Herder’s Philosophy

351 Pages·2018·2.59 MB·English

by  Michael N. Forster

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/20/2018, SPi
Herder’s Philosophy
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/20/2018, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/20/2018, SPi
Herder’s Philosophy
Michael N. Forster
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/20/2018, SPi
3
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© Michael N. Forster 2018
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First Edition published in 2018
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018934543
ISBN 978–0–19–958836–7
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For Paola
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/20/2018, SPi
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Editions xiii
Introduction 1
Intellectual Life 2
Philosophical Style 5
General Program in Philosophy 10
1. Philosophy of Language 16
The Origin of Language 16
Three Fundamental Principles 18
Defending the First Two Principles 37
Defending the Third Principle 65
Some Further Doctrines 67
2. Hermeneutics 74
Introductory Remarks 74
An Overview 75
Influence 86
Some Advantages of Herder’s Theory 86
Genre 88
Einfühlung 100
The Inferiority of Gadamer’s Hermeneutics 110
Conclusion 116
3. Theory of Translation 117
Overview 117
Influence 134
Herder and Schleiermacher 135
4. Philosophical Contributions to the Birth of Linguistics and Anthropology 138
Contributions to the Birth of Linguistics 138
Contributions to the Birth of Anthropology 152
5. Philosophy of Mind 177
Mind and Body 177
Naturalizing Immortality 181
The Unity of the Mind 183
Sociality and Individuality 185
The Unconscious 187
Influence 189
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/20/2018, SPi
viii Contents
6. Aesthetics 192
Founding Romanticism 192
Two Major Contributions 193
Reinventing Aesthetics 194
Historicizing Aesthetics 196
Interpreting Literature and Art 197
Evaluating Literature and Art 202
Beauty 205
Moral Education 207
Further Contributions 208
7. Moral Philosophy 210
Meta-ethics 210
First-order Morality 221
The Concept of Humanity 224
8. Philosophy of History 239
Teleology 239
Historicization 240
Historicism and Historiography 242
The Genetic Method 247
Historical Bildung 253
Some Further Historicist Ideas 255
The Problem of Skepticism 257
Concluding Remark 261
9. Political Philosophy 262
Domestic Politics 263
International Politics 266
Humanity vs. Human Rights 271
A Political Philosophy? 283
10. Philosophy of Religion 286
A Liberal and Enlightened Christianity 287
Neo-Spinozism 288
Interpreting the Bible 294
The Comparative Study of Religion and Myth 298
A Critical History of Christianity 298
11. Intellectual Influence 301
Some Noteworthy Examples of Influence 301
The Birth of German Romanticism and German Idealism 304
A Residual Puzzle 311
Select Bibliography 315
Index 325
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/20/2018, SPi
Acknowledgments
This book attempts to give an overview of Herder’s philosophy. It is written out of a
conviction that his philosophy is of great value, that it has had enormous influence,
and that neither of these facts has yet been properly understood. It is also written out of
a painful awareness that the very richness of Herder’s ideas and the very extent of their
influence make it well nigh impossible for a book like this one to do more than scratch
the surface. Still, it will try.
The first half of the book (the Introduction and the chapters on philosophy of
language, hermeneutics, translation theory, and the birth of linguistics and anthro-
pology) is largely a more concise and user-friendly reworking of material from
two books that I published previously with Oxford University Press: After Herder:
Philosophy of Language in the German Tradition (2010) and German Philosophy of
Language: From Schlegel to Hegel and Beyond (2011). The second half of the book
(the chapters on philosophy of mind, aesthetics, moral philosophy, philosophy of
history, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and intellectual influence)
mostly consists of new material.
I have incurred many deep intellectual debts in connection with this project that
I would like to acknowledge here. Some of these reach back to my undergraduate
education at Oxford, where I learned much about German philosophy from the late
Patrick Gardiner, Peter Hacker, Alan Ryan, the late Peter Strawson, Charles Taylor, and
Ralph Walker. Other debts are to people from whom I learned as a graduate student at
Princeton University: especially, the late Michael Frede, Raymond Geuss, Saul Kripke,
and the late Richard Rorty. Yet other debts were incurred during twenty-eight years
of full-time teaching at the University of Chicago. Some of these debts are to former
colleagues there—including the late Arthur Adkins, Dan Brudney, the late Ted Cohen,
Arnold Davidson, Dan Garber, Charles Larmore, Jonathan Lear, Brian Leiter, the
late Leonard Linsky, Yitzhak Melamed, the late Ian Mueller, Martha Nussbaum, Bob
Richards, Howard Stein, Lina Steiner, Josef Stern, the late George Stocking, and Bill
Tait. Others are to former students—including Stephen Engstrom, Susan Hahn, Jim
Kreines, Sheela Kumar, Alison Laywine, Alyssa Luboff, Stephen Menn, Nathana
O’Brien, Gregg Osborne, Erich Reck, Tim Rosenkoetter, David Sussman, and Rachel
Zuckert. I also owe a great debt of gratitude to colleagues in Germany with whom
I have worked closely over the years in Heidelberg, Bonn, and Jena. These include
Hans-Friedrich Fulda, Markus Gabriel, Wolfram Hogrebe, Guido Kreis, Rainer
Schaefer, François Thomas, Klaus Vieweg, and Wolfgang Welsch. Other people who
have contributed to the development of this project in various ways and whom I would
like to thank include: Karl Ameriks, Andreas Arndt, Jeffrey Barash, Fred Beiser,