Songs of nature : from philosophy of language to philosophical anthropology in Herder and Humboldt

In this paper I trace the manner in which Herder’s philosophy of language developed a theory of mental cognition that would go on to ground Herder’s approach to hermeneutical issues regarding interpretation and translation, (an approach that would in turn provide also the groundwork for his subsequent efforts to write a philosophical history of mankind). Herder’s approach to the question of language and interpretation has been repeatedly lauded for its important influence on the later work done by Schleiermacher, Dilthey, and Gadamer, but in this discussion I am going to put him more directly in conversation with Wilhelm von Humboldt. Although recent critics like Michael Forster have made a strong case for Friedrich Schlegel as the theorist whose work represented the most significant development of Herder’s program – and have in fact derided Humboldt’s approach as derivative at its best, and wrong-headed in its few attempts at originality – I will argue that we should instead recognize that Humboldt’s philosophy of language represents a genuine development of Herder’s thesis.1 This development, however, is one that is accomplished by way of Humboldt’s synthesis of Kant’s mature theory of reason, and the kind of research that was being done by the medical-anthropologists at work in Göttingen while Humboldt was a student there in the late 1780s. This is something that I will be interested in sketching out in the essay as well.