Enlightenment, Reason, and Religion: A German Perspective

As a true champion of the Enlightenment,Footnote ²⁴ Herder saw freedom as the most important source of our humanity, as well as an essential element of “the spirit of government and politics.”Footnote ²⁵ Thus, he strongly supported freedom of thought, the “fresh air of heaven in which all the plants of a government, especially the sciences, thrive best.”Footnote ²⁶ However, while supporting the Enlightenment, Herder also warned that philosophy and freedom should be only means to the formation of humanity.Footnote ²⁷ When intellectual refinement becomes an end in itself, he thought, cultural creativity is stifled and humanity is narrowed, as a result of separating the mind from the senses and imagination, from life and the “language of heart.” Consequently, the mind loses the capacity to be receptive and flexible. It becomes barren and, eventually, it is annihilated.Footnote ²⁸

In a fundamental philosophical sense, Herder saw freedom as the state of being through which we become human. Expressing the more general presupposition according to which logic needs to be connected to the body,Footnote ²⁹ freedom is made possible by the erect position of humans. The erect position and, in general, the upward orientation seem to suggest that the human way of being in the world is intrinsically opposed to subjugation and to the narrowing of perspectives. Man is “anthropos, a creature looking far above and around him,”Footnote ³⁰ a creature whose imagination is “not focused upon one single thing.”Footnote ³¹ Because humans are not confined to any instinctive and narrow sphere of skill, as animals are, they are free to create themselves and to reflectively refashion their lives, in light of new impressions, examples, and ideas.Footnote ³² In short, there seems to be a flexibility of orientation and perspective in the human presence in the world, which explains the preeminence of freedom.

The primacy of freedom in the constitution of our humanity accounts for the specific nature of Herder's conception of reason. Humans are poiētai or creators—first and foremost. Reason and its categories originate in poetic (and, consequently, mythical and religious) imagination.Footnote ³³ Reason is “the creation of man,”Footnote ³⁴ which displays “an orientation of all powers of the soul,” including emotions, imagination, and volition, and a reflective mind, a reflection, or awareness (Besonnenheit), which is continuous with life. As the “ongoing process, which fashions our lives as human beings,”Footnote ³⁵ reason expresses the active and creative engagement of an individual being with the surrounding world, his immersion in existence and creative response to it. The more active and interactive an individual is, the more experiences he has. Consequently, the higher his creative capacity to invent the language that reason requires, as the power to express his own existence, to understand, think, learn, and communicate with others. As Sonia Sikka points out, in this sense, Herder saw genuinely autonomous reasoning as being to some extent associated with the “capacity for finding new names for things.”Footnote ³⁶

At the same time the erect position, where freedom originates, is not devoid of ambiguity. The position situates humans between worlds: they exist between the highest aspiration to achieve the image of divinity in them, because the “essence of our life is never fruition, but continuous becoming,”Footnote ³⁷ and the lowest desire to embrace their chains. Reflecting the split in the origins of our humanity, we are free to choose between becoming more human, that is, freer and more creative, as well as more harmoniously developed in all our powers, and falling into the trap of embracing one narrow sphere of existence and thus, the certain path of an instinct-like tradition, which does all the work for us. Expressing (on a higher level) the ambiguous potential that is present in the (bodily) origins of our humanity, both reason and religion can turn either into creative and dynamic forces, which cultivate the disposition to humanity, or into opinions of philosophers, which, as just an intellectual and abstract game of the mind, have the potential to divide and even oppress others in the name of some absolute truth. (As I explain later, the second path corresponds to Herder's specific understanding of the notion of dogmatism.) The saving grace that can help to avoid the derailment of either reason or religion is love.

