The Japanese Society for Aesthetics

Aesthetics No.23-24 (2021): 47-59

Herder’s Way to “Sentio, ergo sum” *SUGIYAMA Takashi
Kyoto University, Kyoto

Introduction
Johann Gottfried Herder wrote in the Fourth Grove of the Critical Forests and “On the
Sense of Touch” (both written in 1769, published posthumously) as follows:[T]here is nothing in the world of which I am immediately convinced by an innerfeeling other than that I exist, that I feel. (FHA, II 252 = SWS, IV 7 = SWA, 178)
I feel myself! I am! (FHA, IV 236 = SWS, VIII 96)
These statements show nothing less than his position “sentio, ergo sum,” as opposed to the
Cartesian “cogito, ergo sum” (AT, VI 32; cf. 558; VII 25; VIII 7). This paper aims to makeclear what led Herder to this position, in order to consider the possibility of “sentio, ergo sum”
as an alternative to “cogito, ergo sum”1.
Both the Fourth Grove of the Critical Forests and “On the Sense of Touch” have been
regarded as preparatory studies for the Sculpture (1778) as they share some of discussions2.
Thus “sentio, ergo sum” is considered a starting point for Herder’s “aesthetics of feeling” that
resulted in this work3. This explanation then does away with the need of the question, what led
Herder to this position. However, this motto will have to be understood in the same way as the
Cartesian “cogito, ergo sum” is understood as a result of “methodological skepticism,”* This paper is based on the Japanese version printed in Bigaku Vol. 66, No. 1 (2015): pp. 53-64, publishedby the Japanese Society for Aesthetics, and was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP18K00126 andJP26770038.
1
This is, for example, suggested by the fact that Damasio, who pointed out “Descartes’ Error” (Damasio1994), develops his own ideas in the book whose German translation is titled “Ιch fühle, also bin ich” (Damasio
2000). The significance of Damasio for aesthetics is, for example, suggested by Shusterman, who refers positively
to him in proposing the “somaesthetics” (Shusterman 2008).
2
Sculpture was “largely written in the years 1768-70” (FHA, IV 244 = SWS, VIII 2 = Sculpture, 32).
3
Cf. e.g. Irmscher 1987; Sugiyama 2009; Zeuch 2013. Furthermore, for the literatures addressing “sentio,
ergo sum” directly, see Zeuch 1998 and Mellmann 2002. The former, carried out by the leading scholar of
Herder’s aesthetics, is a comparison between Kant and Herder on this motto, but it is hard to understand why theirlater works, the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and the Metacritique (1799), respectively, have been considered
for comparison. The latter takes this motto in “On the Sense of Touch” as a starting point, refers to Damasio, andconcludes it as a principle of driving the Strum und Drang on the whole, but interpreting “sentio, ergo sum” as the“interoceptive question to the self” seems too close to the contemporary psychoanalysis. In addition, HellerRoazen 2009 formulates the Aristotelian theory of sense as “sentio, ergo sum,” the flaw of which, that is,advocating the “archaeology of a sensation” without reference to Herder, will be fixed in this paper.

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according to which, even if you doubt the existence of all the things outside of you in order toobtain certain knowledge, you cannot doubt yourself doubting.
There is another reason that justifies the question, what led Herder to “sentio, ergo sum.”Though both the Fourth Grove of the Critical Forests and “On the Sense of Touch” share thecharacteristics of a preparatory study for the Sculpture, the context in which this motto appears
in the two works seems different at first glance. It is then worth asking whether this mottomeans the same—a starting point for the “aesthetics of feeling”—in both texts. To resolve thisquestion will need to consider what led Herder to “sentio, ergo sum” in each text separately.

