Abstract
The object of this Chapter is to trace the movement of ideas about human nature that came to change the understanding of it. This movement can be subsumed under that notoriously elusive term Romanticism, though, perhaps, equally appropriate to our concerns is the new attitude to history (the ‘historicist revolution’). In a nutshell, the Enlightenment’s conviction that human nature was comprehensible, and could be used as a source of standards, removed or apart from the differing circumstances of social life, was rejected, because human nature was now seen to be inseparable and unintelligible apart from these differences. There is an organic union between a man and his own society: that is, no longer did it seem meaningful to talk of Man independent of any particular society. Thus the Enlightenment’s understanding of human nature as uniform and constant gave way to a concrete specific understanding: an understanding here termed contextualist.1
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References
Though its use and elaboration are mine the term itself is appropriated from J.G. Gunnell, Political Philosophy and Time, p. 255.
Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), p. 9.
Conjectures, p. 12.
Letter to Horace Walpole, July 15, 1768 in Candide and other writings, ed.
Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres (1838), p. 26.
Discourses, ed. E. Goss, No. 6, p. 88, 90.
Enquiry concerning the Human Understanding, ed. G. Hendel, p. 33. Hume, too, applies this to Shakespeare who though “a great and fertile genius” his work is disfigured by “great irregularities and even sometimes, absurdities”, thus proving how genius alone is unable to attain “excellence in the finer arts”, History of Great Britain, ed. D. Forbes, p. 248.
Essai sur les connoissances humaines, Pt. I, Sect. 2., Chap. 9: Oeuvres (1792), Vol. I, p. 106.
Gerard, p. 27.
Genius, p. 39. The similarity to Hume is of course not incidental — see Part II infra for Hume’s associationist criticism.
Conjectures, p. 78.
Conjectures, p. 28.
Duff, p. 260.
A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian (1763), appended to Poems of Ossian, ed. A. Stewart, p. 133.
The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition, p. 202.
The Problem of Knowledge, p. 218. Similarly, F. Meinecke sees Herder as “perhaps” like Columbus in that he did not fully realise (despite an awareness of things to come) that he had discovered a new world, to wit, Historismus: Die Entstehung des Historismus, 2nd Edit., p. 466 and Dilthey closes his examination of the historical world of the eighteenth-century with a discussion of Herder’s thought, which is held to transcend the limits of the century and lead directly to the Romantics and Hegel Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert und die Geschichtliche Welt in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. III, p. 268. But cf. P.H. Reill, The German Enlightenment and the rise of Historicism, who argues that the historians and theologians of the Aufklärung are to be regarded as the originators of historicism. Though the German Enlightenment is clearly to be differentiated from its contemporary counterparts (see Chap. 1, n. 11 supra) nevertheless much of the writing that Reill discusses has echoes elsewhere (especially in Scotland — both were university and Protestant based). Additionally, however, the linking of historical experience with human nature (see infra) is not to be found in these writers, for, as Reill himself brings out, their thought is riven between acceptance of relativism and the employment of ahistorical normative analysis (p. 125, 192 et passim). Of course, Herder himself exhibits these same tensions and his thought did not come out of a vacuum — also see infra.
Herder, p. 57.
Cf. C.J. Berry, ‘Eighteenth-century approaches to the Origin of Metaphor’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen (1973), 690–713.
Blackwell, p. 40, 37.
Trans. in Gillies Herder, p. 44n.
Cf. R.T. Clark Jr., ‘Herder’s Concept of Kraft’, PMLA (1942) 737–752, esp. 747. For an exhaustive examination of the different uses and contexts of Kraft in Herder’s thought see H.B. Nisbet, Herder and Scientific Thought.
Cf. A. Gillies, ‘Herder’s Essay on Shakespeare’: Das Herz der Untersuchung’, Modern Language Review (1937) 262–280, wherein Herder’s debt to Percy’s Reliques is emphasised as the key to his interpretation of Shakespeare. For the Sophocles comparison (as brothers) see e.g. SW V, 225.
Cf. IdM, 178 (slightly amended): SW XIV, 105 “If then we cannot be Greeks ourselves, let us at least rejoice that there once were Greeks and that like other flowers of human thought (Denkart) this also found a time and a place to put forth its loveliest growth”. Also cf. E.M. Butler, ‘“Imitate the Greeks’ commanded Winckelmann and Lessing. ‘Impossible to do so’ came Herder’s mournful reply” The Tyranny of Greece over Germany, p. 17.