While freedom is the origin of our humanity and reason, “mutual trust and love,”Footnote ³⁸ as made possible by family life, are the origin of the first human society. In Herder's view, the experience of love and the affection that individuals receive in their families, both from the maternal and the paternal side, account for the fact that peace, not war, is “the natural state of unoppressed humanity.”Footnote ³⁹ To be able to nourish and preserve throughout life the capacity to love mattered for Herder because, in his view (like that of Edmund Burke), we cannot love what is distant if we do not start by loving our neighbor. Herder thus praised friendship as “the noblest and sweetest pleasure of which human beings are capable.”Footnote ⁴⁰ Through friendship, individuals cultivate trust and loyalty, while practicing care for each other. The friends cultivate their disposition to humanity in a very concrete and living manner. Herder relates friendship to religion, which is “the highest expression of our humanity.”Footnote ⁴¹ In his view, religion was born as a human call to friendship and not out of fear, as the attempt to make friends or to keep as friends the “powerful invisible beings that helped or injured” human beings.Footnote ⁴²

As with freedom, Herder situates the human propensity to love in the body. The very structure of our bodies makes us fit not for murder and destruction, but for peace, love, and friendship. More importantly, the capacity to love is the analogue in our bodies “of the all-sentient Deity.”Footnote ⁴³ Moreover, it is not sight (associated with the erect position, which frees us from the confines of instinct), but what we hear, the voice, that evokes our love and sympathy. In short, voice and spoken language are the principal sources of human sympathy and love.Footnote ⁴⁴ In Herder's view, language is essentially creativeFootnote ⁴⁵ and communication oriented. The human voice makes possible a way of interacting and a form of communication that never divorce meaning from the bodily and emotional context of words and from the living and befriending dialogue with others.Footnote ⁴⁶ Through their quality as “means of connection,” voice and spoken language make the transmission of tradition into more than just an intellectual experience. They make it an act of communication which lovingly responds to the living presence of others.

Because of his coupling of upright position and visualizing self-activity with the empathic capacity to identify with what we hear and to love and trust each other, Herder does not see freedom as occurring in a vacuum and as being self-made. Freedom and creativity can only be the result of a deep receptivity to and absorption of ideas and examples that belong to a living and dynamic tradition. Human beings cannot avoid “being improved or harmed by culture.” Tradition, to which religion belongs in a fundamental way, fashions their minds and even their limbs. Thus, the organic power of individuals to receive “what has and can be transmitted and convert it, like the food whereby they live, into their own natures” is essential to their formation. Freedom is the active and creative capacity to bring the potential an individual has as a cultural and human being to full actuality, through the reception of “a dynamic tradition that shapes us.” Enlightenment and, consequently, the freedom to become an individual, with the capacity for autonomous reasoning, require reception and the creative absorption, assimilation, and application of a culture or way of life, the ability to “actively receive and impart.”Footnote ⁴⁷

On the one hand, individuals cannot leave “the chain of culture and enlightenment,” but they need, instead, to embrace it, which shows that each individual is “a whole in itself,” a most fulfilled expression of humanity, always according to specific circumstances. On the other hand, such positioning does not exclude freedom. Herder's idea of freedom requires seeing ourselves as the result of “a continuous interaction of individuals that alone makes us human beings.” To see oneself as the result of such continuous interaction means to embrace to some extent a universal or Godlike perspective. This perspective allows individuals to recognize that cruelty and inhumanity are an ineluctable part of their history and tradition. However, it also makes possible the insight that “we are not yet human beings, but are daily becoming so.”Footnote ⁴⁸ Thus, it provides the incentive to strive for the continual development and formation of humanity, to which (a specific understanding and practice of) religion together with language, arts, sciences, and government can contribute to a large extent.

In short, while “we receive everything through imitation, instruction, and practice,”Footnote ⁴⁹ we also have the desire and power to make ourselves. To receive without at the same time being able to actively transform tradition into another and improved expression of humanity results in the uncreative and unloving perpetuation of prejudices and, even more gravely, of cruelty, injustice, and inhumanity. To think that one has the power to make oneself in an absolute way means not only to believe that individuals (or even whole cultures) can exist in isolation from others. It also means that one has to give up all hopes of immortality. Herder conceives immortality in a nonmetaphysical manner, as the capacity to see the meanings of one's words and deeds, as well as of the institutions that an individual has created, helped improve, or, simply, participated in as furthering the development of other individuals, “as what gives them room to breathe and creates joy in them,”Footnote ⁵⁰ and not as oppressive of their freedom and creativity, or as destructive of their humanity and dignity.

