Johann Gottfried Herder
Every people and every age has its own language, culture and worth, and none should be judged by the standards of another.
Placement
Language, culture and history: every epoch and every people has its own value.
Key ideas
- Origin of language
- Humanity
- Cultural diversity
Teachers: Immanuel Kant
Influence
Influenced by 3
Baruch de Spinoza
influenced by ✓
In God: Some Conversations (1787) Herder defended Spinoza against Jacobi’s charge of atheism, reinterpreting his substance as the primal force active in all things. J. G. Herder, Gott. Einige Gespräche (1787); SEP “Johann Gottfried von Herder”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Baruch de Spinoza › 1632–1677
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
influenced by ✓
Herder took over Leibniz’s concept of living force and his doctrine of obscure perceptions, on which On the Cognition and Sensation of the Human Soul (1778) builds. J. G. Herder, Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele (1778); SEP “Johann Gottfried von Herder”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz › 1646–1716
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
influenced by
In his Journal of My Voyage in 1769 Herder sketched Rousseauian plans of education, and his Treatise on the Origin of Language (1772) argued with Rousseau’s Second Discourse. J. G. Herder, Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769 (publ. 1846); Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache (1772); SEP “Johann Gottfried von Herder”
Evidence: AI draft
Jean-Jacques Rousseau › 1712–1778
Influenced 4
Friedrich Schlegel
influenced
Schlegel reviewed the seventh and eighth collections of Herder’s Letters for the Advancement of Humanity (1796), engaging with Herder’s historical view of ancient and modern poetry. F. Schlegel, review of J. G. Herder, Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität, seventh and eighth collections (1796), in Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe II; SEP “Friedrich Schlegel”
Evidence: AI draft
Friedrich Schlegel › 1772–1829
Ernst Cassirer
influenced
Cassirer read Herder’s theory of the origin of language from reflection (Besonnenheit) as a forerunner of his philosophy of symbolic forms (Philosophie der symbolischen Formen I, 1923). E. Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen I: Die Sprache (1923); Die Philosophie der Aufklärung (1932); J. G. Herder, Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache (1772); SEP “Ernst Cassirer”
Evidence: AI draft
Ernst Cassirer › 1874–1945
Isaiah Berlin
influenced
Berlin read Herder as a founder of cultural pluralism and expressionism, for whom each culture has its own centre of gravity (Vico and Herder, 1976). I. Berlin, Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas (1976); Three Critics of the Enlightenment (2000)
Evidence: AI draft
Isaiah Berlin › 1909–1997
Charles Taylor
influenced
Taylor took from Herder the expressive-constitutive view of language, setting a ‘Hamann-Herder-Humboldt’ theory against designative theories of meaning (The Language Animal, 2016). C. Taylor, The Language Animal (2016); “The Importance of Herder”, in E. and A. Margalit (eds.), Isaiah Berlin: A Celebration (1991)
Evidence: AI draft
Charles Taylor › b. 1931
Criticism
Criticizes 1
Immanuel Kant studied with
studied with ✓
Herder studied at Königsberg from 1762 to 1764 and attended Kant’s lectures, among them those on metaphysics and moral philosophy; Kant gave him special privileges, and Herder’s notes on the metaphysics and ethics lectures are printed in the Academy edition. SEP “Johann Gottfried von Herder”; Kant, Gesammelte Schriften (Akademie-Ausgabe), vols. 27–28 (Herder’s lecture notes)
Evidence: AI draft
criticised
Herder rejected dividing humanity into races, seeing only shades of one species (Ideas II, 1785), and in his Metacritique (1799) attacked Kant’s split of sensibility and understanding. J. G. Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit II (1785), book 7, ch. 1; Verstand und Erfahrung. Eine Metakritik zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1799); SEP “Johann Gottfried von Herder”
Evidence: AI draft
Immanuel Kant › 1724–1804
Works
Language is a human invention arising from reflection.
There is no reason without language – against Kant's pure forms.
Position
Herder argued that reason is never pure: it lives in language, and language grows out of the life of a people. Against the idea of a divine origin of speech he showed that humans create language from their own reflective awareness. Each culture, he held, has its own centre of gravity and must be understood from within rather than measured against a single standard such as Enlightenment Paris. History thus becomes a plural process of growth aimed at “humanity”. These ideas shaped Romanticism, historicism and hermeneutics, and anticipated modern linguistics and anthropology – though his notion of a people’s spirit was later misused by nationalists.
Life & context
Born in Mohrungen in East Prussia, Herder studied in Königsberg, where he heard Kant and befriended Johann Georg Hamann. After years as a preacher and teacher in Riga and a formative meeting with the young Goethe in Strasbourg, he spent most of his life in Weimar as the leading churchman of the duchy, at the heart of German classicism.
Further main works
- This Too a Philosophy of History for the Formation of Humanity (1774)
- Ideas for the Philosophy of History of Humanity (1784–1791)
- Letters for the Advancement of Humanity (1793–1797)
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