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Culture and Political Development: Herder's Suggestive Insights*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

F. M. Barnard
F. M. Barnard*
Affiliation:
University of Saskatchewan
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Extract

When in the early thirties Harold Lasswell declared that “political symbols and practices are so intimately intertwined with the larger array of symbols and practices in culture that it is necessary to extend the scope of political investigation to include the fundamental features of the culture setting”, he was very much a voice in the wilderness. Today Lasswell's words have almost become commonplace in the vocabulary of political science. In this, as in many other current concerns, Lasswell's early work has rightly been judged seminal. It substantially contributed towards the prolific expansion of the academic boundaries of political enquiry within the last three decades, in particular to the growth of interest in psychological and sociological approaches. Increasingly students of political behavior in both ‘established’ and ‘emergent’ nations have come to realize that purely formal and legalistic conceptual frameworks are inadequate to provide meaningful answers to such problems as persistence and change, socialization, political cohesion, and the complex bases of political authority and legitimacy. This realization, though it has made political science a more rather than less problematical undertaking, nonetheless has had the result of adding new dimensions or perspectives to its analytical vision. Indeed, in the course of this development the very notion of the political has undergone a profound re-appraisal.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , June 1969 , pp. 379 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1969

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Footnotes

*

An award by the Canada Council in 1967 enabled me to do further research on unpublished Herder sources in Germany.

References

1 Lasswell, Harold D., World Politics and Personal Insecurity (New York: McGraw Hill, 1935, Free Press ed. 1965), p. 158 Google Scholar.

2 Eulau, Heinz, “The Maddening Methods of Harold D. Lasswell: Some Philosophical Underpinnings”, Journal of Politics, 30 (1968), 3–24 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 XVIII, 315 and 535. (All references are to the Suphan edition of Herder's, Werke, 33 vols., Berlin, 1877–1913 Google Scholar).

4 Thus wrote F. K. von Moser, one of the outstanding publicists of the period in his challenging tract Der Herr und der Diener (1759), cited in Fauchier-Magnan, A., The Small German Courts in the Eighteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1958), p. 55 Google Scholar. Regarding the political and intellectual background of Herder's Germany, probably the best recent works in English are Krieger, Leonard, The German Idea of Freedom (Boston: Beacon, 1957), pp. 8–80 Google Scholar; Bruford, W. H., Culture and Society in Classical Weimar (1776–1806) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962)Google Scholar and Berlin, Isaiah, “Herder and the Enlightenment,” in Wassermann, Earl R. (ed.), Aspects of the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965), pp. 47–104 Google Scholar.

5 Herder's Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie (The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry), published in 1783, is perhaps the best example of this. I have found this rather neglected source of Herder's socio-political thinking quite intriguing. For an interpretation of this work, see Barnard, F. M., “The Hebrews and Herder's Political Creed,” Modern Language Review, 54 (1959), 533–546 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, or “Herder and Israel,” Jewish Social Studies, 28 (1966), 25–33 Google Scholar.

6 See, for example, Lindblom, Charles E., The Intelligence of Democracy: Decision Making Through Mutual Adjustment (New York: Free Press, 1965), pp. 293–310 Google Scholar; Swartz, Marc J., Turner, Victor W., and Tuden, Arthur (eds), Political Anthropology (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1966)Google Scholar; Easton, David, “Political Anthropology,” Biennial Review of Anthropology, ed. Siegel, B. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959), pp. 210–262 Google Scholar; and Friedrich, Carl J. and Horwitz, Morton, “Some Thoughts on the Relation of Political Theory to Anthropology,” this Review, 62 (1968), 536–545. Google Scholar

7 Barnard, F. M., “Herder's Treatment of Causation and Continuity in History”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 24 (1963), 197–212 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Herder's Social and Political Thought: from Enlightenment to Nationalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965, rev. ed. 1967); idem, “Metaphors, Laments, and the Organic Community”, Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 32 (1966), 281–301; idem, with Jene M. Porter, “Discontent and Political Development: a Discussion of Some Contemporary Methodological and Substantive Problems,” paper presented at the 1968 meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association; and idem, Herder on Social and Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969). This work includes translations from the Travel Diary, Essay on the Origin of Language, Yet Another Philosophy of History, Dissertation on the Reciprocal Influence of Government and the Sciences, Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind, and shorter extracts from the Letters for the Advancement of Humanity.

8 See Pye, Lucian W., Aspects of Political Development (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, 1966), p. 8 Google Scholar.

9 See Eisenstadt, S. N., “Breakdowns of Modernization,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 12 (1964), 345–367 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Modernization: Protest and Change (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1966), p. 40 Google Scholar; and Shils, E., Political Development in the New States (New York: Humanities Press, 1964), pp. 7–8 Google Scholar.

10 Halpern, Manfred, “The Rate and Costs of Political Development,” Annals o] the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 358 (1965), p. 22 Google Scholar. See also Welch, Claude E. Jr., (ed.), Political Modernization (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1967), pp. 319–382 Google Scholar; Mehden, Fred R. von der, Politics of the Developing Nations (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1964), ch. VIIGoogle Scholar; and Anderson, Charles W., Mehden, Fred R. von der, and Young, Crawford, Issues of Political Development (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1967), pp. 220–235 Google Scholar.

11 Pye, op. cit., p. 97.

12 This is a revised and abridged version of my article on Alfred Weber in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Crowell, Collier and Macmillian, 1967), Vol. 8, pp. 281–282 Google Scholar.

13 VIII, 193 and 178.

14 XIII, 137.

15 XIII, 4.

16 Kroeber, A. L. and Kluckhohn, Clyde, Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), p. 286 Google Scholar.

17 XIII, 348.

18 XVIII, 247–249.

19 IV, 38.

20 V, 502 and 509.

21 XXI, 179.

22 XIII, 290 and V, 504.

23 See Landau, M., “On the Use of Metaphor in political Analysis,” Social Research, 28 (1961), 353 Google Scholar; F. M. Barnard, “Metaphors, Laments and the Organic Community,” op. cit., pp. 281–285, and Gregor, A. James, “Political Science and the Uses of Functional Analysis,” this Review, 62 (1968), 425–439. Google Scholar

24 For a more detailed discussion of Herder's approach to causation and determinism, see Wells, G. A., Herder and After (The Hague: Mouton, 1959), pp. 262–269 Google Scholar; F. M. Barnard, “Herder's Treatment of Causation and Continuity in History,” op. cit., pp. 197–212; and idem, Herder's Social and Political Thought, op. cit., pp. 51–53. See also Spitz, Lewis W., “Natural Law and the Theory of History,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 16 (1955), 453–475 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a most penetrating study of Herder's conception of historical laws.

25 Cassirer, Ernst, The Logic of the Humanities (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), p. 25 Google Scholar.

26 F. M. Barnard, Herder's Social and Political Thought, op. cit., ch. 5, esp. p. 98.

27 To this inner driving power Herder applied the term Kraft. It signifies the prime source of all that is alive and the dynamic force of its continued existence. See his Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind (1784–91), esp. XIII, 172–188 and 274–277. For a fuller discussion of the notion of Kraft see Clark, Robert T. Jr., “Herder's Conception of Kraft”, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 57 (1942), 737–752 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and F. M. Barnard, Herder's Social and Political Thought, op. cit., pp. 38–39 and 44–53 where Herder's views are compared with those of Rousseau, Locke, Spinoza and Leibniz.

28 See, for example, Shils, Edward, “Primordial, Personal, Sacred and Civil Ties,” British Journal of Sociology, 8 (1957), 130–145 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clifford Geertz, “The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civic Politics in the New States,” in Welch, Political Modernization, op. cit., pp. 167–188; and Apter, David E. (ed.), Ideology and Discontent (Glencoe: Free Press, 1964), p. 22 Google Scholar.

29 The most systematic exposition of Herder's philosophy of organicism is to be found in his Metakritik; see esp. XXI, 152–182.

30 See Ideas, esp. XIV, 83–84.

31 XIII, 346; see also XIV, 227; XVI, 119, 551; XVII, 116; XVIII, 302, 408; XXIV, 375; and XXIX, 133, 139. This faith in the attainability of harmony between conflicting interests is by no means absent from modern pluralistic ideology.

