However, Herder’s deep-seated of socio-political discontent and alienation did not lead him, as Liah Greenfeld further claims, to envision “a totalitarian society” that left no room for individual freedom and gathered “all within its iron embrace” as the answer to the ills plaguing modern life. On the contrary, Herder was a committed egalitarian, democrat, and republican who abhorred political coercion, entrenched patterns of inequality, and any form of social organization that failed “to make use of man’s divine and noble gifts” for conscious striving and self-improvement. Above all, he was a ‘man of the people’ motivated by what Sheldon Wolin suggests is the fundamental quality common to all great (or “epic”) political theorists: concern for the world and care for the res publicae. Philosophy, Herder insisted, must be for the “benefit of the people;” it must function as a tool in the continual process of comprehensive shaping and harmonious development of the intellect, character, and spirit of the people. Echoing Rousseau, Herder argued that the spread of the Enlightenment—of “philosophical reason” and “philosophical ability”—had, in fact, been “harmful for the people.” It had destroyed ancient virtues, diminished the power of local ties, alienated men from one another, weakened the sentiments upon which morality depends, and diminished the people’s attachment to existence. “Our age,” Herder laments, “has used aqua fortis to etch the name ‘Philosophy!’ on its forehead, and this seems to be having its effect deep inside the skull.” The problem was not simply that the Enlightenment vision was distorted but also that it had begun to infect and distort every facet of existence, creating a world of alienation, superficiality, and decay: The cold, sensationlessly thinking science of the soul has perpetrated its deception as far as into life and action… Thus arose a hypocritical figment of the imagination which the metaphysician calls the soul, clothes in the gloomy rays of abstractions, but which only appears in the presence of his magical lamp… representing to us a vaporous
In Another Philosophy of History Herder attempts to develop a method for grasping a foreign way of life with his notion of Einfühlung, an empathetic “feeling one’s way into.” Because of its passion for classification and generalization, human reason alone is ill equipped for the task of grasping the rich complexity and unique spirit of a distant people. Thus, we must supplement our reason with feeling, more specifically with a sympathetic and imaginative immersion into the life-world of a people: One first have to sympathize with a nation to feel a single of its inclinations and actions, to feel them all together, to find one word, to think all in its richness… To empathize with the entire nature of a soul, which rules through everything, which molds all other inclinations and forces of the soul after its model, coloring even the most indifferent actions, do not answer with words, but enter into the age itself, follow the compass, enter into all history; feel your way into everything – only then will you be on your way to understanding the word; only then will the thought fade whether all this, taken separately or taken together, is really you! You as everything taken together? The quintessence of all ages and people? That already shows the foolishness! We must “feel our way into everything,” into the thoughts, strivings, sensations, and experiences of a people. But for Herder, empathetic feeling is not a mystical turning away from the use of reason. Einfühlung is a meticulous method of empirical inquiry and a demanding process of historical, psychological, and philological investigation. Sympathy does not replace the scientific study of historical events and material relations but, rather, helps us to grasp their significance and meaning. The achievement of sympathetic understanding requires rigorous research into historical context, the willingness to cast aside preconceptions and a priori categories, the performance of audacious acts of imagination, and, above all, the cultivation of an ethos of responsiveness to the strange, paradoxical, and unfamiliar. So, while the challenges facing historical and inter-cultural understanding are immense, Herder thinks that we can achieve a good measure of these so long as we recognize that we cannot judge another era or culture according to our own standards and are willing to proceed with appropriate modesty and care.