Learning and Vision: Johann Gottfried Herder on Memory

Essays in Philosophy ISSN 1526-0569 | Essays in Philosophy is published by the Pacific University Libraries Volume 19, Issue 2 (2018) Learning and Vision: Johann Gottfried Herder on Memory Laura Follesa Friedrich Schiller University of Jena Abstract A consistent thread throughout Johann Gottfried Herder’s thought is his interest in human knowledge and in its origins. Although he never formulated a systematic theory of knowledge, elements of one are disseminated in his writings, from the early manuscript Plato sagte (1766–68) to one of his last works, the periodical Adrastea (1801–3). Herder assigned a very special function to memory and to the related idea of a recollection of “images,” as they play a pivotal role in the formation of personal identity. He provided an original description of the Platonic theory of recollection, trying to merge ancient and modern metaphysical views and to interpret them from a less metaphysical and more psychological point of view. I then analyze Herder’s notion of memory via another research line, which is basically founded upon the analogy between the childhood of an individual and the infancy of the human race. Finally, I explore Herder’s view that memory and imagination, as “forces” of the soul, can have negative effects on an individual when they are not equally balanced. Essays Philos (2018)19:2 | DOI: 10.7710/1526-0569.1610 Correspondence: © 2018 Follesa. This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Essays in Philosophy Volume 19, Issue 2 1. “Just Remembering” Plato sagte (Plato Said), an early manuscript by Johann Gottfried Herder (1766–68), exemplifies the author’s early commitments to the problem of the origins of knowledge and of mnemonic processes.1 A few years beforehand, in 1764, Moses Mendelssohn had published his Abhandlung über die Evidenz in Metaphysischen Wissenschaften (Treatise on the Evidence of Mathematical Sciences).2 In this book, Mendelssohn analyzed the meaning of Plato’s theory of recollection, paying special attention to the dialogue Meno and mathematical thought. In Meno, as it is well known, we find a definition of learning as “mere recollection,” which Plato also invoked in his passages in the Phaedo to support his theory of the immortality of the soul.3 Mendelssohn’s purpose was—so to say—to “actualize” Plato’s philosophy and his theory of the soul by means of modern thought, especially deriving from the Leibnitian and Wolffian tradition. As Herder noticed, Mendelssohn frequently used Wolff ’s terminology; he also referred quite often to Alexander Baumgarten, another relevant author from the Wolffian school who was a pivotal figure for him throughout his life.4 Baumgarten’s Metaphysics was also a key reference for Kant during the preparation of his lectures on metaphysics and rational psychology, which 1 The manuscript has recently been published as an attachment in Marion Heinz, Sensualistischer Idealismus: Untersuchungen zur Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik des jungen Herder, 1763–1778 (Sensualistic Idealism: Researches on young Herder’s Theory of Knowledge and Metaphysics) (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1994), 175–82. Heinz also referred to another, even earlier writing by Herder, the philosophical Versuch über das Sein (1763), in Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke in zehn Bände: Frühe Schriften 1764–1772, ed. (Work in Ten Volumes: Early Writings) Urlich Gaier (Frankfurt am Main: Deutsche Klassiker, 1985), 9–21. Cf. Heinz, Sensualistischer Idealismus, 1–25. 2 Moses Mendelssohn, Abhandlung über die Evidenz in Metaphysischen Wissenschaften (Berlin: Aude und Spener, 1764). 3 A few years later, Mendelssohn published one of his most popular writings, his German version of Plato’s Phaedo: Phädon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, in drey Gesprächen (Berlin: F. Nicolai, 1767); see also the English translation, Phädon; or, On the Immortality of the Soul (New York: Peter Lang, 2007). This book became very popular in Germany and started quite an animated debate on Plato’s philosophy and, in particular, on the problem of the immortality of the soul, during the second half of the eighteenth century. I quote Plato from The Collected Dialogues of Plato: Including the Letters, ed. Edith Hamilton (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). 4 In the first paragraph of his manuscript, Herder wrote that Mendelssohn, in his “Preisschrift” On Evidence, explained the meaning of the Platonic theory of reminiscence with “Wolffian terminology.” See Heinz, Sensualistischer Idealismus, 45, 175. Cf. Moses Mendelssohn, On Evidence in Metaphysical Sciences, in Philosophical Writings, ed. Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 251– 306. Cf. Johann Gottfried Herder, “A Monument to Baumgarten,” in Selected Writings on Aesthetics, ed. Gregory Moore (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 41–50. 2 | eP1610 Essays in Philosophy Follesa | Learning and Vision Herder attended during the years 1762–64 (as we know from his annotations).5 According to Baumgarten, the human soul preserves its personality and its memory after the death of the body, and this allows it to be responsible for its eternal salvation or damnation.6 Kant discussed these topics in his lectures, which serve as the basis of Herder’s reflection on psychology and the mind, with a special interest in memory. One of the main aspects of Herder’s interpretation of Plato’s theory of recollection also returned in his later writings as a characteristic of his thought: the transposition of topics and argumentations from a metaphysical level to a more concrete, human, and historical plane. He took some theoretical elements that he considered relevant from metaphysical theories, detaching them from the metaphysical frame. While Plato necessarily set the foundations of memory in the Hyperuranion, the world of ideal forms, Herder maintained that we are unable to know anything about what exists outside of this world, and, most importantly, human nature does not require a similar premise. Actually, to Plato, the link between the “true” world of ideas and the world of sensory experience provides the grounds for our only possible way of knowing something, in an objective sense, as a truth.7 For Plato, no real knowledge would have been possible if we just relied on the world of senses, of shadows, of illusions: no science, no eternal truths. Recollection is, from this perspective, the means by which we reactivate the connection between the “two worlds.” We remember what our soul already learned in another life, and we do this by seeing: what we recognize, what we “see” in this life, is something similar to what we (or, our soul) already “saw” in a previous, purely spiritual life before descending to earth.8 It is interesting here to consider one of the Platonic definitions of recollection from Phaedo, 73 e: “What happens to lovers when they see (...truncated)