1. The Way to “Sentio, ergo sum” in “On the Sense of Touch”
1.1. Molyneux’s Problem
The context in which “sentio, ergo sum” appears in “On the Sense of Touch” is asfollows:
Try how a blind philosopher would imagine a world! / a) I feel myself! I am!—I
believe that it is possible for a blind person to reduce the whole body in its build toforces of the soul. I believe that a person born blind can, as it were, remember how thesoul prepares its body, how every sense was formed from every force. We do not: for
we are too scattered, too thrown out of ourselves to think about it. We know our soulas little as our face, because we do not study it; we study physiognomy of others only
to recognize them when they meet us; we do not study ourselves because we do notneed to meet ourselves. We only see and study appearances; we do not study how webecame appearances. But that would be a blind person who would be so
metaphysician as Saunderson be mathematician. If he went back to everything, hewould remember everything in Platonic terms: that would be philosophy. (FHA, IV
236 = SWS, VIII 96)
Herder makes endless references to a “(born) blind person.” This shows the so-called“Molyneux’s problem,” a question concerning whether a person born blind who has learnt todistinguish and name a globe and a cube by touch, would be able to distinguish and namethese objects simply by sight, once (s)he becomes able to see by surgery, and the answer “no”
to the problem that such a person cannot simply distinguish and name these objects by sight
and would need the help of touch. Herder discusses this problem both in the Fourth Grove of
the Critical Forests and the Sculpture to provide a basis for the “aesthetics of feeling”4. Herein “On the Sense of Touch,” he contrasts the motto of “sentio, ergo sum” as a principle of aperson born blind with “cogito, ergo sum” as that of a visually unimpaired person (Herderhimself suffered from eye trouble for life). The distinction between blindness and visual
4

Cf. Sugiyama 2009.

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unimpairment is only superficial, and “sentio, ergo sum” must precede “cogito, ergo sum”
because sight needs help of touch.
In any case “sentio, ergo sum” in “On the Sense of Touch” is located in the context of the
Molyneux’s problem first of all.
1.2. Sense of Touch as a Sensor of Impenetrability of Matter
However, the Molyneux’s problem must not be the only rationale behind “sentio, ergosum.” If so, any one of the authors who answered Molyneux’s question with a “no” before
Herder—such as Diderot in the Letter on the Blind (1749) and Condillac in the Treatise on
Sensations (1754), even after Voltaire had reported Cheselden’s surgery (1728) in the
Elements of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy (1738)5—would have claimed “sentio, ergo sum”
against Descartes. However, they did not do so, at least explicitly6. Thus, the Molyneux’s
problem is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition for “sentio, ergo sum.” What
more is then required?
In “On the Sense of Touch,” Herder does not make the reference to “a blind person” fromthe start of the text. The following is the passage which marks the beginning of the appearanceof “a blind person”:
It is strange that the highest concepts of the philosophy of attraction and repulsion are
the simplest things of feeling, so little we know! The highest in philosophy is at thesame time the first and known. / So everything must start from feeling and return toit—what an excellent undertaking to reduce all the concepts to this one point! For
feeling and for the senses. / How few concepts does a blind person have! (FHA, IV
235 = SWS, VIII 96)
Thus, Herder begins this text with the identification of attractive and repulsive forces, thehighest concept of philosophy, and the sense of touch, which provides a broader context to thewhole text behind the Molyneux’s problem. This shows rather a strong influence of his teacher
Kant than his own uniqueness. First, concerning the identification of attractive and repulsive
forces as the highest concept of philosophy (cf. FHA, IV 239; SWS, XXXII 231), Kant says in
the Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755), which Herder praises asshowing “the simple, eternal, and perfect laws of the formation and motion of the planets”

5

The Molyneux’s problem differs before and after Voltaire’s report. After Voltaire reported the negative
surgical fact, the focus shifted to what it (i.e. to be able to see) means, while before the report, it was a purethought experiment.
6
Yet Condillac says in the Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge (1746) that “we are conscious of ourthought” (Part 1, sect. 1, ch. 1, §2. Condillac 2001, 14). Moreover, Rousseau explicitly says in Emile (1762) that“[t]o exist is to feel; our feeling is undoubtedly earlier than our intelligence, and we had feelings before we had
ideas” (Rousseau 1911, 253), though he does not mention the Molyneux’s problem. These may have influenced
the emergence of “sentio, ergo sum” in Herder, but it is only a half side, namely in “On the Sense of Touch,” notin the Fourth Grove of the Critical Forests.

