Publisher's Synopsis
This study attempts to show that Herder, like Rousseau, profoundly affected the transformation of states into nation-states, and of subjects into citizens. The status of Jean Jacques Rousseau as a political writer and creative thinker is unquestioned, but Johann Gottfried Herder has received scant attention as a political author, and the extent of his originality as a social philosopher is not widely known.;The author finds a "great common theme" as Herder saw the paradox that civilization, which humanizes and moralizes us, also corrupts us. The crux of political legitimacy for both, therefore, and a focus of this study is the possibility of "extended selfhood" - of selves acting with others without injury to either party. Professor Barnard compares their ideas on nature and culture, selfhood and mutuality, paternalism, freedom, and autonomy, highlighting the important features of a world-view which came into being in the eighteenth century and which persists into our own day.;The author has also written "Herder's Social and Political Thought", "Herder on Social and Political Culture" and "Socialism with a Human Face: Slogan and Substance".
