HERBART, Johann Friedrich. – Philosopher and Protestant pedagogue, b. Oldenburg, 4 May 1776, d. Göttingen, 14 Aug. 1841. A pupil at the University of Jena of Fichte, though without sharing his views, he was later a private tutor at Berne and Interlaken (1797–99), an experience which gave him the opportunity to observe the work of Pestalozzi at Burgdorf, returning full of admiration and enthusiasm. From 1802 to 1809 he was a Privatdozent, then professor of philosophy and pedagogy at Göttingen; in 1809 he succeeded Kant in the chair at Königsberg, and finally from 1833 to 1841 he taught again at Göttingen.
Herbart’s name is linked to his pedagogical theories, which were adopted more or less fully in Europe and America, and which he based on his own philosophical system. The latter, however, owing to its negative aspects and a certain deliberate obscurity, has left little lasting impression.
His principal philosophical works are: *Lehrbuch zur Einleitung in die Philosophie* (1813; Eng. tr. Bari 1908); *Lehrbuch zur Psychologie* (1816); *Psychologie als Wissenschaft, neu gegründet auf Erfahrung, Metaphysik und Mathematik* (2 vols., 1824–25); *Allgemeine Metaphysik nebst den Anfängen der philosophischen Naturlehre* (2 vols., 1828–29). His pedagogy is chiefly expounded in: *Allgemeine Pädagogik aus dem Zweck der Erziehung abgeleitet* (1806; Eng. tr. Palermo 1915); *Umriss pädagogischer Vorlesungen* (1835; Eng. tr. ibid. 1913); *Analytische Beobachtungen des Naturrechts und der Moral* (1836).
For Herbart, philosophy is the “elaboration of the concepts” supplied by experience; and this elaboration can proceed by three methods: 1) rendering the concepts clear and distinct (logic); 2) eliminating the contradictions that arise from them (metaphysics, divided, according to its object, into psychology [study of man], philosophy of nature [study of the world], natural theology [study of God and religion]); 3) evaluating the concepts, abstracting from reality but attending only to their value, i.e., to the judgment of approval or disapproval that is formed concerning them (aesthetics). Aesthetics, in turn, applied to the various forms of activity, constitutes the practical sciences (music, architecture, poetry, etc.), which leave one free to occupy oneself with their objects, and ethics, which instead imposes an obligation to do so. Ethics, further, applied to the State, constitutes politics; applied to the individual, it constitutes pedagogy.
Pedagogy is thus founded on psychology and ethics. The latter teaches the end to be attained in education; the former sets forth and explains the means of attaining II. In psychology, Herbart, opposing subjective idealism, which denies any reality outside the mind that creates it, affirms the existence of multiple real, immutable beings in themselves, which tend toward their own preservation in relation to others; against Kant, who admits innate forms and categories, he maintains that the soul, simple and immutable in its essence, when it begins to exist is devoid of every faculty, having no ideas or activity whatsoever. Coming, however, into contact with real beings outside itself, which tend to produce disturbances in others, the soul is impelled by the instinct of self-preservation to react and produce acts of self-assertion, which are the “representations.” In other words, there are perceptions that come from without, which stimulate the soul, compelling it to form “representations”; the mass of these maintains the same relations that the real beings, from which they derive, had before perception. Thus there arises in the soul, transformed into a battlefield, a struggle conducted according to a rigid mechanism that can be expressed by material formulas; from this struggle arise the various psychic processes that give rise to the different faculties and activities. Representations of the same nature “fuse”; those of a disparate nature combine to form a “complex”; those of a contrary nature expel one another. Some remain in the field of consciousness; others sink into the subconscious and take the form of impulses and tendencies, ready, if occasion arises, to re-emerge. “Fusions” and “complexes” explain all intellectual facts: memory, imagination, abstraction, judgment, reasoning, volitions; even sensibility is but a mode of intelligence; “desire,” for example, is an idea or representation that crosses the threshold of consciousness; “volition” is a stronger and more ardent desire that is deemed attainable.
