Forms of Temporality and Historical Time in the Work of Johann Gottfried Herder

Liisa Steinby, Johannes Schmidt, Liisa Steinby, Johannes Schmidt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781032373386
• eBook ISBN: 9781040115442
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

This edited collection is the first volume solely dedicated to research on Johann Gottfried Herder's understanding of history, time, and temporalities.

Although his ideas on time mark an important transition period that advanced the emergence of the modern world, scholars have rarely addressed Herder's temporalities. In eight chapters, the volume examines and illuminates Herder's conception of human freedom in connection with time; the importance of the concept of forces (Kräfte) for a dynamic ontology; human beings' sensuous experience of inner and external temporality; Herder's conception of Bildung, speculations on extra-terrestrial beings and on different perceptions of time; the mythological figure Nemesis and Herder's view of the past and the future; the temporal dimension in Herder's aesthetics; and Herder's biblical studies in relationship to divine infinitude and human temporality. The volume concludes by outlining the influence of Herder's understanding of time on following generations of thinkers.

Forms of Temporality and Historical Time in the Work of Johann Gottfried Herder is ideal for scholars, graduates, and postgraduates interested in Herder's metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of history, as well as any scholar concerned with eighteenth-century concepts of time and the emergence of the modern world at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Herder on Time, Change, and History
• 1 Herder on the Temporality of Freedom
• 2 Grasping the Changeable: Concepts, Metaphors, and Laws
• 3 Herder: Time, Temporality, and (Christian) Telos
• 4 Time and Bildung in the Thought of Johann Gottfried Herder
• 5 Human History and Extra-Terrestrial Temporalities in Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit
• 6 Nemesis in Herder’s Approach to Time, or How “to Enjoy the Ocean in a Nutshell”
• 7 “Die Welt eines Fühlenden ist bloß eine Welt der unmittelbaren Gegenwart”: Past Made Present in Herder’s Aesthetic Experience
• 8 Historical Finitude Plus Divine Transcendence: Temporality and ‘Double Origin’ in Herder’s Biblical Writing
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects