1st Edition

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

Edited By Liisa Steinby, Johannes Schmidt Copyright 2025
256 Pages
by Routledge

256 Pages
by Routledge

256 Pages
by Routledge

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... Read more

Introduction: Herder on Time, Change, and History

1. Herder on the Temporality of Freedom

John K. Noyes

2. Grasping the Changeable: Concepts, Metaphors, and Laws

Liisa Steinby

3. Herder: Time, Temporality, and (Christian) Telos

Johannes Schmidt

4. Time and Bildung in the Thought of Johann Gottfried Herder

Rainer Wisbert

5. Human History and Extra-Terrestrial Temporalities in Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit

Christina M. Weiler

6. Nemesis in Herder’s Approach to Time, or How “to Enjoy the Ocean in a Nutshell”

Beate I. Allert

7. “Die Welt eines Fühlenden ist bloß eine Welt der unmittelbaren Gegenwart.” Past Made Present in Herder’s Aesthetic Experience

Catherine Girardin

8. Historical Finitude Plus Divine Transcendence: Temporality and ‘Double Origin’ in Herder’s Biblical Writing

John Pizer

Biography

Liisa Steinby is Professor emerita of Comparative Literature at the University of Turku. She was the Vice President (2015–2016) and President (2017–2018) of the International Herder Society. Her recent publications include Myth in the Modern Novel (monograph, 2023), the article “Das ‘Bild’ bei Herder” (2023), and the chapter “Approaches to Myth and Mythology” in The Oxford History of Modern German Theology I (2023). She co-edited The Politics of Literary History (2024) and edited Herder and the Nineteenth Century (2020).

Johannes Schmidt is Professor of German at Clemson University. His research and teaching interests include literature and philosophy of the eighteenth century, Herder, Lessing, and Shoah studies. He is the co-editor of the Herder Yearbook (5 volumes, 2014–2022), co-editor of Herder on Empathy and Sympathy (2020), author of a chapter on Herder in the The Palgrave Handbook of German Romantic Philosophy (2020), and author of “‘I do desire no free will’: Lessing’s Peculiar View on Human Freedom” (2019).