Cf. A.O. Lovejoy, “The substitution of what may be called diversitarianism for unifor-mitarianism” was the common factor in Romanticism and constituted a “profound and momentous change” in standards of value, The Great Chain of Being, Chap. 8.
Author of Über die Geschichte der Menschheit (1764). In an addition to the Introduction in 1774 Iselin declares that the leading idea in the work is “the progress of mankind from external simplicity to an ever higher level of light and prosperity” (5th Edit., 1786, p. xxxv). Herder’s reference to happiness in the quotation just given is an allusion to Iselin.
This aspect of Herder’s thought is termed ‘expressivism’ by C. Taylor (Hegel, p. 15) who, as he acknowledges, follows I. Berlin, ‘J.G. Herder’ in Encounter, July 1965, 29–48 and August 1965, 42–51 (reprinted with some additions in Vico and Herder: Two studies in the History of Ideas.).
Cf. C. Berry, ‘Adam Smith’s Considerations on Language’, JHI (1974) 130–8.
The Dignity and Advancement of Learning’ in Physical and Metaphysical Works of Lord Bacon, ed. J. Devey, p. 207.
Wilkins’ An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (1668) was designed to devise “a real universal character that should not signify words, but things and notions and consequently might be legible by any Nation in their own tongue” quoted in W.S. Howell, Eighteenth Century British Logic and Rhetoric, p. 463. Cf. Barbara J. Shapiro, John Wilkins 1614–1672: An Intellectual Biography, esp. p. 203ff.
Helvétius, pp. 18–25.
See his Theory of Fictions, ed. CK. Ogden. Bentham also wrote an ‘Essay on Language’ and ‘Fragments on a Universal Grammar’ both in Works, ed. J. Bowring, Vol. 8.
La Langue des Calculs (1798) in Oeuvres Philosophiques, ed. G. Leroy (1947), Vol. 2, p. 420. Cf. Isabel F. Knight, The Geometric Spirit: The Abbé de Condillac and the French Enlightenment, Chap. 6.
Discours…de l’Inégalité parmi les Hommes (Everyman Library), p. 175: Oeuvres (Pléiade), Vol. III, p. 147.
Essai sur les connoissances humaines, Pt. 2, Sect. 1, Chap. 1. Cf. H. Aarsleff, ‘The Tradition of Condillac’ in D. Hymes (ed.), Studies in the History of Linguistics, pp. 93–156, esp. p. 110.
Origin and Progress of Language (1773–9), Vol. 1, Bk. 1, Chap. 1 et passim; also see his Antient Metaphysics (1779–99), Vol. III, Bk. 2, Chap. 1 et passim.
Cf. inter alia E. Sapir, ‘Herder’s Ursprung der Sprache’, MP (1907) 109–42; R.H. Robins, A Short History of Linguistics, pp. 151–3; E. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 1, p. 152–3.
Cf. Berry, J.H.L (1974).
Hamann held that the world is God’s word ‘‘Every phenomenon of nature was a word, the sign, image and pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible, but for that reason all the more inward union, communication and community of divine energies and ideas. Everything that man in the beginning heard, saw, gazed upon, and touched, was a living word” (tr. in R.G. Smith, J.G. Hamann 1730–88: A Study in Christian Existence, p. 73: ‘Des Ritters von Rosenkreuz letzte Willenseinung’ Sämmtliche Werke, ed. J. Nadler, Vol. III, p. 32). From this perspective it was held to follow that “since the instruments of language at least are a present from the alma mater Nature…and since, in accordance with the highest philosophical probability, the Creator of these artificial (künstlichen) instruments desired and had to establish the use of them as well, then certainly the origin of human language is divine” (Smith, p. 247: Werke III, p. 27). Though Herder rejected this theory his writings (generally and on language in particular) owe much to Hamann’s preoccupations. Despite this debt in general philosophical orientation, together with close personal ties, Herder did not subscribe to Hamann’s mystical irrationalism. Cf. R.T. Clark Jr., Herder: His Life and Thought who rejects (p. 3) the argument of Haym than Hamann was the chief influence on Herder, Herder: nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken (Vol. 1, p. 53). Similarly Berlin (July, p. 37–8) and L.W. Beck, Early German Philosophy, p. 389.
