Herder or the Dark Face of the Vindication of Spinoza

Abstract

This article shows Herder’s role in the way in which Schelling and the early Romantics interpreted the motto Hen kai Pan. Herder read Spinoza from a Christian perspective that overcame the contradiction between Pantheism and Theism. Thus, the paper develops the historical and conceptual origin of Herderian ideas. In affinity with Goethe, the other creator of the Philosophy of Nature, Herder conceived the deus sive natura without Materialism and adapted it to the idea of purpose, characteristic of Providentialism. This allowed him to conceive human History in continuity with Nature, conferring it great significance as the culmination of natural evolution. Vico defeated Descartes through a prophetic thought based on signs of revelation, which invoked Spinoza to build a universal faith, already directed towards an aesthetic conception. Feeling and empathy were its pillars, at the service of defending the idea of individuality. Individuality became compatible with the Absolute thanks to an immanent God in the finite, present in individuals by contraction, in the way of the Lurian Cabala. The universe returns from chaos to harmony through the created orders, where humans constitute an intermediate species between two different worlds.