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HERDER'S PHANTOM PUBLIC*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2012
Abstract
Some of Herder's most striking ideas stemmed from his early evaluation of German literary publicity, which to his mind stood in stark contrast to conditions in the sociable world. Such a predicament bespeaks the importance of considering the relationship between printed text and lived sociability in the Enlightenment. By charting the heady twists and turns in his intellectual development from 1765 to 1769, this essay treats the young Herder in what for him became an aesthetically charged field between the two. The “phantom” public which he came to envision would be manifest to the senses, at least to the extent that it might be “felt” by the reader of print, but it also amounted to a surrogate for the more tangibly sensual experience of face-to-face community.
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Footnotes
*
This article began as a first-year proseminar paper in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. For their guidance I extend hearty thanks in particular to Warren Breckman, Roger Chartier, and Benjamin Nathans. Because of Emily Dolan, I had the wonderful opportunity to share a shorter version with my esteemed co-participants at the Herder, Music, and Enlightenment conference in 2008. Their responses were of great help. Finally, I have benefited from the comments of astute anonymous readers, as well as the thoughtful suggestions of Duncan Kelly. All have my sincerest gratitude.
References
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59 Thus the thesis that “Herder's philosophy originated with the theoretical problem of sensation and reflection,” from my vantage point, requires qualification: why, and how inflected? Cf. Norton, Herder's Aesthetics, 45.
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61 Quoted in Zammito, Birth of Anthropology, 152–7. See Norton, Herder's Aesthetics, 33–42.
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66 Zammito, Birth of Anthropology, 147; Haym, Herder, 1: 36 ff.
67 Haym, Herder, 1: 97–103.
68 Herder, Werke, 1: 130–34; Redekop, Enlightenment and Community, 183–5.
69 Herder, Werke, 1: 114.
70 Ibid., 1: 693–4. See also Van der Zande, “In the Image of Cicero,” 431.
71 Norton, Herder's Aesthetics, 65–70. See also Dahlstrom, Daniel O., “The Aesthetic Holism of Hamann, Herder, and Schiller,” in Ameriks, Karl, ed., The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism (Cambridge, 2000), 82Google Scholar. Herder did not adopt Hamann's derision of the public: Robert, Robert, “J. G. Hamann and the Problem of Public Reason,” Monatshefte 98 (2006), 12–19Google Scholar. For a clear-eyed look at the underappreciated influence of Johann Georg Hamann in German letters, consult Betz, John R., “Reading ‘Sibylline Leaves’: J. G. Hamann in the History of Ideas,” Journal of the History of Ideas 70 (2009), 93–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See too Haym, Herder, 1: 68–78.
72 Herder, Werke, 1: 23–7, 9/2: 138–40.
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74 Herder, Werke, 1: 170–71.
75 Ibid., 1: 255. Cf. Norton, Herder's Aesthetics, 99–103.
76 Herder to Scheffner, 31 Oct. 1767, in Herder, Briefe, 1: 91–4.
77 Vazsonyi, “Montesquieu,” 231–40. See also Blitz, Aus Liebe zum Vaterland, 281–340. Friedrich Carl von Moser was the son of another prominent jurist–intellectual and staunch defender of the Reich, Johann Jakob Moser. See Mack, Mack, Johann Jakob Moser and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (Chapel Hill, 1981)Google Scholar.
78 Herder to Johann Georg Hamann, mid-March 1769, in Herder, Briefe, 1: 130–35.
79 Herder, Werke, 1: 177, 570. See also Redekop, Enlightenment and Community, 193–6.
80 Norton, Herder's Aesthetics, 59–67.
81 Herder, Werke, 9/2: 206. The formulation of a uniquely modern “spirit of moderation” on the part of the legislator was not a concern for Herder. See Pangle, Thomas L., Montesquieu's Philosophy of Liberalism: A Commentary on The Spirit of the Laws (Chicago, 1973), 271–3Google Scholar. Around this time began for Herder a lifelong desire to make of Montesquieu's system a “usable” method. Vierhaus, “Montesquieu in Deutschland,” 30–31.
82 Whether one ought to designate this site as Volk, Sprache, or Nation, at least at this stage in Herder's intellectual development, and in an age before the dawn of political nationalism, is frankly not vital. On related problems, see in particular Michael Zaremba, Johann Gottfried Herders humanitäres Nations- und Volksverständnis: Ein Beitrag zur politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Berlin, 1985), 117–20; Vicki, Vicki, “Towards an Ontology of Holistic Individualism: Herder's Theory of Identity, Culture and Community,” History of European Ideas 22 (1996), 252Google Scholar.
83 Here I rely on the excellent commentary of Rainer Wisbert in Herder, Werke, 9/2: 861–972. Refer additionally to Haym, Herder, 1: 337–80.
84 Haym, Herder, 1: 87–97, 321–34. Cf. Zammito, Birth of Anthropology, 160–63.
85 Herder to Johann Georg Scheffner, 21 June 1766, in Herder, Briefe, 1: 55–7.
86 Mah, “The Man with Too Many Qualities,” 31–3, 35.
87 Herder, Werke, 9/2: 11–13.
88 La Vopa, “Herder's Publikum,” 8–9, 12–13.
89 Herder, Werke, 9/2: 28–9. Compare the analogous remarks of Herder to Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, late Oct. 1769, in Herder, Briefe, 1: 166–71.
90 Herder, Werke, 9/2: 29–33. An apt description of Herder's vacillation between the theoretical and the “practical” is to be found in Richard, Richard, “Herder's Journal meiner Reise,” in Koepke, Wulf, ed., Johann Gottfried Herder: Language, History, and the Enlightenment (Columbia, SC, 1990), esp. 102–3Google Scholar.
91 Herder, Werke, 9/2: 52. Cf. Zammito, Birth of Anthropology, 309–10.
92 Herder to Hartknoch, 4 Aug. 1769, in Herder, Briefe, 1: 155–60.
93 Herder, Werke, 9/2: 106.
94 Ibid., 9/2: 81–2, 93.
95 Herder to Hartknoch, mid-Nov. 1769, in Herder, Briefe, 1: 174–5. Cf. La Vopa, “Herder's Publikum,” 14–15; Mah, “The Man with Too Many Qualities,” 38–9.
96 Herder, Werke, 9/2: 101–3.
97 Ibid., 9/2: 105, 111–12.
98 Ibid., 9/2: 14–15.
99 Herder to Hartknoch, mid-Dec. 1769, in Herder, Briefe, 1: 181–4.
100 La Vopa, “Herder's Publikum,” 15–17.
101 Cf. Samson B. Knoll, “The Experience Denied: Herder Abroad,” in Koepke, Johann Gottfried Herder, 190.
102 Recent scholarship has been attentive to the polarity between pluralism and universalism in the mature Herder, which allows for greater interpretive flexibility than previously assumed. See, for example, Peter, Peter, “The Nature of Collective Individuals: J. G. Herder's Concept of Community,” History of European Ideas 25 (1999), 291–304Google Scholar; Damon, Damon, “The Reluctant Pluralism of J. G. Herder,” Review of Politics 62 (2000), 267–93Google Scholar; Sonia, Sonia, “Enlightened Relativism: The Case of Herder,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 31 (2005), 309–41Google Scholar. Compare Pauline, Pauline, “Six Varieties of Cosmopolitanism in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany,” Journal of the History of Ideas 60 (1999), 515–18Google Scholar. On pluralism see Sankar, Sankar, “Enlightenment Anti-imperialism,” Social Research 66 (1999), 966, 998–99Google Scholar.