Muthu S. Enlightenment against Empire
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214 CHAPTER SIX
we don’t breathe the “same air” as others, leads us to impose our own,
parochial set of values on to others.
The general, philosophical tone of our century wishes to extend ‘our own ideal’
of virtue and happiness to each distant nation, to even the remotest age in
history. But can one such single ideal act as an arbiter praising or condemning
other nations or periods, their customs and laws; can it remake them after its
own image? (SC 187)
As I detail later, Herder theorizes some of the potentially radical implica-
tions of such questions on the nature of moral judgement itself, especially
to what extent, if at all, one can judge others or compare the values of
distinct times and places. Much of his early critique, however, consists of
a series of sarcastic denunciations of “philosophy”, that is the philosophy
of his age or, at times, of his century, though he rarely targets individual
figures.
The upshot of such pronouncements is that any philosophical history
that is written from what is either taken to be a golden age or from a
truly enlightened perspective is simply a crude transformation of one’s
view of happiness into a universal good or a grand historical realization.
In a particularly caustic and telling passage, Herder himself crystallizes his
indictment of generalized viewpoints and universal judgements in the
study of others:
As a rule, the philosopher is never more of an ass than when he most confi-
dently wishes to play God; when with remarkable assurance, he pronounces on
the perfection of the world, wholly convinced that everything moves just so, in
a nice, straight line, that every succeeding generation reaches perfection in a
completely linear progression, according to his ideals of virtue and happiness. It
so happens that he is always the ratio ultima, the last, the highest, link in the
chain of being, the very culmination of it all. ‘Just see to what enlightenment,
virtue, and happiness the world has swung! And here, behold, am I at the top
of the pendulum, the gilded tongue of the world’s scales!’ (SC 214)
While the concept of progress itself, then, appears to be one of the in-
tended victims of such attacks, we will later see that Herder begins to
transform what he takes to be the conventional understanding of pro-
gressive change so as to incorporate humans’ self-making and transforma-
tive freedom—their perpetual striving. He views the tendency to place
oneself above others and viewing oneself as the culmination of historical
progress as often linked; thus, he derides the pretension that can guide
historical inquiry, broadly understood. History, then, is the category un-
der which Herder theorizes both the study of past ages and the diversity
of peoples in his own day, and the arrogance that fuels generalizations
about vast swaths of human experience.
HERDER’S POLITICAL THOUGHT 215
Herder’s criticisms of simplifying and generalizing historical knowl-
edge spring not only from his annoyance at the arrogant intellectual dis-
position that often guides historical inquiry, but also (and perhaps espe-
cially) from his awareness of the particularly dire consequences that result
for our comprehension of politics and our ability to reform social and
political practices. The legal and political processes by which one exam-
ines specific cases, with all of their eccentricities and complications, have
given way to a set of indiscriminately applied standardized rules. Linked
to this, Herder argues, is a rush to judgement, and a flawed diagnosis of
social needs and ills.
Old traditions, prejudices in favour of painstaking scholarship, slow maturing,
searching inquiry, and cautious judging have been thrown off like a yoke from
the neck! At the bars of our courts, in place of minute, detailed, dusty learning
and the individual treatment and examination of each case, we now have that
elegant, free-and-easy fashion of judging all cases from a couple of precedents,
leaving aside everything which is individual and unique in favour of facile or
grandiose generalities.... In our political economy and political science phi-
losophy has offered us a bird’s eye view in place of an arduously acquired
knowledge of the real needs and conditions of the country; an overall picture,
as on a map or a philosophical chart. (SC 198)
Herder’s attacks upon generalities constitute, in part, an appreciation for
local forms of knowledge as crucial for understanding ourselves and
others, but they should not be construed as defences of tradition as such.
Many of his criticisms are, in fact, made in the name of future reform,
challenges to tradition (though not in the sweeping manner that he finds
is all too common in many philosophical writings), and the strengthening
of liberty against political despotism.