SUGIYAMA Takashi

50(FHA, VI 21f. = SWS, XIII 14 = Outlines, 1) in the beginning of the Ideas for the Philosophyof History of Humanity (1784-91), that “I have, after I placed the world in the simplest chaos,made use of no forces other than those of attraction and repulsion to develop the great order ofnature” (AA, I 234). Second, concerning the identification of attractive and repulsive forces
and the sense of touch—the claim that it is the sense of touch to sense attractive and repulsive
forces are working—Herder’s transcript of Kant’s lecture on metaphysics contains thefollowing passage7:
Immediate compresence is contact. However, since the touch is not aroused by sight,but (according to Descartes’ true note8) the idea of it merely by feeling, we see that, aswith feeling, the power of resistance of things, that another does not occupy the same
space, is active, impenetrability is required for the concept of touch. (AA, XXVIII 28;
cf. 847)
The precritical Kant discussed a variety of subjects in natural philosophy by using the conceptof “impenetrability”9 mentioned here. In many cases, it is used only to characterize matter, but
is given a more advanced role to distinguish spirit from matter in one work, Dreams of a
Spirit-seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics (1766), to which I shall turn in the next
section.
1.3. “Where I Feel, There I Am”: Kant’s Criticism of the Mind-body Problem“A spirit-seer” here is Swedenborg, a Swedish mystic, who claimed to “cultivat[e] theclosest contact with spirits and with the souls of the dead,” identify the location of a lost
receipt for a strange woman, report live a dreadful conflagration in Stockholm from the remote
Gothenburg, and so on (II 354-356). To reveal his phoniness was the direct aim of the Dreams.
However, since this “seeing the spirit” is a phenomenon in which the “soul,” which should
normally be one with the body, leaves the body to become a “spirit” and sees something
without the body, we have to analyze the criticism of the mind-body problem resulting from“cogito, ergo sum” beyond the criticism of Swedenborg. In fact, what Kant did first is toreveal the problematicness of the concept of “spirit” through the following thought
experiment:
Take, for example, a cubic foot of space and suppose that there is something whichfills this space, that is to say, that there is something which resists the attempt by any

7This is a comment to §233 of Baumgarten’s Metaphysics (1739), which was the textbook of Kant’s lecture.
This may refer to article 38 of the second part of the Principles of Philosophy (1644. AT, VIII 63 = IX 85).
9
Physical Monadology (1756) says that “in moving one body closer and closer to another, we say that they
are touching each other when the force of impenetrability, that is to say, of repulsion, is felt” (I 483). This work
shares with the lecture on metaphysics the discussion that the concept of contact requires impenetrability, but does
not mention the sense of touch as sensing it, which tells eloquently where Herder was interested.
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other thing to penetrate this space. No one would call the being which existed in spacein this fashion a spirit-being. Such a being would obviously be called material, for it isextended, impenetrable and, like everything corporeal, capable of division and subject
to the laws governing impact ... But imagine a simple being and at the same timeendow it with reason. Would that then fully correspond to the meaning of the word
spirit? … I now proceed to raise the following question: suppose that I wished to place
this simple substance in that cubic foot of space which is full of matter: would it benecessary for a simple element of that matter to vacate its place so that the spirit could
occupy it? Do you think that the question must be answered affirmatively? Very well!
In that case, the space in question, if it were to admit a second spirit, would have tolose a second elementary particle. And if one were to continue with this process, thecubic foot of space would eventually be filled with spirits. And this cluster of spirits
would offer resistance by means of impenetrability in exactly the same fashion as if
the cubic foot of space were full of matter. And this cluster of spirits would be subject
to the laws of impact just as much as matter itself. (320f.)
Here Kant distinguishes matter from spirit by whether or not it has “impenetrability” and “thelaws of impact,” “for the essential characteristic mark of this concept [of spirit] is supposed tobe constituted by the property of being present in space but not impenetrable” (347). If so, thenas many spirits as possible can enter into a cubic foot of space. That is, multiple spirits coexist
in one place, so one cannot meet the spirit of a so-and-so anywhere in such a spirit world. It
would be unacceptable even for a preacher believing in the presence of spirits. What shouldsuch spirits see at all?
If the concept of spirit is so problematic, the same applies to “soul,” the spirit in the living
human body. Where in the body? Kant criticizes those who claim that “the human soul has its
seat in the brain, and its abode is an indescribably tiny place in it” (325f.) in the footnote
where he explicitly names Descartes10, as follows:
Now, suppose that it has been proved that the human soul was a spirit (though it isapparent from what has been said above that no such thing has as yet been proved), thenext question to which we might then proceed would perhaps be the following: whereis the place of this human soul in the world of bodies? My answer would run like this:The body, the alterations of which are my alterations – this body is my body; and theplace of that body is at the same time my place. If one pursued the question further
and asked: Where then is your place (that of the soul) in this body? then I should
suspect there was a catch in the question. For it is easy to see that the question alreadypresupposes something with which we are not acquainted through experience, though
10