To have the ability to practice creative freedom always in combination with active receptivity and as the expression of a responsible and engaged love (for a tradition and for other beings) requires a complex form of cultural imagination. As empathic and receptive, imagination makes it possible to feel one's way into others’ configurations of meaning (a religious feeling, since God is given to the senses as an experience of the interconnectedness of all life) and to actively assimilate them into the making of one's being. As reflective, imagination makes individuals aware of their limitations, while at the same time revealing their indebtedness to others (the fact that we are part of a chain of individuals and cultures). Finally, as creative, imagination invents the language for understanding and judging new situations and experiences, thus, being quintessential to individual freedom and autonomous reasoning.Footnote ⁵¹ To function in this way imagination requires intense acquaintance with myth and poetry, with the archive of archaic mythology that language is.

A form of sacred poetry, religion is deeply present in the makeup of this complex form of socio-cultural imagination. As an important part of culture, poetic, mythical, and religious language connects individuals to the conditions in which a specific human experience was first brought to meaning and expression in an entire people (Volk). As Herder explains, the “language of the ancient primitive peoples, like their mythology, is a study in the labyrinth of human imagination and passions.”Footnote ⁵² It reveals the initial experiences through which humans first oriented themselves in the world, and, consequently, interpreted its occurrences. As the first philosophy of a people, mythology and religion provide the language that reason needs in order to maintain and renew the creativity that allows for its reflective and communicative power, as well as for its participatory and loving dimension. Moreover, as the last philosophy of a people, religion gives them hope and faith in their ability to overcome obstacles and the limitations of their own reason.

Education, Humanity, and the Ability to Think as a “Philosopher on a Boat”

Herder was an active and passionate educator, who was also engaged in reforming the educational institutions of his time. The image that he projected of himself as an educator and reformer was that of a citizen of the earth and a “Socrates of humanity,” who can address, vividly and energeticallythrough his writings, the world and posterity in ways that form the reason and the freedom of the audience.Footnote ⁵³ The fervor with which Herder theorized about education and engaged himself in acts of educational reform reflects his conviction that the “reason and humanity of man depend on education, language, and tradition.”Footnote ⁵⁴ If religion is an essential part of tradition and language, then humanity requires both reason and religion, both freedom and love, both creativity and receptivity. The failure of the Enlightenment to cultivate the disposition to humanity, which is universal and older than speculative reason,Footnote ⁵⁵ is due to its neglect of tradition and to the dismissal of poetic, mythical, and religious narratives and languages, which a wide and creative mind also requires.Footnote ⁵⁶ The Enlightenment's misguided reason led to a politics of despotism and imperialism, because it was divorced from love and friendship, from hope and faith, all feelings that are connected, in Herder's view, with religion.

In one of his early writings, Journal of My Voyage in the Year 1769, Herder proposes the metaphor of the ship as evocative of a manner of thinking that is at once autonomous-critical and receptive to vividly sensorial experiences. The metaphor evokes the form of thinking that Herder would like to see instilled as early as possible in every student, if the disposition to humanity is to be successfully cultivated. Herder starts his travel diary by pointing out that, when on a ship, the individual is “suspended between sky and sea,” in ways that somehow echo the initial condition of the first humans, like children, of not being committed to any specific sphere and of having “a wide scope,” the capacity to see far and away and everything as for the first time. To the metaphor of the ship Herder opposes that of the land, where we are “chained to a fixed point and restricted to the narrow limits of a situation.”Footnote ⁵⁷ The argument is that the state of mind made possible by traveling overcomes parochialism, as well as a certain exaggerated sense of self-importance, the result of becoming too attached to one's small town, pulpit, or lecture desk, to one's doctrines and truths. Now the mind can open and add wings to its thoughts, thus gaining an ample sphere.Footnote ⁵⁸ Humanity requires the adventurous and curious spirit of the sailor, its opening to the novel and unfamiliar, to the diversity of human cultures and experiences.Footnote ⁵⁹

As a “philosopher on the boat” the thinker can situate himself in a position where the “narrow, firm, and restricted center” of his sphere of activity disappears and where he can “know everything from immediate personal conviction.”Footnote ⁶⁰ The situation enhances autonomy and freedom, since everything is known first hand, through direct personal experience and judgment. At the same time, the situation also suggests an intensity of feeling that would not be possible otherwise (i.e., if the individual did not experience things in an unmediated manner). Thus, humanity requires not only that the mind be open in its undertakings to the unfamiliar, but also that it be capable of performing its activities with a freedom that no authority can inhibit, as if no tradition existed before the experiences and feelings of this specific individual or members of a given society.

