JOHANN GOTTFRIED VON HERDER
(Johann Gottfried)
Note that Herder regarded foreign impressions and learning as not only desirable but important. Most extreme nationalists are xenophobic and fear any knowledge, law, ideas or understandings of other nations and cultures. Even in the United States, there are a few Americans who are terribly distressed whenever one of the participants in a legal case cites an opinion or study done in another country.
This was a very unusual assertion for Germany where traditionally the Germans had seen themselves as a separate race and often the “master race.” Herder wrote this 50 years before Darwin and 150 years before we had thee scientific proof that race was a meaningless concept and all humans alive today are of the same species. Herder also criticized the historical German persecution of the Jews.
This is particularly true for politicians where many who seem to have so little talent and wisdom seem to have followers and supporters.
Johann Gottfried (after 1802, von) Herder was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the Enlightenment, Sturm und Drang, and Weimar Classicism.