Ethics, according to Herbart, is entirely independent of metaphysics; hence the law of “estimation or of values” is autonomous. Indeed, ethics does not start from theoretical judgments, but from practical judgments, i.e., from the evaluation of facts, which is expressed in approving or disapproving them; among these evaluations there are five that are objective, universal, necessary, and impose themselves by their evidence: the idea of inner freedom (consistency between what one judges right and what one does); the idea of perfection (coordination of all efforts toward a supreme end); the idea of beneficence (disposition to conform to others); the idea of right (giving to each his due); the idea of equity (rewarding or punishing according to merit or demerit).
On these premises Herbart wished to construct a complete system of pedagogy, which in broad outline may be summarized as follows: 1) The aim of all education is to form the individual considered in himself, whose end is morality, i.e., the attainment of a character that loves and follows the good, shuns evil, and acts consistently with itself. 2) The indispensable means will be instruction. Character, in fact, is the fruit of volitional energy, and will in turn is the product of representations and ideas; hence, by increasing and organizing representations—which is the proper function of instruction—one will cooperate in the development of the will and consequently in the formation of character. As may be seen, in the Herbartian system the protagonist of the educational work is no longer the child, but the teacher, who, following the norms provided by Herbart, will infallibly achieve his aim.
Now, these principles are grouped under the three major offices of pedagogy: 1) government, which moderates and directs the child’s manifold activities through a system of occupations and prohibitions, accompanied by vigilance, authority, and love. 2) Instruction, whose fundamental task is to arouse interest—that is, to awaken in the child a desire to acquire ever new knowledge. It should be noted that interest is of various kinds: empirical, for knowledge of things and sensible facts; speculative, for knowledge of causes and laws governing phenomena; aesthetic, for the beautiful and the good; sympathetic, for the joys and sorrows of others; social, for the various societies—family, state, Church; and religious, for the Divinity. The teacher must not allow a single interest to dominate, for this would degenerate into exclusivism (as would be the case, for example, with a naturalist who focused only on plants or a single species of plant; or an individual who loves only his compatriots or the people of his own family). Instead, the teacher should make the pupil sensitive to all interests (the plurality of interesting knowledge). To avoid, however, a cumbersome accumulation of information, the teacher must ensure that variety is harmoniously composed; hence, he must select and organize the material, presenting it to the pupil in accordance with psychological laws (which hold that every doctrine and every science consists in adding new ideas to old ones, forming an organic whole), first awakening attention to the new idea, then associating it with what the pupil already knows, and finally deducing from it a law or general principle. 3) Moral culture, which is achieved through the constant use of the following means: preserving the child by habituating him to self-control; urging him to act by showing him the purpose and necessity of determining his actions; impressing upon his mind above all the idea of duty; maintaining his spirit in calm and serenity; employing exhortation and correction, and, after an action is completed, approval or blame.
To crown and give efficacy to these means, religious instruction is necessary, for it adds new strength to human motives and develops the feeling of one’s dependence on God.
ASSESSMENT. — H. and his school have valid and stimulating pedagogical merits: having assigned pedagogy a solid foundation in philosophy; insisting on the psychological laws provided by thought; invoking rational principles against every pedagogical empiricism; placing interest at the center for the selection of material and the method of instruction; assigning pedagogy the lofty end of the moral formation of the pupil; stimulating a broad and multifaceted culture; recognizing the great power of education; and the enthusiasm for the teacher’s vocation are all titles of praise and approval. There are, however, several highly questionable points: the soul, if it has no innate ideas, does possess the faculties necessary to acquire ideas, and these faculties are therefore not created by objects and knowledge; human freedom disappears, for man is reduced to a mere machine that moves and acts according to representations originating from without, without having within himself any power to determine himself spontaneously; lacking entirely is all that strength and stimulus which can come from the supernatural part of Christianity, especially from the presence of grace and the cooperation and practice of the Sacraments.
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