Herder, Gadamer, and 21st Century Humanities Essay -- Philosophy Relig

One of the anticipations of this Congress, namely, that of all the world's philosophical traditions address the 'problems of human life, civilization, and residence on earth,' cannot be accomplished by insisting upon the means and prescriptions of any one tradition. In this paper I address the theme of the Congress by considering the views of Johann Gottfried Herder and Hans-Georg Gadamer on education and history. In spite of attacks on his religious loyalties, Herder supported what may today be called pluralism. Having studied history and having watched history in the making of one of its darkest moments, Gadamer also saw the future of the humanities in the global conversation. To educate humanity, I conclude, philosophy should first attempt to understand the existential conditions of human life. Ideen is a curious and in some ways contradictory work. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) respects the humanistic ideals of freedom and social improvement and recognizes the teleological and progressive notions of historical development. But he does not confine himself to European history and sources like most others in his time and even after did. He rejected the then prevailing view that there exist some invariant laws or standards of consciousness and behavior that are applicable to all humans at all periods and in terms of which even the past should be judged. On the contrary, he argued that every historical age and culture has its own character and its own value. In Book 14, chapter 6 of Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Mankind, 1784-91), he likens societies to organisms as they develop in distinctive manner and in response to the combination of environmental condi... ...Gadamer on Education, Poetry, and History. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992, p. xvii (7) Gadamer. Reason in the Age of Science. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 198. p. 92 (8) "Aber fà ¼r die Geisteswissenschaften dà ¼rfte es anders aussehen"—Das Erbe Europas. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1989, P.35 (9) Das Erbe Europas, p. 52: '. . . einer standardisierten weltzivilisation herauffà ¼hren, in der sich die Geschichte des Planeten gleichsam in Idealstatus einer rationalen Weltverwaltung stillstellt -' (10) See: Claude Sumner. The Source of African Philosophy: The Ethiopian Philosophy of Man. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1986. (11) See: Kwame Gyekye. An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987 (12) See: Paulin Hountondji. African Philosophy: Myth and Reality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.