Cf. Berry, JHI (1974).
Cf. E.M. Wilkinson, The inexpressible and the unspeakable: Some Romantic Attitudes to Art and Language’, GLL (1962/3) 308–320, esp. p. 316.
Über Naive und Sentimentalische Dichtung, tr. J. Ellias, p. 98: Werke (Nationalausgabe), Vol. 20, p. 426.
For discussion of Besonnenheit see F.M. Barnard, Herder’s Social and Political Thought, p. 42f and Clark, Life and Thought, p. 134.
Cf. his Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der Menschlichen Seele (final draft 1778) (in SW VIII) where Herder attacks abstract intellectualism and emphasises the physiological base of psychology, that thought is inseparable from feelings. Kraft once again plays a key mediating role. M.H. Abrams (Mirror and Lamp, p. 204) has termed this work “a turning point in the history of ideas” since it “heralds the age of biologism” so that man is an organic unity of thought, feeling and will. Cf. also Herder’s later explicit attack on Kant (Metakritik 1799) where the ‘faculties’ are juxtaposed to the living diversity of the soul, SW XXI, 19.
Cf. P. Salmon, ‘Herder’s Essay on the Origin of Language and the place of Man in the Animal Kingdom’, GLL (1968/9) 59–70.
For a comparison of Herder and Hume see F. Manuel, The Eighteenth-Century Confronts the Gods, esp. p. 301, though he does not employ the term ‘qualitative primitivism’. Herder paraphrased Hume’s Natural History of Religion, SW XXXII, 195–197.
The lynch-pin of Vico’s New Science (3rd edit. 1744) is that the world of civil society has been made by men and can thus be understood by men (within the modifications of their own minds) unlike Nature which God alone knows since He alone created it (para. 331). The Science will reveal the Universal and eternal principles on which all nations are founded (para. 332) and this describes “an ideal eternal history traversed in time by the history of every nation” (para. 349); a history which, as evidenced by philology, envelops the history of man himself through poetic, heroic and human phases (para. 34). Erich Auerbach concludes his examination of Vico’s aesthetic historicism by commenting that “Vico created and passionately maintained the concept of the historical nature of man. He identified human history and human nature, he conceived human nature as a function of history”, ‘Vico and Aesthetic Historism’, J. Aesthetics and Art Criticism (1949), p. 118. For a painstaking analysis of Vico’s understanding of human nature see L. Pompa, Vico: A Study of the ‘New Science’, esp. Chaps. 3, 11, 12. The question of Vico’s ‘influence’ and penetration is the subject of much speculation. For example, cases have been made for this impact on the Scottish Enlightenment, Montesquieu and with more certainty on Herder himself. But even if these cases hold (and in the first two cases this is very unlikely) little of import is thereby established.
Lewis S. Spitz remarks that Lessing received the inspiration for the Erziehung from suggestions in Herder’s Auch eine Philosophie ‘Natural Law and the Theory of History in Herder’, JHI (1955), p. 473n. However, the importance of the ‘new’ Leibniz to both philosophers is crucial; see I. Stamm, ‘Herder and Aufklärung: a Leibnizian Context’, Germanic Review (1963) 197–208, who sees a parallel, from this perspective, between Herder and Lessing’s essay. Lessing’s debt to Leibniz in the Erziehung is brought out by H.E. Allison, Lessing and the Enlightenment, pp. 147–161.
D.M. Cameron, The Social Thought of Rousseau and Burke, p. 87. But Rousseau is not regarded as a precursor of nineteenth-century historicism, p. 92.
Cf. J. Starobinski, Rousseau: La Transparence et l’Obstacle, p. 33.
Life and Thought, p. 417. Similarly far-reaching claims are made by Gillies (Herder, p. 116) “it is not too much to say that the whole of the Romantic movement in Germany is Herder’s intellectual legacy” and Beck (Early German Philosophy, p. 367) “the influence of Herder cannot be overestimated…Eighteenth-century thought was fed into the nineteenth century through two channels: Kant and Herder”.
Cf. F. Meinecke, Cosmopolitanism and the National State, Chap. 1.
Cf. J. de Maistre, Works, ed. & tr. J. Lively, p. 99.
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Berry, C.J. (1982). Human Nature in Context: Herder’s Contribution. In: Hume, Hegel and Human Nature. Archives Internationales D’Histoire des Idees / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 103. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-7588-0_3
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