Kant names “signs, which Descartes calls ideas materiales” and suggests the discussion about the pineal
gland as the confluence point of mind and body in the Passions of the Soul (1647), but Descartes himself does not
use the word “ideas materiales.” Its direct source is §112 of Christian Wolff’s Rational Psychology (1734).

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it may perhaps be based on imaginary inferences. The question presupposes, namely,that my thinking ‘I’ is in a place which is distinct from the place of the other parts ofthat body which belongs to my self. But no one is immediately conscious of aparticular place in his body; one is only immediately conscious of the space which one
occupies relatively to the world around. I would therefore rely on ordinary experienceand say, for the time being: Where I feel, it is there that I am. (324)“The place of my body,” whether as a whole or a part, is determined (only) “relatively to theworld around”; as a whole, my body exists in front of the desk, on the chair, and so on; as apart, my stomach exists below the esophagus, above the intestine, and so on. The brain is no
exception. However, such a spatial determination is applicable to matter characterized byextensibility and impenetrability, not to the soul. Asking “where is your soul in your body?” isa mistake in itself.
It was the position “where I feel, there I am” that Kant reached to through the above
thought experiment. It will not be the overemphasis to point out the fact that Kant said thisbefore Herder. Yet, this does not mean that Kant proposes this statement positively as his own
position. He merely said, “rely[ing] on ordinary experience ... for the time being.” That is, if
one is forced to answer the question “where is your soul in your body?” then one can do
nothing but to answer “my soul is wherever I feel.” Rather, Kant’s interest lies in showing that
this question itself is false. This is why Dreams is considered important as a prototype for the“Transcendental Dialectic” of the Critique of Pure Reason from the point of view of history ofdevelopment of the Kantian philosophy11.
However, Herder was dissatisfied with Kant’s stance of “for the time being.” He believedthat it deserved more serious consideration as a basis on which a philosophical system could
be built. In the following, I shall reflect on this point by examining the review of Dreams that
Herder contributed to the Königsberg Scholarly and Political Newspaper.
1.4. “Spiritual Impenetrability”: Herder’s Review of the Dreams
In this review, contrary to the actual structure of the Dreams, Herder first comments
briefly on the second part “which is historical” and then summarizes each of the four chaptersof the first part “which is dogmatic” and gives his own insights on them. How does he see
Kant’s criticism of the mind-body problem developed in the first chapter of the first part?
The author, who treads the happy analytical path of always philosophizing abouthumans, does nothing more than add something negative to the ordinary determinationof a spirit; namely, a property which gives its whole difference from matter a claritythat has hitherto been neglected. But just as corporeal concepts envelop us so muchthat we can hardly think of a kind of effectiveness in a space without the principle of11

Cf. Sakabe 1976.

