Herder and the Limits of Einfühlung

ABSTRACT

The fifth chapter of Experience Embodied is devoted to Herder’s theory of cognition and the epistemic merits of the capacity for ‘sympathy’, or ‘empathy’ – what Herder calls Einfühlung, and which Waldow renders more accurately as ‘affective immersion’. I situate Waldow’s reading of Herder as a member of the epistemological tradition within the debate on Herder’s relationship to the Enlightenment. Waldow’s reading, I contend, is congruent with the view of Herder as an Enlightenment, rather than anti-Enlightenment, figure. I focus on what Waldow calls ‘the problem of the conceivability of difference’ (Waldow 2020, 185) and how she charts Herder’s proposed method of Einfühlung and the need for ‘affective immersion’ to address this problem. However, I also identify three potential problems, which Waldow does not address, that can arise when Einfühlung is taken too far: the first is that it may lead to relativism, and thus to incoherence; the second is reductionism, which can eliminate, rather than draw attention to, difference – thereby achieving the opposite goal; while the third is that relying solely on Einfühlung as a method can lead us into error, as it is speculative and lacks an external truth criterion.

KEYWORDS:

• Herder
• Enlightenment
• Einfühlung
• Sympathy
• Difference
• ‎‎Relativism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For an overview, see Zammito, Menges, and Menze (2010). For an updated Herder bibliography, see Markworth (2022).

2. Emblematic is the exchange between Norton and Lestition in the Journal of the History of Ideas (Lestition 2007; Norton 2007, 2008)

3. Einfühlung can be translated as ‘feeling with/into’, ‘sympathy’, or ‘empathy’, yet none convey the full sense of the concept.

4. A notable attempt to reconcile the two in Herder is Sikka (2011).

5. I would like to thank Bernardo Bianchi and Anthony Pagden for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.