: U of California P, 1975.
Reventlow, Henning Graf. “Johann Gottfried Herder — Theologian, Promoter
of Humanity, Historian.” In Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its
Interpretation, vol. 2, edited by Magne Sæbø, 2:1041–50. Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008.
Ricœur, Paul. La métaphore vive. Paris: Seuil, 1975.
Rieks, R. “Humanitas.” In Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, edited by

Joachim Ritter, 3:1231–32. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
1974.
Ripley, George. “Letter to a Theological Student.” The Dial, 1.2 (Oct. 1840).
Reprint, New York: Russell and Russell, 1961, 1:183–87.
———. Review of Johann Gottfried von Herders sämtliche Werke: Zur Religion
und Theologie. Ed. Johann Georg Müller. 18 vols., Stuttgart and Tübingen:
Cotta, 1827–1830. The Christian Examiner 19 (Nov. 1835): 172–204.
———. Review of Johann Gottfried von Herder’s The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry.
Trans. James March. 2 vols. Burlington: Smith, 1833. The Christian
Examiner 18 (May 1835): 167–221.
Rölleke, Heinz. “Über Volks- und Geistliche Lieder bei Herder.” In Kessler
and Leppin, Johann Gottfried Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, 115–28.
Rössler, Martin. “Das 18. Jahrhundert.” In Kirchenlied und Gesangbuch:
Quellen zu ihrer Geschichte. Ein hymnologisches Arbeitsbuch, edited by
Christian Möller, Peter Bubmann, 170–213. Tübingen: Francke, 2000.
Rohls, Jan. “Herders Gott.” In Keßler and Leppin, Johann Gottfried Herder.
Rouché, Max. La Philosophie de l’histoire de Herder. Paris, Strasbourg: Belles-
Lettres, 1940.
Ruprecht, Erich. “J. G. Herders Bekenntnisgedichte. Selbstbefragung und
Selbstgewißheit.” In Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder
1983, edited by Brigitte Poschmann, 174–89. Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1984.
Saine, Thomas P. “Johann Gottfried Herder. The Weimar Classic Back of the
(City) Church.” In The Literature of Weimar Classicism, edited by Simon
Richter, 113–31 (= The Camden House History of German Literature, vol. 7).
Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2005.
Sammons, Jeffrey L. Heinrich Heine. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1979.
Sauder, Gerhard. “Herders Gedanken über lyrische Sprache und Dichtkunst.”
Herder-Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook VI/2002, 97–114.
———, ed. Johann Gottfried Herder 1744–1803. Proceedings of the Ninth
Annual Meeting of the German Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies/
Deutsche Gesellschaft für die Erforschung des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts.
Hamburg: Meiner, 1987.
———. “Lyrikmuster: Das ‘Silberne Buch’ und Herders Theorie des Ge-
dichts.” Herder-Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook VII/2004, 113–21.
———. “Zur Rezeption von Herders Schrift Älteste Urkunde des Menschen-
geschlechts.” In Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder 1988,
edited by Brigitte Poschmann, 268–91. Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1989.
Scherer, Wilhelm. Geschichte der deutschen Literatur. Berlin: Weidmann, 1883.
Schmidt, Wolff A. von. “Zur Übersetzungstheorie der Frühromantik — Berüh-

rungspunkte bei Herder und Friedrich Schlegel.” Zeitschrift für Religions-
und Geistesgeschichte 37 (1985): 185–62.
Schmidt, Wolf-Gerhard. “Homer des Nordens” und “Mutter der Romantik”:
James Macphersons “Ossian” und seine Rezeption in der deutschsprachigen
Literatur. Vol. 1. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003–4.
Schmitz, Reta. Das Problem “Volkstum und Dichtung” bei Herder. Berlin:
Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1937.
Schneider, Jost. “Herder und der deutsche ‘Kriegsgesang.’” Germanisch-
Romanische Monatsschrift 47 (1997): 53–64.
Schödlbauer, Ulrich. “Herders Paramythien. Vom Grund des Ungenügens an
theologischer Rede.” In Fabel und Parabel: Kulturgeschichtliche Prozesse im
18. Jahrhundert, edited by Theo Elm and Peter Hasubek, 247–64. Munich:
Fink, 1994.
Scholz, Günter. “Herder und die Metaphysik.” In Zwischen Wissen-
schaftsanspruch und Orientierungsbedürfnis: Zu Grundlage und Wandel der
Geisteswissenschaften, edited by Gunter Scholz, 81–107. Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1991.
Seeba, Hinrich C. “Geschichte als Dichtung. Herders Beitrag zur Ästhetisie-
rung der Geschichtsschreibung.” Storia della Storiografia 8 (1985): 50–72.
Sengle, Friedrich. Biedermeierzeit: Deutsche Literatur im Spannungsfeld
zwischen Restauration und Revolution 1815–1848. 3 vols. Stuttgart: Metzler
1971, 1972, 1980.
Shaw, Leroy R. “Henry Home Kames. Precursor of Herder.” The Germanic
Review 35 (1960): 16–27.
Sheehan, Jonathan. The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture.
Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005.
Sikka, Sonia. “Enlightened Relativism: The Case of Herder.” Philosophy &
Social Criticism 31.3 (2005): 309–41.
Simon, Ralf. Das Gedächtnis der Interpretation. Hamburg: Meiner, 1998.
Simon, Walter. “Zu einem vermeintlichen Gedicht Johann Gottfried Herders.”
In Korrespondenzen: Festschrift für Joachim W. Storck aus Anlaß seines 75.
Geburtstages, edited by Rudi Schweikert with Sabine Schmidt, 133–50. St.
Ingbert: Röhrig, 1999.
Singer, Rüdiger. “Hat Herder eine Theorie der Übersetzung entwickelt? Über-
legungen, ausgehend von Schleiermachers Methoden des Übersetzens.” In Der
frühe und der späte Herder / Young Herder, Old Herder, edited by Sabine
Gross and Gerhard Sauder, 385–95. Heidelberg: Synchron, 2007.
Smend, Rudolf. “Herder und die Bibel.” In Kessler and Leppin, Johann Gott-
fried Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, 1–14. Berlin: de Gruyter 2005.
———. “Herder und Göttingen.” In Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann

Gottfried Herder 1988: Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts, edited by
Brigitte Poschmann, 1–28. Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1989.
Spencer, Vicki. “Difference and Unity. Herder’s Concept of Volk and its Rele-
vance for Contemporary Multicultural Societies.” In Nationen und Kulturen,
edited by Regine Otto, 295–305. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann,
1996.
———. “Herder and Nationalism. Reclaiming the Principle of Cultural Re-
spect.” Australian Journal of Politics and History 43 (1997): 1–13.
Spaldings Bestimmung des Menschen. Ed. Horst Stephan. Giessen: Töpelmann,
1908.
Springer, Bernd. “Sprache, Geschichte, Nation und Deutschlandbilder bei
Herder.” In Poetisierung — Politisierung: Deutschlandbilder in der Literatur
bis 1848, edited by Wilhelm Gössmann and Klaus-Hinrich Roth, 33–62.
Paderborn, Munich: Schöningh, 1994.
Stadelmann, Rudolf. Der historische Sinn bei Herder. Halle: Niemeyer, 1928.
Stausberg, Michael. Faszination Zarathustra: Zoroaster und die Europäische Re-
ligionsgeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit. 2 vols. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1998.
Steiger, Johann Anselm. “Von Riga nach Weimar. Auf den Spuren Johann
Gottfried Herders theologischer und homiletischer Entwicklung.” Kerygma
und Dogma 47 (2001): 308–34.
Steinhäuser, Theodor. “Herder als Pfarrer.” In Herder im geistlichen Amt: Un-
tersuchungen — Quellen — Dokumente, edited by Eva Schmidt, 13–25.
Leipzig: Koehler und Amelang, 1956.
Stellmacher, Wolfgang. “Herders Fabeln, Parabeln, Legenden als Versuch einer
‘abgerissenen’ und ‘verstummenden’ Poesie.” Herder-Jahrbuch / Herder
Yearbook VI/2002, 115–27.
Stoeffler, F. Ernest. German Pietism during the Eighteenth Century. Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1973.
Stolpe, Heinz. Aufklärung, Fortschritt, Humanität: Studien und Kritiken.
Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1989.
Strobach, Hermann. “Herders Volkslied-Begriff. Geschichtliche und gegen-
wärtige Bedeutung.” Jahrbuch für Volkskunde und Kulturgeschichte 21
(1978): 9–55.
———. “Volk und Volkspoesie in der Geschichtsauffassung Herders.” In
Herder-Kolloquium 1978. Referate und Diskussionsbeiträge, edited by Walter
Dietze et al., 289–98. Weimar: Verlag Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1980.
Suphan, Bernhard. “Herders theologische Erstlingsschrift.” Zeitschrift für
deutsche Philologie 66 (1875): 165–203.
Taylor, Charles. “The Importance of Herder.” In Philosophical Arguments, 79–

99. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2000.
———. “The Politics of Recognition.” In Multiculturalism: Examining the
Politics of Recognition, edited by Amy Gutmann, 25–73. Princeton: Princeton
UP, 1994.
Teller, Jürgen. “Nachteil und Nutzen in der Unschärfe des Herderschen
Volksbegriffes.” In Herder-Kolloquium 1978. Referate und Diskussions-
beiträge, edited by Walter Dietze et al., 299–314. Weimar: Verlag Hermann
Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1980.
Theoretiker der deutschen Aufklärungshistorie. Ed. Horst Walter Blanke and
Dirk Fleischer. 2 vols. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1990.
Timm, Hermann. Gott und die Freiheit: Studien zur Religionsphilosophie der
Goethezeit. Vol. 1. Die Spinozarenaissance. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann,
1974.
Trabant, Jürgen. “Inner Bleating. Cognition and Communication in the Lan-
guage Origin Discussion.” Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook 2000, 1–19.
———. Mithridates im Paradies: Kleine Geschichte des Sprachdenkens. Munich:
Beck, 2003.
———. Vico’s New Science of Ancient Signs: A Study of Sematology. London,
New York: Routledge, 2004.
Träger, Claus. Die Herder-Legende des deutschen Historismus. Frankfurt am
Main: Verlag Marxistische Blätter, 1979.
Triomphe, Robert. “Joseph de Maistre et Herder d’après un document in-
connu.” Revue de littérature comparée 28 (1954): 322–29.
Tronchon, Henri. La fortune intellectuelle de Herder en France. Paris: F. Rieder,
1920. (Reprint Geneva: Slatkine, 1971.)
Tucker, Aviezer. Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography.
Tümmler, Hans. “Zu Herders Plan einer deutschen Akademie (1787).”
Euphorion 45.2 (1950): 198–211.
Van der Zande, J. “Popular Philosophy of Mankind in Eighteenth-Century
Germany.” Storia della Storiografia 22 (1992): 37–56.
Vick, Brian. “The Origins of the German Volk. Cultural Purity and National
Identity in Nineteenth-Century Germany.” German Studies Review 26.2
(2003): 241–56.
Vivian, Kim. “Herder and Rousseau. An Investigation of Herder’s Relationship
with Rousseau during the Years 1761–1776.” PhD diss., University of Santa
Barbara, 1978.
Völkel, Markus. ‘Pyrrhonismus historicus’ und ‘fides historica’: Die Entwicklung

der deutschen historischen Methodologie unter dem Gesichtspunkt der his-
torischen Skepsis. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1987.
Vontobel, Georg Willy. Von Brockes bis Herder: Studien über die Lehrdichter des
18. Jahrhunderts. Bern: Buchdruckerei B. Grunau, 1942.
Vorländer, Karl. Immanuel Kant: Der Mann und das Werk. 2nd ed. Hamburg:
Meiner, 1977.
Walker, Daniel P. The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the
15th to the 18th Century. London: Duckworth, 1972.
Weech, Fr[iedrich] v[on]. “Der Versuch der Gründung eines Instituts für den
Allgemeingeist Deutschlands.” Preußische Jahrbücher 21 (1868): 690–97.
Weidner, Daniel. “Hieroglyphen und heilige Buchstaben. Herders orientalische
Semiotik.” Herder Jahrbuch / Herder Yearbook VII/2004, 45–68.
———. “‘Menschliche, heilige Sprache’. Das Hebräische bei Michaelis und
Herder.” Monatshefte 95.2 (2003): 171–206.
———. “Politik und Ästhetik. Lektüre der Bibel bei Michaelis, Herder und de
Wette.” In Hebräische Poesie und jüdischer Volksgeist, edited by Christoph
Schulte, 35–65. Hildesheim: Olms, 2003.
Wellmer, Albrecht. Zur Dialektik von Moderne und Postmoderne: Vernunftkritik
nach Adorno. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985.
Wells, G. A. “Herder’s Two Philosophies of History.” Journal of the History of
Ideas 21 (1960): 527–37.
Wetzels, Walter D. “The Herder-Nicolai Controversy.” In Johann Gottfried
Herder: Language, History, and the Enlightenment, edited by Wulf Koepke,
87–97. Columbia SC: Camden House 1990.
Whitton, Brian J. “Herder’s Critique of the Enlightenment. Cultural Com-
munity versus Cosmopolitan Rationalism.” History and Theory 27 (1988):
146–68.
Wiese, Benno von. Herder: Grundzüge seines Weltbildes. Leipzig: Bib-
liographisches Institut, 1939.
Wilhelm, Gustav. “Herder, Feuchtersleben und Stifter.” Euphorion (1923)
16th Supplement: 120–34.
Willi, Thomas. “Hebräische Sprache und Sprachlichkeit der Bibel bei Herder.”
In Nationen und Kulturen, edited by Regine Otto, 395–404. Würzburg:
Königshausen und Neumann, 1996.
———. “Die Metamorphose der Bibelwissenschaft in Herders Umgang mit
dem Alten Testament.” In Johann Gottfried Herder: Geschichte und Kultur,
edited by Martin Bollacher, 239–56. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neu-
mann, 1994.
Windfuhr, Manfred. “Herders Konzept von Volksliteratur. Ein Beitrag zur

literarischen Mentalitätsforschung.” Jahrbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache 6
(1980): 32–49.
Witte, Markus. “‘Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie’ — Johann Gottfried
Herder als Bibelwissenschaftler.” In Herder-Gedenken, edited by Wilhelm
Ludwig Federlin, 171–87. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005.
Wokler, Robert. “Apes and Races in the Scottish Enlightenment. Monboddo
and Kames on the Nature of Man.” In Philosophy and Science in the Scottish
Enlightenment, edited by Peter Jones. Edinburgh: Donald, 1988.
———. “Tyson, Buffon, and the Orangutan.” Studies on Voltaire and the
Eighteenth Century 155 (1976): 2301–19.
Wölfel, Kurt. “Prophetische Erinnerung. Der klassische Republikanismus in der
deutschen Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts als utopische Gesinnung.” In Uto-
pieforschung, edited by Wilhelm Vosskamp, 3:191–217. Stuttgart: Metzler,
1982.
Wolfes, Matthias. “‘Das höchste Gut, was Gott allen Geschöpfen geben konnte,
war und bleibt eignes Daseyn.’ Herders Ideal freier Religiosität.” In Kessler
and Leppin, Johann Gottfried Herder. Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, 293–307.
Zammito, John. “Epigenesis. Concept and Metaphor in Herder’s Ideen.” In
Vom Selbstdenken. Aufklärung und Aufklärungskritik in Herders Ideen zur
Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, edited by Regine Otto and John
H. Zammito, 129–144. Heidelberg: Synchron, 2001.
———. The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Chicago, London: U of
Chicago P, 1992.
———. “Historicism and Naturalized Epistemology. Bridging the Epistemo-
logical Gap between the Two Cultures,” forthcoming.
———. Kant, Herder and the Birth of Anthropology. Chicago, London: U of
Chicago P, 2002.
———. “Koselleck’s Philosophy of Historical Time(s) and the Practice of His-
tory. A Review Essay.” History and Theory 43 (2004): 124–35.
———. “‘The Most Hidden Conditions of Men of the First Rank’ — The Pan-
theist Current in Eighteenth-Century Germany ‘Uncovered’ by the Spinoza
Controversy.” Eighteenth-Century Thought 1 (2003): 335–68.
———. “Naturalizm XVIII Wieku. Spinozyzm w Filozofiach nauki Diderota i
Herdera” [Polish; “Naturalism in the Eighteenth Century: The Use of
Spinozism in the Philosophies of Science of Diderot and Herder”] Rozum i
Świat: Herder i filozofia XVIII, XIX i XX wieku. Ed. Marion Heinz, Maciej
Potępa, Zbigniew Zwoliński, 117–46. Warsaw: Genessis, 2004.
———. A Nice Derangement of Epistemes: Post-Positivism in the Study of Science
from Quine to Latour. Chicago, London: U of Chicago P, 2004.
———. “Physiological Psychology: Herder’s Engagement with Haller in the

1770s.” In Der frühe und der späte Herder / Young Herder, Old Herder,
edited by Sabine Gross and Gerhard Sauder, 433–48. Heidelberg: Synchron,
2007.
———. “Reconstructing German Idealism and Romanticism: Historicism and
Presentism.” Modern Intellectual History 1 (2004): 427–38.
———. “(Re)discovering Johann Gottfried Herder: A Personal Memoir.”
Historisch Tijdschrift Groniek 171 (Summer 2006): 191–214.
———. “Die Rezeption der schottischen Aufklärung in Deutschland. Herders
entscheidende Einsicht.” In Europäischer Kulturtransfer im 18. Jahrhundert.
Literaturen in Europa — Europäische Literatur?, edited by Barbara Schmidt-
Haberkamp, Uwe Steiner, and Brunhilde Wehinger, 113–38. Berlin: Berliner
Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2003.
———. “Rousseau — Kant — Herder and the Problem of Aufklärung of the
1760s.” In New Essays on the Pre-Critical Kant, edited by Tom Rockmore,
201–23. Amherst, NY: Humanity Press, 2001.
Zeuch, Ulrike. Umkehr der Sinneshierarchie: Herder und die Aufwertung des
Tastsinns seit der frühen Neuzeit. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000.
Zimmerli, W. Ch. “Evolution or Development? Questions Concerning the
Systematic and Historical Position of Herder.” In Herder Today, edited by
Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, 1–16. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1990.
Zippert, Thomas. Bildung durch Offenbarung: Das Offenbarungsverständnis des
jungen Herder als Grundmotiv seines theologisch-philosophisch-literarischen
Lebenswerks. Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 1994.
Contributors
HANS ADLER is Halls-Bascom Professor for the study of Modern Litera-
ture at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has published numer-
ous books and scholarly articles on German literature, philosophy, and
culture from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. He was co-editor
of the Herder Yearbook and is editor of Monatshefte für deutschsprachige
Literatur und Kultur. From 1995 to 1999, he was president of the Inter-
national Herder Society.
GÜNTER ARNOLD is a specialist for scholarly editing at the Goethe and
Schiller Archives, Stiftung Weimarer Klassik in Weimar, Germany. He is re-
sponsible for the complete edition of Herder’s letters and has published
Herder’s Adrastea as volume 10 of the Frankfurt edition of Herder’s works.
ARND BOHM is Professor of English at Carleton University and adjunct
associate professor of German at Queen’s University (Canada). He has
published extensively on German and English literature, with emphasis on
the eighteenth century. His current research includes a study of no-
madism and English Romanticism, and investigation of the sources of
Goethe’s Faust.
CHRISTOPH BULTMANN is Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of
Erfurt, Germany. He has published a study of Herder’s interpretation of
Genesis, Die biblische Urgeschichte in der Aufklärung (1999) and contribu-
ted to the volume on the Enlightenment in the multi-volume Hebrew Bible/
Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, ed. Magne Sæbø (2008).
HEINRICH CLAIRMONT is an independent scholar. He published numerous
articles on aisthetics and the philosophy of Enlightenment, eighteenth-
century literature, German Classicism and Romanticism. He is co-editor of
G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (1988, several editions) and of
Johann Gottfried Herder, Studien und Entwürfe I: Manuskripte aus dem
Nachlaß (2009).
ULRICH GAIER is Professor Emeritus of German Literature and Literary
Theory at the University of Constance, Germany. He is also honorary pro-
fessor at the Al. I. Cuza University of Iasi, Romania, and president of the
Hölderlin Society. He published widely on Herder, Hölderlin, Goethe,
and all periods of German Literature, as well as on topics of literary theory
such as satire and literary anthropology.
460 ♦ NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS
STEFAN GREIF is Professor for German and Comparative Literature at the

University of Kassel, Germany. His main fields of research are Classicism
and Romanticism as well as intermediality and aesthetic perception. He is
author of Ehre als Bürger in den Zeitromanen Theodor Fontanes (1992) and
Die Malerei kann ein sehr beredtes Schweigen haben: Beschreibungskunst und
Bildästhetik der Dichter (1998), and editor of Goethe’s Ästhetische Schriften.
1820–1824 (Vol. 21 of the Frankfurt edition, 1998).
MARION HEINZ is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Siegen,
Germany. Her areas of research include philosophy of Enlightenment, Ger-
man Idealism, Phenomenology, Feminist Philosophy. She is the author of
Zeitlichkeit und Temporalität: Die Konstitution der Existenz und die Grund-
legung einer temporalen Ontologie im Frühwerk Martin Heideggers (1982)
and Sensualistischer Idealismus: Zur Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik des
jungen Herder (1994). Her editions include vol. 44 of the Heidegger Ge-
samtausgabe; Nietzsches metaphysische Grundstellung im abendländischen
Denken: Die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen (1986); Herder und die Philo-
sophie des deutschen Idealismus (1998); Philosophische Geschlechtertheorien
(2002); and Johann Gottfried Herder, Studien und Entwürfe I: Manu-
skripte aus dem Nachlaß (2009).
MARTIN KESSLER is Lecturer of Protestant Church History at the Uni-
versity of Basel, Switzerland. His studies on Herder, Bahrdt, and Lessing
focus on Enlightenment theology advancing to Romanticism, rational-
ism, and idealism. His Jena PhD thesis — published as Johann Gottfried
Herder — der Theologe unter den Klassikern: Das Amt des Generalsuperin-
tendenten von Sachsen-Weimar (2 vols., 2007) — was awarded the Hanns-
Lilje-Prize 2006.
KURT KLOOCKE is Professor Emeritus of French and Italian at the Univer-
sity of Tübingen, Germany. He has published on French Medieval litera-
ture, and, among others, Rousseau, Baudelaire, and Camus. He has edited
several volumes; is author of Benjamin Constant: Une biographie intellec-
tuelle (1984); and serves as co-editor of Annales Benjamin Constant, in
which he has published numerous articles on Constant and Mme de Staël;
since 1980, he has been co-editor of Benjamin Constant’s Œuvres complètes.
WULF KOEPKE is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Modern German Lit-
erature at Texas A&M University. He has published widely on German
Classicism, Romanticism, and twentieth-century German literature. He is
author of Zum Frühwerk Jean Pauls (1977), Lion Feuchtwanger (1983),
Johann Gottfried Herder (1987), and Understanding Max Frisch (1990).
He is editor and co-editor of 12 volumes on the later eighteenth-century
and exile literature, and co-editor of Jahrbuch für Exilforschung and Herder
Yearbook.
NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS ♦ 461
STEVEN MARTINSON is Professor of German Studies and a member of the

Affiliated Faculty in Religious Studies at the University of Arizona at
Tucson. His book, Harmonious Tensions: The Writings of Friedrich Schiller
(1996), received a Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award. He edited
A Companion to the Works of Friedrich Schiller (Camden House, 2005).
Martinson is Past President of the Lessing Society (2006–8) and a research
fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
KARL MENGES is Professor Emeritus of German at the University of Cali-
fornia, Davis. His areas of research are eighteenth- and twentieth-century
German literature, and he has written on Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Jean
Paul, Herder, Broch, Musil, Karl Kraus, exile literature, and Literary The-
ory. He is co-editor of the Herder Yearbook.
ERNEST A. MENZE is Professor Emeritus of History at Iona College, New
Rochelle, NY. His publications include numerous articles pertaining to
Herder and related topics, as well as translations and editions of selected
Herder texts.
HARRO MÜLLER-MICHAELS is Professor Emeritus of Literature and Didac-
tics at the Ruhr-University in Bochum, Germany, where he also served as
vice-president of the university (1996–2000). His publications span topics
in German literature from the eighteenth through the twentieth century
(among others Herder, Kleist, Uwe Johnson, and the debate about the
canon).
ROBERT E. NORTON is Professor of German at the University of Notre
Dame. His books include Herder’s Aesthetics and the European Enlighten-
ment (1991), The Beautiful Soul: Aesthetic Morality in the Eighteenth Cen-
tury (1995), and Secret Germany: Stefan George and His Circle (2002),
which won the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History.
GERHARD SAUDER is Professor Emeritus of German Literature at the Uni-
versity of the Saarland, Germany. His main fields of research are eighteenth-
century literature, Weimar Classicism, and twentieth-century literature. He
has published widely on Empfindsamkeit (1974, 1980, 2003), Sturm und
Drang (2003), the burning of books in 1933 (1983); he has edited an-
thologies on Herder (1987), Mozart (1995), Goethe (1996), and French
Germanists (2002); he has also prepared editions of Goethe, Young,
Naubert, Maler Müller, Kayser, Jenisch, Regler, Kulka, and Harig.
JÜRGEN TRABANT is Professor of Romance Linguistics at the Freie Univer-
sität Berlin. His recent publications include Mithridates im Paradies: Kleine
Geschichte des Sprachdenkens (2003), Vico’s New Science of Ancient Signs:
A Study of Sematology (2004), Sprache und Sprachen in Berlin um 1800 (ed.
with U. Tintemann, 2004), Sprache der Geschichte (ed., 2005), and the
462 ♦ NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS
periodical Paragrana: Historische Anthropologie der Sprache (ed. with B.

Jostes, 2005).
JOHN ZAMMITO is John Antony Weir Professor of History at Rice Univer-
sity. His publications include The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment
(Chicago, 1992), Kant, Herder and the Birth of Anthropology (Chicago,
2002), and A Nice Derangement of Epistemes: Post-Positivism in the Study
of Science from Quine to Latour (Chicago, 2004).
Index
The index includes names of people, geographical places, mythological fig-
ures as well as subjects and titles of publications. The entries refer to the
main text only, not to endnotes, the bibliography, or other corollary texts.
Noun entries also cover the adjectives. The spelling of work titles follows
the alphabetical order. German umlaut ä, ö, ü are treated as a, o, u. Ger-
man ß is represented as ss. Titles of all publications are given in italics with
an indent.
Abbt, Thomas 18, 20–21, 67, 73, aesthetics 2, 4, 6–7, 9, 11, 19, 22–23,
189, 216, 218–20, 224 47–48, 66, 68, 70, 136, 141–57,
Vom Tode fürs Vaterland 220, 224 160–62, 165, 183, 189–93, 195,
Vom Verdienste 220, 224 200, 202–4, 207, 216, 223–26,
See also Briefe, die neueste 229, 319, 324, 331, 355–57, 375,
Literatur betreffend 381, 383–84, 391, 399–400, 414
Abraham 238 Africa 324, 415
absolutism 8, 190, 200, 204, 222, Agamben, Giorgio 294
298, 368, 381 aisthetics 143–44, 146–48, 151–52,
abstraction 9, 13, 43, 97, 105, 137, 154, 162, 193, 331
147, 179, 182, 249, 345–46, 350, allegory 112, 144, 167, 171–73, 182,
377 208, 282, 285, 317, 321, 336
academy 16, 65, 70, 120, 123, 134, Allgemeine historische Bibliothek 70
146, 161, 192, 195, 216, 219, Allgemeine Literaturzeitung
223, 227, 229, 247–48, 259, 261, (Jena) 365
264, 353, 357, 387–88, 392, 403, America 7, 81, 160–61, 190, 202,
409, 411 204, 278–79, 324, 352, 392,
Academy of the Sciences, Bavaria 31 403–7, 414–15
Academy of the Sciences, Berlin 25, analogon rationis 47, 146
28, 31, 50, 122–23, 134, 146, analogy 25, 52–54, 56–57, 60, 77–
216, 224, 291–92, 357, 388 81, 101, 103, 122, 136, 147, 151,
Achilles 184 175–77, 183, 185, 192, 205,
Adam 130, 176, 182, 237 207–8, 250, 252, 257–59, 309,
Adler, Emil 1, 93, 403 335, 341–42, 367
Adler, Hans 1, 11–12, 93, 277, 331 anatomy 17, 69, 79, 207
Adorno, Theodor W. 10, 113 Andreae, Johann Valentin 283, 285–
Adrastea 112, 339 86, 293
Aesop 165–66, 175–76, 315 Christianopolis 285–86, 293
angel 107–8, 254, 363
464 ♦ INDEX
Anna Amalia, duchess of Saxony- Babel 21, 130–31, 190, 284

Weimar 3, 34 Bach, Johann Christoph
Anquetil-Duperon, Abraham Friedrich 317
Hyacinthe 235 Bacon, Francis 117, 123, 125, 166,
Anthologia graeca 112, 310–11 285
anthropology 6, 8–10, 24, 47, 99, De sapientia veterum 166
113, 134, 138, 141–42, 144–47, Instauratio magna 285
150, 160, 165–66, 170, 173, 176, New Atlantis 285
178, 181, 185, 205, 234, 254, balance 7, 23, 82, 110, 112, 183–84,
277, 322, 324, 334, 392, 394, 401 222, 224, 231, 254, 293, 315, 398
a posteriori 46, 250 Balde, Jacob 309, 326–27
a priori 9, 46, 51, 103, 136, 147, Lyrica 327
250, 367 Poema de vanitate mundi 326
Arabashin, K. 413 Silvae 327
Aris, Reinhold 277 ballad 181, 222, 230, 325–26, 329,
Aristotle 94, 97, 106, 109, 124, 136, 392
151, 165, 173–75, 178, 374 Bancroft, George 406
Nicomachean Ethics 109 Barbara Eleonore, countess of Lippe-
Poetics 165, 173 Biesterfeld 26
Rhetoric 109 Barnard, Frederick M. 81, 278, 405
Arndt, Johann 15, 250, 285 Basedow, Johann Bernhard 385
Vom wahren Christentum 15 Basilius (“the Great”) 233
Arnim, Achim von 322, 392 Batteux, Charles 229, 382
Des Knaben Wunderhorn 322, 392 Bauer, Barbara 327
Arnold, Gottfried 280 Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb 6,
Arnold, Günter 12, 38, 252, 324, 22, 43–44, 47–48, 102, 145–46,
367–68, 391, 403 148–49, 151, 165, 167, 175, 183,
Arnold, Matthew 405 193, 357
art(s) 5–7, 16, 20–22, 27, 32, 34, 37, Aesthetica 6, 22, 43, 47, 145–46
48–49, 59, 70–72, 80, 142–46, Meditationes de nonnullis ad
148–63, 167, 169, 172, 175–76, poema pertinentibus 175
180, 184, 190, 194, 202, 217, Metaphysica 43
222–25, 230, 233, 288–89, 307, Bayle, Pierre 38
311, 335, 339, 354, 357, 363, beauty 6–7, 19–20, 22–24, 28, 31,
378, 381–84, 387–88, 392, 397, 33, 37, 48, 71–72, 97, 117, 129,
406 142, 145–46, 148–52, 154, 163,
Asia 7, 235, 395 167, 170, 183, 191, 193–94, 215,
assimilation 52, 62, 151, 285, 335 219, 225–26, 231, 235, 248, 311,
atheism 32, 393 315–16, 319, 321, 333, 336, 339,
August, prince of Saxony-Gotha 3 342, 356, 358, 360, 363, 381–82
Augustine 30, 125, 128, 251 Becker, Bernhard 398
Auserlesene Bibliothek der neuesten being (Sein) 17, 22, 43, 45–47, 49–
deutschen Litteratur 229 53, 55–56, 58, 60–62, 69, 99–
authority 8, 83, 171, 173, 279, 100, 102–4, 108, 138, 147, 154,
283–84, 291, 354, 384, 412
INDEX ♦ 465
being (continued) Boening, John 404

177, 182, 192, 205, 238, 251, Bohm, Arnd 11, 277
254, 346, 393 Böhme, Franz 393
Belgium 24 Deutscher Liederhort 393
Bellay, Joachim du 119–20, 122 Bollacher, Martin 81, 340
Défense et illustration de la langue Bonstetten, Karl Viktor von 410
française 119 Boyle, Robert 250
Benjamin, Walter 342 Brandt, Reinhard 81
Benveniste, Émile 136 Brentano, Clemens 322, 392
Berens, Johann Christoph 184 Des Knaben Wunderhorn 322, 392
Berkeley, George 7, 50 Breslau 379
Berlin 21, 25, 28, 31, 50, 122, 216, Breysig, Kurt 401
224, 263, 291–92, 379, 394–95, Briefe, die neueste Literatur
397 betreffend 20–21, 189, 217–18,
Berlin, Isaiah 76, 352–53, 405 220, 355
Three Critics of Enlightenment 353 Bückeburg 3, 26–27, 29–30, 220,
Bernhardi, August Ferdinand 393 261–62, 306, 310, 317, 378, 401,
Berr, Michel 408 403
Besonnenheit 25, 113, 124–25, 127– Buffon, George Louis Leclerc,
28, 134, 230 Comte de 76–77, 182, 333
Bestandheit 175–76, 178, 315–16 Bultmann, Christoph 11, 216, 233,
bible 3–4, 6, 8–9, 32, 37, 66, 123, 395
135, 203, 216–19, 233–37, 242, Burckhardt, Jakob 400
248, 250, 280, 321, 392, 395–96. Bürger, Gottfried August 325–26,
See also scripture 392
Bibliothèque universelle des Lenore 325–26
romans 325
Biedermeier 398 (See also under K)
Bienenstock, Myriam 409 cabbala 235
Bildung 6, 10, 22, 28–29, 31, 33– Cain 284
35, 38, 71, 80, 98, 103, 107, 111, Calvin, John 280, 287, 406
119, 122–23, 132, 134, 161, 202, Campanella, Tomaso 285
215, 226, 230, 259, 304, 309, City of the Sun 285
359, 362–63, 380, 386 Canada 294
Billigkeit 105–6, 108–10, 112, 231, Cancionero de Romances 326
254, 256, 260, 339, 385, 389. See cantata 316–17
also fairness Carl August, duke of Saxony-
Blumenberg, Hans 341 Weimar-Eisenach 29, 204, 262–
Paradigmen zu einer 63, 291, 376, 379
Metaphorologie 341 Carlyle, Thomas 405
body 5–6, 10–11, 19, 34–35, 49, Caroline. See Herder, Karoline
51–52, 55, 58, 60, 99, 101, 103, Carriere, Moritz 399
124, 130, 136, 153, 167, 175, Cartesian. See Descartes
182–83, 254, 259, 261–62, 282, Cassirer, Ernst 104–5
331, 336, 341, 345, 389 Catholicism 119, 249, 282, 287
466 ♦ INDEX
cause and effect 55, 205, 255 Condillac Etienne Bonnot 117–18,
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart 399 120, 123, 125, 165, 357
The Foundations of the Nineteenth Essai sur l’origine des connaissances
Century 399 humaines 117
China 324 conjecture 69, 166, 170–73, 176–
Chomsky, Noam 124, 127–28, 132– 77, 183–85, 254
33 consciousness 4–5, 43–45, 53, 57–
Christ 16, 29–30, 118, 182, 248, 58, 113, 151, 155, 160, 162,
255–58, 281 167–68, 170, 173, 197, 203,
Christian 4, 15, 20, 22–23, 32–33, 248–49, 393, 396
36, 81–82, 106, 118, 148, 173, Constant, Benjamin 409–10
184, 201, 227, 233, 235–37, De la Religion 410
240–42, 247–49, 251, 255–58, Coppet Circle 410
280–82, 284–86, 292, 307, 318, cosmology 40, 76, 109, 154, 177
396, 401, 406, 413 cosmopolitanism 5, 155–56, 292,
church 3–4, 6, 11, 15–17, 20, 22, 401–2, 406, 410
24, 29–30, 36, 38, 118, 215, 226, Couchut 325–26
247–48, 257, 261–64, 277, 280, Cousin, Victor 410
282–83, 287, 291, 293, 316–17, creation 5, 7, 27–28, 33, 71, 74, 79–
373–74, 378, 388, 403, 413 81, 98, 100, 103, 106–10, 112,
Churchill, T. O. 406, 408 117–18, 120, 134, 145–46, 151,
Cicero 190 153, 155, 157–58, 176, 182, 185,
Cid, Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar 325 195, 199, 201, 205, 207, 221,
Clairmont, Heinrich 11, 43 234, 240, 242, 248, 250–51, 253–
Clark, Robert T. 1, 94, 405 55, 257–59, 308, 311, 321, 386
Classicism 5–6, 93, 95, 160–61, creativity 18, 43, 70, 142, 144, 147,
180–81, 190, 194, 200–202, 204, 154, 156, 179–81, 184, 305
217, 225–26, 231, 279, 323–24 Creutz, Friedrich Carl Casimir
326, 383, 398, 412. See also von 311
Klassik Creuzer, Friedrich 395
Claudius, Matthias 24, 201, 392 Symbolik und Mythologie der alten
Abendlied 24, 201 Völker 395
climate 5, 73, 169, 225, 344, 408 criticism 1, 3–5, 7, 9–12, 17, 19–22,
Closs, August 306 25–26, 29, 36–37, 43, 47–49, 53,
cognition 4–6, 9, 11–12, 28, 43, 46, 55–56, 66–67, 70, 80–81, 97, 104,
48–57, 59–61, 78, 82, 103, 106– 132, 135–38, 142–46, 150, 152,
9, 111–12, 120–21, 123–25, 127– 165–66, 180, 189, 197, 202, 207–
30, 138, 141, 145–46, 169, 174– 8, 215–16, 218–19, 222, 225–26,
75, 182–83, 193, 196, 205, 315– 228–30, 233–34, 236–37, 239,
16, 331, 334, 341, 367 241, 250, 253, 294, 305, 309, 322,
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 405 324, 326–28, 333–34, 337–38,
colonialism 104, 190, 284, 294, 358 340, 344, 346, 351–58, 360, 365–
Comenius, Johann Amos 285–86, 67, 369, 382, 391, 398, 401–3
385. See also Komenský Crusius, Christian August 45, 49
Vernunftlehre 45
INDEX ♦ 467
culture 1–5, 7–8, 16–18, 21, 24–25, 124, 128, 131–33, 143–44, 152,
30–32, 34–36, 38, 61, 65, 67–68, 155, 160, 203, 208, 220, 222,
70, 72–74, 77, 79, 81, 93, 95, 225, 228, 255, 259, 262, 278,
101, 105, 118, 122, 131, 133, 285, 288, 310, 325, 328, 331–32,
137–38, 142–43, 150, 152–58, 366, 404, 413
160–62, 171–73, 175, 178–79, dilettante 37, 229, 305, 395
181, 184–85, 190, 192–93, 195– Dilthey, Wilhelm 65
200, 203–4, 215–19, 221–22, Dippel, Johann Conrad 285
225–27, 231, 235–38, 278, 289, distinct 19, 21, 43–44, 49, 51, 66,
322, 325, 329, 334, 339, 346, 125–26, 137, 151, 174, 356
354, 357, 359, 367, 377–78, diversity 1, 17, 24, 44, 54, 98, 100,
381–73, 388, 393, 396, 401, 104, 111, 123, 130–33, 141, 146,
404–5, 407, 411–13 156, 162, 215, 325, 393
Cyrus 16 divine 8, 25, 28, 30, 34, 44, 49, 51,
Czechoslovakia 285, 413 70, 79, 99, 101, 107, 118, 134,
144, 167, 170–71, 173, 198, 205,
Dahlhaus, Carl 318 237–38, 249–50, 252–55, 257,
Dalberg, Johann Friedrich Hugo 282, 284, 314, 339–40, 363
von 34 Dobbek, Wilhelm 16, 307, 316, 402
Dalberg, Karl Theodor von 229 Dobrovský, Joseph 411
Nachrichten von gelehrten Dockhorn, Klaus 345
Sachen 229 dogmatics 17, 53, 55, 196, 208,
Dann, Otto 291, 308 248, 252–53, 365
Dante Aligihieri 122, 131 Dostoevsky, Feodor 413
Darmstadt 3, 24, 26, 31, 220, 315, drama 21, 34, 154, 204, 215, 217,
320 220, 222, 224, 227, 236, 305,
Darwin, Charles 80 316–18, 329, 392, 394, 398
Darwinism 5, 80, 399 Droysen, Johann Gustav 65
deism 238, 252, 393 Düntzer, Heinrich 305
demiurge 341 Dusch, Johann Jacob 229
democracy 36, 196, 203, 288, 400, Düsing, Wolfgang 81, 83
402, 405
Denis, Johann Nepomuk Cosmas Eckermann, Johann Peter 230
Michael 229, 319 Edda 201, 392
Denkbild 342 education 3, 6, 9, 15–16, 20, 27, 29,
Descartes, René 5, 56, 103, 124, 35–36, 65, 71, 132, 166, 183,
127, 151, 205–6, 252 202–3, 205, 215, 226, 230, 247,
Discourse on the Method . . . 124 250, 260–64, 293, 314, 342, 356,
despotism 67, 283, 285, 289–91, 373–84, 386–89, 396–97, 402,
356, 365 409, 412
Dessau 379 Egypt 70, 167, 194, 235, 239
destiny 67, 98–100, 102, 104, 107, Eichhorn, Johann Gottfried 392
111, 126, 312 Einfühlung 21, 65, 205, 230, 319
difference 18, 24, 54, 58, 61, 67, Einsiedel, Johann August von 3
79, 83, 104, 106, 109, 120, 122, Emerson, Ralph Waldo 405, 407
468 ♦ INDEX
emotion 26, 151, 159, 197, 220, 61, 190, 195, 200–203, 215–17,
228–31, 239, 318, 320, 335, 342, 219, 282–85, 287, 294, 314, 319,
344, 378, 383 322, 325, 329, 359, 378, 382,
empiricism 43–44, 50, 58, 77, 82, 387, 389, 399, 403, 408, 411–14
102–3, 107, 117–18, 128, 136– Eutin 24
37, 141, 145–48, 152, 175–76, evolution 5, 10, 18, 24, 75, 104,
183, 185, 191, 193, 196, 205, 177, 203, 205–6, 339, 364–65,
208, 247, 249–50, 321, 367, 394 400
encyclopedia 9, 38, 233, 248, 353, external sense 44–45, 50
394, 402, 413 Ezra 16
England 8, 17, 31, 67, 94–95, 160,
190, 198, 201, 218, 221–22, 252, fable 34, 38, 145, 159, 162, 165–66,
278–79, 285, 287, 306, 319–20, 173–78, 181, 192, 194, 217, 223,
323, 352, 392, 394, 404–8, 412 227, 230, 307, 312, 315–16,
Enlightenment 1, 3–8, 10–11, 21, 328–29, 412. See also myth
24, 34, 38, 46, 49, 51, 67, 82–83, fairness 105–6, 108–10, 112, 231,
93, 95–96, 99, 118, 122–23, 134, 254, 256, 260, 339, 385, 389. See
141–49, 158, 160–62, 165, 174, also Billigkeit
176, 190–93, 195–97, 200, 204– Falk, Johannes Daniel 396
6, 215, 217, 226, 228, 230, 234, father tongue (‘Vatersprache’) 130
248, 260, 278, 283, 285, 287, Federal Republic of Germany 402–3
292, 314, 318, 333, 342, 346, feeling 7–8, 16, 18, 20, 22, 25, 27–
353–54, 357–58, 360–61, 377– 28, 47–50, 52, 55, 58, 73–74, 98,
78, 380, 383, 387–88, 395, 400, 125, 144, 146–47, 149–53, 156–
402–3, 405, 408, 411–12, 414 59, 161–62, 175, 197, 218, 250,
epigenesis 80, 206–8 259, 310–11, 335, 337, 342–44,
epigram 154, 217, 223, 227, 230, 378, 382. See also Gefühl
307, 310–11, 327–28 Feldman, Burton 407
epistemology 2, 9, 18, 27, 31, 43– Fénelon, François de Salignac de La
44, 46–53, 55–56, 58, 60–62, 66, Mothe- 342
71, 97, 102–3, 109–10, 117, 128, Ferguson, Adam 67
130, 141–42, 145–46, 154, 165, Essay on the History of Civil
171, 174, 182, 193, 196, 206, Society 67
208, 332, 337 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 4, 99, 312,
Erasmus 382 331–32, 393–94
Erk, Ludwig 393 Die Bestimmung des Menschen 99
Deutscher Liederhort 393 fiction 5, 33, 163, 175, 180, 193,
Ermatinger, Emil 305 215, 227, 237, 337
Estonia 323 finite 44–46, 49–50, 61
ethics 23, 68, 106, 108–10, 112, Flachsland, Caroline. See Herder,
184, 193, 226, 230, 279, 288, Karoline
377, 383, 405 Flachsland, Friedrich Sigmund 320
Eurocentrism 67, 104, 160, 401 folk 5, 158–62, 200, 217, 219, 222–
Europe 7–8, 17, 24, 38, 67–68, 118– 23, 225–26, 322–23, 392–93,
19, 122–24, 131, 141–42, 160– 407, 412. See also Volk
INDEX ♦ 469
folk poetry 24–25, 32, 68, 162, 201, Gaier, Ulrich 11, 160, 165, 252,
208, 222, 235, 320–21, 392, 412 307–8, 315, 319–20, 322–23, 325
folk song 4, 30, 142, 145, 149, 159– Gefühl 20, 22, 28, 50, 68, 143, 147,
61, 170, 198, 200–201, 216, 221– 149, 152, 158, 197, 250, 259,
22, 225, 231, 308, 316, 320–26, 335, 337, 343
329, 392–93, 412 Gehlen, Arnold 6, 401
Fontane, Theodor 392, 400 generalization 2, 73, 146–48, 191,
Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier 343, 345–46
de 341 Genesis (Old Testament) 27, 81, 201,
force 5, 21–22, 27, 29, 33–34, 43, 216, 234–39, 241, 254, 284, 321
45–47, 49–55, 57–58, 60–61, 74, genius 5–7, 13, 20–21, 26, 32, 119–
77–78, 80, 94, 103, 107–8, 111, 20, 123, 134, 142, 154–56, 166,
127, 147–48, 151–52, 155, 198, 170, 180, 190–91, 194, 204, 211,
204–8, 251–54, 259, 309, 398. 238, 308–9, 319, 328, 335, 356,
See also Kraft; power 366
Forster, Georg 393 German Democratic Republic 279,
Forster, Michael 124–27, 130–33, 402
278 Gerstenberg, Heinrich Wilhelm
France 3, 8, 23, 94, 118–20, 122, von 220, 228, 383
128, 136, 190, 192, 197, 204, Ugolino 220, 228
216, 218–20, 223–24, 235, 278, Gervinus, Georg Gottfried 399
287, 289, 294, 319, 323, 325–26, Grundzüge der Historik 399
353, 357, 368–69, 374, 383, 396, Geschichte 1, 3–4, 10, 17–18, 27, 32–
404, 406–12, 414 34, 38, 65–68, 70–76, 78, 81, 83,
Francke, August Hermann 285, 287 113, 122, 132–34, 155, 172, 176,
Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen 229 179, 184, 215, 220–21, 230, 233–
Franklin, Benjamin 184, 190, 199 34, 236, 248–50, 253, 257–58,
Frederick II (the “Great”) 21, 184, 260, 280, 316–19, 334–35, 342,
204, 290, 359, 388 347, 358, 361, 365–66, 387, 393–
Anti-Machiavel 286 95, 397, 400–401, 404, 409, 413–
Frederick William II 311 14. See also history
freedom 8, 24, 33, 35, 80, 96–98, Gessner, Johann Matthias 383, 385
100–101, 151, 241, 254, 257, Gessner, Salomon 383
280, 294, 309, 339, 359, 368–69, Gillies, Alexander 404, 409
380, 383, 388–89 Gleim, Johann Wilhelm
French Revolution 2, 4, 9, 36, 82, Ludwig 225, 326, 361
118, 217, 224–25, 231, 286, 291, Gluck, Christoph Willibald 317
311, 327, 363, 389, 402 gnoseology 43, 47–48
Freud, Sigmund 5, 165 God 4, 7, 15–20, 23, 27–30, 33–34,
Friedrich. See Frederick 43, 46, 49–51, 54, 58, 61–62, 78,
Friedrich Ernst Wilhelm zu 81, 83, 99, 101–2, 106–9, 111,
Schaumburg-Lippe 26, 29 115, 118, 122–23, 172–73, 175–
Frisi, Paolo 222 76, 182–85, 200, 205, 236, 238,
Fuller, Margaret 405 240–42, 247–57, 283–84, 312,
354, 359, 378, 393
470 ♦ INDEX
god(s) 99, 102, 106, 112, 131, 158, 179–81, 184, 191, 193–94, 199–
165–68, 170–71, 173, 178–79, 200, 202, 218, 222, 225, 227,
184, 191–92, 194, 202 233, 235–37, 241, 287–89, 310–
Goethe, Cornelia 323 12, 319, 321, 323–25, 327–28,
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 2–6, 25, 346, 353–54, 382, 394, 413
29–30, 32, 34–37, 65, 95, 142, Greenland 160, 323
161, 180, 200–201, 203–4, 219, Greif, Stefan 11, 141, 357
220–22, 224–26, 229–31, 262, Grillparzer, Franz 398
277, 306, 311, 323, 326–28, 346, Grim(m) (school principal) 16
351–52, 361, 368, 374, 383–84, Grimm, Jakob 392
389, 391–94, 396–97, 401, 404 Grotius, Hugo 285–86
Dichtung und Wahrheit 4, 25, 32, Gründerzeit 399
392 Guizot, François 410
Die natürliche Tochter 352 Gunkel, Hermann 396
Egmont 204 Gustavus Adolphus 184
Götz von Berlichingen 204, 222 Gutzkow, Karl 397
Iphigenie auf Tauris 180, 204
Italienische Reise 361 Halle 22, 287, 357
Roman Elegies (“Römische Haller, Albrecht von 52, 206–7,
Elegien”) 180, 327 311, 382–83
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre 384 Hamann, Johann Georg 3, 5, 17–18,
Goeze, Johann Melchior 24 31, 68, 81–82, 134–35, 166–67,
Gogol, Nicolai 412 178–79, 181–82, 184, 220, 239,
Arabesken 412 248, 250, 284, 353, 365–66, 373,
Goldsmith, Oliver 227 394, 400
The Vicar of Wakefield 227 Aesthetica in nuce 17, 239
Görres, Joseph 395 Kreuzzüge eines Philologen 18
Mythengeschichte der asiatischen Hanka, Václav 411
Welt 395 Harich, Wolfgang 402
Göttingen 28–29, 35–36, 65, 70, Harrington, James 285
229, 234, 392, 395, 397 Oceana 285
Gottsched, Johann Christoph 165, Hartknoch, Johann Friedrich 82
218 Haym, Rudolf 1, 19, 82, 331, 337–
Götzinger, Ernst 305 38, 355, 399, 402, 413
Götzingers Deutsche Dichter 305 hearing 25, 49–50, 54, 57–59, 107,
government 6, 18, 30–31, 34, 73, 128–30, 134, 143, 149, 157
100–101, 167, 199, 224, 256, Hebrew 4, 32, 161, 168, 195, 201,
262, 277–80, 283, 288–89, 291– 216, 229, 233–34, 236–38, 240,
94, 361, 378, 381, 388–89, 396, 258, 319–21, 328, 347, 392, 396,
413 399, 408, 412
gradation 52, 207 Hederich, Benjamin 165
Great Britain 404 Gründliches mythologisches
Greece 6–7, 31, 34, 66, 70, 95, 105, Lexikon 165
109, 119–20, 128, 131, 136, 152, Heeren, Arnold Hermann
158, 161–62, 165, 167–68, 172, Ludwig 395
INDEX ♦ 471
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 6, 68, 73, 81, 83, 122, 132, 215,
37, 65–66, 79, 138, 198, 393, 395 250, 342, 346, 358–59, 409
Glauben und Wissen 393 Aurora 367
Vorlesungen über die Philosophie Auszug aus einem Briefwechsel über
der Geschichte 395 Ossian und die Lieder alter
Heidegger, Martin 103, 138 Völker 26, 154, 159, 216, 221–
Heine, Heinrich 397–98 22, 310, 322, 325, 392
Heinz, Marion 11, 43, 394 Blätter der Vorzeit 181, 312
Hemsterhuis, Frans 34, 53, 408 Blumen aus der griechischen
Œuvres philosophiques 408 Anthologie gesammlet 328
Heracles 184, 318 Blumen aus morgenländischen
Herder, Anna Elisabeth (neé Dichtern gesammlet 328
Peltz) 15 Briefe, das Studium der Theologie
Herder, Catharina Dorothea betreffend 4, 31–32, 233, 236,
(married Güldenhorn) 15 248–50, 253, 256, 347, 395–96
Herder, Christoph 15 Briefe, die Fortschritte der
Herder, Gottfried (father of Johann Humanität betreffend 36, 361
Gottfried) 15 Briefe zu Beförderung der
Herder, Johann Gottfried passim Humanität 4, 36, 38, 68, 83,
Abhandlung über den Ursprung 94–95, 181, 217, 224–25, 229,
der Sprache 3, 25, 77, 122–23, 283, 285–86, 313–14, 364,
156, 175, 182, 206, 216, 292, 374, 388, 402, 412
357, 360, 392, 401, 409 Briefwechsel über Ossian.
Admetus Haus 317 See Auszug aus einem
Adrastea 4, 38, 150, 154, 215, Briefwechsel . . .
217, 229, 251, 285, 311, 313– Brutus 317
15, 318, 324–25, 347, 368–69 Christliche Schriften 4, 32, 36–37,
Aeon und Aeonis 317 236, 248, 251, 256–57, 396,
Aesop und Lessing 315 401, 413
Als ich von Liefland aus zu Schiffe Cid. See Der Cid
ging 23 Das Flüchtigste 307
Alte Fabeln mit neuer Das Ich 312
Anwendung 315 Das Land der Seelen 260
Alte Volkslieder 153, 158–59, Der Cid 162, 181, 316, 320, 324–
161–62, 201–2, 323 26, 399, 408–9
Älteste Urkunde des Der deutsche Nationalruhm 309
Menschengeschlechts 3, 26–27, Der entfesselte Prometheus 277,
33, 81, 201, 216, 235, 321, 347, 318, 329
395–97 Der Fremdling auf Golgatha 317
An den Kaiser 309 Der Genius der Zukunft 309
An Prediger 28, 347 Der Mensch 312
Ariadne-Libera 317 Deutschlands Genius 308–9
Arist am Felsen 312 Dichtungen aus der morgen-
Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte ländischen Sage 181, 328
der Menschheit 3, 27, 34, 65, 67– Die Auferweckung Lazarus 316
472 ♦ INDEX
Herder, Johann Gottfried Hyle 328

(continued) Idee zum ersten patriotischen
Die Brüder 313 Institut für den Allgemeingeist
Die Frucht am Baume 313 Deutschlands 286, 291–92, 387
Die Kindheit Jesu 316 Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte
Die Lerche 307 der Menschheit 1, 4, 18, 33–34,
Die Lyra 157–58, 309 36–37, 65, 75–77, 79, 81–83,
Die rechte Hand 313 98–102, 104, 106–8, 110–12,
Die Wassernymphe 307 133–35, 176, 182–85, 206–8,
Dithyrambische Rhapsodie 168 229–30, 234, 236, 249, 251,
Edward 325, 400 253–54, 238, 260, 280–83,
Eine Metakritik zur Kritik der 288–90, 334, 336, 338–40,
reinen Vernunft 4, 37, 53–61, 347, 361, 365, 374, 393–96,
98, 134–38, 182, 347, 393 398–99, 401–2, 406, 408–15
El Cid. See Der Cid Iduna, oder der Apfel der
Entwurf der Anwendung dreier Verjüngung 181
akademischer Jahre für einen Ist die Schönheit des Körpers ein
jungen Theologen 387 Bote . . . 19
Entwurf eines Seminarii zu Jahrbuch der Schriften für die
Lehrern für Landschulen 379 Menschheit 353, 377
Erläuterungen zum neuen Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769
Testament aus einer 3, 23, 33, 48, 148, 287, 353,
neueröffneten morgenländischen 376, 381–82, 388, 409
Quelle 235, 238, 257 Jüdische Parabeln 328
Erlkönigs Tochter 325 Kalligone 4, 37, 143–44, 149–55,
Fragment über die Ode 175, 309 163, 347, 357
Fragmente über die neuere deutsche Kantate bei dem Kirchgange
Literatur. See Über die der regierenden Herzogin
neuere . . . von Sachsen-Weimar und
Gedanken einiger Bramanen 328 Eisenach . . . 317
Gesang an den Cyrus 16 Kantate zur Einweihung der
Gesangbuch. See Weimarisches Katharinen Kirche auf
Gesangbuch Bickern 316
Gott. Einige Gespräche 4, 33–34, Kritische Wälder 3, 21–23, 37, 48,
61, 251–52, 393, 409 143, 216, 356–57, 391
Gottes Rat und Tat über das Lehrer der Offenbarung 28
Menschengeschlecht 312 Liebe und Selbstheit 166, 408
Hades und Elysium 260 Lieder der Liebe 31, 184, 216, 235
Hodegetische Abendvorträge an die Luthers Katechismus 253, 255,
Primaner Emil Herder und 257, 263
Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert 378 Maran Atha 235
Homer, ein Günstling der Zeit 162 Metakritik. See Eine Metakritik
Homer und Ossian 162 Michaels Sieg 316
‘Humanitätsbriefe.’ See Briefe zu Nachlese aus der griechischen
Beförderung der Humanität Anthologie 328
INDEX ♦ 473
Herder, Johann Gottfried 122–23, 131, 135, 137, 181,

(continued) 190–91, 201, 216–20, 228,
Neger-Idyllen 313 354–56, 391, 412
Nemesis: Ein lehrendes Sinnbild 75, Über die Seelenwanderung 260
112, 398 Über die Unsterblichkeit der
Oden von Horaz 328 Seele 259
Oster-Kantate 317 Über die Würkung der Dichtkunst
Palingenesie. Vom Wiederkommen auf die Sitten der Völker 31,
menschlicher Seelen 260 224, 360
Paramythien 181, 312, 329, 408 Über Thomas Abbts Schriften 18,
Parthenope 312 73, 216
Pfingstkantate 316 Über Wissen, Ahnen, Wünschen,
Philoktetes 317 Hoffen und Glauben 258
Pindars Siegsgesänge 328 Übers Erkennen und Empfinden in
Plastik 4, 23, 28, 30, 37, 48, 143, der menschlichen Seele 28
310, 357, 392 Ursachen des gesunknen Geschmacks
Provinzialblätter 28, 347 bei den verschiednen Völkern, da
Pygmalion 317 er geblühet 223–24, 360
Scheu und Achtung. See Von der Vernunft und Sprache. Eine
Scheu und Achtung Metakritik zur Kritik der reinen
Selbst 312 Vernunft II 136
Sermonen von Horaz 328 Verstand und Erfahrung. Eine
Shakespear [sic] 26, 154, 216, Metakritik zur Kritik der reinen
221, 392 Vernunft I 136
[Stimmen der Völker in Liedern] Versuch einer Geschichte der
30, 324–25, 392 lyrischen Dichtkunst 233
Terpsichore 309, 326–27 Versuch über das Sein 17, 43, 46,
Über Bild, Dichtung und 48–51, 53, 61, 98, 146, 182
Fabel 176, 182 Volkslieder 4, 24, 30, 159, 170,
Über das Leben Jesu 262 181, 198, 201, 222, 316, 323–
Über den Einfluss der schönen in 26, 392, 412
die höhern Wissenschaften 31, Vom Begriff der schönen
224, 360 Wissenschaften 381–82
Über den Fleiss in mehreren Vom echten Begriff der schönen
gelehrten Sprachen 25, 169, 318 Wissenschaften 381
Über den neueren Gebrauch der Vom Einfluss der Regierung auf
Mythologie 179, 191 die Wissenschaften und der
Über den Ursprung der Sprache. Wissenschaften auf die
See Abhandlung über den Regierung 31, 224, 361, 388
Ursprung der Sprache Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der
Über die Bildung der Völker 382 menschlichen Seele 4, 28, 30, 50–
Über die ersten Urkunden des 51, 58, 60–61, 82, 146, 148
Menschlichen Geschlechts 234 Vom Erlöser der Menschen 236, 256
Über die neuere deutsche Literatur.
Fragmente 11, 20–21, 37, 119,
474 ♦ INDEX
Herder, Johann Gottfried Über die Stellung des Menschen in

(continued) der Natur 412
Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie 4, Hesse, Andreas Peter von 323
32, 216, 234–35, 238, 321, 347, Hettner, Hermann 413
396, 406 Heyne, Christian Gottlieb 27–28,
Vom Geist des Christentums 251 66, 397
Von der Auferstehung, als Glauben, hieroglyph 27, 315, 321, 396
Geschichte und Lehre 257–58 Hillebrand, Karl 406–7
Von der Grazie in der Schule 20 Hintzenstern, Herbert von 29
Von der Integrität und Scham historicism 65, 70, 76, 83, 401, 414
einer Schule 386 historiography 5, 9, 215, 353
Von der Ode 159, 168, 233 history 1–12, 17–18, 21, 24–25, 27–
Von der Scheu und Achtung der 29, 32–34, 36, 38, 61, 65–83, 93,
Lehrer und Eltern . . . 385 95, 99, 101–2, 104, 106–7, 111–
Von der Veränderung des 13, 122–23, 130, 132–34, 137–
Geschmacks 20 38, 142, 146, 149–50, 152–56,
Von der verbesserten Lehrmethode 160, 165, 168, 172–76, 178–81,
unserer Zeit 385 184–85, 189–92, 194–95, 198–
Von deutscher Art und Kunst 26, 201, 203–4, 206–8, 215–17,
216, 221, 322, 392 220–23, 225–26, 228–30, 233–
Von Gottes Sohn, der Welt 41, 248–53, 255, 257–61, 263,
Heiland 236 277, 279–80, 282–85, 288–90,
Von Schulen als Übungsplätzen der 305–6, 308–9, 314–15, 317–19,
Fähigkeiten der Seele 386 322, 325–26, 329, 331, 334–35,
Von Schulübungen 385 339, 341–42, 344–45, 351, 355–
Vorstellung seiner [A. L. Schlözer] 58, 360–61, 365–66, 368, 375,
Universal-Historie 229 377, 381–82, 384–88, 391, 393–
Weimarisches Gesangbuch 263 402, 404–5, 407, 410–13
Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet 260 Hitler, Adolph 400, 407
Wie die Philosophie zum Besten des Hobbes, Thomas 101–2, 285
Volks allgemeiner und nützlicher Hölderlin, Friedrich 180, 182
werden kann 178 Hohlfeld, Alexander 404
Zerstreute Blätter 34, 76, 217, Holland 24, 358–59
223, 229, 258, 286, 306, 310– Homer 25, 70, 154, 162, 172, 201–
12, 314, 328 2, 218, 225, 290, 392
Zimeo 313 homiletics 19, 226, 235, 248
Herder, Karoline, née Flachsland 3, Horace (Horaz) 190, 326, 328
24, 26, 31, 35–36, 220, 306, 323, Horkheimer, Max 10
373–76, 380–81, 386, 396, 406 Hübner, Kurt 165
Erinnerungen 373–76, 380 hubris 7
hermeneutics 65, 70–72, 83, 193, human 1, 3–6, 8–12, 17–18, 22–23,
234, 236–37, 241, 314, 346, 400 26–28, 30, 32–33, 38, 43–47, 49–
Herodotus 70, 155 51, 59, 61–62, 66–70, 73–82, 85,
Herzen, Alexander 412 94–97, 99–104, 106–13, 117–18,
120–30, 132–34, 136–38, 145–50,
INDEX ♦ 475
human (continued) Hume, David 7, 43–47, 67, 194

153, 155–57, 159–61, 167, 169– hymn 16, 36, 157, 168, 200, 215,
70, 173, 175–80, 182–83, 186, 262–63
192, 194, 196, 198, 203, 205, hypothesis 69, 122, 166, 179, 234,
216, 219, 225–26, 230, 234–39, 240–41, 374, 396
241–42, 248–51, 253–57, 259–
60, 262–64, 278, 280–83, 290, Idealism 4, 10, 43, 49–51, 53, 60–
293–94, 305, 309, 312–14, 318, 61, 393, 399–400
321–22, 324–25, 331, 334, 337, idyll 222, 312–14
339–42, 347, 357–59, 361–63, image 7, 18, 27, 30, 33–34, 46, 51,
366, 377, 381, 384, 386, 388–89, 58–60, 73, 98, 107, 141–42, 144,
393–95, 398, 400–401, 405, 413 147–48, 154, 156, 158, 160, 171–
human being 5–6, 8–10, 18–22, 25, 73, 176–80, 182, 192–94, 198,
27, 34, 36–37, 43–49, 52, 55, 60, 222, 231, 238–41, 253–54, 307,
73, 80, 95–104, 106–13, 115, 310, 313, 315, 321, 336, 341–42,
118–19, 122–31, 133–34, 137, 353, 365, 377, 385, 399, 401–2,
141–44, 147–48, 150, 155, 158, 406–7, 409
169–70, 172, 175, 177, 183–86, imagination 8, 16, 25, 52, 69, 79,
196, 218, 226, 237–38, 242, 249, 83, 123, 148–49, 151, 155–56,
256–58, 279, 282–83, 285, 290, 159, 168–69, 172, 175, 177–84,
294, 307, 311–13, 315–16, 337, 192, 195, 198, 208, 235, 237,
339–40, 343, 354, 363, 367, 375, 248, 251, 287, 291, 305, 313,
378–79, 386, 389, 401, 412 335, 341, 346, 358, 373, 378,
Humanität 4, 6–7, 10–11, 23, 31, 387, 407
33–36, 38, 41, 68, 83, 93–99, imperialism 67, 119, 160, 197, 278,
102–5, 108–14, 116, 181, 185, 284, 289, 292, 294, 398–99, 413
203–8, 215, 217, 224–25, 229, India 324
231, 283, 285–86, 313–14, 339, individual 7–8, 16, 20, 22, 24, 26–
347, 360–64, 374–75, 386, 388– 28, 34, 44, 47–49, 53–54, 65, 68,
89, 398, 401–2, 407–9, 411–13 74, 94, 98, 101, 104–5, 109–12,
humanities 2, 10, 22, 81, 105, 119, 119–22, 130–31, 134, 138, 143–
141, 153, 216, 224, 241, 247, 48, 150–52, 154, 156–57, 159,
253, 361, 382, 396, 402, 415 174, 176, 183–84, 190–91, 193,
humanity 4–6, 9–11, 15, 18, 20, 23, 196–99, 201–3, 205–6, 215, 217–
30, 32, 34–37, 68, 74, 76, 79, 18, 230, 237, 241, 248–49, 252,
93–98, 100, 102, 108–9, 111–13, 259–60, 262, 277, 285, 290, 292,
130, 132, 160–61, 165, 169–70, 294, 306, 308, 310, 321, 327,
176–78, 181, 183–85, 198, 200– 345–46, 377, 381, 385, 387, 389,
201, 205–6, 208, 217, 230, 236, 395, 398, 411, 413
256, 288, 314, 323, 334, 339–40, infinite 44, 62, 78, 203, 208, 248,
347, 353–54, 361–66, 375, 377– 360, 367, 394
78, 382, 384, 386, 389, 413 inner sense 43–45, 50, 58, 144, 171,
Humboldt, Alexander von 414–15 177
Humboldt, Wilhelm von 118, 121, International Herder Society 403,
132–34, 138, 379, 399 407, 415
476 ♦ INDEX
intuition 27, 48, 73, 118, 136–37, 43, 45–46, 51, 53–56, 58, 60–61,
151–52, 157, 205, 208, 259, 341, 66, 76, 78–83, 103, 118, 135–38,
394, 405 144, 146, 151–52, 182–83, 196,
Irmscher, Hans Dietrich 21, 27, 33, 205–8, 225–26, 228–29, 291,
77, 94, 113, 307–8, 403 307, 331–32, 334–38, 340, 347,
irrationalism 5, 8, 15, 65, 67, 123, 354–55, 357, 361, 364–68, 374,
141, 146, 347, 400, 403 393–95, 401
irritability 52 Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und
Iselin, Isaak 67 Theorie des Himmels 17, 78
Geschichte der Menschheit 67 Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des
isotopy 338, 345 Erhabenen und Schönen 152
Israel 16, 155, 237–40 Critique of (the Faculty of)
Italy 4, 34–35, 122, 178, 225, 287, Judgment. See Kritik der
289–90, 308, 323, 361, 374, 383, Urteilskraft
414 Critique of Pure Reason. See
Kritik der reinen Vernunft
Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich 32, 82, Der einzig mögliche
252, 393 Beweisgrund . . . 17, 46
James (epistle of) 235 Die Religion innerhalb der
Japan 2, 324, 415 Grenzen der blossen Vernunft 37
Jena 65, 261, 264, 365, 383, 388, Idee zu einer Geschichte in
393–94, 415 weltbürgerlicher Hinsicht 395
Jerusalem 16, 241 Kritik der reinen Vernunft 53, 61,
Jesus 19, 182, 235, 240–42, 248, 135–36, 207, 228
254–57, 262–63, 316, 327 Kritik der Urteilskraft 7, 37, 357,
Jew 16, 32, 181, 195, 240, 259, 393
328, 353, 408 Träume eines Geistersehers 51
Job (book of) 216, 235, 238–39, Was ist Aufklärung? 354
319–20 Kantzenbach, Friedrich Wilhelm 20,
John (gospel according to) 106, 34
118, 235–36, 241, 256 Karamzin, Nikolai Mikhailovich 412
Joret, Charles 410 Briefe eines russischen
Joseph II 204 Reisenden 412
Jouffroy, Théodore 410 Kauffmann, Maria Anna Angelika 35
Journal von Tiefurt 312 Kelletat, Andreas F. 318, 320, 323,
Jude (epistle of) 235 328
judgment 7, 21, 37, 71, 149, 171, Kemper, Hans-Georg 308
173, 204, 220, 228, 249–50, 258, Kerstenberg. See Gerstenberg
280, 292, 305, 311, 320, 328, Kessler, Martin 11
332, 335, 354, 409 Kindermann, Heinz 401
Jung, Carl Gustav 165 Kireevskij, Ivan 413
Juranek, Christian 24 Klassik (“Weimar Klassik”) 37, 93,
225, 401
(See also under C) Kleist, Ewald Christian von 189, 383
Kant, Immanuel 3–7, 9–10, 17, 37, Kleist, Heinrich von 400
INDEX ♦ 477
Klinger, Friedrich Maximilian 392 language 2–3, 5–6, 8–9, 11, 17–21,
Kloocke, Kurt 12, 391 24–26, 32, 36–37, 52–53, 58–60,
Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb 24, 63, 65–66, 68, 77, 80, 93–95, 97,
181, 192, 201, 220, 225, 228–29, 105–6, 113, 117–38, 147–48,
383 154, 156–59, 168–69, 171, 173,
Der Messias 220, 228 175, 178–79, 182, 190–91, 196–
Klotz, Christian Adolf 22, 229, 357 97, 198, 202–3, 206, 215–16,
Knebel, Karl Ludwig von 3, 35 218–19, 221, 226, 235–39, 248,
knowledge 5, 9, 18, 22, 25–26, 28, 251, 278, 282–85, 296, 308–12,
44–51, 53–55, 57, 61, 68, 71, 83, 318–22, 324, 327, 329, 331–34,
101, 103, 107, 109, 112, 117–18, 336–37, 341–42, 344–46, 350,
120–21, 124, 128–29, 135, 137– 355–57, 359, 367, 374, 382, 385,
38, 142, 144, 151, 154–57, 162– 387, 392, 404, 411–12. See also
63, 171, 173–75, 177–78, 180, Sprache
182, 185–86, 199, 215, 220, 227, Lapland 323
257–58, 260, 279, 285, 312, 322, Latvia 18, 23, 219, 323
337, 339, 357, 360–61, 374, Lavater, Johann Kaspar 19, 229,
377–81, 384–85, 387, 393, 411 251, 253, 259, 395
Koepke, Wulf 1, 11, 25, 31, 215, Aussichten in die Ewigkeit 259
329, 355, 368 Physiognomische Fragmente 259
Kollár, Jan 411 legend 159, 192, 222–23, 227, 235,
Die Tochter der Slava 411 314–16, 328–30
Komenský. See Comenius Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 7, 38,
Königsberg 2, 17, 31, 39, 135, 146, 44, 49–50, 60, 78, 83, 103, 117–
228, 261, 306–7, 355, 365–66 20, 122–23, 125, 130–32, 135,
Königsbergsche Gelehrte und Politische 137, 151, 251–52, 285
Zeitungen 355 Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement
Kopitar, Bartholomäus 411 humain 117
Korff, Hermann August 401 Lenz, Jakob Michael Reinhold 224,
Körner, Christian Gottfried 367 275, 392
Koselleck, Reinhart 66 Die Soldaten 224
Kraft 7, 10, 22, 27, 29, 33, 46–47, Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 20–24,
49, 51, 53–54, 71, 74, 77–80, 94, 32, 34, 166, 175–76, 178–79,
100–101, 103–4, 107–8, 111, 189, 217–20, 223–25, 227, 229,
127, 144, 146–47, 152, 155, 161, 237, 250, 256, 260, 285, 310–11,
168, 177, 179, 183, 204–5, 207– 315–16, 323, 329, 337, 342, 355,
8, 249, 251–54, 259, 316–17, 357, 382–83
335, 339, 378, 381. See also force; Abhandlungen über die Fabel 166,
power 175–76
Krämer, Jörg 317 Axiomata 237
Kraus, Christian Jacob 393 Die Erziehung des
Kypke, David 17 Menschengeschlechts 250, 260
Emilia Galotti 224
La Fontaine, Jean de 316 Die Religion Christi 256
Lambert, Johann Heinrich 184, 252 Eine Duplik 237
478 ♦ INDEX
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim Louis XIV 290, 368