6
The following passage is especially
clear on this point, and deserves to be quoted at length:
This is a time when the art of legislation is considered the sole method of
civilizing nations. Yet this method has been employed in the strangest fashion
to produce mostly general philosophies of the human race, rational axioms of
human behaviour and what-have-you! Doubtless the undertaking was more
dazzling than useful. Admittedly, we could derive from it all the commonplaces
about the right and the good, maxims of philanthropy and wisdom, views of all
times and peoples for all times and peoples. For all times and peoples? That
means, alas, precisely not for the very people whom the particular code of law
was meant to fit like clothing....
What an abyss there is between even the finest general truth and the least of
its applications to a given sphere, to a particular purpose and in any one specific
manner! The village Solon who abolishes just one bad custom, who initiates
just one current of human sentiment and activity, has done a thousand times
216 CHAPTER SIX
more in the way of legislation than all our great rationalists who believe in the
miserable illusion that everything is either true or false. (SC 203)
Thus, Herder contends that universal claims about the truth or falsehood
of ideas in the political sphere establishes a mode of thinking that makes
difficult, if not impossible, the task of determining judiciously which
practices and institutions ought to be reformed and in what manner. The
more universal the claim, the more ill-suited it becomes, he suggests,
when we are faced with the specifics of a given political problem. More-
over, Herder contends that a whole array of pernicious consequences re-
sult from a homogenizing impulse behind the generalities of historical
inquiry. As we will see later, the generalized judgement Herder con-
demns, which proclaims simply truths or falsehoods and which impedes
most prospects for genuine reform, is precisely the logic that lies behind
the characterization of whole peoples as simply inferior or superior, as
barbarous or enlightened.
Herder notes that, to some extent, the comprehension of vast amounts
of information, of the kind that was available about the world’s peoples,
requires one to make certain classifications and generalities—“[c]an there
be a general picture without grouping and arrangement?” While the im-
pulse to generalize might in part, then, be a result of necessity, Herder
also presents a brief sociology of knowledge which suggests that unifor-
mity and generality are hallmarks of philosophical thinking in his day
because political life itself has become homogenized and centralized.
Thus, the historical scholarship and political theory that he targets are, in
his view, partly reflections of broader social changes that are in the pro-
cess of effacing local idiosyncrasies and regional differences. It is for this
reason, he contends, that one can now theorize plausibly about Europe
as such, for Europe itself is becoming less differentiated, more identifiable
as an integral whole. Accordingly, in a particularly sarcastic passage,
Herder writes of the social and political changes that are remaking Eu-
rope and that enable the scholarship to which he gives biting praise:
To depict the growth of these circumstances is the sole privilege of our political
historians and of our historical eulogists of monarchy! How sad were the times
when people acted according to needs and their innermost feelings; sadder still,
when the power of rulers was still curbed, but saddest of all, when their reve-
nues were not yet wholly arbitrary. For it provided the philosophical and histor-
ical epicist with little scope for generalizing rationalizations and scant oppor-
tunity for painting the whole of Europe on one vast canvas! (SC 207–8)
Not only the understanding of Europe’s present, however, is affected by
such changes. When thinkers glorify the present, Europe’s past becomes
HERDER’S POLITICAL THOUGHT 217
denigrated and its nuances, contradictions, and contributions are lost.
Commenting on the histories and historical reflections of, among others,
Voltaire, Hume, and William Robertson, Herder asserts that the pre-
sumed superstition and barbarity of past ages is both true and untrue—
true because in relative terms one can plausibly contrast certain features
of the past and current ages, but untrue “if one considers the earlier
epoch according to its intrinsic nature and aims, its pastimes and mores,
and especially as the instrument of the historical process.”
7
(SC 192) The
historical process that Herder refers to is only later developed as a theory
of social change and progress, intimations of which can be found in Yet
Another Philosophy of History, as I discuss later. At this point, it should be
clear that he has already established the idea of contextual and relative
analysis and judgement.
