‘the Most Natural State’: Herder and Nationalism

Herder is often considered a cultural nationalist rather than a political nationalist. Although there is a measure of truth in this assessment, it overlooks the important passages in Herder’s writings where he did make political claims about the nation. The article explores the basis of these claims, and tries to articulate what is theoretically interesting and plausible in Herder’s account. Herder defended the nationally bounded state (as opposed to the nation-state) with an argument that rests on an individuality principle and a nationality principle. Together these principles inform a variant of nationalism that is liberal and democratic in orientation and that remains relevant for contemporary normative theorists working on a range of problems. Almost everyone who writes about Herder recognizes his important place in the history of nationalist thought. He was one of the earliest theorists to treat the nation as a major unit of social analysis and to argue that individuals find value and meaning in their national culture. He implored his fellow Germans not to slavishly imitate the French and urged them to develop their own language and culture. He was even the first political theorist to use the word ‘nationalism’ (Nationalism), identifying it with a strong attachment to one’s own nation that spills over into prejudice against other nations (PW 297). The story has often been recounted of Herder’s influence on later nationalist thinkers and leaders, including Fichte, Mazzini and Mazaryk. In the view of many scholars, however, there is a fundamental divide between the form of nationalism espoused by Herder and the nationalism embraced by later thinkers and movements. The difference is not merely that Herder defended the rights of all nations (not just his own) and condemned various forms of nationalist aggression and chauvinism, although these certainly are distinctive features of his position compared with some later HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT. Vol. XXXI. No. 4. Winter 2010 1 Department of Politics, Princeton University, 246 Corwin Hall, Princeton University, Princeton NJ 08544–1013, USA. Email: [email protected] 2 The author would like to thank audiences at Harvard, Columbia, Oxford, University College London and Princeton for comments on earlier drafts of this paper, as well as Jan-Werner Müller, Sankar Muthu, Andy Sabl and Hans Aarsleff for written comments. Thanks also to Christopher Ro and Javier Hidalgo for their research assistance. 3 Parenthetical references to ‘PW’ refer to page numbers in J.G. Herder, Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans. Michael N. Forster (Cambridge, 2002), which collects together in English translation a number of key writings by Herder. 4 See, for instance, Robert Reinhold Ergang, Herder and the Foundations of German Nationalism (New York, 1931), ch. 8; F.M. Barnard, Herder’s Social & Political Thought (Oxford, 1965), ch. 9; and F.M. Barnard, Herder on Nationality, Humanity, and History (Montreal, 2003), p. 86. Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2010 For personal use only -not for reproduction expressions of nationalism. Instead, the key difference, according to a number of scholars, is that Herder was concerned to promote the ‘cultural nation’, not the ‘political nation’. Rather than aim for political unity or the sovereignty of the German people, he sought to energize the spiritual, linguistic and aesthetic formation of the German nation. The most prominent English-language proponent of this interpretation has been Isaiah Berlin. According to Berlin, ‘it is important to realize that Herder’s nationalism was never political’. Herder was a populist who believed that a people can and should determine its own cultural path, but he steadfastly refused to draw any political implications from this commitment. Berlin attributes this refusal to Herder’s denunciation of every form of centralization, coercion and conquest, and to his almost anarchistic dislike of the state. Berlin and others are right to notice the relatively apolitical character of Herder’s nationalism compared with later forms of nationalism. However, a singular emphasis on the non-political character of Herder’s nationalism risks pushing into the shadows the important passages where he does make political claims relating to the nation. Berlin exaggerates when he writes that Herder’s nationalism was ‘never’ political. In volume two of Ideas on the Philosophy of History of Mankind, Herder argued that ‘the most natural state [Staat] is . . one people [Volk], with one national character’ (I 249/337). In 658 A. PATTEN 5 The anti-chauvinist features of Herder’s nationalism are emphasized by Isaiah Berlin, ‘Vico and Herder’, in Three Critics of the Enlightenment, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton, 2000 [1976]), p. 181; Frederick Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism (Cambridge, MA, 1992), p. 212; Forster, ‘Introduction’ to Herder, Philosophical Writings, pp. xxxi–xxxii; and Vicki Spencer, ‘Herder and Nationalism: Reclaiming the Principle of Cultural Respect’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 43 (1) (1997), pp. 1–13, pp. 8–9. 6 Friedrich Meinecke, Cosmopolitanism and the National State, trans. Robert B. Kimber (Princeton, 1970), ch.1 and p. 29; John Hutchinson, ‘Cultural Nationalism and Moral Regeneration’, in Nationalism, ed. John Hutchinson and Anthony Smith (Oxford, 1994), pp. 122–31. 7 Berlin, ‘Vico and Herder’, p. 205, see also p. 180; Barnard, Herder on Nationality, Humanity, and History, pp. 9–10; Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism, p. 189; and Hans Reiss, ‘Introduction to Reviews of Herder’s Philosophy of the History of Mankind’, in Kant, Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 192–200, p. 199. 8 Berlin, ‘Vico and Herder’, p. 181. 9 Parenthetical references to ‘I’ refer to Herder’s Ideas on the Philosophy of History of Mankind. Two page references are given: the first to the English translation in J.G. Herder, Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, trans. T. Churchill (New York, 1966 [1800]); the second to the German original in J.G. Herder, Werke, Volume III/1: Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, ed. Wolfgang Pross (Munich, 2002). I have sometimes amended the translation and have frequently relied on translations from Herder on Social and Political Culture, ed. and trans. F.M. Barnard (Cambridge, 1969). Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2010 For personal use only -not for reproduction HERDER AND NATIONALISM 659 the subsequent volume (published two years later), he reiterated this claim,