Abstract
In literary, cultural and historical study of mythology, Johann Gottfried Herder is often portrayed as the bridge between the Enlightenment and the Romantic age. Myths for Herder were not only material for poetry, but the essential content of religion. Herder&rsquo;s new understanding of myth and religion did not, however, signify a rejection of the Enlightenment principle of rationality. On the contrary, this understanding expanded and transformed his understanding of rationality. Herder regarded man&rsquo;s mythopoetic activity as a genuine and natural form of man&rsquo;s cognitive appropriation of the world. The personification of natural forces in the cultural creation of gods did not denote a return to irrationalism, but an extended form of rationality. According to Herder, the Bible had to be read as a human mythopoetic creation. The Old Testament, which depicts the special relation of God to His people, was in Herder&rsquo;s <em>Vom Geist der ebr&auml;ischen Poesie</em> (1782&ndash;1783) the result of a poetic worldview characteristic of nomadic societies. Herder did question the validity of the Old Testament as a true source of religion and its usefulness even for modern man. Mythology did not have to be rejected as untrue imagination. Old Testament monotheism could be related to Spinoza&rsquo;s pantheism and the Law of Moses could be seen as a precursor of the modern constitutional tradition.
Highlights
Johann Gottfried Herder is commonly recognised as a predecessor or even an initiator of German Romanticism
I focus on two important, interdependent fields of his interest, namely mythology and religion, and elucidate how he partly following, partly extending the Enlightenment mode of thinking proceeds to thinking that exceeds the Enlightenment in the direction of Romanticism
It is well-known that Romanticism meant a turning point in the view on myths
Summary
Johann Gottfried Herder is commonly recognised as a predecessor or even an initiator of German Romanticism. Lessing – endeavoured to show the compatibility of Christian religion with reason by reducing it to its abstract idea content, Herder regards it impossible to strip religion of mythology, because this is exactly what religion is He considers the Bible to be created by a similar process to other mythologies, namely by men who imagine as anthropomorphic figures the natural forces they are confronted with. Einige Gespräche, and his interpretation of the Old Testament in his Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie (1782-83) This analysis will show that he does not make myths and religion, which is based on mythology, acceptable by rejecting the Enlightenment perspective of rationality but by extending it or by following it in a manner which may seem paradoxical
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