BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

the Enlightenment itself and cannot be classed with anti-rational polemics for established religion
or divine-right monarchy. 25 Frederick Beiser writes that Herder continually leaned toward an all-
embracing humanitarian philosophy in his attempts to reconcile the cross-currents of Aufklärung
and Sturm und Drang, respectively represented by his two mentors, Kant and Hamann. 26 He
adopted Hamann’s thesis on the irreducibility of life as a corrective against excessive
generalization or mechanistic abstraction, but essentially accepted Kant’s naturalism and the
rational principle in explaining laws governing the universe. 27
Herder’s conditional cultural relativism becomes important for nationalism and national
identity through the temporal/spatial paradox that arises in his separation of cultural nation from
political state. Herder resolved for himself the inherent discrepancy between cultural autonomy
and a desired evolution toward humanistic political goals with the idea of relative progress, and
his populism and pluralism remained essentially democratic and egalitarian. 28 But because
Herder conceived of nationalism as purely cultural within the framework of Enlightenment
25 See Darrin M. McMahon, “The RealCounter-Enlightenment: The Case of France,” in
Mali and Wokler, 97-98, 108. Mark Lilla advances the idea that reaction and critique have
mingled in an “eternal Counter-Enlightenment” from Socrates to Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel
Kant, revolving around the relation of reason to morality, the sacred and political authority. See
“What Is Counter-Enlightenment?” Mali and Wokler, 11.
26 Beiser, 191-94.
27 Ibid., 193, 196. As an empiricist, Herder rejected Kant’s categorization of a priori
transcendent human faculties (i.g., reason, will, morality) distinct from natural instincts and the
struggle for survival. See also Berlin, 164, 174.
28 See Beiser, 208-9, on Herder’s attempted resolution of the relativist/humanist paradox.
Beiser, 211-15, outlines a strain of anarcho-socialism in Herder’s insistence that a government’s
duty to educate should in no way impinge upon unfettered individual self-development within a
locality or culture.
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