3/8/2013 Herderian Nationalism

by Nathan Turowsky

What is a 'nation', how does it differ from a 'state', and how does 'culture' come into all this? In the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, the answer has seemed simple in much of the Western world: States are those political entities which blanket the planet, and nations are those entities which are formed by the culture or cultures or a state. (Or, if you prefer, states are the tangible rational-legal forms taken by nations, which may or may not have 'culture', an abstract, amorphous, uncountable noun.) Somebody who is a nationalist is committed to the interests of their nation, membership in which is defined by citizenship granted by a state.

Early in the development of nationalist thought, however, 'nation' indicated something very different indeed, a cultural unit or entity which state power could either support or threaten and to which it was in no way theoretically connected. This early non-state nationalism found its most sophisticated expression in the writings of the German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803), whose nationalism, based on real or perceived cultural affinity, may be defined as 'orthopraxic' as compared to the 'orthodox' nationalism of the citizenship-based modern nation-state. After Herder's death, other European thinkers appropriated different aspects of his thought and writings, which led in directions as varied as anodyne romanticism, militant anti-imperialism, and--in combination with later forms of German nationalism, which Herder in his lifetime opposed--the intellectual seeds of the Third Reich.

Herderian cultural nationalism, as its eponym conceived it, was decentralist, anti-authoritarian, traditionalist, religious, and in its pure form worryingly racist; it was formed out of a cacophony of sometimes contradictory, sometimes bizarrely consonant humanist and reactionary instincts within Herder's psyche, which J.M. Lyon describes in 'The Herder Syndrome' as defined by a deep undefinable sense of not belonging. How have the thoughts of this comparatively second-rate eighteenth-century German thinker borne fruit in more recent times? Where, if at all, do we see them on the modern American 'left' or 'right'? Were they precursors to fascism or anti-imperialism or both? Philosophy Club President Nathan Turowsky will lead us on a magical ride through the carnival funland of early modern political and social thought, with Herder and his ambiguous and frustrating legacy as our guide.