Kant: Political Writings

Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind by Johann Gottfried Herder. Quern te Deus esse iussit et humana qua parte locatus es in re disce. Part One. 318 pp. Quarto. Hartknoch: Riga and Leipzig. 1784.

In this work, our ingenious and eloquent author displays those distinctive qualities of mind for which he has already gained recognition. For this reason, the work is perhaps as little subject to ordinary standards of judgement as are some of the other products of his pen. It is as if his genius did not simply bring together ideas from the broad sphere of the arts and sciences in order to supplement them with other ideas which might be communicated to others, but as if he adapted them, by a certain law of assimilation (to borrow his own expression) and in a way peculiar to himself, to his own specific mode of thinking. They thus become markedly different from those by which other minds are furthered and sustained (p.292), and are accordingly less capable of being communicated to others. Consequently, what he understands by the philosophy of the history of mankind may well be something quite different from what is usually understood by that term. His approach does not entail, for example, a logical precision in the definition of concepts or careful distinctions and consistency in the use of principles, but rather a cursory and comprehensive vision and a ready facility for discovering analogies, together with a bold imagination in putting these analogies to use. This is combined with an aptitude for arousing sympathy for his subject—which is always kept at an obscure distance—by means of feelings and sentiments; and these in turn, as the product of weighty thoughts or as highly significant pointers, lead us to expect more of them than cool assessment would ever be likely to discover. Nevertheless, since freedom of thought (which is present here in ample measure), as exercised by a fertile mind, always affords food for thought, we shall attempt as far as possible to extract the most important and characteristic of the author's ideas and to present them in his own words, adding in conclusion a few remarks concerning the whole.