Johann Gottfried Herder - Biography

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744 – 1803) was born in Mohrungen, East Prussia, into a middle-class family, spent much of his life as a Lutheran Pastor. Despite this devotion it was not Luther who dominated young Herder’s intellectual development, but two philosophers encountered during his student days in Konigsberg - Immanuel Kant and Johann Georg Hamann. Certainly, these two thinkers shared some common ground, most notably their emphasis of, and belief in individual emancipation, their faith in the essential goodness of human nature, and their hatred of both aristocratic privilege and superstition, nonetheless, the differences placed them into conflict, if not outright antagonism. The resolution of this opposition, or more appropriately, its sublation, was the tension in the heart of Herder’s work.

This drive towards a synthesis between Kantian sovereign reason, and Hamannian emphasis on imagination, the discontents of civilization and the value of local and ethnic identity, inscribed an inevitable instability into Herder’s thought. On the other hand, this attempted synthesis made Herder a central figure for both Romanticism and German Idealism. More specifically, it was his historicism, metaphysics of vitalist pantheism, and theory of the mind-body relationship that made him a major influence on the giants of German thought who followed, including the great Idealists, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and the last renaissance man himself, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

It is fair to condense Herder’s work as an attempt to explain the cultural realm through a historical and naturalistic, and yet non-reductivistic philosophy. He insisted that the cultural sphere, including language, mind, history and religion, could be and must be explained in a holistic and internal manner, as well as a mechanistic and external one. Herder’s thought can be divided into five primary categories: theory of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of history, metaphysics, and political and social thought.

In 1770, in response to a competition announced by the Berlin Academy of Science, Herder wrote On the Origin of Language, a short essay where he attempted to ground the origins of language in naturalism. His argument consisted of two main theses: first, reason alone is sufficient to create language, and second, the use of reason is both natural and necessary, as it is the means by which men gather information and ability for survival. Reason’s function is to organize and control experience. This function, which Herder terms reflection, involves a self-consciousness of our sensations and experience, through identification and mnemonics. Reflection functions on the basis of signs, and the use of signs is basis of language. Herder defends his second thesis by arguing that since men, unlike animals, lack instincts, which determine their behavior, they must learn to survive. The transmission of this information, from generation to generation, is accomplished most effectively through language. Herder’s naturalism, however, is distinguished from both Jean Jacques Rousseau and Condillac, whom Herder accuses of reductivism. More specifically, Herder claims that while Jean Jacques Rousseau reduces human reason to animal nature, Condillac assumes it without an account of its origin. For Herder, it is precisely human rationality, an outgrowth of nature, that is responsible for the origin of language.

Herder’s resolution of the mind-body problem is also based on his naturalist non-reductivist philosophy. Dualism and materialism, the two predominant articulations of the problem are both rejected by Herder, the former on account of positing a mysterious interaction between mind and body, and the latter on account of its reduction of mind to chains of stimulus-response mechanism, what we would today call behaviorism. The essential thesis in On the Knowledge and Sensation of the Human Soul (1774), is that mind and body are not qualitatively different, but merely different degrees of organization and development of a single ‘power’. The essence of which is self-organizing and self-generating activity, which evolves from simpler to more complex forms of structure and organization. The basis of Herder’s interrogation of the common fundamental premise of both dualism and materialism, namely the belief that matter consists only in extension, is founded on then recent scientific discoveries, such as those in the fields of electricity and magnetism, which purported that the essence of matter is not extension but force, or power. As with much of Herder’s though, what we can call the abstract or conceptual register is always connected to the concrete or physical.

In Another philosophy of History of Humanity (1774), On the Difference in taste and Thinking among Human Beings (1765-1768), and in the unfinished Ideas for a Philosophy of History of Humanity, Herder develops the most influential aspect of his thought, namely, his philosophy of history. Throughout the edifice Herder struggles to walk the tight line between ethnocentrism and relativism. Two basic methodological principles underlie his argument: one, accurate understanding of any action or creation is possible only from within its immanent historical context, and two, it is necessary to understand a contextualized action or creation together with its intention, and not merely with external causes and pressures, or some universal rules. Herder reveals his debt to Immanuel Kant when he repeatedly reiterates that that which appears eternal and given is in reality a product of history. With the second methodical principle Herder stresses the need for and possibility of a non-reductivist explanation.

