HERDER, JOHANN GOTTFRIED. – Critic, philosopher, and theologian, b. 25 Aug. 1744 at Mohrungen (East Prussia), d. 18 Dec. 1803 at Weimar. He studied Protestant theology at Königsberg; during the period 1764–69 he was a teacher and preacher in Riga, and from 1771 to 1776 he held the office of pastor and member of the Consistory of Bückeburg. In 1775, at Goethe’s suggestion, he was called to Weimar as general superintendent.
H. was a figure of primary importance in the intellectual and literary life of his time. Defining true poetry as “the voice of nature” and the lyrical expression of irrational and lived feeling, he established the program and poetic canon of the “Sturm und Drang” and of Romantic poetry. Through his profound understanding of the individuality of peoples and cultures, he surpassed the historical vision of the Enlightenment and prepared the historicism of the 19th century. As a theologian too, H. opposed Enlightenment ideas; yet he did not arrive at a theology founded on Christian dogmas and became, through his interpretation of the Old Testament as a poetic creation
(from Herders Werke, Leipzig n.d., verso of the title page)
HERDER, JOHANN GOTTFRIED — Portrait with autograph signature.
of the popular genius of Israel and with his conception of Christianity as the religion of pure and perfect humanity, one of the inspirers of the liberal and adogmatic theology of the nineteenth century.
H.’s rich thought draws its profound inspiration from a feeling of union with the Divine, present in the life of the world and of humanity. Although he invoked the name of Spinoza, his metaphysical ideas are in reality aligned with a vitalistic Neoplatonism (v. especially Gott. Einige Gespräche, 1787). Finite beings are conceived as manifestations of divine life: God is immanent in the universe as the animating force of its teleology. H. is therefore, in this respect, close to the philosophers of the Italian Renaissance; the principal innovation in comparison with them consists in an expansion of the sphere in which the divine animating spirit may be felt and grasped. H. considers humanity and its history, together with nature, as a single cosmos of divine manifestations; he seeks to understand the emergence of different cultures and the ascent toward higher concepts of humanity in connection with the life of the universe (Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit, 1774; Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, 1784–91). The proper subjects of the historical process are peoples and their “profound souls”; the supreme criterion of evaluation is an ideal of humanity that is a sublimation of the image of ancient man in the classical age. H.’s historical conception proved fruitful especially for the understanding of the ethnic cultures of antiquity. In his Die älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts (1774–76) and Geist der hebräischen Poesie (1782–83), he gave convincing proof of his ability to interpret historical documents as expressions of inner orientations and forces. Through his new appreciation of historical individuality, which no longer takes common human nature into consideration, he became a precursor of historicism, whose relativism in him is nevertheless counterbalanced by the idea of a universal evolution according to a divine plan or at least according to a natural immanent finality.
H. also interpreted religion and Christianity on the basis of his conception of divine immanence and his ideal of humanity (especially Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend, 1780; Christliche Schriften, 1794–98). Religion is the highest realization of the divine image in us. Its concept, however, cannot be found through abstract thought. The heights of the human are revelations of God, actualized in persons and historical events and transmitted through religious traditions. Only by placing himself within history and its living traditions can man recognize and feel the voice of Revelation (cf. Briefe d. St. d. Theol. b., ed. B. Suphan, X, pp. 457 ff., 290 ff.). With these ideas H. goes beyond the theology of the Enlightenment to a certain extent, without, however, attaining the true Christian concept of Revelation and faith. Recognizing Revelation only insofar as it confirms and highlights the numinous perceived in nature and history, H. rejects the concept of the supernatural. The more Divine, according to him, must prove to be the more natural; Christ is the highest model and the greatest teacher of a pure humanity. Every attempt to express the mystery of his person in dogmatic formulas leads away from the living sense of the divine presence in him (Ideen z. Ph. d. G., ed. cit., XIV, pp. 290 ff., 500 ff.).
The growing rapprochement with Enlightenment ideas in H.’s later works demonstrates that his conceptions signified rather a modification of Enlightenment theology than an overcoming of II.