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effectiveness at least with the intention of another being, which in its nature would be
identical with it, a kind of spiritual impenetrability: then, of course, this hypothesis
will only receive a philosophical certainty when the concept of space is completely
analyzed and the concept of force is seen a priori. As long as this is impossible, theauthor’s hypothesis will also remain the safest of all previous systems of thecommunity of spirit and body, because it is the least asserting and generally comesclosest to the origin of the concept in the word spirit, which presumably owes its
origin not to a philosophical invention, but to a delusion, to which its ignorance and its
preliminary judgment gave the word spirit. (SWS, I 128; cf. FHA, VIII 1074)12
Here Herder tries to rebut Kant through the concept of “spiritual impenetrability.” Though it is
not clear what this means, I shall take the expression “moving one’s mind” as an example.
Kant would not admit this because nothing can literally move one’s mind. However, we use
this expression. This suggests some link between “moving” the human body as theimpenetrable matter and “moving” the mind which is immaterial. Though Herder did not refer
to Kant’s motto “where I feel, there I am,” his line of thought can be paraphrased as: “I feel(moving physically) myself, therefore I am (spiritually).” The soul—if you want to call it so—thus emerges where I feel moving myself physically at a higher level, as it were13. By thinking
like this, the Cartesian mind-body dualism can be overcome without eliminating the question
itself as Kant did.
Kant must have taken Herder’s rebuttal seriously. It is because “Concerning the ultimate
ground of the differentiation of directions in space,” which Kant published two years later(1768), was the very attempt to “analyze the concept of space completely” and concluded “thedistinct feeling of the right and the left side” (AA, II 380) as “the ultimate ground of thedifferentiation of directions in space.”

2. The Way to “Sentio, ergo sum” in the Fourth Grove of the Critical Forests
2.1. “Crusian-Riedelian Maze”
In terms of both form and content, the Fourth Grove of the Critical Forests is divided into
three parts, the last two parts of which share content similar to the Sculpture, that is, have thecharacteristics of a preparatory study for it (but also contain the sketch of an aesthetics ofmusic). The first part develops the criticism of Riedel’s Theory of the Fine Arts and Sciences(1767), which was originally intended, and it is in this part that “sentio, ergo sum” appears.
Thus, the context in which “sentio, ergo sum” appears in the Fourth Grove of the Critical
Forests (in the criticism of Riedel) is different from that in “On the Sense of Touch” (asargued in the Introduction). It is clear from Herder’s saying that he is “immediately convinced”
12

FHA includes this not as an independent writing but as a commentary material. See also Heinz 1994, ch. 2.
This point of view plays a similar important role also in “sentio, ergo sum” in the Fourth Grove of the
Critical Forests. See the below (2.2.1.).
13

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54of this position. This may look like a casual descriptive phrase at first glance, but in fact is thephrase used by Riedel, which Herder in turn uses to criticize Riedel. Herder quotes Riedel asfollows, though not strictly:
Man has three ultimate ends, which are subordinated to his spiritual perfection: thetrue, the good, and the beautiful. / For each Nature has endowed man with a special
fundamental faculty: for the true the sensus communis, for the good the conscience,and for the beautiful taste. / The sensus communis is the inner feeling of the soul bymeans of which, without rational inferences, it is immediately convinced of the truthor falsity of a thing. The conscience is the feeling by which the soul is immediately
convinced of what is good and evil, and taste the feeling by which the soul isimmediately convinced of the beautiful, wherever it is found. (FHA, II 250 = SWS, IV
5 = SWA, 177; cf. Riedel 1767, 7)
By quoting like this and then questioning “immediately convinced?” Herder begins the Fourth
Grove of the Critical Forests. He argues that what one is immediately convinced of should not
be the ultimate ends such as the true, the good, and the beautiful, but “sentio, ergo sum.”
So since Herder himself finds it “immediately convinced” or “inwardly cognized without
inferences” (FHA, II 252 = SWS, IV 7 = SWA, 178), no further consideration might beneeded. However, a clue is given us. That is, a little later (within the first part), Herdercriticizes Riedel by saying “the Crusian-Riedelian maze” (FHA, II 257 = SWS, IV 12 = SWA,
182). That is Herder criticizes not only Riedel but also Crusius in the Fourth Grove of the
Critical Forests. And it is for this paper critically important how Herder criticizes Crusius. In
the following I shall reflect on this point by examining one of Herder’s earliest essays “Essay
on Being” (1763)14.
2.2. Being as an Unanalyzable Concept: Criticism of Descartes and Crusius in the “Essay
on Being”
Near the end of this essay Herder writes as follows:
Even Being for us is separated into ideal and existential Being. Both are concepts intheir own right, neither explainable by way of the other. For this reason Descartes
concluded erroneously: I think therefore I am. Crusius too: I am conscious of myself,
therefore I am. Both drew conclusions for existential Being from ideal Being. (FHA, I
21 = AA, XXVIII 961 = EB, 73).