At the same time, Herder observes, as “a philosopher on the boat,” the (enlightened) thinker can also get closer to the state of mind of the first creators of myth and ancient poetry, to their religious experience and feeling. As he explains, the “whole language of shipboard life, the reveille, the calling of the hours, is therefore framed in pious stock phrases and is as solemn as a chant from the bowels of the ship itself. In all this lie data which explain the earliest ages of mythology.”Footnote ⁶¹ Life on the ship is shared and, to some extent, its rhythm is articulated through myth and rituals, through a shared tradition. It is also a life of intense discipline and rigor, of communion with others, where each has to understand and responsibly play his role in the larger crew, given the situations of danger and vulnerability that one might face when navigating on a ship. A life on a small ship, threatened at times by destructive forces, also requires prayer and the pious belief in higher forces that need to be befriended by the vulnerable seafarer;Footnote ⁶² the call to friendship, which religion fundamentally is for Herder. In sum, it seems that, as understood by Herder, the metaphor provided by life on the ship combines, within a space that is at once experiential, emotional, and mental, the ability to be open to the unfamiliar and be adventurous; the autonomous capacity to know everything from immediate experience, through vivid sensory experiences; and the ability to share a life of discipline, piety, and prayer, which is governed by common rituals and interpreted through a language (that is still) pregnant with myth.

The metaphor of the ship provides insight into a manner of thinking and a way of being in the world that avoids the artificial and mechanical nature of the Enlightenment's reason, its failure to cultivate the disposition to humanity, and, consequently, to successfully reform human societies, their laws, and morals.Footnote ⁶³ Opposing the reduction of both reason and religion to principles and “abstracted spirit,”Footnote ⁶⁴ Herder looks for an experience, as condensed by the metaphor of the ship, where thinking and, in general, the humanity of the individual would grow out of both freedom and faith in a common enterprise. Thus understood, thinking would combine the capacity to experience everything as for the first time, knowing everything from personal need and conviction (a form of autonomy), and the pious and anxious wonder and anticipation of those who, perhaps, in exile and looking for a strange land, see themselves as vulnerable seafarers engaged in the precarious adventure of approaching, with faith and as one community, new worlds and unfamiliar coasts.Footnote ⁶⁵ In short, what Herder argues for is a form of thinking that is both reason and religious feeling, both knowledge and faith; it is an attitude and way of being in the world that is both innovative and reverent of a tradition's living spirit, all aspects that humanity requires.

The experience evoked by the metaphor of the ship captures the fact that religion represents, in Herder's view, the first and last philosophy. Religion provided in the history of human societies the rudiments of civilization and science. Moreover, reason started as religious feeling, that is, as an attempt to capture through (poetic) language and to befriend an invisible presence, to invoke its benevolence, as well as an attempt at self-limitation, which expresses one's love for others and trust in them.Footnote ⁶⁶ In short, Herder argues that religion needs to be seen as both an exercise of understanding and an exercise of the human heart, which has a lasting and powerful relationship with reason.Footnote ⁶⁷

His argument about the relationship between reason and religion reveals two important things. First, it reveals that freedom is not possible in the absence of the capacity to empathize with what is seen and, particularly, with what is heard. Thus, it appears that reason, which also requires the freedom to poetic invention, cannot (and, therefore, should not) be divorced from love, understood in the most general sense as the capacity to participate in what is offered to the senses (and, it can be speculated, in what refuses to appear and be seen, in the invisible). As Herder argues, words and concepts come into being through the analogical projection of one's “manner of feeling and thinking onto external objects.”Footnote ⁶⁸ The body, a “little world” of light and sound, provides the analogon through which, owing to the power of imagination, “the sensing human being feels his way into everything, feels everything from out of himself, and imprints it with his image, his impress.”Footnote ⁶⁹ The result is the act of naming, a metaphorical creation, through which language and, implicitly, reason come into being. Since the capacity to empathize with the surrounding world and to love is the living imprint of God in us, it follows that, from its inception, reason is intertwined with the experience of God's presence (in our senses), as conveyed by the sacred poetry that religion is.

