Forms of Temporality and Historical Time in the Work of Johann Gottfried Herder

Liisa Steinby is Professor emerita of Comparative Literature at the University of Turku. She was the Vice President (2015–2016) and President (2017–2018) of the International Herder Society. Her recent publications include Myth in the Modern Novel (monograph, 2023), the article “Das ‘Bild’ bei Herder” (2023), and the chapter “Approaches to Myth and Mythology” in The Oxford History of Modern German Theology I (2023). She co-edited The Politics of Literary History (2024) and edited Herder and the Nineteenth Century (2020).Johannes Schmidt is Professor of German at Clemson University. His research and teaching interests include literature and philosophy of the eighteenth century, Herder, Lessing, and Shoah studies. He is the co-editor of the Herder Yearbook (5 volumes, 2014–2022), co-editor of Herder on Empathy and Sympathy (2020), author of a chapter on Herder in the The Palgrave Handbook of German Romantic Philosophy (2020), and author of “‘I do desire no free will’: Lessing’s Peculiar View on Human Freedom” (2019).

• Introduction 1. Herder on the Temporality of Freedom 2. Grasping the Changeable: Concepts, Metaphors, and Laws 3. Herder: Time, Temporality, and (Christian) