Johann Gottfried Herder

Herder, Johann Gottfried (1744–1803)

Herder was a central figure in the German intellectual renaissance of the late eighteenth century. His achievement spanned virtually every domain of philosophy, and his influence, especially upon Romanticism and German idealism, was immense. In social and political philosophy he played a prominent role in the development of historicism and nationalism. In metaphysics he developed the doctrine of vitalist pantheism, which later became important for Goethe, Schelling and Hegel. In the philosophy of mind he formulated an organic theory of the mind-body relationship, which was crucial for Schelling and Hegel. And in aesthetics he was among the first to defend the value of ethnic poetry and the need for the internal and historical understanding of a text.

Herder’s main aim was to extend the powers of naturalistic explanation to the realm of culture, so that characteristic human activities, such as art, religion, law and language, could be included within the scientific worldview. But he also wanted to avoid reductivistic forms of explanation that viewed such activities as nothing more than matter-in-motion or stimulus-response mechanisms. He insisted that explanation in the cultural sphere had to be holistic and internal as well as mechanical and external. An action had to be understood in its historical context and according to the intention of the agent and not simply as another instance of a causal regularity between events. Herder’s programme, then, was to develop naturalistic yet non-reductivistic explanations for the realm of culture. He attempted to realize this programme in many spheres, especially language, history, religion and the mind.

1 Intellectual ideals and background

Born into a middle-class family in Mohrungen, East Prussia, Herder spent most of his life as a Lutheran pastor in the provincial cities of Riga, Bueckeburg and Weimar. Herder’s intellectual development was dominated by one central fact: during his formative university years in Königsberg from 1762 to 1764, he was the student of both Kant and Hamann. To the same degree, they were a profound influence upon him. But such a rich legacy also proved problematic, for Kant and Hamann represented opposing intellectual movements. While Kant was a champion of the Aufklärung, the German Enlightenment, Hamann was a founder of the Sturm und Drang (lit.: Storm and Stress), the German literary movement of the 1760s and 1770s that proclaimed personal freedom and glamorized revolt. Although these movements had some common values – individual emancipation, the essential goodness of human nature, contempt for aristocratic privilege and clerical prejudice, hatred of superstition and intolerance – they also had some conflicting ones. The Aufklärung stressed the sovereignty of reason, the value of the arts and sciences, and the virtues of cosmopolitanism; the Sturm und Drang emphasized the rights of feeling and imagination, the problems of civilization, and the value of local and ethnic identity. Herder struggled to reconcile these opposing ideals. His philosophy could be described as a rich synthesis – or unstable mixture – of these antithetical movements. We might best describe Herder with oxymorons: a turbulent Aufklärer, a rational Stürmer und Dränger.

What, more specifically, did Herder learn from Kant? All his life Herder adhered to the young Kant’s conception of the aim and method of philosophy: its purpose is to develop intellectual autonomy; and its method should be ‘analytic’, beginning from experience and ascending to general principles. In his later works Herder applied these early Kantian ideals –much to the chagrin of the mature Kant, who regarded them as a relapse into metaphysical dogmatism. Of all Kant’s works Herder was most influenced by the Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels (Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens) (1755). This work was important for Herder for two reasons: (1) its idea of a natural history, that the apparently eternal and static structure of nature is really the product of historical development; (2) its suggestion that human beings are part of nature and also have a natural history. Herder’s historicism arose from his application of Kant’s idea of natural history to the social, religious and historical spheres.

What, more precisely, did Hamann teach Herder? There were many influential ideas: the value of cultural diversity, the vitality of folk poetry, the power of the passions, the importance of language for reason and of custom for language, and the need to examine the social and historical context of reason. Hamann also impressed upon Herder the limitations of the Aufklärung: that religious experience cannot be criticized by reason, that the mind-body relationship is inexplicable by mechanism, and that human beings are indivisible wholes not neatly analysed into faculties.

The guiding ideal behind Herder’s intellectual development was a synthesis of Kant and Hamann. Throughout his career Herder’s aim was to develop naturalistic and historical explanations for characteristic human activities, such as art, religion, language, law and morality. He wanted to extend the powers of natural explanation, so that all forms of humanity would be brought within the scientific worldview. In this regard he revealed himself as a loyal follower of Kant and the Allgemeine Naturgeschichte. Yet there was something unique about Herder’s programme that broke from the heritage of Kant and the Aufklärung. Herder insisted that naturalistic explanations do not reduce human activities to matter-in-motion or stimulus-response mechanisms. His critique of mechanism, and his demand for a more holistic and internal form of understanding, betrays the influence of Hamann. Herder’s programme for naturalistic yet non-reductivistic explanation attempted to do justice to the legacy of both Kant and Hamann. We shall now see how Herder attempted to fulfil this programme in virtually every field of philosophy.

2 Theory of language

In 1769 the Berlin Academy of Sciences announced a prize competition for the best essay on the questions ‘If human beings were left with their natural faculties, would they be able to invent language? And, if so, by what means could they invent it?’ Competitors were invited to disagree with a late member of the Academy, J.P. Süssmilch, who argued that a perfect and complete language could have only a divine origin. This quaint question raised an important and broader issue: to what extent is reason, which depends on language, explicable according to natural laws? Should human intelligence be brought within the scientific worldview?

Inspired by the question, Herder wrote a short tract to answer it in December 1770, Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache (On the Origin of Language). This marks the starting point of his philosophical programme, the attempt to provide naturalistic yet non-reductivistic explanations of characteristic human activities. Herder takes a firm stand on behalf of naturalism, dismissing Süssmilch’s theory as so much nonsense. He puts forward two specific theses, each of which is necessary to prove his naturalism. (1) Human reason is sufficient to create language. Since, however, reason itself might have a supernatural or divine origin, he adds a second thesis. 2) The use of reason is natural and necessary because it is the means by which human beings acquire the skills and information necessary for survival. Hence if reason is sufficient to create language, and if its use is natural, then the creation of language will be natural too.

To defend his first thesis, Herder argues that the function of reason is to direct, control and organize our experience. Such a function involves what he calls ‘reflection’ (Besonnenheit), the capacity to be selfconscious of our sensations by identifying or remembering them. We can exercise this capacity only by giving signs to specific features of experience; only through the use of signs are we able to identify, remember and control our sensations. In employing signs, though, we have already created language.

To support his second thesis Herder develops a proto-Darwinian account of why reason, and indeed language, is necessary for survival. Since men, unlike animals and insects, do not have instincts to guide them, they must learn how to survive. If each new generation is not to be exposed to the same dangers and perils as past ones, its ancestors must teach them the skills and facts necessary for survival. The most effective means of doing so is, of course, language.

The aim of Herder’s tract is not simply to develop a naturalistic theory of the origin of language. That had been done before by such eminent thinkers as Rousseau and Condillac. Herder’s specific aim is to develop a naturalism that is not reductivist. He rejects the theories of Rousseau and Condillac precisely because they were reductivist, failing to explain the characteristic functions of human reason. In his second Discours (1755) Rousseau argued that language originates with the expression of feeling; the first words were cries or ejaculations (see Rousseau, J.-J. §2). In his Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines (1746) Condillac maintained that language begins with convention, the agreement between speakers about the referents of sounds (see Condillac, É.B. De §2). The purpose of language is to communicate; but people can do this only by agreeing about the meaning of sounds. Herder rejects Rousseau’s theory because it treats human beings as if they were animals, ignoring what is most distinctive about human language, its cognitive dimension. He dismisses Condillac’s theory for its circularity: primitive people cannot make conventions unless they already have a sophisticated concept of language. Both theories are inadequate because they do not consider the characteristic nature of man – reason. Either they reduce reason to man’s animal nature (Rousseau) or they assume it without explaining it (Condillac). Yet it is human rationality, Herder contends, that holds the key to the origin of language. Since men alone possess rationality, and since they also are unique in having language, we must seek its origin in their characteristic nature. That, Herder says, is the guiding assumption behind his whole investigation.

3 Philosophy of mind

In 1774 Herder wrote another treatise for an academic prize, his Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele (On the Knowledge and Sensation of the Human Soul), which was eventually published in 1778. He again attempted to answer a question posed by the Academy of Sciences: ‘What is the nature of, and relationship between, the two basic faculties of the soul, knowledge and sensation?’ This question too raised a wider problem: the relationship between the mind (the source of knowledge) and the body (the source of sensation).

