International Herder Society

Call for papers:

Herders Geography

20th Conference of the IHS – Toronto, 4.-9. September 2025

Please indicate your interest in participating before January 31, 2025 by writing to

john.noyes@utoronto.ca

Title and abstract due by 28 February, 2025

Prior to or perhaps beyond any disciplinary boundaries, there is one single concern that runs through all of Herder’s writings: the attempt to develop the range of possibilities (and limits) of the human species in its planetary biotope. This process depends upon an entelelechial approach to human history, and thus goes beyond mere description, fostering humanity’s development within its ecological and theological bounds. Herder is focused on the advancement of humanity in its regional diversity. In consequence, the spatial dimension acquires enormous weight, yet is seldom accorded sufficient attention.
By emphasizing anthropology as the foundation of scientific inquiries into human life (“… once all our philosophy has become anthropology…” Philosophie zum Besten des Volks, FHA 1, 134), Herder has committed himself to the centrality of geography. This centrality rests not only upon the determinate position of Klima in organic life, but issues from an important conviction Herder acquired from Kant’s pre-critical thinking: that the empirical dimension of the sciences must begin with a description of physical geography. The implications for scientific practice are clear, for example, in the composition of the Ideen, where he speaks of a “comprehensive geography of poeticizing souls” (FHA 6, 298). And Herder had already positioned geography at the centre of the other sciences in the Journal of 1769 (FHA 9/2, 44, 48).
Herder’s concern with geography can be traced back to the time when he counted Kant’s lectures on physical geography among his favourite studies. In this spirit, geography, or at least the geographical dimension of other sciences, is given an important position in almost all his works. For example, in the älteren Wäldchen he speaks of the “geography of human formations,” and he goes on to consider the tasks facing a “geographer of beauty” (FHA 2, 42). In the Journal he drafts a teaching plan in which geography plays a central role in the mediation of empirical and abstract learning processes. Here he also sketches the definitive connection between history and geography, stating that “the historian cannot do without geography, and vice versa” (FHA 9/2, 51). In the Ideen, this mutual scientific conditioning is referred to as the conflict of genesis and climate (FHA 6, 280). And the pedagogical significance of geography is repeatedly emphasized in the Schulreden.
Herder’s theology also rests upon his geography, even if this is only sparingly alluded to. When, for example, in the Theologiebriefe, he speaks of a “physical geography of the human species on our earth,” he references the New Testament, where he finds a geographical differentiation but also a unification of all humans (FHA 9/1, 427).
In examining the role of the geographical sciences and conceptual models in Herder’s works, a number of questions present themselves, addressing a wide spectrum of his writings; for example:

1. What scientific influences were important for the development of his geographical ideas? Here, not only pre-critical Kant, but also writers such as Buffon, Reinhold Forster, Büsching, Zimmermann, and others could be considered.
2. How does travel writing relate to the geographical conception of the earth, particularly in connection with Herder’s understanding of world geography?
3. How does Herder’s geography influence his political theory, his theory of culture, and other central aspects of his thought?
4. What is geography? Is it the same as climate theory? How does it relate to Erdkunde?
5. How does Herder connect the empirical sciences of time and space (i.e. historiography and geography) to philosophical inquiry? What might we understand by his reference (in Ideen) to a philosophical-physical geography?
6. What is the relationship between geography and the other sciences beyond historiography, such as aesthetics, anthropology, ethnography, botany and zoology, cartography, etc.?
7. How did Herder’s geographical thinking influence other writers, not only during his lifetime, but throughout the 19th century? In this connection, Haym mentions not only Alexander von Humboldt, K. E. von Baers, and Karl Ritter, but also what he refers to as “the youthfully developing science of geography” in his own time. He mentions here Paul Lehrmann’s programmatic essay on geography, also Friedrich Ratzel’s “anthropo-geography” (both 1883).

Proposals for contributions will be accepted until February 28, 2025. Please send your suggestions to john.noyes@utoronto.ca.