(continued) Louis XVI 36, 389
Hamburgische Dramaturgie 21 Lowth, Robert 32, 234, 239
Laokoon 22–23, 220, 357 De sacra Poësi Hebraeorum 234
Minna von Barnhelm 223–24 Lucretius 311
“Wolfenbütteler Fragmente” 237 De rerum natura 311
See also Briefe, die neueste Luise Auguste, duchess of Saxony-
Literatur betreffend Weimar (née princess of Hessen-
Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph 374 Darmstadt) 3, 31
Lied 4, 24, 26, 30–31, 153, 158–59, Luke (gospel according to) 241
161–62, 170, 172, 181, 184, 197– Luther, Martin 15, 20, 24, 30–31,
98, 201–3, 216, 222, 230, 235, 119, 184, 194, 199, 201, 219,
239–40, 311, 316, 320, 322–26, 226, 234, 253–55, 257, 263, 280,
392–93, 412 395, 403, 408
Lilienthal, Christoph 17 Kleiner Katechismus 194, 253,
linguistics 2, 6, 17, 66, 122, 127, 255, 257, 263
136, 351, 411 Lyotard, Jean-François 66, 83
Liszt, Franz 318
Literaturbriefe. See Briefe, die neueste Machiavelli, Niccolò 279, 286, 359
Literatur betreffend Macpherson, James 25, 201, 222,
literary criticism 4, 9, 230, 233–34, 309, 320, 322
356 Fragments of Ancient Poetry 25
literature 2–9, 11, 16, 20–22, 24–25, The Works of Ossian 25, 201, 309,
31, 37–38, 65, 68, 87, 119, 120– 320
22, 142, 150, 152, 154, 156–58, macrocosm 27
161–62, 165, 167, 173–75, 179– Mann, Heinrich 400
81, 189–204, 208, 215–18, 220– Mann, Thomas 400
34, 236, 241, 278, 286, 305–7, Maria Barbara, countess of
309, 311, 315–16, 318–19, 321, Bückeburg 29
323, 327–29, 331–32, 342, 354– Mark (gospel according to) 241
56, 360, 364–65, 373, 377, 381– Marsh, James 406
83, 385, 389, 391–94, 396–99, Martinson, Steven 11, 15
401, 402–8, 411–14. See also Masaryk, Tomas Garrigue 413
national literature, world literature Mass (Maß) 7, 28, 74, 112, 121,
Lithuania 160, 323 171, 183, 226, 334, 356, 368
Litt, Theodor 401 Matthew (gospel according to) 112,
liturgy 6, 30, 248, 262–63 241–42, 256
Lobstein, Johann Friedrich 24–25 Maupertuis, Pierre-Louis Moreau
Locke, John 38, 78, 117–18, 123, de 357
125, 135, 151, 285 Maximum 183–84
An Essay Concerning Human Megill, Allen 66
Understanding 117–18, 135 Mehring, Franz 402
logic 6, 9, 18, 45–48, 50, 54, 58, 102, Meinecke, Friedrich 65, 83, 399, 401
136, 141–42, 154, 156, 174, 184, melodrama 316–17
191, 279, 334–35, 337, 340, 357
INDEX ♦ 479
Mendelssohn, Moses 20, 23, 27, 32, Considérations sur les causes de la
49, 67, 103, 189, 217, 220, 259, grandeur des Romains et de leur
355 décadence 290
Phaedon 103, 220, 259 De l’esprit des lois 289
See also Briefe, die neueste More, Thomas 285
Literatur betreffend Utopia 285
Menges, Karl 11, 189, 393 Morgan 404
Menze, Ernest A. 12, 391 Moritz, Karl Philipp 95
Merck, Johann Heinrich 229, 315, Möser, Justus 221–22
323 Osnabrückische Geschichte 221
mesocosmos 99 Moser, Friedrich Karl Ludwig
metanarrative 65–66, 74–75, 83 von 21, 197, 219–20
metaphor 22, 25, 28, 60, 83, 121, Über den deutschen
178, 195, 205, 219, 242, 254, Nationalgeist 220
331, 336–41, 367, 394–95 Moser, Walter 338
metaphysics 8, 37, 43, 46, 51, 53, Moses 195, 199, 234, 236, 238–40,
55, 75, 80, 82, 151, 165, 184–85, 319
191, 196, 205, 207–8, 223, 365– Mosheim, Johann Lorentz von 280
66 mother tongue (Muttersprache) 6,
meta-schematism 58, 60 17, 68, 120, 130, 167, 169, 178,
Metastasio 317 220, 239
Michaelis, Johann David 66, 120, Müller, Johann Georg 397
229, 234, 321, 395 Müller, Johannes von 324, 397, 408
De l’influence des opinions sur le Müller-Michaels, Harro 12, 373, 381
langage et du langage sur les music 6, 22, 25, 34, 145, 152, 156,
opinions 120 159, 162, 217, 225, 227, 310–11,
Michelet, Jules 410 316–18, 329, 380, 382
microcosm 52, 311 mysticism 5, 8–9, 15, 81, 395
Middle Ages 5, 34, 22, 263 myth 7–8, 11, 13, 112, 131, 154,
Millar, John 67–68 158, 165–85, 189, 191–95, 197–
Observations on the Differences . . . 98, 200, 203, 209, 235, 248, 308,
67 312–13, 315–16, 318, 329, 336,
Milton, John 154, 192, 285, 382–83 353, 368, 394–95, 406–7, 412.
mimesis 151, 153–54 See also fable
mind and body 5, 11, 175 mythology 8, 11, 112, 165–69, 172–
minister 9, 15, 18, 20, 24, 32, 219, 73, 176–82, 184, 189, 191–95,
226, 248, 253, 261–64, 373 200, 203, 209, 235, 248, 312–13,
moderation 7, 112, 134, 200, 204, 315, 336, 368, 395, 407
224, 226, 231, 308, 366
Mohrungen (Morąg) 2, 15–17, 306 Nadler, Josef 401
Möller, Michael 27 Namowicz, Tadeusz 23
monism 49, 54 Nantes 3, 23–24, 220
Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Napoleon I 221, 325, 369, 409, 411
baron de la Brède et de 67, 289– nation 2–3, 5, 7–8, 10–11, 21, 24–
90, 293 26, 30, 36, 38, 65, 68–72, 74, 77,
480 ♦ INDEX
nation (continued) Newton, Isaac 45, 166, 182, 185,

98, 104, 111, 119–22, 130–33, 285
142, 145, 152–53, 158, 160–62, Nicolai, Friedrich 189, 218, 220,
165, 169–70, 172, 183, 189–90, 227–28, 230, 323, 355
195–201, 203, 206, 208, 216–17, Allgemeine Deutsche
219–23, 226–27, 230–31, 234, Bibliothek 220, 227–28
237–28, 240, 248, 253, 257, See also Briefe, die neueste
277–80, 283, 289, 291–92, 294, Literatur betreffend
309, 322, 324–25, 343–44, 346, Nietzsche, Friedrich 138, 400
353, 356, 359–60, 382, 387–88, Menschliches,
391–93, 398–404, 407, 409–15 Allzumenschliches 400
National-Bibliothek sämmtlicher Nieuwentyt, Bernard 182
deutscher Klassiker 305 Nimrod 283–84
national literature 5, 8, 11, 189, 195, nobility 8, 27, 30, 34–35, 74, 98,
197–98, 200, 203, 393, 407, 412 100–101, 172, 219, 262, 281,
National Socialism 199, 391, 400 288, 290, 293, 313, 358, 363,
nationalism 2, 8, 11, 65, 122, 133, 375, 412
160, 197, 199, 221–22, 226, 231, North America 403–4, 406–7
277–80, 325, 353, 391–92, 398– Norton, Robert 12, 351
402, 404, 409, 413 Novalis 144, 182, 400
natural science 17, 25, 76–77, 182, Die Lehrlinge zu Sais 182
261, 311, 393–94, 415
naturalism 69, 76, 80–81, 83, 206, objectivity 44–45, 47–48, 50–53,
394 55–56, 58, 60–61, 141–42, 152,
naturalization 52, 79, 321, 356 159, 279, 403
nature 16–20, 22, 25–30, 33–34, obscure 2, 4, 44, 47, 49, 51, 59, 80,
44–49, 51–52, 60–61, 69–70, 73, 93–95, 105, 161, 332, 335, 359,
75–81, 83, 95, 99–104, 106–11, 393–94, 398, 405–6
117, 122–24, 127–32, 138, 141– ode 24, 158–59, 161, 168, 171–72,
44, 147–49, 152–63, 166, 169– 175, 178, 220, 229, 233, 308–9,
73, 175–78, 182–83, 185–86, 327–28
193–94, 196, 198, 203, 205–7, Oedipus 167, 171
222–23, 230, 238–40, 242, 248– Oetinger, Friedrich Christoph 252
58, 261, 280, 282–83, 289, 309, Old Testament 16, 27, 131, 201,
311–13, 315–16, 319–21, 333, 203, 216, 218, 229, 233–38, 240,
337, 342, 351, 356, 359, 361, 329, 396, 408
364, 367, 369, 377, 385, 393–94, ontology 43, 51–53, 58, 60–62, 71,
398, 401, 405, 412, 415 103, 143, 147, 252, 294
Nemesis 7, 10, 75, 112, 226, 339, ontotheology 53, 61
364, 368–69, 398 opera 317
Neologismus 395 Opitz, Martin 201, 382
Netherlands. See Holland oratorio 316
New Testament 4, 32, 235–36, 238, organism 24, 28, 34, 49, 52, 54,
240, 257, 396 57–58, 60, 77–78, 80–81, 154,
INDEX ♦ 481
organism (continued) Peltz, Jakob 15

182, 198, 206–7, 251–53, 338, Pénisson, Pierre 93, 410
393, 401 Penn, William 285
Orient 17, 142, 161, 181, 203, 218, Pentateuch 234
231, 235, 238–40, 312, 321, people 5, 20, 26, 29–32, 38, 68–69,
327–28, 395–96 71–72, 77, 98, 120–21, 126, 129,
origin 3, 5–8, 11, 18, 22–23, 25, 132–34, 145, 150, 154, 159–60,
30, 32–33, 36–37, 43–44, 47, 50, 162, 169, 171, 173–74, 178, 189,
54, 56–61, 66, 69, 76–77, 93–95, 193, 195–203, 208, 219, 221–24,
117, 122–25, 127–30, 132–33, 226–28, 237–38, 259, 261–62,
151, 154, 156–57, 160, 166–70, 278, 282–84, 290, 293–94, 297,
172–73, 175–76, 178, 192–95, 314, 322–25, 343–44, 353–54,
198–99, 201–3, 205–6, 216, 236, 356, 358–60, 367–68, 375, 377–
238–41, 248, 284, 309, 311–12, 78, 380, 382, 384–88, 392, 394–
314–15, 320–23, 342, 357, 392 95, 401–2, 411–13. See also Volk
Orpheus 184, 202 perception 11–12, 19, 23, 25, 43,
Osgood, Samuel 406 47–50, 52, 54, 56–57, 60–61,
“Ossian” 25–26, 68, 154, 159, 162, 103, 105, 130, 141–46, 148, 152,
201–2, 216, 221–22, 229, 306, 157, 159, 171, 192–95, 197, 315,
309–10, 319–22, 325, 392 338, 398, 405, 414
Otto, Regine 402 Percy, Thomas 201, 306, 325, 392
Reliques of Ancient English
painting 6, 16, 34–35, 144–45, 152, Poetry 201, 306, 392
156, 162, 312 Persius 328
Palacký, František 413 Peru 323
Palti, Elias 76 Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich 396
Pannenberg, Wolfhart 40 Peter (apostle) 16, 38, 241
Paris 3, 193, 220 Peter III (tsar) 16
Parker, Theodore 406 Petrarch 374
pastor 16, 18, 22, 24, 26, 29–30, Pfenninger, Johann Konrad 315
32, 229, 255, 258, 261–62, 270, Sammlungen zu einem christlichen
281, 291, 321, 373, 376, 384, Magazin 315
389 Phaedrus 167, 328
patriotism 122, 189–90, 195, 197, philanthropy 93, 95, 97, 281, 359
201, 210, 286, 290–92, 308, 356, philology 18, 27–28, 65–66, 72–73,
387, 398–99, 401 233, 248, 306–7, 319, 325, 328,
Paul (apostle) 16, 38, 236, 241, 251 394, 400, 410
Paul, Jean (Jean Paul Friedrich philosophy 1–6, 8–11, 17, 21–23,
Richter) 30, 37–38, 227–28, 396 25, 27, 29, 32, 34, 37, 43–47, 49,
Vorschule der Ästhetik 396 51–54, 56, 58–62, 65–71, 75–76,
pedagogy 6, 9, 12, 20, 27, 149, 81–83, 93–94, 99, 101–5, 108,
166, 331, 356, 374–76, 382, 113, 117–19, 122, 124, 133–38,
384–87, 396 141–42, 145–46, 148–49, 154,
Peirce, Charles Sanders 118, 185 156, 162–63, 165–66, 169–70,
Peltonen, Markku 287 172–80, 182, 184–85, 190–94,
482 ♦ INDEX
philosophy (continued) 81, 145, 150, 153–54, 156–57,