From the outset, Herder resists the obvious counter-argument that
such an approach obscures or even legitimizes the injustices of other ages
(or other peoples). With regard to the Middle Ages, he writes,
I am by no means disposed to defend the perpetual migrations and devasta-
tions, the feudal wars and attacks, the armies of monks, the pilgrimages, the
crusades. I only want to explain them; to show the spirit which breathed
through it all, the fermentation of human forces. (SC 193)
Thus, to attend to the spirit of temporal or geographic foreignness is to
set aside facile judgement in favour of more subtle and complicated ac-
counts, which, Herder insists, does not require legitimating every facet of
the object under study. Indeed, he suggests that the very methodology
that freely and easily judges others according to its own values is precisely
the most stultifying when wants to approach one’s own society or time in
a critical manner.
At the heart of such self-centred viewpoints lies an incomplete and
dogmatic appraisal of one’s own values, practices, and institutions. Our
“political histories and our histories of commerce and trade”, Herder
complains, offer optimistic praise about extant governments, ideas, and
industry (SC 214). But the celebration of one’s own surroundings and
times narrows one’s scope and makes it less likely that one can critically
assess the present. To transform one’s condition, meditating upon a vari-
ety of circumstances is crucial for gaining fresh perspectives on all things
familiar. “Indeed,” Herder writes, “our very enjoyment of the things we
boast of may cut us off from experiences which might have proved supe-
rior.” (SC 213–14) The rosy portraits of the modern world that political
theoreticians and historians offer their contemporaries are offered sin-
cerely, but they serve a largely social, not an educative, function, for they
calm the spirit that might have agitated for change. Such works emerge
218 CHAPTER SIX
from an intellectual disposition that ultimately breeds passivity and the
most lazy forms of conservatism. Belittling the complacency that results
from such self-understandings, Herder casts European polities as dying
patients in need of comforting tales of their ostensibly salubrious condition:
the consumptive invalid lies peacefully in bed, whimpers and—gives thanks!
But is he really grateful? And if he is, could not this very gratitude be consid-
ered a symptom of his decline, his despondency and extreme timidity?... We
are faced here with a disease which precludes remedy. Since opium dreams help
to ease the agony of death, should I disturb the ailing patient if I cannot hope
to cure him? (SC 213–14)
Thus, the enthusiasm with which self-serving political histories are con-
sumed, Herder suggests, indicates precisely the sickness that afflicts the
political and social situation of modern Europe, a malady that in other
passages he begins to diagnose. For now, it should be noted again that he
seeks not an affirmation of present realities, as one might suspect from his
attacks upon the easy judgements of moralists, but rather an immanent
criticism of reformist thinking. For Herder, the prevalent view of his age
is one that celebrates reform, but that too often dogmatically accepts
present changes as progressive. To be sure, one can plausibly dispute such
a characterization of eighteenth-century thought, although the heavily
sarcastic tone of Yet Another Philosophy of History suggests that he inten-
tionally makes blanket generalizations about his contemporaries for rhe-
torical effect. Ultimately, Herder was not a reactionary who sought to
militate against reform as such. Rather, it was precisely the easy celebra-
tion of the language of reform in his age, he believed, that most chilled
prospects for actual reform.
