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6 - The place of reason

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2011

Sonia Sikka
Affiliation:
University of Ottawa
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Summary

Herder holds an empiricist theory of language, according to which all of its semantic content is derived from experience, understood as including sensations and emotions. Given his insistence that thought depends upon language, it follows that Herder's position on concepts and patterns of reasoning will also be an empiricist one. Herder's critique of Kant in the Metacritique rests on this empiricism, complaining, among other things, that “to make oneself independent of oneself, i.e. to place oneself beyond all original, inner and outer experience, to think beyond oneself, entirely free of the empirical: this no one can do” (Metacritique, 324–5). Such a claim might at first seem odd as an objection to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, since the latter expressly denies that concepts can function independently of sensuous content. Herder's Metacritique has been criticized for overlooking this essential point, as well as for failing to understand that Kant's treatment of the a priori in the first Critique constitutes an attempt to isolate the necessary conditions for experience in general, conditions that – being conditions – cannot themselves be derived from experience or reduced to it. In light of points like these, Rudolf Haym accused Herder of not comprehending the most basic elements of the transcendental philosophy (Haym 1954, 709–26). The suspicion arises here that Herder's Metacritique actually represents a naively pre-critical stance, especially since it appeals to empiricists like Bacon, Locke, and Hume in articulating its opposition to Kant.

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Herder on Humanity and Cultural Difference
Enlightened Relativism
, pp. 192 - 218
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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  • The place of reason
  • Sonia Sikka, University of Ottawa
  • Book: Herder on Humanity and Cultural Difference
  • Online publication: 03 May 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511783012.008
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  • The place of reason
  • Sonia Sikka, University of Ottawa
  • Book: Herder on Humanity and Cultural Difference
  • Online publication: 03 May 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511783012.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The place of reason
  • Sonia Sikka, University of Ottawa
  • Book: Herder on Humanity and Cultural Difference
  • Online publication: 03 May 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511783012.008
Available formats
×