196, 204, 207–8, 215–17, 219, 159, 161–62, 167–70, 172–73,
225–26, 229, 234, 237–38, 248– 175–82, 190, 192–95, 197–98,
49, 251–53, 255, 259, 264, 277– 200–203, 205, 207–9, 215–16,
79, 281, 287–88, 294, 309, 311, 218–20, 222–25, 233–40, 248,
319, 324, 328, 331–39, 342, 263, 305–13, 315–16, 319–21,
344–46, 351, 355–59, 362–67, 323–29, 331, 333, 336, 342, 347,
375, 378, 380–82, 387, 391, 360, 367, 382, 392, 394, 396,
393–97, 399–402, 405, 408, 408–9, 411–12
410–11, 413–14 Poland 2, 15, 412
philosophy of history 4–5, 9, 11, polarity 52, 58, 155
65–71, 75–76, 81, 83, 99, 101–2, polemic 3–4, 9, 12, 22, 83, 98, 135,
122, 142, 215, 279, 309, 331, 138, 150, 193, 207–8, 215, 220,
335, 339, 342, 344, 365, 393, 225, 228–30, 334, 347, 355, 358,
395–96, 400, 405, 410–11, 413 393, 395
philosophy of language 11, 117–19, politics 2, 4, 9–11, 13, 17, 21, 35–
331 36, 38, 67–68, 83, 106, 122–23,
philosophy of life 51–54, 58, 60–62, 160, 190, 193–96, 198–200, 204,
163 208, 215, 217, 219, 221–22, 225,
physics 35, 45, 75, 78, 80, 94, 100, 227–28, 230, 262, 277–81, 283–
105, 185, 206, 282, 339, 387, 88, 291–94, 338, 353, 358, 360–
394 61, 368, 374, 377, 382, 386,
physiognomy 134, 229, 333, 395 388–89, 395–96, 399, 402, 405,
physiology 48, 51, 69, 79, 207, 254 408–9, 411, 414
pietism 15–16, 22, 250, 283, 285, Pölitz, Karl Heinrich Ludwig 395
287, 393, 395 pope 197, 282
Pindar 25, 168, 171–72, 200, 202, Pope, Alexander 185
308, 321, 328, 392 power 7, 16–18, 22, 25, 27–28, 37,
Olympics 171 44, 47–48, 50, 52–53, 78–79, 82,
Pinker, Steven 127 100–101, 104, 108, 111, 141–42,
plastic arts 22, 27 144, 146–47, 149, 155, 161, 163,
Plato 49–50, 58, 83, 144, 165, 167– 166–68, 170–71, 173, 177, 180,
68, 170, 172–73, 176, 178, 191, 183–84, 190, 194, 197, 204, 230,
256, 341 236, 238, 249, 252–53, 284, 288,
Ion 167–68 293, 312, 316, 329, 333, 335,
Phaedrus 167 340–41, 355, 358, 364, 378, 381,
Phaidon 170 388–89, 393, 399, 404. See also
plurality 49, 53, 151, 169, 208 force; Kraft
Pocock, J. G. A. 279 preacher 3, 9, 15, 22, 28, 36, 158,
poetics 141–42, 145, 153, 156–57, 219–20, 226, 256, 262, 264,
165, 167, 171, 175, 177, 179, 341–42, 347, 375, 381, 389
192, 202, 216, 220, 223, 310, prejudice 8, 10–11, 38, 44, 72, 94,
326, 374, 410 122, 133, 155, 165, 173, 196–98,
poetry 1, 4–8, 13, 16–17, 20–22, 222, 242, 257, 293. See also
24–25, 29–32, 34, 36, 38, 68, 73, Vorurteil
INDEX ♦ 483
progress 26, 31, 36, 52, 66–69, 76, rational 3, 5, 7–10, 18, 43–45, 47,
80, 83, 99, 107, 122–23, 126, 130, 57–58, 62, 67, 102, 109, 117,
132, 142, 149, 154, 156, 159–60, 122–25, 127, 134, 141, 145–47,
192, 194, 196, 206, 208, 247, 149–51, 156, 165, 174–75, 179,
249, 251, 307, 346, 362, 365, 183, 192–97, 200, 226, 230, 247,
387, 399, 401–2, 408, 411, 414 250, 285, 293, 321, 334, 342,
Prometheus 5, 134, 167, 277, 318, 346, 350, 358, 378
329 rationalism 9–10, 45, 127–28, 145–
Protestant 2, 81, 99, 247, 249, 261, 46, 162, 166, 176, 191, 193, 196,
277, 280, 283, 285, 287, 291–93, 199, 385
395–96, 398 realism 53, 362
Proteus 131, 158, 206, 352 reality 6–7, 9, 18, 28, 37, 46, 97, 99,
providence 19, 70, 238, 254–55, 339 102–4, 107, 113, 125, 136, 141–
Prussia 2, 15, 123, 134, 146, 184, 44, 146–47, 150–51, 155, 157,
204, 221, 263, 278, 284, 291, 166, 174, 202, 205, 240, 285,
311, 357, 359, 366, 376, 379, 314, 345, 353–54, 359, 367, 400
387–89, 399 reason 5, 9–10, 15, 25, 34–35, 37,
psychology 44–45, 47–48, 50, 54, 45, 48, 51, 54–55, 57–58, 68, 73,
56, 166, 185, 197, 215, 284, 314, 79–80, 82, 98, 100–102, 105–8,
338, 392 110–12, 123, 127, 134–38, 141–
public 10, 31–32, 35, 70, 96, 99, 42, 145–46, 148, 150, 152, 154,
151–52, 158, 167, 173, 178, 167, 175–76, 193, 196, 207, 228,
190–91, 198, 215, 219, 221, 223, 230–31, 248–51, 253–55, 260,
226–27, 230, 261–62, 277, 279, 281, 292, 337–40, 344, 347, 357,
287–89, 292–93, 325, 327, 344, 361, 366–67, 378, 385, 389, 402
353, 360, 376, 391, 396–98, 404, receptivity 4, 50, 54, 74, 179, 193,
407–8 368
Pufendorf, Samuel von 285, 298 Redeker, Martin 401
Purdie, Edna 318 Redlich, Carl 306, 325, 328
Pypin, A. N. 413 reductionism 2, 9, 10, 48, 150, 334
Pyrrho 46 reflection 6, 8, 11, 23, 25, 34, 43,
Pythagoras 260 46–47, 97, 117–18, 124, 137,
143–44, 151, 153, 193, 195, 197,
Québec 294 203, 237, 239, 247–48, 250–51,
Quinet, Edgar 396, 406, 408, 410 253–55, 258–59, 307, 319, 329,
Etude sur le caractère et les écrits de 331, 333, 351, 355, 374–75, 393,
Herder 410 408
Reformation 17, 21, 285, 308, 408
racism 104, 402 region 5, 12, 29, 47–48, 162, 184,
Radiscev, Alexander Nikolajevic 412 219, 231, 292, 336, 343
Reise von Petersburg nach Reichardt, Johann Friedrich 311
Moskau 412 Reimann, Paul 402
Ramler, Karl Wilhelm 323 Reimarus, Hermann Samuel 237
Ranke, Leopold von 65 Reinhold, Karl Leonhard 394
Rasch, Wolfdietrich 401 relativism 65, 121–22, 133, 137, 149
484 ♦ INDEX
religion 3–7, 9–11, 13, 15–18, 23, 226, 237, 342, 364, 394, 397,
36–37, 75, 80–83, 98, 108, 118, 412, 414
123, 154, 158, 165, 170–71, 178, Rome 3, 8, 34–35, 106, 109, 179–
184, 194, 196, 205, 208, 215, 81, 194, 216, 218, 233, 236, 241,
219, 223, 227, 231, 235, 238–39, 278, 286–91, 309, 311, 323, 325,
242, 247–49, 251, 253, 255–57, 327–28, 413
259–61, 264, 278, 280, 314, 316, Römer, Ole 341
319, 342, 358, 364, 380, 394, Rouché, Max 409–10
396–97, 405–6, 408, 410 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 27, 67–69,
Renaissance 225, 322, 398, 400, 76, 79, 166, 184, 193, 289, 374,
405, 410–11, 413 385
Renan, Ernest 410 Confessions 184
responsibility 8, 30, 101, 112, 155, On the Origin of Inequality among
224, 231, 249, 260–62, 264, 291, Mankind 166
332, 339, 361, 363, 374–75 Russia 3, 17, 219, 287, 412–13
republicanism 287, 289–91 Russian Orthodoxy 287
retribution 7, 112, 226, 254
revelation 28–29, 235, 238, 249–51, Sachsen-Weimar 3, 6, 204, 224, 317
259 salvation 240–41, 254–55, 257–58
Revelation, Book of 235 Sapir, Edward 392
revolution 2, 4, 9–10, 36, 53, 82, Sappho 161
118, 128, 156, 196, 204, 206, Sauder, Gerhard 11, 305, 392
217, 224–25, 231, 278, 286, 291, Saussure, Ferdinand de 346
311, 318, 327, 363–64, 389, 392, Scaliger, Julius Caesar 167
402, 405, 411 Scandinavia 8, 23, 323
rhetoric 98, 109, 149, 158, 206, Schardt, Sophie von 31
220, 234, 279, 288, 333, 341, Schäublin, Peter 398
344–45 Schaumburg-Lippe, Friedrich Errnst
Richardson, Robert D. 407 Wilhelm, Graf zu 26, 291
Richardson, Samuel 227 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm
Richter. See Paul, Jean Joseph 37, 144, 331, 393–95
Ricœur, Paul 341 Darlegung meines Systems der
Riedel, Friedrich Justus 22, 49 Philosophie 393
Riga 3, 17–18, 20, 22–23, 30, 33, Ideen zu einer Philosophie der
75, 184, 219–20, 261–62, 287, Natur 394
289, 306, 308, 310, 376, 378, Über Mythen, historische Sagen und
384, 388, 391 Philosopheme der ältesten
Rilke, Rainer Maria 400 Welt 395
Rinck, Friedrich Theodor 394 schema(tism) 19, 49, 56, 58–60,
Ripley, George 406 136–38
Ritter, Johann Wilhelm 394 Scherer, Wilhelm 318
Aphorismen 394 Schiller, Friedrich 2–7, 37–38, 95,
Robertson, William 194 142, 180–81, 183, 219, 224–27,
Roman Catholic. See Catholicism 231, 326, 342, 367–68, 374, 383,
Romanticism 4–5, 30, 141, 217, 392
INDEX ♦ 485
Schiller, Friedrich (continued) 285, 292–93, 306, 311–12, 323,

Die Horen 4, 37, 180–81, 225, 383 335, 339–40, 356–57, 377, 379,
Don Carlos 224 381–82, 384, 387–88, 393–94,
Über die ästhetische Erziehung des 396, 415
Menschen 183, 383 scripture 234, 240–41, 249–50, 280,
Schirmer, Walter F. 405 283–84. See also bible
Schlegel, August Wilhelm 225, 382, sculpture 4, 6, 23, 48, 66, 149, 156,
394, 409 225, 310, 357, 392
Vorlesungen über Enzyklopädie 394 Seckendorff, Sophie Friederike
Schlegel, Friedrich 225, 319, 394– von 34
95, 413 seeing 18, 49, 58–59, 69, 128, 130,
Über das Studium der griechischen 306
Poesie 394 semiotics 99, 118, 121, 132, 134,
Schleiermacher, Friedrich 396, 406 165, 333–34, 341, 345
Schlosser, Friedrich Christoph 395 Sengle, Friedrich 397
Geschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts 395 sensation 4, 18, 22, 28, 48, 50–52,
Schlosser, Johann Georg 229, 260 82, 123–25, 136, 141, 144, 156–
Schlözer, August Ludwig 65, 67, 57, 159, 310, 319, 331, 341
229, 323 sense 6, 28, 43–48, 48, 50, 57–58,
August Ludwig Schlözers 60, 65–66, 68, 73, 125, 127–31,
Vorstellung seiner Universal- 143–44, 148, 152, 156, 159, 171,
Historie 229 177, 193, 237, 378. See also
Schmitt, Carl 294 exernal sense; feeling; hearing;
Schmitz, Reta 401 inner sense; seeing
Schneider, Jost 309 sensualism 49–51, 53, 58, 60–62,
school 3, 12, 16, 18, 20–21, 29–30, 118, 122, 124, 136, 392
65, 67, 82, 113, 128, 146, 163, Sepulveda, Lorenzo de 326
175, 181, 184, 190, 203, 220, Romances nuevamente sacados de
226, 261–62, 264, 291, 293, 325, historias antiguas de la cronica
337, 366, 373–74, 376–89, 394, de España compuestos 326
396, 398, 407 sermon 18–19, 22, 24, 29–30, 104,
Schopenhauer, Arthur 333 112, 159, 215, 219, 226, 248,
Schöpfungshieroglyphe 27 253, 255, 257–60, 262–63, 328,
Schöttgen, Christian 240 373, 375
Schubert, Gotthilf Heinrich 378, 394 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper,
Ansichten von der Nachtseite der Third Earl of 38, 167, 252
Naturwissenschaften 394 Shakespeare, William 25–26, 30, 68,
science 2, 6, 8, 10, 13, 17, 20–21, 142, 154, 162, 201, 203–4, 216,
24–25, 31, 44, 46–48, 50, 71, 73, 218, 221–22, 225–26, 306, 308,
76–78, 81–83, 101, 117, 119, 317, 383, 392, 394
123, 137–38, 141–43, 145, 147– Shukovskij, Vasilij Andrejevic 412
48, 150, 159, 166, 169, 171, 176, Simon, Richard 66
182, 184–86, 189–90, 203, 206– simplicity 35, 159, 278, 321, 333,
8, 215–16, 224, 229, 234, 247, 342
249, 252, 257, 261, 277, 279–80, Sismondi, Simonde de 408
486 ♦ INDEX
Sisyphus 373–74 277–79, 282, 285, 288–89, 291–