Second, the argument about the relationship between reason and religion shows that the acquired body of knowledge and the truths that define reason at a given time need to be periodically repositioned in the active and interactive contexts of life, where words and concepts first came into being as verbs. Otherwise, the ideas and truths of reason are in danger of becoming misguided and artificial, incapable of engaging with and lovingly befriending worldly occurrences. To Herder the place that verbs occupy in language suggests that human beings are a web of “multifarious living powers” and energies. Human beings are what they do and undertake, their actions and practices.Footnote ⁷⁰ The place that Herder accords to verbs in the genesis of poetic language (and implicitly, of human reason) expresses his view that what makes individuals human is the activity through which they energetically, freely, and creatively respond to changing circumstances and contexts, and thus affirm their freedom.Footnote ⁷¹ The “human spirit's genuine art of invention,”Footnote ⁷² where language originates, gets its power from such energetic and dispersed motion and activity, from the adventurous spirit of the sailor.

To bring this line of argument to a conclusion, I would like to suggest that the manner of thinking and being in the world that Herder associates with the metaphor of the ship provides a model of enlightened humanity, to which religion contributes in a decisive manner. Individuals who thus developed their humanity, as an expression of both their freedom and their love, of both reason and faith, are aware that, when engaged in dialogue across cultures, a moment might arrive when the firm ground provided by their certainties and truths is shaken and starts dissolving; when their reason reaches its limits. In this situation, to continue the dialogue and thus keep on the side of reason, and not take the path of dogmatism, despotism, or imperialism, requires the capacity to live with the unknown, with uncertainty, and with an unsettling sense of one's vulnerability. It also requires the adventurous spirit and the receptivity of those who experience everything as for the first time and without the safety net of doctrines.

In moments when knowledge (and reason) cannot help and when certainty is shaken, love and faith might have the power to keep the dialogue going. Love and faith can awaken in the participants in the commerce of ideas the capacity to feel the spirit that lives in and breathes through their tradition, rather than desire to shelter themselves under its letter. What would now matter most to them would be not to abide by the existing truths, but to become fully alive and creatively receptive to the new situation and to its demands, to its promises and threats, thus widening their mind and expanding their sensibility and consciousness. Herder thought that religion can help in making this attitude possible. An important aspect of one's humanity which religion can decisively form is the capacity to see oneself, one's culture and society, as part of a larger and common enterprise, as the sailors on a ship see themselves. Thus, as I will argue in the last part of the paper, while Herder thought very highly of Christianity, his view of religion had the potential for helping him to see the capacity that other sacred languages and traditions have to cultivate humanity. Himself a Christian and a Lutheran minister, Herder praised what he saw of value in every religion. At the same time, he criticized every religion equally, including his own, when it failed to live up to what he considered to be true religion.

Religion and Religious Education as a Training Ground for Reason and Humanity

As a Lutheran minister, Herder had rather unconventional views of God, the result of embracing pantheism and Spinozism.Footnote ⁷³ To deism, he opposed a view of divinity as a force that is ever-living and ever-active in the whole world. To theological rationalism,Footnote ⁷⁴ he opposed a view of religious texts as originating in poetic creation, not in speculation. It was the idea of God, not as an abstract concept, but as living in all things and present in human beings, as power, understanding, and goodness,Footnote ⁷⁵ as the feeling of the interconnectedness of all life, that allowed Herder to see religion not as a doctrine, but as “a matter of our entire being” and “an inner moral conviction,”Footnote ⁷⁶ which demands faith, builds faith up and develops it.Footnote ⁷⁷

Herder distinguished between dogma and religion. While dogma is only a philosophical affair, religion appeals to the whole being of the humans, to the truth they all share.Footnote ⁷⁸ As suggested by the metaphor of thinking as a philosopher on the boat, the truth that all humans share is not a doctrine but rather an ability to feel and experience themselves as members of the same crew, despite the differences in their ideas, and to continue their ascent to the ideal of humanity,Footnote ⁷⁹ which, as the image of God in us, cannot be reduced to any of its particular expressions. The implication seems to be that Herder saw the reduction of truth to a doctrine as a form of dogmatism, since the power of love and faith to bind individuals across intellectual differences is thus gone.

