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Perfection, History, and Harmonious Individuality: Herder's Ethical Thought, 1765-1791

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Perfection, History, and Harmonious Individuality: Herder's Ethical Thought, 1765-1791 Syracuse University SURFACE Dissertations - ALL SURFACE May 2015 Perfection, History, and Harmonious Individuality: Herder's Ethical Thought, 1765-1791 Charles Richard Booher Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/etd Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Booher, Charles Richard, "Perfection, History, and Harmonious Individuality: Herder's Ethical Thought, 1765-1791" (2015). Dissertations - ALL. 203. https://surface.syr.edu/etd/203 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the SURFACE at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract This work is a study of the ethical thought of Johann Gottfried Herder. I examine the development of his ethics from 1765 through 1791. I contend that the earliest texts express a set of ideas that Herder modified and developed throughout the rest of his work. These are a perfectionist conception of the end of human life, a belief in the centrality of history for ethics, a form of naturalism, and a commitment to the idea that every individual ought to blend their characteristic powers into a harmonious whole. The study considers a set of texts in chronological order. I begin with an examination of the ideals espoused by Herder in two texts from the 1760s, “Wie die Philosophie zum Besten des Volks Allgemeiner und Nützlicher Werden Kann” and Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769. I then look at an exchange of letters between Herder and Moses Mendelssohn concerning the highest good, or vocation of man. I then look at how the ideas sketched in these earlier works were filled out in Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache (1772), Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit (1774), Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele (1774-8), and Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91). Perfection, History, and Harmonious Individuality: Herder’s Ethical Thought, 1765-1791 by C. Richard Booher B.A., California State University Fullerton, 2003 M.A., The University of Chicago, 2004 Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Syracuse University May 2015 Copyright © 2015 C. Richard Booher All rights reserved Acknowledgements Fred Beiser provided me with judicious advice and criticism from the beginning of this project up to its completion. He was also encouraging at several crucial junctures when I needed it. This work would not have many of its better qualities, and would have taken much longer to bring to an end, had I not been fortunate to have such an excellent advisor. I also owe a debt to other members of the faculty at Syracuse University. Michael Stocker was a kind and wise guide. Traces of his influence have left their mark on my work, and the shape of my own philosophical views, even if they are not always immediately apparent. I also owe thanks to Ken Baynes, who has always been supportive, in addition to being a pleasure to converse with. I am thankful the members of my examination committee for their time, energy, and willingness to read my work: Nigel DeSouza, Michael Forster, Kristin Gjesdal, and Ahmed Abdel Meguid. Among my graduate student peers at Syracuse, I am thankful to Andrew Corsa, Jon Delmendo, Kienhow Goh, Aaron Koller, and John Monteleone for their camaraderie and intellectual support. I am also thankful for the love and encouragement of my family. My daughters, Caroline and Myra, are about as old as this project. Many challenging moments were allayed by their free and uplifting spirits. I also thank my parents, Chuck and Pam Booher, for their support. In working on the final stages of this project, I was carried on by the loving support of Erin Evans, for whose presence in my life I am enormously grateful. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………iv Introduction………………………………………….……………………………….….………1 Chapter 1: Herder’s Early Ideals………………………………………..………………...…15 Chapter 2: The Vocation of Man Controversy….................…………………..………….46 Chapter 3: Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache…………………..…….….…….92 Chapter 4: Herder’s Genealogy of Morals: Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte………………………..………………117 Chapter 5: Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele…………..….……143 Chapter 6: Bonds of Love and the Chain of History: Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit……………….…......175 Conclusion…………………………………………………………….…………….…….….199 Note on Translations………………….…………………………………….……………….201 Abbreviations…………………….……………………………………………….…………..202 Bibliography………………….……………….……….……...………………………………202 Vita……………………………….………………………..…………………………………..211 v Introduction I T. Churchill, in the translator’s preface to the 1800 English language translation of Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, writes of his experience translating Herder: …many moments of bodily pain and mental anxiety has it sweetly beguiled; and while it has made my breast glow with the fervor of virtuous sentiment, I have almost felt myself the inhabitant of another world. May others feel from the perusal what I have done from the performance; and then no one, I hope, will lay down the book, without being able to say, that he is a happier and better man.1 This is not the only reference to the effect of reading Herder that strikes such a tone. Herder receives a significant mention in one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth- century, Tolstoy’s War and Peace. In a central moment of the novel, Pierre Bezukhov counsels the despondent Prince Andrei Bolkhonski: “You say you can’t see the kingdom of the good and the true on earth. I didn’t see it either; and it can’t be seen if you look at our life as the end of everything. On earth, I mean this earth” (Pierre pointed to the fields), “there is no truth – but in the universe, in the whole universe, there is the kingdom of the true, and we are now children of the earth, but eternally – children of the whole universe. Don’t I feel in my soul that I make up a part of that huge, harmonious whole? Don’t I feel that, among the countless number of beings in which the divinity – the higher power – whatever you like – is manifest, I make up one link, one step from lower beings to higher? If I see, see clearly, this ladder that leads from plant to man, then why should I suppose that this ladder, the lower end of which I do not see, is lost in the plants? Why should I suppose that this ladder stops with me and does not lead further and further to higher beings? I feel not only that I cannot 1 Translator’s preface to Johann Gottfried Herder, Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, trans. T. Churchill (London: Luke Hansard, 1800), p. iv. 1 disappear, as nothing disappears in the world, but that I will always be and have always been. I feel that, besides me, above me, spirits live, and that in this world there is truth.” “Yes, that’s Herder’s teaching,” said Prince Andrei, “but that, dear heart, does not convince me; life and death are what convince me.”2 For the present moment, I wish to set aside the issue of the accuracy of these portrayals.3 What I want to draw attention to is that in both passages we can see that Herder was regarded as a thinker who had something to offer us in our ethical reflections, even for our improvement. This facet of his thought is foregrounded, and both writers suggest that Herder is a philosopher to be read for moral edification.4 This stands in stark contrast to the majority of Herder scholarship, which has not frequently made his ethical thought an object of detailed study. Admittedly, there are frequent passing references to Herder’s ethical views by scholars. However, these are almost always interjected as a background consideration in the midst of an account of his philosophy of history, language, social theory, or aesthetics.5 This is understandable, as 2 Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Knopf, 2007), p. 389. It is worth noting that Pierre achieves this transformation, in part, through an involvement in freemasonry, and that Herder was also a freemason from early in his adulthood. Tolstoy may have been aware of this. 3 The passage from Tolstoy comes closest to offering an actual interpretation of Herder, and I think that there are elements of it that are correct, but others that are wrong or misleading. Where I think it seems to go wrong, in brief, is that it intonates that the meaning of a human life is something transcendent and has to do with the existence of spirits or “higher beings”. As I will try to show in the present work, I think that Herder’s account of the highest good does not at all rely on such notions. 4 Throughout the rest of this text, I do not distinguish between the ‘ethical’, as an account of how one should live, and the ‘moral’, as concerned with duties and obligations. I admit the fruitfulness that such a distinction can have, as has been argued in Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), chapter 10. I believe nonetheless that imposing a distinction of this kind onto Herder, or forcing an inquiry into his works to conform to such a distinction, would be arduous and distortive. 5 The most noteworthy exceptions to this are Benjamin D. Crowe, "Herder’s Moral Philosophy: Perfectionism, Sentimentalism, and Theism," British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20, no. 6 (2012); Heiko Joosten, Selbst, Substanz und Subjekt: Die ethische und politische Relevanz der personalen Identität bei Descartes, Herder und Hegel (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2005); Sonia Sikka, Herder on Humanity and Cultural Difference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
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