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Philosophy & Social Criticism Philosophy & Social Criticism http://psc.sagepub.com Enlightened relativism: The case of Herder Sonia Sikka Philosophy Social Criticism 2005; 31; 309 DOI: 10.1177/0191453705051708 The online version of this article can be found at: http://psc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/3/309 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for Philosophy & Social Criticism can be found at: Email Alerts: http://psc.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://psc.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav Downloaded from http://psc.sagepub.com at CAPES on December 11, 2009 03_051708_Sikka (JB-S) 8/4/05 8:49 am Page 309 Sonia Sikka Enlightened relativism The case of Herder Abstract Johann Gottfried Herder has been described as the founder of cultural relativism within the German philosophical tradition, which would make him the starting-point for one thread in the pattern of ideas leading to the Nazi disaster. More recently, some scholars have rejected this interpretation, arguing that Herder actually supported the universalist values of the Enlightenment. I argue that Herder’s position is actually a complex, and laudable, blend of universalism and relativism. It includes: (1) the presumption of a set of basic human goods, upon which some universal criteria for ethical judgements may be founded: and, (2) the view that human practices, values and beliefs must be interpreted within their social context, and that the happiness and virtue of individuals can only be measured in relation to their specific values, being a function of their capacity to satisfy their desires and to live up to their ideals. Key words Counter-Enlightenment · cultural relativism · ethical relativism · Eurocentrism · Johann Gottfried Herder There are probably few debates within moral and political philosophy that evoke more anxiety, on all sides, than that surrounding value- relativism. The contemporary landscape of this debate is familiar. All parties see themselves as defending justice against the dangers rep- resented by their opponents, dangers to which, they think, present events should alert us and to which history bears witness. Anti- relativists worry that the position they oppose would disallow condem- nation of many violent, oppressive, and manifestly unfair social practices across the world, and they often point out the appeal to relativist tenets by Nazi ideologues. Anti-universalists worry that the position they oppose inclines people to ignore the partiality of their own perspective while passing negative judgements on others, and they often point out the appeal to universalist principles by colonialists and imperialists. PHILOSOPHY & SOCIAL CRITICISM • vol 31 no 3 • pp. 309–341 PSC Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com DOI: 10.1177/0191453705051708 Downloaded from http://psc.sagepub.com at CAPES on December 11, 2009 03_051708_Sikka (JB-S) 8/4/05 8:49 am Page 310 310 Philosophy & Social Criticism 31 (3) It is against the backdrop of this debate that I wish to re-examine the position expressed in the writings of Johann Gottfried Herder. Herder is commonly thought of as belonging firmly to the relativist camp. Indeed, he has been described as the founder of relativism within the German philosophical tradition,1 which would make him the starting-point for one thread in the pattern of ideas leading to the Nazi disaster. Consider, for example, the following remark by Max Rouché, in his introduction to the 1943 French translation of Yet Another Philosophy of History: With Yet Another Philosophy of History, according to which our concep- tion of life is a function of our nation and our age, German thought sets out on the path of relativity; our vision of the world will be presented as a function of our race by H. S. Chamberlain and then Rosenberg, and our type of civilisation by Spengler. Modern Germany is the country par excellence of relativity . .2 The perception that the core of Herder’s thought places him on the relativist side of the debate has by now passed into common philo- sophical currency. Kai Nielson, for instance, refers in a 1987 article to Herder’s ‘relativistic claims about . forms of life being equally valid and all being incommensurable’, and says that ‘if Herder is right, we can have no grounds for the assertion of the superiority of one way of living over another’.3 His own ideal, which he contrasts with that of Herder, involves combining the latter’s ‘recognition of the central signifi- cance of local attachments’ while keeping ‘the universalistic ideals of the Enlightenment’.4 Nielson’s understanding of Herder as a ‘Counter- Enlightenment’ thinker here is indebted to Isaiah Berlin’s highly influ- ential essay, ‘Vico and Herder’.5 On the other hand, much scholarship over the last decade or so has questioned this characterization of Herder.6 Kurt Mueller-Vollmer rightly notes that ‘Herder’s