33 Undoubtedly the most vigorous expression of Herder's repudiation of the idea of linear progress is to be found in Yet Another Philosophy of History; see esp. V, 527, 559, 564.

33 V, 506.

34 II, 65.

35 XIV, 34–35.

36 XIII, 310.

37 See, for example, Lipset, S. M., Political Man (New York: Doubleday, 1959, Anchor ed., 1963), pp. 31–37 Google Scholar. If European stable democracies are characterized by the ownership of 43–400 telephones per 1,000 persons and European dictatorships by 7–196 telephones per thousand, one wonders how those nations whose population possesses 43–195 telephones manage to remain stable democracies. See also, on this point, Cutright, Phillips, “National Political Development” in Polsby, , Dentler, and Smith, (eds.), Politics and Social Life (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1963), pp. 569–582 Google Scholar, La Palombara, Joseph, “Decline of Ideology: a Dissent and an Interpretation”, this Review, 60 (1966), 8 Google Scholar; and Neubauer, Deane E., “Some Conditions of Democracy”, this Review, 61 (1967), 1002–1009. Google Scholar If one prefers automotive production to bathtubs as an indicator of democratic development, Rostow, W. W., The Stages of Economic Growth: a Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960)Google Scholar, or his more recent “Unsolved Problems of International Development”, International Development Review, 7 (1965) no. 4, 15–18 Google Scholar, and 8 (1966) no. 1, 2–5, will prove instructive. See also Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society, (New York: Macmillan, 1958)Google Scholar and Millikan, Max F. and Blackmer, Donald L. M., The Emerging Nations (Boston: Little, Brown, 1961)Google Scholar.

38 Samardzija, Milos, “The Yugoslav Economic System and Contemporary Socialist Economic Theory” in Porter, J. M. (ed.), Contemporary Developments in the Theory and Practice of Communism (Springfield, Mo.: Drury College, 1967), pp. 28–38 Google Scholar.

39 XIV, 149.

40 XIII, 371.

41 XIII, 307.

42 Of German contemporaries, Goethe perhaps comes closest to Herder's conception of Bildung, although he views the process in wholly apolitical and individualist terms, as ‘self-improvement.’ (See W. H. Bruford, Culture and Society in Classical Weimar, op. cit., p. 236). Herder's faith in the power of Bildung to engender in a people the will and ability to govern itself reflects, of course, the influence of Rousseau's educational gospel which in like manner came to dominate Jefferson's democratic creed.

43 XIII, 343–348; see also XIV, 84. Lest these terms are interpreted in a biological, as distinct from a socio-cultural sense, Herder—much to the chagrin of Kant—goes out of his way to assure us in the Ideas that he is not thinking of biological or ‘racial’ heredity. In fact he bluntly declares that he has no use for the concept of race. (XIII, 257–258). Regarding Kant's criticism, see his review of the Ideas in the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung of 15 November, 1785. Surprisingly enough, Herder has been presented as a racist by some commentators.

44 V, 98; see also XIII, 182.

45 In view of this, Herder, though hailing the French Revolution as the most momentous event since the Reformation, could not help feeling that it was a regrettable alternative to Bildung as he conceived it. See esp. XVIII, 313, 314–320 and 331–332.

46 XIII, 372–373.

47 On this point see F. M. Barnard, “Metaphors, Laments and the Organic Community”, op. cit., pp. 281–301.

48 XIV, 89.

49 For modern critiques of replicative socialization see, for example, Wallace, Anthony F. C., Culture and Personality (New York: Random House, 1961), esp. pp. 84, 111–119 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Easton, David, “The Theoretical Relevance of Political Socialization”, Canadian Journal of Political Scïence, I (1968), 125–146 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 See Easton, David, “An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems”, World Politics, 9 (1957), 383–400 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also idem, “Political Anthroology”, op. cit., pp. 228–229 and A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: John Wiley, 1965) pp. 171–219.

51 XIII, 273.

52 V, 141.

53 V, 510.

54 Ibid.

55 Herder's early interest in this direction is evident from his highly perceptive observations in the Travel Diary of his voyage from Riga to France in 1769, which was not published during his lifetime. He resolved there to collect data from the mythology of all ages and cultures and “to examine everything from the point of view of politics” (IV, 363–364), which in fact he subsequently did in his pioneering collection of folksongs from the most diverse and almost forgotten nationalities, and in other works.