There is no doubt that Herder was a deeply committed Christian and a deeply committed Lutheran. Reflecting this position, he took the Bible as the living model for giving reality to a Christian commonwealth. At the same time, he did not shy away from criticizing Christianity when appropriate (not only Catholicism, but also Protestantism for its tendency to slide into deism), as he never failed to see value in other religions. One important aspect of Christianity that disturbed and worried Herder was its missionary impulse, which he cites as a bad influence on Islam. While Christianity affirms that all peoples are brothers, it also has the potential to transform them into slaves if religion is imposed on them.Footnote ⁸⁰ In this sense, I think that Arnd Bohm is wrong to characterize the traveling Herder of 1769 as being moved by “missionary impulses.”Footnote ⁸¹

It is true that in Journal of My Voyage in the Year 1769, Herder is enthusiastic about reviving the spirit of Zwingli, Calvin, and Luther as models to follow in acts of social and political reform in Eastern Europe. However, I think it is incorrect to say that his enthusiasm was moved by a “missionary impulse” to extend the frontiers of Protestantism into the territories of Eastern Europe. First, Bohm's argument does not fare well in light of Herder's general criticism of the missionary spirit of Christianity. Second, Bohm omits to mention that Herder shows enthusiasm for the Protestant heroes in connection with the reform of Livonia, a region by the Baltic Sea to which Riga belonged, and which historically was under German and Swedish influence, of which Protestantism was an important part. Hence, in showing enthusiasm for Calvin and Luther in connection with Livonia, Herder is only faithful to his own idea that tradition should be taken as an important starting point in acts of reform. Third, Bohm conveniently neglects to mention that when Herder turns to the discussion of reform in Russia, with its impressive diversity of cultures, he does not look for Christian or Lutheran models to follow. Quite the contrary, he states that “neither English, nor French, nor German legal minds can legislate for Russia.” Instead, he advances the idea that Persians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Chinese, and Japanese can provide better inspiration for Russia's work of creating its own political and social culture.Footnote ⁸²

Herder's argument for the potential that different religious traditions have for successful acts of social and political reform across societies seems to be more in tune with his larger philosophical ideas that the freedom of individuals and of whole cultures should be respected and that mankind provides different cultural venues to the cultivation of humanity. In short, it seems to be more in tune with his deep appreciation of pluralism, as also shown by his admiration for the heroes of other religions. Herder does not hesitate to recommend Moses and Mohammed as worthy examples to follow in acts of social and political reform.Footnote ⁸³ At the same time, he seems to think that there is a true religion, which he defines as “a filial service of God, an imitation of the most high and beautiful represented in the human form, with the extreme of inward satisfaction, active goodness and love of mankind.”Footnote ⁸⁴

I would like to suggest that even if the concept of true religion can be taken as referring to Christianity, it can still be seen as not contradicting Herder's argument for pluralism and the antidualist manner of his thinking. Consistent with his argument for pluralism, but also with his commitment as a minister, Herder cannot but start from where he is: his Christian tradition and identity. However, the real challenge for an antidualist thinker, who does not divorce religion from reason and plurality from unity, is to engage his Christian identity and tradition in ways that expand and cultivate the disposition to humanity, both in himself and in his audience. What I think helped Herder to successfully understand and, perhaps, achieve this task, at least at times, was the idea that the truth all religions share is not a doctrine, but a feeling of love and friendship and an experience of the interconnectedness of all life.

If the previous line of argument is correct, then it makes sense to think that Herder's idea of a “Christian” commonwealth, while inspired by the Christian tradition, will have citizens that can master with equal skill two abilities. On the one hand, they will be capable of criticizing their own (Christian) religion, when this becomes too dogmatic (i.e., too intermeshed in intellectual and doctrinal disputes) and thus too divisive. On the other hand, they will also have the ability to see other religions as expressions of the truth they all share across differences; a truth that is rather a matter of attitude than one of doctrine. In short, while inspired by the Christian tradition, Herder's idea of a “Christian” commonwealth has an important interreligious and multicultural opening, which is made possible by a certain manner of conceiving the sermon and of preaching.