relation to the Enlightenment is much more differentiated than we have tradition- ally assumed’ and that ‘many would argue that Herder actually con- tinued leading Enlightenment tendencies rather than breaking with them altogether’.7 Frederick Beiser, whose analysis rejects the view of Herder as a relativist, goes so far as to claim that ‘Herder’s critique is essentially internal: it criticizes the Aufklärung strictly in the light of its own ideals’.8 This claim, in my view, goes too far.9 I will argue, in this article, that while Herder does indeed accept or only modify a number of key theses usually associated with the standpoint of Enlightenment univer- salism, he nonetheless can legitimately be described as a kind of rela- tivist, in a sense I will clarify. A careful reading of Herder’s texts actually demonstrates that he espouses something more like the ideal that Nielson proposes, blending Enlightenment universalism with a species Downloaded from http://psc.sagepub.com at CAPES on December 11, 2009 03_051708_Sikka (JB-S) 8/4/05 8:49 am Page 311 311 Sikka: Enlightened relativism of relativism that challenges his society’s conception of itself as the sum of all perfections. I will limit my analysis mainly to some of Herder’s major works: Yet Another Philosophy of History (1774),10 Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind (1784–91),11 Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, trans. T. Churchill (New York: Bergman Publishers, 1800), and Letters for the Advancement of Humanity (1793–7).12 These works belong to different stages in Herder’s thought, and one can see over their course significant shifts in emphasis and tone. I will argue, though, against some previous interpre- tations, that such shifts do not mark a substantial change in Herder’s principles,13 and that his position can consistently be described as a kind of ‘enlightened relativism’, although at first this might seem to be a contradiction in terms. I Herder’s universalism Although, in ‘Vico and Herder’, Berlin sometimes describes Herder as a relativist, in a footnote added to a later version he points out that the ‘relativism’ he originally had in mind should not be equated with ‘epistemological subjectivism’ but is better described as ‘objective pluralism’.14 According to Berlin, that is, Herder is a realist about values; he believes that some things are genuinely good or bad, right or wrong. But he is a ‘pluralist’ insofar as he believes that not all good things can be realized in the same society, that some goods actually conflict, and that one cannot evaluate societies against one another, so that cultures are ‘incommensurable’.15 Berlin is certainly right that Herder is a pluralist of some sort. However, his account also raises serious puzzles, given that Herder does evaluate, persistently and often negatively, many aspects of the societies he writes about, foreign societies no less than his own, and he seems to appeal to some general principles of justice in doing so. When complaining about the negative depiction of medieval society by his contemporaries in Yet Another Philosophy of History, for instance, he nonetheless adds: ‘I do not by any means want to defend the perpetual migrations and devastations, feudal wars and attacks, battalions of monks, pilgrimages, crusades: I only want to explain them; to explain how spirit nonetheless breathes through them all!’ (APG, p. 53). He is appreciative of the ambition, courage, and pride that functioned as virtues in Roman society (APG, pp. 30–1), but notes that the Roman conqueror is also stained with blood (APG, p. 37). His point is that every society has its virtues and vices, that the vices are often the flip- side of the virtues, and that to understand the values of a foreign society one must transcend the naivety of one’s own culturally conditioned Downloaded from http://psc.sagepub.com at CAPES on December 11, 2009 03_051708_Sikka (JB-S) 8/4/05 8:49 am Page 312 312 Philosophy & Social Criticism 31 (3) perspective. This position implies the incommensurability of cultures only in a highly attenuated sense. It does not rule out passing critical judgements, which suggests that there is a common measure after all in terms of which such judgements can be made. Herder has no qualms about speaking against war, conquest, subjugation, inequality, material want, and superstition, wherever he finds them. He thereby exhibits adherence to some standards of judgement that are similar to those usually associated with the Enlightenment standpoint. This is the primary consideration behind Robert Bernasconi’s claim that ‘Berlin emphasized Herder’s pluralism at the expense of those aspects of his thought that showed him to be a more typical representative of the Enlightenment’.16 It is important not to overlook or downplay a central analogy employed by Herder in Yet Another Philosophy of History, that between cultures and stages of individual life.
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