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Herder's Science of Man: the Origins of Anthropology in the Philosophy Title Page Herder’s Science of Man: The Origins of Anthropology in the Philosophy of Language by William Eck BA in Philosophy, Harvard University, 2011 MA in Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, 2015 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2019 Committee Membershi p Page UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by William Eck It was defended on April 2, 2019 and approved by Robert Brandom, PhD, Distinguished Professor Stephen Engstrom, PhD, Professor Richard Moran, PhD, Professor John McDowell, Distinguished University Professor Mark Wilson, PhD, Distinguished Professor Dissertation Director: Robert Brandom, PhD, Distinguished Professor ii Copyright © by William Eck 2019 iii Abstract Herder’s Science of Man: The Origins of Anthropology in the Philosophy of Language William Alexander Eck, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2019 Herder is one of the historical figures most responsible for the establishment of cultural anthropology as its own discipline. Before Herder, anthropology was conceived of as a science more closely related to biology and anatomy. Early anthropologists such as Ernst Platner proposed to answer philosophical questions by means of an examination of our physical bodies and nervous systems. Questions in logic, epistemology, and the theory of action were transformed by these anthropologists into questions concerning the workings of our nervous system and sensory organs. The central claim of this dissertation is that this transformation of anthropology from an empirical study of anatomy to an empirical study of culture and history was motivated by a new picture of the relationship between mind and language developed together by Hamann and Herder in the 18th century. The development of anthropology from a medical science into a study of culture in the work of Herder and Hamann was largely instigated by Kant’s critiques of Platner’s anthropology. Concepts central to philosophy, such as freedom and reason, are, on Kant’s view, fundamentally normative concepts, and therefore cannot be meaningfully investigated by means of an empirical study of the body. Hamann, however, develops a conception of reason as dependent on language, and therefore social and historical, and he comes to the thought that, just as languages are particular to a given community and a particular point in history, so must reason be. What this meant was that the study of reason not only could but must be made responsible to empirical evidence. Anthropology could then be rehabilitated into a study of reason and free action by means of the empirical study of language iv and culture. In Herder’s work, rehabilitating anthropology into an empirical discipline capable of drawing conclusions concerning reason, meanings, and values meant coming up with an understanding of normativity consistent with both empiricism and naturalism. I reconstruct Herder’s arguments for Einfühlung, a method of “feeling one’s way” into the culture under study, as providing an answer to the former problem, and his social conception of normativity, which provides an answer to the latter. v Table of Contents Preface ......................................................................................................................................... viii 1.0 Introduction.............................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 The Importance of Hamann ........................................................................................... 5 1.2 The Shape of the Project ............................................................................................... 11 2.0 Early Philosophical Anthropology and the Empirical ........................................................ 17 2.1 The State of Philosophical Psychology: Hume and Baumgarten ............................. 21 2.2 Platner’s Medical Anthropology ................................................................................... 25 2.3 Kant and the Limits of Medical Anthropology ........................................................... 31 2.4 Kant’s Pragmatic Anthropology ................................................................................... 36 3.0 Gnawing on the Bone: Language and Reason in Hamann ............................................... 42 3.1 Hamann’s Response to Enlightenment....................................................................... 46 3.2 Instruction, Imitation, and Reason .............................................................................. 56 3.3 Kant’s Purisms of Reason ............................................................................................. 64 3.4 Anthropology as an Edifying Discipline ..................................................................... 73 4.0 The Field, the King, and the Son: Hamann and Herder on Language ............................. 75 4.1 Herder’s Early Holism .................................................................................................. 78 4.2 The Young Herder’s Vision for Anthropology ............................................................ 82 4.3 Herder’s Early Picture of Language ............................................................................ 90 4.4 Hamann’s Critique: The King of the Field ................................................................. 97 4.5 “On the Cognition”: Herder on Normativity ............................................................ 101 vi 4.6 Herder’s Anthropological Holism: An Introduction ................................................ 111 5.0 Herder’s Anthropology as Philosophy ............................................................................... 115 5.1 National Character and Language ............................................................................. 118 5.2 Empirical Data as the Basis of Anthropology ........................................................... 129 5.3 Interpretation as an Act of Empathy ......................................................................... 140 5.4 Herder’s Pluralism ...................................................................................................... 156 5.5 Anthropology as a Future for Philosophy .................................................................. 164 5.6 The Advantages of Herder’s Anthropology .............................................................. 167 6.0 Einfühlung Examined ......................................................................................................... 174 6.1 Davidson on Interpretation......................................................................................... 177 6.2 Einfühlung as Radical Interpretation ........................................................................ 183 6.3 On Scheme and Content ............................................................................................. 191 6.4 Einfühlung as a Methodology .................................................................................... 200 7.0 In Herder’s Wake ................................................................................................................. 204 7.1 The Influence of Herder on Humboldt ..................................................................... 207 7.2 The Neo-Kantian Struggle and Cassirer ................................................................... 215 7.3 Wittgenstein’s Ethnographic Methodology .............................................................. 223 7.4 Ordinary Language and Ordinary Ethics.................................................................. 229 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 237 vii Preface The work which has come together in this dissertation would not have been possible, first and foremost, without the continuous help and support of its director, Robert Brandom. I would also like to thank the members of my committee: Stephen Engstrom, Richard Moran, John McDowell, and Mark Wilson, for both their comments and assistance in getting this project off the ground and their constant contribution to my philosophical upbringing. I would also like to thank my parents, Bill and Maria Eck, for their enduring support as I pursued both this particular project and philosophy more broadly, and my partner, Harriet Provine, without whom I may not have had the strength and focus required by a project of this nature. Although a number of people have provided me with helpful feedback throughout this process, I would like to single out Sabina Bremner and Jake McNulty for their insightful commentary on my chapters as this dissertation came to bear the shape it has. viii 1.0 Introduction One of the most pressing issues facing Kant’s philosophy, and Post-Kantian philosophy in its wake, consists in the question of how to address the relationship between the normative dimension and the empirical world of experience, or, in Kant’s terminology, the noumenal and the phenomenal.1 On Kant’s view, our capacity for practical reason brings with it a set of responsibilities and obligations to act in certain ways, just as our capacity for theoretical reason brings with it a set of responsibilities and obligations to judge and believe in certain ways. The relationship between these responsibilities
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