Herder saw the work of the apostles as one of teaching and not as one of passing around evangelical treatises (doctrines). In his view, the focus of their activity was the living speech, the sermon, which was “a sound, a voice, a living epistle in the heart—not an edited letter.”Footnote ⁸⁵ As teachers, the apostles, each in his own individual way, told the “history of Jesus for the comprehension of everyone.” In this work they followed the spirit not the letter of the Gospel. Thus, they interpreted the Gospel in the context of the human community, as a means to form humanity and “to elevate consideration and respect for universal human feeling,” for the “friendly and brotherly sentiment” that “we work and suffer, sow and harvest, for one another.”Footnote ⁸⁶

As an active minister, Herder professed the same manner of living and teaching Christianity as the one he saw at work in the activity of the apostles. He saw his role as a minister as one of translating “the language of the Bible into the common language of our time and life,” with the intention of helping every one of his listeners to think for themselves. The intention was to make his listeners “think about religious matters with the same free and uncoerced language that they use when they explain everything in the world to themselves, without using words that they have learned by heart and do not understand.”Footnote ⁸⁷ Only thus the pastor reads the Bible in a human way, because in bringing its message to a specific audience, he at the same time cultivates and perfects the humanity of his listeners. Through his reading of the Bible, the pastor does not divorce the care for the sense of community from the care to cultivate the individual's capacity to think for himself.

The pastor does this by nurturing a manner of thinking that enhances self-knowledge and reflects the needs and feelings of a specific individual, thus forming his autonomy. In this sense, religion is meant to “train reason.”Footnote ⁸⁸ At the same time, the role of the biblical sermon is to show that a reason thus trained is not abstract and self-subsisting, but always sees itself in the context of a community, where the individual receives and gives at the same time. Religious education, Herder argued, should open both the eye and the senses, both the ear and mind. It should “nourish the soul of the child,” make imagination grow and judgment bud. The path to be followed in order to reach this objective is that of telling the biblical story as a “vivid situation, as a drama of the human heart.”Footnote ⁸⁹ Thus, the text will be given life again in connection with the audience. However, in the very act of preaching as storytelling, reason and judgment are already budding.

In Herder's view, the preacher universalizes the particular and particularizes the universal.Footnote ⁹⁰ Thus he shows to the audience the reason—the values of humanity, peace, social justice, and tolerance—in the local, in their ancient traditions and (religious) narratives (because they are, in a sense, already there). At the same time, he manages to always give reason a voice and a face, a cultural and historical body, thus never divorcing it from a concrete human community and its living tradition and faith, from its archive of archaic mythology that is stored in language. The sermon strengthens “the whole person,” his faith, hope, and love, as well as his reason, which is, after all, “the natural, active use of our human powers” and a “dynamic, living culture,” which thus takes shape through the “language, teaching, customs, instruction, and practice that surrounds” human beings.Footnote ⁹¹

In sum, an important aspect of the work of building a “Christian” commonwealth, in which, we can imagine, a preacher like Herder saw himself engaged, is to train the reason of the audience and cultivate its humanity without divorcing them from faith. Part of this enterprise is to form in the audience the capacity to engage culture and language in ways that increase reflection and freedom, as well as the good dispositions to justice, peace, love, understanding, and tolerance of other, unfamiliar positions. Characteristic of individuals who have such good dispositions is the complex cultural ability to receive and to learn from others, thus treating them with fairness, empathy, and equity.Footnote ⁹² We can imagine Herder's work of reconstructing other religious languages and narratives as aiming to teach his audiences how to feel and experience the presence of God in the sacred poetry of other cultures, thus forming their humanity. Among these cultures, the Hebrew and the Arabic attracted Herder's special attention.Footnote ⁹³ It is true that the portrait Herder makes of Islam, for example, is complex, sketched from different perspectives, which reflect his position as a Christian, as a Lutheran, and as a poet, and it is not entirely positive. At the same time, as it has been argued, Herder seems to be willing to “diminish, even muffle, his Christian identity in order to allow a more secular project to emerge.” Reflecting the pushing into the background of his Christian identity, as well as his “larger project of European decentering,” Herder recommended that children should be taught in Prussian junior schools about Muhammad and the mufti instead of learning about the pope and cardinals.Footnote ⁹⁴

