| Johann Gottfried Herder is usually seen as having initiated a new form of historical and cultural understanding. His central tenet, so many critics claim, is the claim that other cultures are incommensurable and uniquely individual, only to be evaluated within their own context. Counter to these interpretations, I claim that Herder's main text, the Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, entails racism and sexism, which I explore by analyzing the main category of Humanität. Similarly to Enlightenment positions, Humanität appears as the pure mind and reason.;In contrast to “enlightened,” reasonable progressive Europeans, who have realized Humanität according to Herder, all non-Europeans are identified with the monkey, the antithetical figure to Humanität in the Ideen. The figure of the monkey is the central metaphor for the body in the Ideen, and for non-Europeans, notably Black Africans, Jews, and women.;In a second step I explore the aspect of gender in correlation with Humanität, which is intrinsically gendered and a category of masculinity, since reason in Western tradition is always associated with the masculine. Furthermore Humanist is the manifestation of the new ideal of manliness as it emerges in the eighteenth century in Germany, which by the definition of Moose, is a cluster of middle-class values. These include a strong work ethic, new standards of beauty, and a view of abstinence as manly. These three values constitute the ingredients of the nascent “völkische” ideology. I trace how the idealized asexual white male, epitomized in Herder's adoration of the Greek, is linked to an ideal of men as warriors and is constitutive for Herder's autostereotype of Germans. Herder's ideals received a certain realization in the fascist ideal of man as warrior.;In a last chapter I address Herder's ambivalence towards Humanität . As I can show, this ambivalence does not simply amount to a cultural relativism, but hinges on a civilatory critique modeled after Rousseau, where Europeans are considered degenerates, who have in fact lost their manliness. One of the consequences of this claim, I will argue, is the emergence of eugenics in Germany. |