14

This is a kind of “term paper” Herder submitted to Kant after attending the lecture. It was made public for
the first time relatively recently (Martin 1936) and has a unique history of acceptance that it attracted attention
from the Kant studies during the process of editing the transcripts of his lectures in AA and was included into the
AA as a supplement to reconstruct Kant’s lecture on metaphysics, prior to the editions of Herder.

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The corresponding paragraph in Crusius’ Sketch of the Necessary Truths of Reason (1745) is
as follows:
If the question is how we know that we exist, Descartes answers I think therefore I am.
But it should be I am conscious of myself, therefore I am. So if we want to infer our
existence from the existence of our thoughts, we must first presuppose the existence of
our thoughts themselves from a sensation, namely from the inner sensation or theconsciousness of it. (VW, §16)
The above can be schematized as follows:→ (1) →
→ (2) →

Cogito, ergo sum (Descartes)
Conscius sum me cogitare, ergo sum (Crusius)
Sentio, ergo sum (Herder)

In the following, I shall consider (1) and (2).
2.2.1. Crusius’ Criticism of Descartes
Since Crusius thought that it is not “thinking” itself but being “conscious” of it at a higher
level that separates humans from animals, he added consciousness to “cogito, ergo sum” asfollows:
The beasts have different ideas, which is why they are determined to different
actions ... But one can just as little infer from this that they are conscious ofthemselves or the difference between their ideas than someone will pretend that wewere conscious of ourselves from our first childhood ... (VW, §444)
One of the serious consequences brought by “cogito, ergo sum” is the “animal machine” (cf.
AT, VI 57-59; 572f.), according to which, while human beings are capable of thinking,animals are just machines or material extension separated from it. Against this extreme
counterintuitive animal machine, various objections have been raised since the second half ofthe seventeenth century, namely after Descartes’ death15. For example, Leibniz, in the New
Essays on Human Understanding (1704), distinguishes “apperception” characteristic only ofhuman beings from “perception” characteristic both of human beings and animals. Crusius
argues the same in another way.
Herder also agrees with Crusius, summarizing “animals think, and humans are also
conscious of their thinking!” (FHA, I 10 = AA, XXVIII 952 = EB, 58). He then considers it
justifiable to do the same with “conscius sum me cogitare, ergo sum” as Crusius substitutes

15

Cf. Kanamori 2012.

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consciousness with inner sensation16.
2.2.2. Herder’s Criticism of Crusius
However, it is not enough for “sentio, ergo sum” to substitute consciousness with innersensation in “conscius sum me cogitare, ergo sum.” It is not a matter of indifference to Herder
whether consciousness or sensation derives “sum.” As cited above, he criticized both
Descartes and Crusius for making a mistake to draw “conclusions for existential Being from
ideal Being.” He furthered Crusius’ position critically by distinguishing between the“existential” and “ideal” Being.
This distinction is based on the following distinction of “ground” argued by Crusius
himself (VW, §§34-38).

real groundgroundground of cognition or ideal groundefficacious cause
existential groundground of cognition a posteriori
ground of cognition a priori

