Herder’s Social and Political Thought, from Enlightenment to Nationalism by F. M. Barnard (review)

430 LEITERS IN CANADA the first time, in 1464. (Cf. The Universal Peace Organization of King George of Bohemia [Prague: 1964], and Cultus Pacis: Etudes et documents du Symposium pragense cultus pacis, 1464-1964. . . . [Prague: Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, 1966.]) The realistic plan for "organized peace" did not succeed in George's time but foreshadowed the principles and organization of the United Nations. It should be noted that side by side with the King's design for political pacification there emerged in Bohemia as another expression of the Hussite heritage the apolitical pacifism of the Czech Brethen (Unitas fratrum), a splinter group from the national Uttaquist Church. (Cf. Peter Brock, The Political and Social Doctrines of the Unity of Czech Brethren [The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1957, pp. 302].) The King of the Heretics who throughout his life fought for papal recognition of the Compacts-the permission of lay chalice granted to the Hussites by the Council of Basel in 1436-did not hesitate to endorse violent persecution of the more radical expression of Hussitism in the Unitas fratrum, the first free church of the Reformation era. Dr. Heymann defends the King and offers an interesting explanation of his attitude (pp. 605 ff.). Under King George, Bohemia became the first realm where two expressions, the Catholic and the Uttaquist, of one Christian faith and church were legally recognized and tolerated. A later generation in sixteenth-century Moravia succeeded in assuring religious toleration for all expressions of faith. In his latest book, Dr. Heymann has opened for the western student yet another door into the dark rooms of Slavic history and heritage. A word of appreciation is also due to the publisher for a difficult job done to perfection. (J. K. ZEMAN) A multitude of theoretical and institutional approaches had been put forward by the time Johann Gottfried Herder appeared On the horizon of European political and social thought. From the ethical and political completeness of the Greek polis, to the efficient legal functionalism of Rome, from mediaeval political theology to the absolutism of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and then to John Locke's early liberalism: all these theories and practices had attempted to answer, in their own way, the basic problem of political existence. Yet no single endeavour succeeded in solVing what Immanuel Kant had called man's fundamental "asocial sociability," the basic and simultaneous centrifugalism and centripetalism inherent in every rational social creature. HUMANITIES 431 This unresolved problem was particularly evident in Herder's time and place, the disjointed, politically incoherent and culturally backward area which, in the eighteenth century, could be referred to as "Germany" only in the geographiC sense of the world. In G. P. Gooch's apt phrase, "princely anarchy" prevailed in this land and it is therefore understandable that Herder felt called upon to find a new approach, a more satisfactory scheme for communal existence. He was repelled by the autocratic practices of his native Prussia, he shared in the anti-aristocratic feelings of many of his contemporaries and, above all, he was dissatisfied with the arid, mechanistic formulae of the Enlightenment. As F. M. Barnard demonstrates in his recent book, Herder's Social and Political Thought, from Enlightenment to Nationalism (Oxford, 1965, pp. xxii, 189, $4.80), Herder therefore turned to an organic theory of man and his Volk; he maintained that language was the important link between man and community and that the highest political ideal was represented by the concept of Humanitiit, a notion which, though attractive, was never clearly defined by him. The organic theory appealed to Herder because it took into account a continuous state of "becoming," a constant historical flux and the unceasing variety of relationships between man and his fellowmen and man and his Valk which made up the world around him. Organicism implied growth, development, and a striving for unity without obliterating the constituent parts of the process. Man, as Herder saw him, was driven by a "life-force" (Kraft or entelechy) and sought to unite society and, at the same time, to achieve Self-development both as a human being and as a citizen. Dichotomous impulses such as the drive for unity and the urge to self...