The Flux of History
For Herder, one crucial problem with such judgements and generaliza-
tions about Europe’s condition is that it assumes that a particular set of
social and political achievements can be won and preserved. Moreover, it
presumes that we can identify fairly stable characteristics of different peo-
ples and ages. As we have seen, Herder argues against such assumptions
by noting that historical changes often spring, in part, from contingent
circumstances. The questions that “history should pose” should suppose
“that things could have been quite different—given another place, an-
other time, and taking into account different cultural developments and
circumstances” (SC 182). In part, the task of relativizing our present
situation is based upon the recognition of the intrinsic flux of social and
HERDER’S POLITICAL THOUGHT 219
political life. From this, we ought to grasp the futility of assigning rela-
tively fixed characters for each people. Even if the greatness of the cul-
tural and political achievements of a particular people is widely acknowl-
edged, Herder asserts that such developments arose partly by chance
configurations of social factors and, moreover, will undergo further
changes—likely deleterious ones—due to similarly obscure and often un-
predictable causes. Accordingly, he asserts that
no people long remained, or could remain, what it was, that each, like the arts
and sciences and everything else in the world, has its period of growth, flower-
ing and decay; that each of these modifications has lasted only the minimum of
time which could be given to it on the wheel of human destiny; that, finally, no
two moments in the world were ever identical and that therefore the Egyptians,
the Romans and the Greeks have not stayed the same through all time....
(SC 182–83)
In addition to his obvious distaste of linear conceptions of historical
change and progress, such passages indicate the depth of Herder’s antipa-
thy toward easy comparisons among peoples. The particularity of differ-
ent times and places, in conjunction with the constant movement and
transformation of ideas, practices, and institutions, he argues, should cau-
tion us against assigning intrinsic characteristics to specific peoples and
ages. Moreover, Herder notes that even the most common references to
nations obscure internal differences and tensions. Referring to those who
extol ancient Greece in the broadest possible terms, he responds that
“Greece was composed of many peoples: were Athenians and Boetians,
Spartans and Corinthians, nothing less than identical?” (SC 183) In addi-
tion to identifying the various strands that make up a larger, and more
commonly portrayed, group, Herder asserts that however precisely a peo-
ple is defined, it will be marked nonetheless by significant tensions. Not
only are such inconsistencies and clashing differences intrinsic to human
life, but, at times, he argues, they can be socially productive. Thus, he
writes that
[a] nation may have the most sublime virtues in some respects and blemishes in
others, show irregularities and reveal the most astonishing contradictions and
incongruities.... [F]or him who wants to understand the human heart within
the living elements of its circumstances, such irregularities and contradictions
are perfectly human. Powers and tendencies proportionally related to given
purposes do not constitute exceptions but are the rule, for these purposes
could scarcely be attained without them.... (SC 184)
Herder contends that only those striving for an inhuman, absurdly un-
derstood, singular perfection could be astonished at the conflicts and
220 CHAPTER SIX
complexity within any one people, let alone within humanity as a whole.
All of this makes the characterization and inevitable assessments of var-
ious peoples a particularly challenging task, if one wants to do justice to
the diversity of human life—a goal toward which, for Herder, too few
thinkers apply themselves.
Herder insists that his emphasis on contingency and change does not
bury human agency under so many blind forces that we should be seen as
powerless in the face of our social circumstances. Yet, he is careful to note
that even in those instances in which individuals act against the dominant
institutions and ideas of their time, they often change little themselves
and are capable of inspiring more significant acts only when the social
conditions happen to be ripe for reform. “How often before had such
Luthers risen and fallen,” Herder writes, “silenced by smoke and flame or
else by the lack of a free atmosphere in which their words could re-
sound.” (SC 195) Thus, he argues that the most elaborately wrought
schemes of reform often fail, while seemingly minor proposals and acts
ultimately lay the groundwork in the future for radical social and political
transformations. Herder is particularly interested in the chance events
that engender the most significant historical movements. Presaging his
future work on empire and its often brutal consequences, his most de-
tailed example is of the extraordinary consequences that followed the
invention and refinement of the compass.
Who can count the revolutions in every part of the world which have come
about because of the little needle at sea? Lands, larger than Europe, have been
discovered. Coasts have been conquered, full of gold, silver, precious stones,
spices—and death. Human beings have been forced, through a process of con-
version or civilization, into mines, treadmills and depravity. Europe has been
depopulated, her innermost resources consumed by diseases and opulence.
