Just as Herder's cosmopolitanism allowed him to become very sympathetic to Judaism as a religion and cultural tradition, so it also allowed him to be… - Benedictus de Spinoza

" "

Just as Herder's cosmopolitanism allowed him to become very sympathetic to Judaism as a religion and cultural tradition, so it also allowed him to become a great admirer of the most important Jewish philosopher of the modern period: Spinoza. As is well known, Herder's appropriation (and modification) of the metaphysical monism of Spinoza's Ethics in God: Some Conversations (1787) played a central role in generating the forms of neo-Spinozistic metaphysical monism that later dominated German Idealism and German Romanticism. But Herder's interest in and sympathy with Spinoza in fact reach much further back in time than that work, to the late 1760's, and his intellectual debts to Spinoza extend well beyond the principle of metaphysical monism. Thus, another important debt lies in the anti-dualistic and deterministic philosophy of mind that Herder presented, with explicit mention of Spinoza, in On the Cognition and Sensation of the Human Soul (1778), which is again heavily indebted to the Ethifcs. Moreover, even before Herder was influenced by the Ethics in the ways just mentioned, he was influenced by the Tractatus. Thus, another major area in which he owes debts to Spinoza is the theory of interpretation, especially biblical interpretation, where he borrowed principles from the Tractatus from the late 1760's on. And yet another debt can be seen in Herder's early turn, in about 1770, away from monarchy as a constitutional ideal towards the ideals of democracy and liberalism – for that turn was influenced by Spinoza's championing of the latter ideals in the Tractatus. Putting these cases together, one can indeed see that Herder beginning in the late 1760's engaged in a sort of progressive appropriation of increasingly fundamental levels of Spinoza's thought: first principles of interpretation, then political ideals, then philosophy of mind and metaphysics. All of the principles in question went on to play important roles within German Idealism and German Romanticism. Spinoza's contribution to those movements was thus far greater than has usually been realized.