Herder: Philosophy and Anthropology

J. G. Herder is enjoying a renaissance in philosophy and related disciplines and yet there are, as yet, few books on him. This unprecedented collection fills a large gap in the secondary literature, highlighting the genuinely innovative and distinctive nature of Herder's philosophy. Not only does Herder offer highly original answers to important philosophical questions, such as the mind-body problem and the role of sensibility in cognition and ethics, he also opens up rich resources for thinking about philosophy itself and connections to other fields in the humanities and social sciences. Herder: Philosophy and Anthropology brings together a set of original essays that centre on the question at the heart of Herder's philosophical thought: How can philosophy enable an understanding of the human being not simply rationalistically as an intellectual and moral agent, but also as a creature of nature who is fundamentally marked by an affective openness and responsiveness to the world and other persons.

The first part of the volume examines the various dimensions of Herder's philosophical understanding of human nature through which he sought methodologically to delineate a genuinely anthropological philosophy. The second part then examines further aspects of this understanding of human nature and what emerges from it: the human-animal distinction; how human life evolves over space and time on the basis of a natural order; the fundamentally hermeneutic dimension to human existence; and the interrelatedness of language, history, religion, and culture.