skepticism 4, 10, 46–47, 51, 102, 94, 311, 361, 373, 378, 385–86,
142, 182 388–89, 400–403, 408
Skinner, Quentin 279 Stein, Charlotte von 31, 36
slavery 104, 202, 257, 314 Steinbach, Erwin von 221
Slavic Renaissance 411, 413 Sterne, Laurence 24
Socrates 167–68, 170, 385 A Sentimental Journey 24
Solomon 31, 216, 235, 320–21 Stifter, Adalbert 398
Song of Songs 31, 216, 235, 320– Abdias 398
21 (see also under Herder, J. G.: Bunte Steine 398
Lieder der Liebe) Stock, Carl Friedrich 29
Sophocles 222 Stolpe, Heinz 340, 402
soul 4, 18–19, 22, 24, 28, 30, 35, Strasbourg 3, 24–25, 220–21, 224,
38, 47–52, 54–55, 60, 73, 78, 80, 306, 351, 374, 391–92
82, 101, 103, 108, 124–29, 131, Sturm und Drang 2, 5, 26, 142,
136, 143–44, 147, 151, 156, 159, 154, 203, 220, 226, 230–31, 236,
167, 170–71, 176, 183, 195, 251, 289, 306, 308, 310, 317, 319,
254–55, 259–60, 321, 331, 335, 342, 347, 391–92, 401
343, 355, 359, 361, 377, 383 style 12, 18, 21, 24, 33, 37, 70, 81,
space 43, 45–46, 49–50, 53–54, 58, 149, 156, 169, 207, 218–20, 222,
111, 122, 136, 255 225, 227–28, 230, 233, 236,
Spalding, Johann Joachim 21, 67, 314–15, 317–18, 321, 328–29,
99, 111, 219, 395 331–34, 336–38, 340–42, 344–
Die Bestimmung des Menschen 67, 45, 347, 384–85, 394–95
99, 111 subject 25, 43–53, 55–57, 59–61,
Spener, Philipp Jakob 285 69, 71, 118–19, 125, 144, 146,
Spinoza, Baruch 7, 27, 32–33, 49– 148, 151, 156, 165, 174, 180,
50, 53, 61–62, 66, 82, 148, 205– 220, 228, 231, 248–49, 255, 259,
6, 252, 285, 393, 409 264, 280, 282–83, 285, 287, 293,
spiritualization 52, 58 307, 309, 311, 315, 321, 353,
spontaneity 54, 149, 151, 161, 329 358, 360, 381, 384–85, 387, 393,
Sprache 3, 18–19, 25–26, 59, 77, 79, 402, 407, 414
96, 106, 119–24, 126–37, 148, subjective 44, 46 48, 50–51, 55, 61,
156–59, 169, 171, 175, 182, 197, 148, 220, 228, 307
199, 206, 216, 218, 236–39, 248, Sulzer, Johann Georg 229, 323
251, 283, 292, 309–12, 317–18, Suphan, Bernhard 306, 316, 325,
321–22, 324, 327, 336, 342, 397, 399–400, 403, 406
356–57, 360, 387, 392, 401, 409 Swift, Jonathan 38, 227
Stadelmann, Rudolf 65, 400 system 3, 5, 9–10, 12, 30, 32–33,
Staël-Holstein, Anna Louise 43–44, 47, 50, 62, 79, 82, 94, 97,
Germaine de 409 101–2, 106–7, 118, 123, 135,
De l’Allemagne 409 142, 148–49, 152, 154, 157, 161,
Stapfer, Philipp Albert 410 170, 182, 184, 191–92, 194, 196,
state (Staat) 8, 21, 24, 28, 167, 204–5, 218, 222, 224, 236, 247,
197–99, 203, 208, 216, 221, 231, 251–52, 254–55, 262–63, 278,
INDEX ♦ 487
system (continued) 277–80, 283, 285, 288, 311, 319–

293–94, 314, 357, 360, 378–79, 20, 328, 333, 335–37, 342, 353–
381, 385, 393 54, 359, 364–65, 376, 378, 399–
402, 404–5, 407–8, 410–11, 414
Taillandier, Saint-René 409 Thucydides 70
Tandel, Emile 409 time 5, 8, 13, 43, 45–46, 49–50, 53,
Tasso, Torquato 204, 383 54, 58, 69, 95, 111–12, 122, 136,
taste 20–21, 72, 145, 148–49, 153, 222, 237, 250–51, 253, 255
156, 160–61, 190, 195, 224, 231, Tolstoj, Lev Nikolaeevic 412
334, 360, 364, 404 War and Peace 412
tautology 98, 102–3, 205 totality 55, 66–68, 101, 155, 322
teacher 3, 9, 12, 18–19, 28, 30, 46, Trabant, Jürgen 11, 113, 117, 357,
102, 135, 167, 181, 204, 219, 392
226, 241, 261–62, 264, 281–82, tradition 6–7, 17–18, 32, 44, 47–48,
307, 334, 355, 365–66, 373, 50, 66, 82, 102, 105–6, 109, 111,
378–82, 384–89, 396 123–24, 130, 133, 145, 148, 151,
teleology 5, 8, 67, 99, 122 165, 167, 173, 175–76, 178, 181,
Teutscher Merkur. See Wieland 192–93, 195–97, 199–205, 216,
theism 239 219, 221–24, 234–37, 239–42,
theodicy 70, 83 247–55, 257, 260, 284, 286, 289,
theology 2–4, 6, 9, 11, 16–17, 23– 294, 307–8, 311, 317–18, 321,
24, 27–29, 31–32, 67, 69, 81, 99, 323, 325–26, 329, 333, 341, 383–
102, 105, 108–9, 118, 122, 148, 84, 392–94, 401–2, 407, 410, 414
166, 215, 227, 229, 233, 235–37, transcendentalism 9–10, 37, 56, 102,
241–42, 247–50, 253–56, 259, 136–38, 146–47, 151, 207, 337,
261, 264–65, 277, 280, 316, 321, 342, 405–7
324, 328, 331, 347, 351, 374, translation 31, 58, 108, 142, 161,
387, 393, 395–97, 399, 405–6, 170, 174, 179, 181, 191, 201,
408–9 216–17, 219, 229, 235–36, 286,
thinking 5, 7–8, 10–13, 15, 17, 20, 305–7, 311, 316, 318–21, 323–
22, 26–28, 33, 44, 50–51, 53, 58, 29, 331, 352, 392, 394, 396, 400,
61, 67, 72, 78, 82, 89, 93, 113, 404–10, 412–13
120, 130, 141–44, 146–47, 149– Trescho, Sebastian Friedrich 16, 20
50, 158, 162, 165, 168–70, 172– Briefe über die neueste Theologie 16
73, 178–79, 218, 221, 255, 281, triceps 175, 183–84, 319
294, 320, 331–32, 335, 337, 341, Trier 34
344–45, 351, 356–58, 364, 374, trinity 251, 253–55
386, 401 Tronchon, Henri 410
thought 1–2, 4, 12, 18, 23, 28, 33, Tschaadajev, Pjotr 413
43, 45, 49–52, 58–62, 69, 76, 81, typography 341, 344–47
83, 93–94, 101, 107, 113, 118–
21, 123–25, 127–30, 132, 134, ugliness 23, 226
136–37, 144–45, 152, 169–71, Uhland, Ludwig 392
177–78, 183–85, 193, 202, 218, Alte hoch- und niederdeutsche
247–48, 250, 252–56, 262, 264, Volkslieder 392
488 ♦ INDEX
Unger, Rudolf 400 388–89, 393, 396, 398, 400, 403,

United States of America 190, 198, 410, 414
278, 387, 405, 407 Weinrich, Friedrich 401
Urbild 30 Wekhrlin, Wilhelm Ludwig 393
utopia 72, 113, 134–35, 203, 206, Hyperboreische Briefe 393
280, 284–87, 293, 385 Wellhausen, Julius 396
Uz, Johann Peter 383 Weltliteratur 200, 203, 318
Wette, Wilhelm Martin Leberecht
variety 68, 77, 80, 97–98, 100, 104, de 396, 406
111, 122, 132, 201, 203, 215, Whitman, Walt 407
240, 247, 264, 283, 352, 415 Wieland, Christoph Martin 3, 29–
Vico, Giambattista (Giovanni 30, 227, 229
Battista) 117–18, 127, 165, 178, Der Teutsche Merkur 229, 315
353, 395 Wiese, Benno von 401–2
Scienza nuova (Principi di una Wilhelm, Gustav 398
scienza nuova d’intorno alla Wilhelm (count). See Schaumburg-
commune natura delle Lippe
nazioni ) 117, 178 Willamovius, Christian Reinhold 16
Villers, Charles 408–10 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 23,
Essai sur l’esprit et l’influence de la 66–67, 70, 95, 145, 152, 194,
réformation de Luther 408 202, 219–20, 383
virtue 23, 74, 218, 242, 248, 257, Gedanken über die Nachahmung
281, 287–91, 354, 359–61, 385– der griechischen Werke 152
87 Geschichte der Kunst des
Volk 2, 5, 10, 29, 93, 98, 133, 160, Altertums 220
165, 169–70, 173, 178, 195–99, Windfuhr, Manfred 397
203, 222, 238, 278, 280, 283, Wisbert, Rainer 113, 377, 380, 384
292–93, 322–24, 343. See also Wittgenstein, Ludwig 47, 118, 138
folk; people Wolff, Caspar Friedrich 76, 207
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) 27, Wolff, Christian 9–10, 44–45, 76,
67, 122, 194 102, 165, 174–76, 179, 183, 333,
Essais sur les mœurs 67 336, 346
Philosophie de l’histoire 67, 122 Philosophia practica
Vormärz 397–98 universalis 174
Vorurteil 38, 197. See also prejudice world history 11, 34, 112, 152, 229,
290, 339, 397
Walch, J. G. 192 world literature 11, 189, 201, 203–
Philosophisches Lexicon 192 4, 208, 329
Warburton, William 165
Weimar 3–6, 12, 29–31, 34–36, 38, Zammito, John 11, 65, 394
95, 161, 181, 200, 203–4, 224, Zaremba, Michael 18, 23, 27, 30,
229, 261–64, 277, 279, 291, 306– 37, 389
7, 312, 317, 351–52, 367, 373– Zedler, Johann Heinrich 192
76, 378–79, 381, 383, 385–86, Universal-Lexicon 192
Zeus 168
INDEX ♦ 489
Zimmermann, Johann Georg 197,

221
Vom Nationalstolz 221
Zinzendorf, Nikolaus Ludwig
von 285
Zippert, Thomas 28–29
Zoroaster 235
Zwingli, Huldreich 287

(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Hans Adler, Wulf Koepke - A Companion To The Works of Johann Gottfried Herder-Boydell & Brewer (2009)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Hans Adler, Wulf Koepke - A Companion To The Works of Johann Gottfried Herder-Boydell & Brewer (2009)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

A Companion to the Works of Johann Gottfried Herder

Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture

Camden House Companion Volumes

The Camden House Companions provide well-informed and up-

Rochester, New York

All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation,

First published 2009

Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A companion to the works of Johann Gottfried Herder / edited by Hans

This publication is printed on acid-free paper.

1: Herder’s Life and Works 15

3: Herder and Historical Metanarrative: What’s

4: Herder’s Concept of Humanität 93

5: Herder and Language 117

6: Herder’s Aesthetics and Poetics 141

7: Myth, Mythology, New Mythology 165

8: Particular Universals: Herder on National Literature,

9: Herder’s Views on the Germans and Their Future Literature 215

10: Herder’s Biblical Studies 233

11: Herder’s Theology 247

12: Herder and Politics 277

13: Herder’s Poetic Works, His Translations, and His

14: Herder’s Style 331

15: Herder as Critical Contemporary 351

16: Herder in Office: His Duties as Superintendent of Schools 373

17: Herder’s Reception and Influence 391

Notes on the Contributors 459

Editions of Herder’s Works, including

BBH Johann Gottfried Herder. Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität.

FA Johann Gottfried Herder. Werke in zehn Bänden. 10 vols. in 11

HB Johann Gotttfried Herder. Briefe. Gesamtausgabe 1763–1803. Ed.

HN Der handschriftliche Nachlass Johann Gottfried Herders. Katalog im

HW Johann Gottfried Herder. Werke. 3 vols. in 4 books. Ed. Wolfgang

OWH Johann Gottfried Herder. On World History: An Anthology. Ed.

PhW Johann Gottfried Herder. Philosophical Writings. Trans. and ed.

SEW Johann Gottfried Herder. Selected Early Works, 1764–1767.

SWS Johann Gottfried Herder. Sämmtliche Werke. 33 vols. Ed. Bernhard

Single Works by Herder

AkB Ahndung künftiger Bestimmung

ÄU Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts

BD Von Baumgartens Denkart

BDF Über Bild, Dichtung und Fabel

BdV Blätter der Vorzeit

DAK Von deutscher Art und Kunst

DR Dithyrambische Rhapsodie über die Rhapsodie in kabbalistischer Prose

EE Vom Erkennen und Empfinden

EP Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie

F1 [Fragmente 1] Über die neuere deutsche Literatur. Erste Sammlung

F2 [Fragmente 2] Über die neuere deutsche Literatur. Zwote Sammlung

F3 [Fragmente 3] Über die neuere deutsche Literatur. Dritte Sammlung

Hum Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität

Ideen Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit

Journal Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769

LL Lieder der Liebe

Ode [Von der Ode]

P Paramythien. Dichtungen aus der griechischen Fabel

STh Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend

US Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache

VüS Versuch über das Sein

DW Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Dichtung und Wahrheit.

DWb Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. Deutsches Wörterbuch. 33 vols. [1854–

KrV Immanuel Kant. Kritik der reinen Vernunft.