gesang reviewed Against Pure Reason by Johann Gottfried Herder (Fortress Texts in Modern Theology)
An extremely underappreciated work
5 stars
Herder, along with Fontenelle, Vico, and Schelling, are these underappreciated figures that the Anglo-Saxons due to their strict empiricism, deism, along with a tradition, originating from the Reformation's abolishment of sacraments such as Eucharist, that rejects the fantastic and the irrational, may not really like. These are theoreticians that proposed to view religion as religion, myths as myths, and suggested a possibly irrational root of human culture. Nowadays people tend to think it is Freud who single-handedly conjured up the notion of unconscious, prefigured by Nietzsche, but no, this is a long tradition that goes back to Joachim of Fiore and even earlier. A large field of contemporary humanity couldn't have emerged without the works of these unappreciated philosophers. And Herder is probably the most underappreciated one. It was he who transformed Goethe from a lawyer and a poet into a full-blooded proto-architect of German romanticism. It was he, along …
Herder, along with Fontenelle, Vico, and Schelling, are these underappreciated figures that the Anglo-Saxons due to their strict empiricism, deism, along with a tradition, originating from the Reformation's abolishment of sacraments such as Eucharist, that rejects the fantastic and the irrational, may not really like. These are theoreticians that proposed to view religion as religion, myths as myths, and suggested a possibly irrational root of human culture. Nowadays people tend to think it is Freud who single-handedly conjured up the notion of unconscious, prefigured by Nietzsche, but no, this is a long tradition that goes back to Joachim of Fiore and even earlier. A large field of contemporary humanity couldn't have emerged without the works of these unappreciated philosophers. And Herder is probably the most underappreciated one. It was he who transformed Goethe from a lawyer and a poet into a full-blooded proto-architect of German romanticism. It was he, along with Oetinger, Baader, etc., who motivated Hoelderlin and Schelling in their research into the myths and into the mystical cults. It was he who virtually created the modern discipline of anthropology in its non-reductionist shape - though it was Kant who coined the term. In these writings the modern human science as a whole takes the shape. It might be argued that these writings are now largely out-dated, but that is only for the mediocre mind. There are so many insightful gems hidden here, that these works should be ceaselessly be read, reread, pondered, and reflected on.