56 Peter Winch's close similarity to Herder's ideas on this point was brought to my attention by my colleague, Dr. J. M. Porter. Winch writes: “Our idea of what belongs to the realm of reality is given for us in the language that we use. The concepts we have settle for us the form of the experience we have of the world. … There is no way of getting outside the concepts in terms of which we think of the world… The world is for us what is presented through those concepts. That is not to say that our concepts may not change; but when they do, that means that our concept of the world has changed too.” ( Winch, Peter, The Idea of a Social Science, London: Routledge, 1958, p. 15)Google Scholar.

57 V, 117–136.

58 IV, 423.

59 IV, 429.

60 XIV, 87.

61 Herder uses the term when discussing the political culture of the ancient Hebrews in comparison with that of the Greeks. (See esp. XIV, 67). This may indeed have been the earliest use of the term, which makes somewhat surprising the omission of any mention of Herder in current literature on political culture, although attention is paid to such writers as Montesquieu, Tocqueville and Bagehot. See, for example, Pye, Lucian W. and Verba, Sidney (eds.), Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 514 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Herder's italics. IX, 311–312.

63 See particularly the section entitled “Concluding Remarks about the Conflict between Climate and the Genetic Force.” (XIII, 284–289).

64 XIII, 453.

65 XIII, 377 and 383.

66 Kant, , Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, 1784 Google Scholar; Kant Schriften, Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften edition (Berlin, 1923), Vol. VIII, p. 23.

67 XIII, 383–584.

68 XIII, 319–322.

69 XIII, 384–385; see also XVI, 48.

70 See, for example, Braibanti, Ralph, “The Civil Service of Pakistan,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 58 (1959), 258–304 Google Scholar, and his chapter on “Public Bureaucracy and Judiciary in Pakistan” in Palombara, Joseph La (ed.), Bureaucracy and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 360–440 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 La Palombara, Ibid., p. 55.

72 IX, 313.

73 XIII, 384. Aristotle by contrast, is emphatic in stressing that the distinction between a family and a state is not a simple, numerical difference, but a difference in kind. (Politics I, chs. 1, 3 and III, ch. 4).

74 See F. M. Barnard, Herder's Social and Political Thought, op. cit. ch. IV, esp. pp. 84–86.

75 IX, 407; see also Ibid., 401–408; XVI, 601 and XXX, 234.

76 Herder's advocacy of freedom of thought and expression in his treatise On the Reciprocal Influence of Government and the Sciences forcibly recalls Milton's pleas in the Areopagitica, as it also foreshadows Mill's central arguments in his essay On Liberty. (See esp. IX, 357–361).

77 Arendt, Hannah, On Revolution. (New York: Viking Press, 1963), p. 221 Google Scholar.

78 Almond, Gabriel and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 4 Google Scholar.

79 Ibid., p. 19.

80 XIV, 217.

81 XIII, 455; see also Ibid., 385.

82 V, 516; see also XIII, 340–341. J. S. Mill argues similarly in Representative Government, Ch. 8.

83 XVIII, 309.

84 XIV, 227.

85 XIII, 376.

86 Lasswell and Kaplan make this point rather well: “To speak of society as a whole as a power holder is to miss the whole point of political analysis. Power is distributive, and the aim of political science is to determine how and on what basis it is distributed.” Lasswell, Harold D. and Kaplan, Abraham, Power and Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950), p. 96 Google Scholar.

87 See La Palombara, Bureaucracy and Political Development, op. cit., pp. 30 and 57.

88 Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Free Press, 1957), p. 382 Google Scholar.

89 See, for example, Wallerstein, I., “Ethnicity and National Integration in West Africa,” Sociologie Politique de l'Afrique Noire. Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 3 (1960), 129–139 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fred R. von der Mehden, Politics of the Developing Nations, op. cit., pp. 33–47; Clifford Geertz, “The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civic Politics in the New States,” in Welch, Political Modernization, op. cit., pp. 167–188; and Pye, Aspects of Political Development, op. cit, p. 23.

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