Herder Yearbook: Publications of the International Herder Society, vol. 1.~(book reviews)

Publication: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology

Publication Date: 01-OCT-94

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COPYRIGHT 1994 University of Illinois Press

Edited by Karl Menges, Wulf Koepke, and Wilfried Malsch. Volume I. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1992. Pp. iii + 152. $49.50.

In the "Preface" the editors document some of the events leading to a renaissance in Herder scholarship during the last decade, a movement marked by seven interdisciplinary symposia, a translation project, three new editions, and the foundation of an "International Herder Society" in 1985 (pp. i-iii). At this particular juncture in the movement, they note the problem that exists between Herder, the "universalist" and "innovator" across disciplines, and Herder, the author of "ambiguities" (p. ii) "without systematic force" (p. i). In discussion of the problem, they argue that Herder did not write "to communicate scholarship" but "to capture reality" for "a new orientation, another view of the human race" (p. ii). And so the expressed intent of the volume is "to confront the historical author with the actuality of some of his texts" (p. ii), specifically to show how Herder raised questions about the totality of reason and subjectivity as the "traditional guarantors of unity and closure" (p. ii). This, they argue, links "our postmodern constellation with the Enlightenment" (p. ii), and defines the "crisis of legitimacy" common to both periods....

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