The Counter-Revolution. Doctrine and Action 1789-1804. books.google.comJacques Lon Godechot Originally pub.

In France as La Contre-Rvolution: Doctrine et Action, 1789-1804 Copyright 1961, Presses Universitaires de France. First publ. in Great Britain in 1792 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. London. This review of Herders life is indispensable to an understanding of his ideas. The first of Herders two fundamenta works, published in 1774 and bearing the title Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit (Another Philosophy of History for the Education of Mankind), is directed against rationalism in historiography; the second, which comprises several volumes, is entitled Ideen zur Philosphie der Geshichte der Menschheit (Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of man). The latter appeared from 1784 to 1791; the last volume, therefore, is contemporaneous with the Revolution. In these works Herder reacts against the rationalism which contends that man is everywhere the same, that the person who lives in Germany, in England, in Africa, is one and the same being, from which it follows that one national will always be similar to another. There is no originality in human groupings, it is claimed; consequently the same rules, dictated by reason, could be applied to all nations. Herder compares what he has seen in Germany with what he observed in Latvia, at the time of his sojourn in Riga, and the observtions he has made in France. From this comparison he arrives at the conclusion that each group of men is in fact different from every other, that each nationality is characterized by a particular spirit, which he calls Volksgeist, a difficult word to translate, but approximated by the expression national spirit or national character. So the national spirit animates the nation. Herder compares the Volksgeist to an an imated being, a plant tht grows, blooms and withers. Thus there is a life of national groupings, of nationalities. The Volksgeist, says Herder, is singular, marvelous, inexplicable, ineffable. In other words, it eludes any explanation through reason. It is as ancient as the national grouping; and its withering and death mark the end of the national grouping. If the Volksgeist canno be explained rationally, how are we to graps it? In the phenomena of history, Herder answers, and thereby joins company to a certain extent with the explanations that were to be given by the historicists, and notably Burke. The Volksgeist is expressed through language, literature, religion, the arts, customs; through the Anglo-Xason word folklore. It follows there- [p. 104] Fore that two nations cannot have the same Volksgeist, the same national culture, and that consequently the rules that are applied to one nation are not valid for another. Laws must be adapted to the spirit of each nation. Thus Herder abandons the rationalist philosophy, having subjected it to a keen criticism. He is stanchly opposed to all that rationalism, which is cosmopolite and universalist in character, asserts. In contrast, he believes in particularism. Herder elaborates extensively on an idea borrowed from Montesquieu, namely, that man is the product of the land which he inhabits, of the climate in which he has developed and of the circumstances which have marked his life. The rationalists, he thinks, have not properly

understood Montesquieu, whom they invoke so often, because they have not attached enough importance to his theory of climates. If a nationality is to flourish, it must be sheltered form external influences because these can modify the national spirit. Consequently, when the Revolution breaks out in france Herder demands that Germany shield herself against revolutionary propaganda. He is very hostile to the idea of the free choice of populations. Revolutionary France, as we know, had proclaimed the right of the people to self-determination and, as a beginning, had applied this to the population of Avignon, which had asked for unification with France. Herderviews the free self-determination of populations as a worhless doctrine because the destiny of national groups is fixed by imperatives beyond popular modification. These imperatives are race (Herder did not formulate a theory of race, but to a certain extent he can be considered as a forerunner of modern racism), language, tradition and natural frontiershe believes in the natural frontiers bequeathed by Providence. It must be learned that one cannot become a man except on native ground, he writes, whence the importance of the ideas of nationa, of Fatherland, which herder elaborates at length. *+ *+ Her redeemed the history of the Middle Ages and broadened the general concept of history. In the eighteenthe century, except for a [p. 105] Few men like Voltaire, history was perforce essentially political history. For Herder, history is a history of the totality of culture; it must treat of the language, customs, religion and folklore. Thus Herder predisposed the German theorists to take a hostile stance toward the rationalism of the Revolution. *+ *+ In another work entitle Patriotische Phantasien (Patriotic Fantasied) Mser expandes these ideas and shows that they are valid for vaster territories, indeed, for the whole of Germany. Like Herder, he believes that as regards a people, religion, language, institutions, law, beliefs, even the most secret customsthose which are [p. 106] The last expounded in booksexplain the totality of behavious or a national group; he also believes in the existence of the Volksgeist, a national, creative spirit, which characterizes the group. Institutions, therefore, cannot be modified according to the whims of the legislator without the risk of completely transforming the national spirit, possibly even causing its destruction, and creating great disturbances. *p. 107+