Who can count these revolutions, or describe them? Who can count or describe
the new manners, the dispositions, virtues and vices? The cycle in which, after
three centuries, the world moves, is infinite—and on what does it depend?
What gives it its impulse? The point of a needle and two or three other me-
chanical inventions? (SC 196)
Herder understood, of course, that the causes and full significance of
European imperialism merit more than a simple technological explana-
tion. And it would be Herder himself who would “count” the effects that
European empires wrought—the multiple causes, and especially the com-
plex consequences, of modern imperialism occupy a central place in the
Ideas. Still, the flux of history, even with phenomena as large-scale as the
discovery of continents and the building of empires, turns partly upon
chance, unintended consequences, and overlapping (and sometimes con-
tradictory) practices and events.
HERDER’S POLITICAL THOUGHT 221
On the Horizons of Knowledge and
Universal Standards
In Herder’s historical writings, the epistemological limits that humans
face in grasping the outlines of our condition, our history, and the poten-
tial for our future are usually signified by God. It is crucial to note that
Herder does not suggest that divine power actually controls human ac-
tions, or that our freedom is merely chimerical in light of divine omnipo-
tence, though at times he speaks of history as the workings of God in
nature, and also chastises those who na¨ıvely view freedom as complete
mastery over one’s destiny (e.g., SC 223).
8
In his historical writings, the
language of divinity usually plays two roles. First, it signifies the limits of
human actions and the contingency of human life. Second, God repre-
sents the infinite knowledge about the tremendous diversity, and yet ulti-
mate unity, of humanity that will always elude humans’ cognitive powers
and that indicates the arrogance of humans’ ceaseless striving for com-
plete knowledge. Herder is adamant in asserting that “only the Creator
can conceive the immense variety within one nation or all nations with-
out losing sight of their essential unity.” (SC 183) Thus, his use of reli-
gious language in YPH and later in the Ideas injects a tone of epis-
temological scepticism into his thought, one that largely seeks to curb
the pretensions of his contemporaries and indicates the tentative and par-
tial quality of his own arguments about human unity and diversity, rather
than primarily undergirding a theological conception of the universe and
humans’ place within it.
9
For Herder, the extent to which our knowledge of ourselves and our
surroundings is rooted in local circumstances and understandings is sig-
nificant. The frustration that we feel, or ought to feel, when we aim for
too comprehensive a knowledge of the human condition reveals the lim-
itations of our time and place.
The very limitation of my little corner of the globe, the blinding of my vision,
the failure of my aims, the enigma of my dispositions and my desires, the defeat
of my energies: these can only be measured in terms of one day, one year, one
nation, one century. (SC 222)
But Herder does not counsel others to forsake intellectual pursuits that
strive to move beyond one’s domain. This is obvious in his later writings,
especially the Ideas, which aims to present a global history; but even
earlier it becomes clear that the intellectual disposition with which one
engages in such ambitious projects is his central concern. We should tem-
per not only our arrogant dogmatism, but also our cowardice about em-
barking upon projects that seek to grasp the vast diversity of human life.
As Herder argues,
222 CHAPTER SIX
Our short span is infinitely minute in relation to the pride which claims to be
everything, to know everything, achieve everything and develop everything, but
infinitely great in relation to the pusillanimity which does not dare to be any-
thing. (SC 223)
Still, in YPH, Herder emphasizes primarily the limitations of our per-
spectives, and offers an intriguing analysis of how our “horizons” become
shaped.
Mother Nature . . . placed in men’s hearts inclinations towards diversity, but
made each of them so little pressing in itself that if only some of them are
satisfied the soul soon makes a concert out of the awakened notes and only
senses the unawakened ones as if they mutely and obscurely supported the
sounded melody. She has put tendencies towards diversity in our hearts; she has
placed part of the diversity in a close circle around us; she has restricted man’s
view so that by force of habit the circle became a horizon, beyond which he
could not see nor scarcely speculate. (SC 186)
For Herder, then, the manner in which we are socially acclimatized into
particular surroundings explains at least some part of our limited hori-
zons. Since Herder does not use the metaphor of local horizons as simply
a representation of intrinsic cognitive limitations, but rather partly of ha-
bituation to local circumstances, he therefore leaves open the possibility
that we can survey broader horizons, and incorporate more “notes” into
the diversely composed melody that makes up our limited spheres. It is
crucial to note that for Herder even one’s local circumstances are diverse.
