Herder’s Political Thought: A Study of Language, Culture, and Community by Vicki A. Spencer (review)

Abstract

Vicki A. Spencer, Herder's Political Thought: A Study of Language, Culture, and Community. Toronto: Toronto UP, 2012. xi + 354 pp.Vicki Spencer's Herder's Political Thought represents a moment of consolidation in Anglo-American Herder scholarship. Long a neglected figure in AngloAmerican philosophical discussion, Herder came to notice largely in context of political philosophy and through work of Isaiah Berlin, who in 1965 presented Herder as an anti-Enlightenment thinker who championed claims of particularity and cultural difference against abstract, universalizing, hegemonic claims of reason (Three Critics of Enlightenment, Princeton UP, 2013). Berlin's interpretation prompted both interest in Herder among political philosophers who were looking for alternatives to Enlightenment universalist liberalism and backlash among Herder scholars. Scholars like Robert Norton (1991) and Sankar Muthu (2003) have decisively argued, against Berlin, that Herder should be understood as part of Enlightenment (which itself has come to be seen as a more complex phenomenon): Herder is no relativist, either historical or cultural, but a cosmopolitan, a defender of individual and national liberty. Spencer intervenes in-indeed, synthesizes and thereby progresses beyond-this debate by articulating way in which both sides are correct. Berlin's critics are correct that Herder is a cosmopolitan and is no irrationalist or relativist. Taken in a suitably modified form, Berlin's claims are also correct, however: within a (broadly) liberal, Enlightenment political project, Herder's particular contribution is his appreciation for particularity or cultural difference or, as Spencer puts it, his recognition that the elimination of cultural oppression [is] a fundamental issue of justice (219). Herder is, on Spencer's portrayal, generally concerned to recognize and reconcile universal and particular, thus here (in political philosophy) to recognize and reconcile both universal moral and political values and value of cultural and linguistic specificity.Spencer proceeds by articulating, first, ontological foundations for Herder's insistence on respect for cultural particularity. Building upon (and rendering considerably more grounded in Herder's texts) Charles Taylor's suggestions concerning Herder's expressivism, Spencer articulates various ways in which Herder conceives of human being (the individual or self) as comprehensively formed by her native language and, so, as deeply embedded in her cultural context. (Though Spencer's concerns and interlocutors lie primarily in political philosophy, her treatment of Herder thus overlaps with more literarily oriented work, such as is more central in German-language Herder scholarship.) Spencer then considers political implications of this view: of course, it entails that respect for individuals will require respect for their cultural commitments and native languages, but does it entail relativism or nationalism-positions with which Herder has often (usually pejoratively) been associated? Spencer argues that Herder is not a relativist but a pluralist. He endorses thin universal values-for example, of respect for individuals, compassion, self-realization, and self-determination-which together comprise Humanitat (Herder's term for overarching value of a good human life). …