Herder began by criticizing some of the current theories about the mind-body relationship. In the late eighteenth century these usually took two forms: they were dualistic, making the mind into a special substance distinct from the body, or materialistic, explaining the mind as if it were a complicated machine. Herder rejects dualism because it makes the interaction of mind and body mysterious (see Dualism); and he dismisses materialism since it reduces the mind down to a mere stimulus-response mechanism (see Materialism in the philosophy of mind). What is required, he contends, is a theory that avoids both these pitfalls. It should remove the mystery of mind-body interaction while not reducing one to the other. In other words, it must be naturalistic yet non-reductivist. The main task of his tract is to sketch just such a theory.

The central thesis of Herder’s organic or vitalist theory is that the mind and body are not heterogeneous substances, nor more or less complicated machines. Rather, they are simply different degrees of organization and development of a single living power. The essence of power consists in self-generating and self-organizing activity, which gradually develops from lower to higher forms of organization and structure. The difference in mind and body is therefore not in kind but only in degree: the mind is organized and developed, the body is amorphous and inchoate, power. Such a theory easily explains interaction since mind and body are both aspects of a single force; but it also does not reduce one to the other because they are different degrees of organization and development.

Herder develops his theory by questioning the fundamental premise behind both dualism and materialism: that matter consists in extension alone. It was this assumption that forced the dualist to separate the mind from the body and that compelled the materialist to reduce it to a machine. If, however, we reject this assumption, then we escape the whole dilemma between materialism and dualism. According to Herder, the latest work in the natural sciences permits us to do just this. The recent discoveries of electricity and magnetism, the phenomenon of irritability investigated by Albrecht von Haller, the concept of vis viva developed by Hermann von Boerhaave, and the critique of preformation by Thomas Needham and P.L. Maupertuis, all seem to show that the essence of matter is not extension but force, power or energy. In general, Herder stressed the importance of empirical research for the philosophy of mind. No psychology could succeed, he stressed, unless it followed physiology at every step.

4 Philosophy of history

The most influential aspect of Herder’s thought was his philosophy of history, which laid the foundation for much of the historicism of the nineteenth century. He developed his philosophy of history in two main works, Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Another Philosophy of History of Humanity) (1774) and Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas for a Philosophy of History of Humanity) (1784–91).

Crucial for the development of Herder’s historical thought was his ‘genetic method’, which he first sketched in his Fragmente (1767). This was originally conceived as a method for the proper understanding of a work of literature; but Herder eventually extended it to all human actions and creations. This method consists in two basic principles. (1) To understand an action or creation, it should be seen within its historical context, as the product of a specific time and place. (2) It is necessary to understand the action or creation from within, according to the intention of the agent or creator, and not merely from without, according to its external causes or some purported universal rules. With the first guideline Herder attempted to satisfy the demand for natural explanation; he was applying the general lesson he had learned from Kant’s Allgemeine Naturgeschichte, that what appears given and eternal is really the product of history. With the second guideline he stressed the need for non-reductive explanation. Here Herder’s immediate target was those literary critics who attempted to evaluate a work according to their own standards without attempting to grasp the purpose of the author.

In his Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte Herder criticized the historiography of the Aufklärung and stressed the importance of an internal understanding of the past. The historians of the Aufklärung, he claimed, were guilty of ethnocentrism. They judged the past and alien cultures in the light of their own, as if the values of their age are universal and eternal and the very end of history itself. They failed to judge each epoch in its own terms, according to its own values and ideals. If the historian is to comprehend an alien culture or epoch, then he must suspend his preconceptions and feel himself into the standpoints of the agents themselves. In this regard Herder was one of the first to stress the need for a more sympathetic understanding of the Middle Ages, which had been dismissed as an age of darkness, superstition and fanaticism.

Herder’s critique of Enlightenment historiography raises the question whether he is admitting, or even advocating, relativism. In several places of his tract he openly states that the values of different cultures are incommensurable, and that each culture is valid in its own terms. Indeed, he argues that the apparently universal and eternal standards of the Aufklärung are really only invalid generalizations from their own age.

