The World Laid Waste: Herder, Language Labor, Empire

Johann Gottfried von Herder has been unevenly received in recent years: postcolonial theorists have regarded his philosophy primarily for its contribution to nationalism and anthropology, while scholars in comparative literature have noted his importance to philology and the concept of world literature. This essay argues that these contradictory readings may be resolved and, indeed, a very timely set of theoretical animadversions may be reclaimed, by turning to Herder’s early works such as “Fragments on Recent German Literature” and “This Too a Philosophy for the History of Mankind.” In these works, the young Herder developed a highly original philosophy of language, rejected the principle of linguistic arbitrariness, and set afoot philology as a historically situated, transnational study of literary and cultural development. Moreover, the young Herder mounted a vociferous critique of colonialism for its economic rapacity and human destructiveness. His thought thus evinces the strong associations between anticolonialism, philology, and materialist critique.