Crusius first divides “ground,” “everything that brings about something else either in part or inwhole,” into “real ground,” “one that brings about or make possible, either in part or in whole,
the thing itself, outside of our thoughts,” and “ground of cognition or ideal ground,” “one thatbrings about cognition of a matter with conviction and is viewed as such.” The former isfurther divided into “ground of cognition a posteriori,” which makes us cognize “only why wemust let it be considered to be true” (such as experience and comparison with other things),
and “ground of cognition a priori,” which makes us cognize “why something exists” (such as
deduction of a property from definition). The latter is also divided into “efficacious cause,” bymeans of an efficacious power (cause in the narrow sense, such as fire for warmth), and“existential ground,” “one that makes something else possible or necessary through its mere
existence due to the laws of truth” (such as the three sides and their relations to each other fora triangle).
Thus, Herder’s criticism of Descartes and Crusius means that both made a mistake ofdrawing “conclusions for real from ideal ground.” Here, he sees “cogito” and “conscious sum
me cogitare” as “ideal,” while “sum” as “real Being.” The latter would be intuitively agreed.
What about the former? Here I shall limit myself to “consciousness.” Herder seems to keep inmind that Crusius says in the same paragraph as he discusses the difference between humanbeings and animals, that “when we say that we distinguish between things, this means as muchas we are conscious of the difference between them. Hence the distinction is made possible
first of all through the power of abstraction, and the power of consciousness” (VW, §444).
16

It can be seen as the influence from Crusius that Kant draws in the Dreams the conclusion that “where I
feel, there I am” from the premise that “one is only immediately conscious of the space which one occupies
relatively to the world around,” as discussed above (1.3.).

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Now “abstraction” means “to analyze the manifold in its concepts” (§442). This is, however,nothing but “ground of cognition a priori,” that is, deducing a property by analyzing(definition of) a thing in terms of “ground.” Thus, Herder criticizes the inconsistency inCrusius’ reasoning from a very formal point of view.
Herder thus rejects “consciousness” in deriving “sum,” and considers only sensation as
the qualified condition. He says:
Being is the most sensory of all; it is thus the single completely unanalyzable concept,
and this can be said only partially of all others, because they can all be resolved into
this concept. At the same time, each concept retains something that is uniquely
unanalyzable, insofar as we can perceive it. (FHA, I 20 = AA, XXVIII 960 = EB, 72)
This is what is claimed throughout the “Essay on Being.” “Being” or the fact that humanbeings exists is for Herder “the first absolute concept” (FHA, I 16 = AA, XXVIII 957 = EB,67), repelling abstraction or analysis and can only be “felt” as it is.
A little later, Herder integrated this line of thought into the motto “sentio, ergo sum.” It is
worth noting that the very formal and dogmatic criticism of Crusius is at the core of this motto.
It may seem far from Herder’s standard image, “the driver of Strum und Drang,” but isundoubtedly his own “logic of affect” (FHA, I 90 = SEW, 44) and “the birth of Strum undDrang from the spirit of dogmatism,” as it were.

Conclusion
I shall now summarize the whole discussion and answer the question raised in the
Introduction, that is, what led Herder to “sentio, ergo sum.”“Sentio, ergo sum” in “On the Sense of Touch” is, on the one hand, said not only in termsof the “Molyneux’s problem,” but also from the view that it is the highest concept ofphilosophy to sense impenetrability of matter, by means of which the precritical Kant
criticized the mind-body dualism and in response gave only a temporary answer “where I
sense, there I am.” Herder rebutted this by the counterexample “spiritual impenetrability” andupgraded this “temporary” answer to the “highest concept of philosophy.” “Sentio, ergo sum”
in the Fourth Grove of the Critical Forests is, on the other hand, the consequence of Herder’sformal criticism of Crusius, who had criticized “cogito, ergo sum” be “conscius sum me
cogitare, ergo sum.” “Being” was for Herder the unanalyzable concept which can only be felt.
Thus, we can see that Herder criticizes the content of “cogito, ergo sum” in “On the Senseof Touch” and the form thereof in the Fourth Grove of the Critical Forests. It can be said thatboth share roughly the same purpose/background to criticize the Cartesian “cogito, ergo sum,”though from different perspectives and indirectly through Kant and Crusius. This answers
another question raised in the Introduction, whether or not “sentio, ergo sum” means the same
in both texts.

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SUGIYAMA Takashi

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