Nevertheless, despite his flirtations with cultural relativity, Herder was anxious to claim that there are some universal values in history. In an early fragment – Von der Verschiedenheit des Geschmacks und der Denkart unter den Menschen (On the Difference in Taste and Thinking among Human Beings) (c.1765–8) – he reveals a deep concern to refute sceptical arguments for cultural relativism. In the 1774 tract, he expressly maintains that his aim is to show how, amid all the diversity of cultures, there is still ‘progress in a higher sense’ and how ‘humanity still remains humanity’. Herder’s aim, then, was to find some middle path between ethnocentrism and relativism. A closer reading of the 1774 tract indeed shows that Herder stresses the individual worth of each culture not because all values are relative but because each has the value appropriate to humanity at that stage of its development. In other words, cultures have sui generis values because what is appropriate for a lower stage of development is not so for a higher, just as what is good for a child is not so for an adult. This is not relativism but the very opposite: the belief that all cultures can be graded on a scale of progress and development. There remains in Herder’s philosophy of history, then, a profound teleological dimension, an abiding belief in progress and providence. In the 1774 tract, however, Herder is reluctant to identify the goal of history. Such hesitation is understandable, given that any specific definition invites ethnocentrism.

Herder’s main work in the philosophy of history is his massive, but still incomplete Ideen, which appeared in instalments from 1784 to 1791. It consists in four parts. The first two discuss natural history, human anatomy and anthropology. Only in the third part does Herder begin to treat recorded history, whose course is followed until the Roman Empire. The fourth part continues the history to 1500 AD. The fifth part, which was to conclude with the present age, was never written. Conceived on a grand scale, the Ideen attempts to examine all of world history, giving equal weight to the cultures of Egypt, China, India and Greece, and the place of humanity within the cosmos.

The Ideen was the crowning work of Herder’s philosophical programme. Its aim was to bring human history within the naturalistic worldview. Herder wanted to see history as part of the cosmos as a whole, and to formulate its natural laws. But his naturalism was, again, non-reductivist. He conceived the laws of historical development in organic rather than mechanical terms. For Herder, to explain a culture naturalistically meant to see it as an organism, having a purpose and stages of growth.

The first books of the Ideen begin with a grand survey of the whole order of nature. Herder locates the place of the earth in the solar system, then the place of man on earth. Following his dynamic view of matter, he sees all of nature as a hierarchy, as so many stages of organization and development of living force. At the summit is man, the culmination of all the powers of nature. It is a central claim of the Ideen that there is no distinction between the realms of culture and nature. A culture is portrayed as a continuous development from nature, a unique adaption to specific natural circumstances, such as terrain and climate. Human rationality is also placed within this naturalistic framework. It is seen as the tool by which man learns the skills and information necessary for survival.

The foundation of Herder’s concept of history is his anthropology, which he sketches in the first two parts. Herder stresses that the characteristic feature of mankind is plasticity, the ability to adapt to the most diverse circumstances. While an insect or animal can live in only a specific climate and terrain, mankind can live almost anywhere upon earth. This plasticity also means that a person is shaped by society. Reason, feeling and volition are determined by education, by assimilating a cultural tradition. With this anthropology, Herder broke with the assumptions of a universal human nature, which were so endemic within the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Although he stresses human plasticity, the formative role of culture and nature in shaping our identity and rationality, Herder again refuses to draw relativistic conclusions. As in the 1774 tract, he maintains that there is a single goal to world history, which each culture attempts to realise in its unique way. Now, however, he is more explicit about the nature of this goal. It is what he calls ‘humanity’ (Humanität). This is Herder’s ideal of human perfection, the realization of all characteristic powers, the development of reason, feeling and will into a harmonious whole. Such a vague concept was, however, a mere stopgap against relativism. Although he tries to avoid it, Herder faces the dilemma of relativism or ethnocentrism. If he defines his ideal more specifically, he invites the danger of ethnocentrism; but if he leaves it general and abstract, different cultures can realise it in incompatible ways.

The reception of the Ideen was marked by controversy. The first two parts were harshly reviewed by Kant, who saw his erstwhile pupil as a rival. Kant felt that Herder had refused to learn the main lessons of his new critical philosophy. He accused Herder of indulging in metaphysics, for there cannot be any empirical verification for the concept of an organic power. He also took strong exception to Herder’s naturalistic conception of rationality, which threatened the noumenal/phenomenal dualism of the critical philosophy. Herder was not without his supporters, however, who wrote counter-reviews to Kant. He was defended by K.L. Reinhold, who later became a prominent spokesman for Kant, and Georg Forster, the German explorer and naturalist. This debate about the limits and validity of an organic concept of nature proved to be an important stimulus for Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgment) (1790).