Herder’s naturalism, or historicism, critiques enlightenment historiograhers, and accuses them of ethnocentrism. This accusation, however, sound as it may be, risks falling into an inescapable relativism. Herder’s aim was to both deny enthnocentrism and affirm some universal values in history. The instability of such a thesis was not lost on Herder, who attempted to resolve it by arguing that each culture has a value appropriate to its stage of development. This solution, however, only delays his confrontation with ethnocentrism, since claiming that the value of a practice is conditional on its stage of development implies a teleological dimension, and thereby a particular form of ethnocentrism. Analogous to his grounding of human rationality in nature, Herder claims that culture too is merely a continuous development of nature, different in degree, not quality.

The most important, and undoubtedly influential aspect of Herder’s philosophy of history is the role and power he defines for anthropology. Man is essentially plastic, herder thought, and therefore, he is completely shaped by society. This intimate and determinate relationship between man and his surrounding was prominent since the empiricists. However, it is only with philosophers such a Herder, that this thesis begins to attain its full extension, namely, it is not only what men see and think that is determined by their historical horizon, but also how they see and how they think.

As early as 1774, Herder was anxious to prove a single goal of world history, all the while maintaining a distinction with teleology and ethnocentrism. In his later work he begins to refer to it as ‘humanity’, Herder’s ideal of human ability. The concept, however, is far too ambiguous to function as anything but a stopgap against relativism.

Herder’s account of history was as controversial as it was influential; this division is made clear in Kant’s response alone. Kant responded harshly to Herder’s naturalism, which both naturalized rationality and threatened the phenomena-noumena dualism, on the other hand, Herder’s though about the validity and limits of an organic concept of nature undoubtedly influenced Kant’s third critique, The Critique of Judgment (1790).

Herder’s contribution to metaphysics centers on his attempted rehabilitation of Benedict Baruch Spinoza, from Jacobi’s argument, in Letters to Spinoza (1786), that Spinozism necessarily ends in fatalism and atheism. Herder came to Benedict Baruch Spinoza's defense, arguing that although Jacobi is right to read Benedict Baruch Spinoza as arguing for a scientific naturalism, this does not mean that Spinozism ends in fatalism and atheism. In God, some Conversations (1787), Herder argues that Jacobi’s conclusion is the result of a misreading of Benedict Baruch Spinoza, namely, Jacobi’s projection of God as something personal and supernatural into Benedict Baruch Spinoza's concept of God, which for Benedict Baruch Spinoza is nothing but the whole of nature. Herder claimed, in his own name, and in Benedict Baruch Spinoza's, that God should be conceptualized as something immanent and impersonal, not transcendent and personal, and that this shift alone negates the consequence of atheism. Moreover, a reconceptualization of freedom, from some mysterious ability to act against nature, to freedom as the ability to act according to the necessity of our own nature alone, both makes the concept meaningful, and dissolves the threat of fatalism. For Herder, this proper reading of Benedict Baruch Spinoza's concepts of God and freedom, not only refutes the claim that Spinozism undermines morality and religion, but in fact makes Benedict Baruch Spinoza into a philosopher who reconciles religion and morality with science.

This reading of Benedict Baruch Spinoza was certainly not orthodox, as Benedict Baruch Spinoza openly denied any teleology, and explained his dynamic view in purely mechanical terms. Consequently, Herder’s Spinozism is what can be called vitalistic pantheism. Herder’s theory would soon be placed in resolute antagonism by the work of Arthur Schopenhauer, and depending on the reading, with the German Idealists.

The social and political thoughts of Herder are in no way systematic, rather, they consist of a collection of shorter writings or passages from his historical works. The central claims of his thought are the following: Herder’s anarchism, and hence the claim that the state’s highest aim is to become superfluous and disappear; that the foundation of government and political association should be the national spirit, i.e. the culture of the people; that man is not an animal in need of a master, but rather that the man in need of a master is an animal; and finally, that it is the government’s obligation to provide welfare and education for the people, as well as allow and be determined by a broad franchise. In short, we can say that Herder’s political thoughts would make him In short, we can say that Herder’s political thoughts would make him a populist and a democrat.