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  • Herder on Humanity and Cultural Difference: Enlightened Relativism by Sonia Sikka
  • Chunjie Zhang
Herder on Humanity and Cultural Difference: Enlightened Relativism. By Sonia Sikka. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. 294. Paper $34.99. ISBN 978-1107686830.

Sonia Sikka’s study of Johann Gottfried Herder’s theory of culture is a book of great finesse. Soothing the lament of the editors of A Companion to the Works of Johann Gottfried Herder (2009), Wulf Koepke and Hans Adler, that Herder, as a philosopher, is “the famous nobody,” Sikka is determined to show that Herder’s major works reveal coherent and well-developed philosophical positions, especially those that ground the concept of humanity between cultural relativism and anthropological commonalities. Sikka analyzes Herder’s accounts of ethics, history, race, climate, language, reason, and religion and relates Herder’s positions to those of Kant, Heidegger, and Nietzsche in seven major chapters.

The first chapter, “The Question of Moral Relativism,” carefully delineates Herder’s oscillation between relativism and universalism. Sikka admits that Herder passes moral judgments on European and non-European cultures despite his dictum that every culture has its own center of gravity. She criticizes Herder’s cultural prejudices and Eurocentrism, while she explains the ethical constant in Herder’s thought as his concept of Humanität, which denounces violence and supports justice and equality. Sikka then stresses Herder’s critique of European colonial violence and coercive Christian missions and Herder’s firm belief in happiness as a quality defined and confined by local circumstances. Sikka insightfully concludes that universalism coexists with relativism in Herder’s thinking and this blend permeates through almost all areas of Herder’s thinking.

The second chapter, “Happiness and the Moral Life,” my favorite one, compares Herder’s and Kant’s statements on happiness. Sikka contends that, for Kant, happiness is a subjective sensation that is natural, ephemeral, and self-seeking. Actions motivated by emotions, for Kant, do not contain moral worth. Only actions guided by pure practical reason promise autonomous self-legislation and freedom. Herder shares Kant’s point on the subjectivity and ephemerality of happiness but sees irreplaceable moral values in the ecstatic state of happiness. For Herder, happiness is not something that needs to be tamed and isolated, as Kant cautions; rather it is an essential part and motivation of morality. While, for Kant, obligation and responsibility guarantee a [End Page 376] better path toward morality regardless of emotional inclinations, Herder emphasizes sympathy and emotion as intrinsic sources of virtue. Sikka contends that Herder does not posit a final purpose of creation, which is essential to Kant; rather, for Herder, acting out of the care for others is the highest goal of human existence and history.

History is the theme of the third chapter “History and Human Destiny.” Back to the oscillation between relativism and universalism, Sikka first focuses on Herder’s negative portrayal of China in Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humankind to illustrate his notion of historical development from lower to higher stages. She points out Herder’s Eurocentric narration of history as developing from ancient and changeless China to mature and dynamic Europe. At the same time, she stresses that Herder also criticizes European Enlightenment rationality as senile and in need of fresh oriental sensibility to rejuvenate itself. China functions as an absolute other onto which Herder projects his critique of the French Enlightenment’s Sinophile predilection. Sikka also mentions Herder’s view that historical progress never happens without irredeemable loss and that progress cannot be judged according to European Enlightenment criteria. Progress has to be measured in multiple ways.

Sikka sees connections between Herder’s historicism and the concept of race in the eighteenth century. In chapter 4, “The Concept of Race,” Sikka contends that, even though Herder never uses the term race (Rasse), which Kant relates with skin colors, Herder still divides human beings into different types. But he is not as rigid as Kant in insisting that “races” are permanent and have clear biological boundaries. Herder’s criteria are more flexible. Referring to Herder’s negative descriptions of Africans, Sikka argues that environmental and external influences are important for physiology and national characters in Herder...

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