Thus, rather than contrasting the immense diversity of the globe as a
whole with clusters of relatively homogenous units (be they families,
small communities, cities, or nations), he points to a variety of diverse
practices, institutions, and beliefs, some of which we inhabit and others
of which we view obscurely, if at all.
All of this, of course, raises crucial questions of moral judgement,
which Herder takes up in the Ideas, though at times only indirectly. If
our viewpoints are constrained by and limited to specific horizons, then is
it possible to judge aspects of societies that are arranged around and
formed by different beliefs, histories, and self-understandings? Through-
out YPH, Herder sharply criticizes the nearly instinctive tendency to
make generalizations, and argues instead that a more reflective and cau-
tious historical understanding must incorporate the particularities and
contingencies of our varied situations. Only then, he writes,
will you be in a position to understand; then only will you give up the idea of
comparing everything, in general or in particular, with yourself. For it would be
manifest stupidity to consider yourself to be the quintessence of all times and
all peoples. (SC 182)
HERDER’S POLITICAL THOUGHT 223
Herder explores some of the ethical consequences of such a view by dis-
cussing competing conceptions of happiness.
Judging among various senses of happiness is often impossible, Herder
argues, because comparisons often cannot be made, for the simple reason
that the tremendous diversity of intellectual temperaments and beliefs
belie most attempts to identify normative criteria that span a variety of
peoples and times. When such cross-national or cross-temporal efforts at
moral judgement are made, they amount, in Herder’s view, to celebra-
tions of local goods in the guise of universal goods. Accordingly, he sug-
gests that the “general, philosophical, philanthropical tone of our century
wishes to extend ‘our own ideal’ of virtue and happiness to each distant
nation, to even the remotest age in history.” (SC 187) The problem with
such judgements is not simply the arrogance with which they are often
made (though this aspect of what is now often called ethnocentrism
clearly enrages Herder), but also the mistake in thinking that any one set
of human experiences can furnish the material with which one could
judge human experience as such. In YPH, Herder’s arguments about
moral incommensurability rest upon at least three distinct kinds of claims
about human life: psychological, empirical, and normative.
The psychological or cognitive claim that supports his argument is that
our senses of happiness are shaped so powerfully by the beliefs and prac-
tices that surround us that it is difficult, if not impossible at times, to
comprehend the aesthetic and intellectual dispositions of other times and
ages. In a crucial passage, Herder relates the manner in which standards
of judgement are multiplied and details the resultant effects upon our
ability to compare and assess different practices.
When the inner sense of happiness has altered, this or that attitude has
changed; when the external circumstances and needs fashion and fortify this
new sentiment: who can then compare the different forms of satisfaction per-
ceived by different senses in different worlds? Who can compare the shepherd
and the Oriental patriarch, the ploughman and the artist, the sailor, the runner,
the conqueror of the world? Happiness lies not in the laurel wreath or in the
sight of the blessed herd, in the cargo ship or in the captured field-trophy, but
in the soul which needs this, aspires to that, has attained this and claims no
more—each nation has its centre of happiness within itself, just as every sphere
has its centre of gravity. (SC 186)
I will return to the last claim that Herder makes above in a moment. For
now, it should be noted that the empirical claim that gives force to his
arguments and intimations about moral incommensurability is simply the
fact that the diversity that characterizes human life is much greater than
most thinkers have imagined. Combined with this is the normative claim
that varying practices and beliefs, which embody distinct conceptions of