Herder, Johann Gottfried von

Herder, Johann Gottfried von (1744-1803), German philosopher and literary critic, whose writings were instrumental in introducing German Romanticism. As the leader of the Sturm und Drang movement, he inspired many writers, notably the future leader of the German Romantic school, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. See German Literature.

Herder was born on August 25, 1744, in Mohrungen (now Morag, Poland). He studied at the University of Königsberg under the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Among Herder's earliest critical works was Fragmente über die neuere deutsche Literatur (Fragments on Recent German Literature, 1766-1767), which advocated the emancipation of German literature from foreign influences. Subsequent essays—such as Von deutscher Art und Kunst (Of German Style and Art, 1773), written in collaboration with Goethe—were devoted to extolling folk literature and the poetry of Shakespeare and Homer and to the development of Herder's idea of Volksgeist (“national character”), as expressed in the language and literature of a nation.

In 1776, with the help of Goethe, Herder was appointed to a government post in Weimar. There he wrote his major work, the four-volume study Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit (1784-1791; Outline of a Philosophy of the History of Man, 1800), which attempts to demonstrate that nature and human history obey the same laws and that, in time, contending human forces will be reconciled. Although unfinished, the treatise embodies most of Herder's ideas, and it remains his most important contribution to philosophy.

Towards the end of his life, Herder broke with Goethe and German Classicism, arguing in favour of a didactic purpose in poetry in such works as Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität (Letters for the Advancement of Humanity, 1793-1797). He set out to discredit the philosophies of Kant with Verstand und Erfahrung. Eine Metakritik zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1799) and Die Metakritik zur Urteilskraft (1800), but both works met with a harsh reception. By the end of the 18th century Herder's influence was fading, but his contribution to German literary and historical thought is significant. He died in Weimar on December 18, 1803.