The language that the preacher uses to universalize the particular and to particularize the universal, thus teaching his audiences to move between their own culture and the idea of humanity, between their own religious tradition and others, can be taken as an example of what Herder calls the language of political maturity. This is a language that is rich both in bold images and metaphors and in concepts. It is a combination of (sacred) poetry and philosophical concepts, which ties together unity and diversity, vividness and abstraction.Footnote ⁹⁵ As a result, it can transport individuals into “other people's natures and feelings,”Footnote ⁹⁶ in ways that increase the understanding of their world without precluding the possibility of reflecting and passing judgment on it. This view of language reflects Herder's idea that mind and heart need to be equally cultivated in order to make understanding possible.Footnote ⁹⁷ Thus, understanding and judging require both the capacity to feel and imagine and conceptual correctness and clarity.Footnote ⁹⁸

The language of political maturity allows for the construction of arguments always as three-headed beings, with senses, imagination, and thought. On the one hand, as in the act of thinking as a philosopher on the boat, the language of political maturity does not allow concepts and doctrines to lose their fluidity. The reason is that it connects concepts back to the sensory and emotional contexts where their meaning first took shape in ways that intertwined with wonder, love, faith, and hope; in a word, with God's presence to the senses. On the other hand, the language of political maturity does not fail to bring emotions and images to a clear expression, thus preparing them for communication with others and across cultures and traditions. In this sense, the language of political maturity has the ability to keep vivid in the members of the “Christian” commonwealth the awareness of the truth they share with others across different religious traditions. Such truth refers to the ability of the Christians (as well as of all those who abide in the true religion, as this was understood by Herder) to see themselves as being part of the same crew and of traveling on the same boat with members of other religions, despite the differences between their doctrines, as well as to their ability to continuously ascent to the ideal of humanity,Footnote ⁹⁹ which, as the image of God in them, cannot be reduced to any of its particular human expressions.

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I argued in this paper that, as understood by Herder, religion and religious education can play a pivotal role in cultivating cultural attitudes and in providing a public language that can realize the emancipatory project of the Enlightenment. Herder did not see religion as being primarily a doctrine and an intellectual truth, a perspective that can easily transform ideas and principles into dogmas that divide individuals and human groups. As he argued, what matters is not the letter but the spirit of the Gospel. As a result, religion, understood as sacred poetry and as the first and last philosophy of a people, not as a set of private beliefs, does not consist in the teaching of a doctrine and in the preservation of its letter. Its role is not to revive the fundamentals of a tradition. Instead, in Herder's view, religion has rather the role of establishing a living, educational, and transformative relationship with a concrete audience. Religion is thus seen as a fundamental act of communion and communication through which the humanity of the participants—their reason and their autonomous thinking, their good dispositions for justice, peace, and tolerance, their love and their heart, as well as their imagination—is formed and continually improved.

I argued that, for Herder, the paradigmatic activity that gives expression to this public power of religion (i.e., in civil society or the informal public sphere) is the sermon, the living voice of a preacher and educator, who knows how to creatively receive and give to others a living and dynamic tradition, while making the tradition receptive to the value that other religious narratives and languages have for forming the disposition to humanity. Key to the successful formation of the disposition to humanity in modern individuals is to appeal both to their reason and to their faith, to form both their freedom to think for themselves and their capacity to love others. Thus to act as a preacher and educator means to enact the most important feature of true religion, in Herder's view: the capacity to be a call to friendship. This capacity is most important in situations where what we anticipate, encounter, and address is unfamiliar and unsettling, thus challenging our existing truths and most cherished ideas.

We live today in multicultural societies, where individuals with different religious faiths have to share the same public realm. It has been recently argued that it is antipluralistic and antidemocratic to request religious people to bracket their faith and leave it at home.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ If we assume that it is highly unrealistic to expect individuals to leave at home (in the private realm) their religious beliefs and their general religious formation, which are more intertwined with their self and identity than is usually assumed under liberal premises, then Herder's view of the role of the sermon, to form specific cultural and political abilities in the citizens, becomes very relevant to the contemporary attempts to rethink the meaning of secularism. It becomes relevant for attempts to understand and conceptualize secularism as both a creation of Western Christianity and as (potentially) existing outside this particular tradition. But a full development of this promise in Herder's view of religion and religious education would have to be the subject of another paper.