HERDER Aesthetics against Imperialism GERMAN AND EUROPEAN STUDIES General Editor: Rebecca Wittmann JOHN K. NOYES Herder Aesthetics against Imperialism UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London © University of Toronto Press 2015 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in the U.S.A. ISBN 978-1-4426-5038-1 Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks. (German and European Studies) Publication cataloguing information is available from Library and Archives Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. Funded by the Financé par le Government gouvernement of Canada du Canada For Sascha, Anjou, Indra, and Sheba This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Illustrations i x Acknowledgments xi Introduction: P ostcolonial Theory and Herder’s Anti-Imperialism 3 1 From Epistemology to Aesthetics 23 2 From Organic Life to the Politics of Interpretation 60 3 From Human Restlessness to the Politics of Difference 95 4 From the Location of Language to the Multiplicity of Reason 135 5 From Human Diversity to the Politics of Natural Development 191 6 The Aesthetics of Revolution and the Critique of Imperialism 246 Conclusion: Herder, Postcolonialism, and the Antinomy of Universal Reason 297 Notes 313 Works Cited 371 Index 389 This page intentionally left blank Illustrations 0.1 Johann Gottfried Herder , painting by Johann Ludwig S trecker, 1775 5 3.1 William Hodges , engraved by W. Watts, Matavai Bay, 1773 98 3.2 Vorstellung der Europäischen Handels Plätze in Asien. Engraving, anon., ca. 1770 102 3.3 William Hodges , engraved by J.K. Shirwin, The Landing at Middleburgh, 1784 104 3.4 John Webber , engraved by William Sharp, Inside of a House in Nootka Sound 105 3.5 Giovanni Battista Casanova, Apolito Sauroktonos, 1 821 132 4.1 Frontispiece to Guillaume Thomas François Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des européens dans les deux Indes , 1781 184 5.1 Eberhard Zimmermann, Tabula mundi geographico zoological , 1760 228 5.2 Zimmermann, Tabula mundi (detail) 231 6.1 Frontispiece to Briefe zu Beför d erung der Humanität , 1 793 271