Herder’s Political Thought: A Study of Language, Culture, and Community by Vicki A. Spencer (review)

Vicki Spencer’s Herder’s Political Thought represents a moment of consolidation in Anglo-American Herder scholarship. Long a neglected figure in Anglo-American philosophical discussion, Herder came to notice largely in the context of political philosophy and through the work of Isaiah Berlin, who in 1965 presented Herder as an anti-Enlightenment thinker who championed the claims of particularity and cultural difference against abstract, universalizing, hegemonic claims of reason (Three Critics of Enlightenment, Princeton UP, 2013). Berlin’s interpretation prompted both interest in Herder among political philosophers who were looking for alternatives to Enlightenment universalist liberalism and backlash among Herder scholars. Scholars like Robert Norton (1991) and Sankar Muthu (2003) have decisively argued, against Berlin, that Herder should be understood as part of the Enlightenment (which itself has come to be seen as a more complex phenomenon): Herder is no relativist, either historical or cultural, but a cosmopolitan, a defender of individual and national liberty. Spencer intervenes in—indeed, synthesizes and thereby progresses beyond—this debate by articulating the way in which both sides are correct. Berlin’s critics are correct that Herder is a cosmopolitan and is no irrationalist or relativist. Taken in a suitably modified form, Berlin’s claims are also correct, however: within a (broadly) liberal, Enlightenment political project, Herder’s particular contribution is his appreciation for particularity or cultural difference or, as Spencer puts it, his recognition that “the elimination of cultural oppression [is] a fundamental issue of justice” (219). Herder is, on Spencer’s portrayal, generally concerned to recognize and reconcile universal and particular, thus here (in political philosophy) to recognize and reconcile both universal moral and political values and the value of cultural and linguistic specificity.

Spencer proceeds by articulating, first, the “ontological” foundations for Herder’s insistence on respect for cultural particularity. Building upon (and rendering considerably more grounded in Herder’s texts) Charles Taylor’s suggestions concerning Herder’s “expressivism,” Spencer articulates the various ways in which Herder conceives of the human being (the individual or self) as comprehensively formed by her native language and, so, as deeply embedded in her cultural context. (Though Spencer’s concerns and interlocutors lie primarily in political philosophy, her treatment of Herder thus overlaps with more literarily oriented work, such as is more central in the German-language Herder scholarship.) Spencer then considers the political implications of this view: of course, it entails that respect for individuals will require respect for their cultural commitments and native languages, but does it entail relativism or nationalism—positions with which Herder has often (usually pejoratively) been associated? Spencer argues that Herder is not a relativist but a pluralist. He endorses “thin” universal values—for example, of respect for individuals, compassion, self-realization, and self-determination—which together comprise Humanität (Herder’s term for the overarching value of a good human life). But these “thin” values take on (many) “thicker”—more concrete, filled-in—forms as refracted in different cultural understandings, as adapted to different conditions; hence, Herder accepts value pluralism. Though Herder therefore understands proper political arrangements to vary, depending on historical and other conditions, he nonetheless endorses republicanism—the rule of law—together with relatively decentralized, localized self-governance as the ideal form of governance because it most promotes individual self-realization. Spencer acknowledges that Herder’s insistence on respect for cultural differences, together with his endorsement of self-rule, renders his position a resource for nationalist movements. Nonetheless, she argues that Herder’s position cannot support any nationalism that is aggressive either externally (against other states) or internally (against minority groups within the state). For Herder’s dominant universal principle—that which legitimates a culture’s or people’s claim to self-rule—is that of respect for individual self-realization and, thus, for cultures that promote or constitute a form thereof, and precisely not for any culture that oppresses another. Herder would therefore in principle favor states that respect multiple cultures...