Johann Gottfried von Herder (25 August 1744 – 18 December 1803) was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the periods of Enlightenment, Sturm und Drang, and Weimar Classicism.
Born in Mohrungen (Morąg) in the Kingdom of Prussia, Herder grew up in a poor household, educating himself from his father's Bible and songbook. In 1762, an introspective youth of seventeen, he enrolled at the local University of...
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Johann Gottfried von Herder (25 August 1744 – 18 December 1803) was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the periods of Enlightenment, Sturm und Drang, and Weimar Classicism.
Born in Mohrungen (Morąg) in the Kingdom of Prussia, Herder grew up in a poor household, educating himself from his father's Bible and songbook. In 1762, an introspective youth of seventeen, he enrolled at the local University of Königsberg, where he became a student of Immanuel Kant. At the same time, Herder became an intellectual protégé of Johann Georg Hamann, a patriotic Francophobe and intensely subjective thinker who championed the emotions against reason. His choice of Hamann over such luminaries as Immanuel Kant was significant, as this odd figure, a needy hypochondriac, delved back into the German mysticism of Jacob Böhme and others, pronouncing obscure and oracular dicta that brought him fame as the "Magus of the North". Hamann's disjointed effusions...
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