Document Type : Research Paper

Author

• Mohammad Mehdi Ardebili

Assistant Professor, Institute for humanities and cultural studies (IHCS)

Abstract

Though thinking about culture returns to ancient Greece, "culture" as understood today is a modern concept influenced more by the speculations of the German thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries than ancient Greek thinkers. Despite the ideas of Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire, Vico, Leibniz, and others, it can be shown that Johann Gottfried von Herder (1764-1803) was the first thinker that provided a metaphysical and philosophical grounding for culture. He portrayed the human being as essentially a cultural being. However, Herder does not have an independent book or treatise specifically about the "philosophy of culture" or even the meaning of culture. Consequently, the present paper tries to analyze how Herder's "philosophy of culture" implicitly emerges from his vast oeuvre by extracting his diverse and diffuse discussions about language, man, history, politics and culture; and, finally, its impact on the subsequent thinkers of this field, especially Hegel. Accordingly, this paper, regardless of its short introduction, has three main parts: First, the theoretical foundations of Herder's thoughts and his sources of inspiration; Second, Herder’s philosophy of culture, extracted from a variety of his works and focusing on his critiques of Enlightenment; and third, examining Herder's influence on subsequent thinkers, focusing on the evolution of the concept of culture.

Highlights

Herder and the Emergence of the Philosophy of Culture

Mohammad Mehdi Ardebili

Assistant Professor, Institute for humanities and cultural studies (IHCS), E-mail: m.m.ardebili@gmail.com

Abstract

Though thinking about culture returns to ancient Greece, "culture" as understood today is a modern concept influenced more by the speculations of the German thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries than ancient Greek thinkers. Despite the ideas of Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire, Vico, Leibniz, and others, it can be shown that Johann Gottfried von Herder (1764-1803) was the first thinker that provided a metaphysical and philosophical grounding for culture. He portrayed the human being as essentially a cultural being. However, Herder does not have an independent book or treatise specifically about the "philosophy of culture" or even the meaning of culture. Consequently, the present paper tries to analyze how Herder's "philosophy of culture" implicitly emerges from his vast oeuvre by extracting his diverse and diffuse discussions about language, man, history, politics and culture; and, finally, its impact on the subsequent thinkers of this field, especially Hegel. Accordingly, this paper, regardless of its short introduction, has three main parts: First, the theoretical foundations of Herder's thoughts and his sources of inspiration; Second, Herder’s philosophy of culture, extracted from a variety of his works and focusing on his critiques of Enlightenment; and third, examining Herder's influence on subsequent thinkers, focusing on the evolution of the concept of culture.

Key Words: Philosophy of Culture, Johann Gottfried von Herder, Enlightenment, Cultural Immanent Organism

The 'Philosophy of Culture', in the sense used today, is a very new branch of the human sciences, which, according to Konersmann's definition, is "a precise analysis of the finite world constructed by human beings which is culture" (Konersmann 2009, p. 70). But it is clear that the theoretical and philosophical roots of this science return to the first human speculations about the world, society, city, religion, and man itself. One can find a form of thinking about culture in the social works of the great Greek thinkers, especially Plato and Aristotle, as well as great historians (such as?). But the first glimpses of systematic and modern thinking about Culture date back to the 17th and 18th centuries in German enlightenment (Aufklärung). Several commentators and historians point to this particular historical moment, but as far as the task of the present article is concerned, Schmidt explicitly states in Philosophisches Wörterbuch that philosophy of culture begins with Herder's Ideas for the Philosophy of History of Humanity, and reaches its peak with Hegel's elements of philosophy of right and Lectures on the philosophy of history (see Schmidt, 1931, p. 241). Following Schmidt, the present paper will focus on Herder's thoughts and ideas to trace the roots of the Philosophy of Culture and examine the path of its development. But at the same time, it will try to take into account the intellectual and historical roots of the "Philosophy of Culture" before Herder by uncovering his theoretical foundations and analyzing his predecessors' opinions in this regard.

Farsi sources about both the Philosophy of Culture and Herder's ideas about the culture are limited to a few written or translated texts. The most prominent of these texts is the article "Herder and the Philosophy of Culture" by Ali Asghar Moshleh (Mosleh, 2014a), later edited briefly in a chapter in his book, Philosophy of Culture (Mosleh2014b: 150-167). This article is important because it is the first Farsi text which systematically engages with Herder's contributions to the philosophy of culture. The present article will indeed refer to this text, but what makes writing and publishing the present article necessary despite the publication of that valuable article is its different theoretical foundations, referral resources, and research landscape. While Mosleh's article is devoted to the thought of Herder in the context of the philosophy of culture, based on an interpretive perspective of the German world (in particular, the views of Ralf Konnersman and Fred Dallmayr), the present article, by referring to different sources and relying upon a much more metaphysically grounded perspective and mainly in the context of the Anglo-American interpretive tradition will try to shed new lights on consider Herder's philosophy of culture.

Therefore, the present article has three main parts. The first part addresses the theoretical foundations of Herder's thoughts and his inspirations from his predecessors. In this part, it will particularly focus on the relation between Herder and philosophical and intellectual atmosphere of the 17th and 18th centuries of Germany. The second part, which forms the main body of this article, presents a coherent and integrated plan of "Herder's philosophy of culture." As already mentioned, "Philosophy of Culture" is a recent concept and, naturally, Herder does not use this concept in this way and does not have a book or article specifically about it. Because at that time 'Not even the term "philosophy of culture" was available, since it is an offspring of the second half of the nineteenth century, a concept that came to dominate Germany's philosophical scene during the Weimar Republic' (Moxter 2010: 299). Consequently, the present paper must, by examining the various works of Herder and using various interpretations, extract and compile a kind of philosophy of culture from the works of Herder, and for this reason, this part will pay close attention to all the works of Herder. The second part consists of five subheadings: 1. the definition of culture in Herder's view; 2. the originality of culture; 3. the struggle with enlightenment; 4. culture as a living being: the cultural intrinsic organism; 5. conservatism or radicalism. In this regard, of course, it should be noted that one of the most important fruits of Herder's thoughts is cultural pluralism, but due to length restrictions, this issue is not discussed in the present article and its analysis has been postponed to another, independent article. The third and final part of this article, focusing on the evolution of the concept of culture, is dedicated to a brief review of Herder's influence on the later thinkers in the 19th and 20th centuries, and will argue that Herder could be regarded as the spiritual father of many currents in modern and postmodern thoughts.

References

-        Berlin, Isaiah (2016) Jostarhaee dar tarikh andisheha, translation by Leyla Sazgar, Tehran: Qoqnous Publications.

-        Berry, Christopher J. (1982) Hume, Hegel and Human Nature, Boston & Londn: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

-        Bruford, W. H. (1975) Culture and Society in Classical Weimar 1775-1806, London & New York: Cambridge University Press.

-        Cassirer, Ernst (2010) Falsafeye Roshangari, translation by Yadollah Moughen, Tehran: Niloufar.

-        Clark, Robert T. (1969) Herder: His Life and Thought, Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.

-        Clayton, John P. (1980) The Concept of Correlation, Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter & Co.

Keywords

• Philosophy of Culture
• Johann Gottfried von Herder
• Enlightenment
• Cultural Immanent Organism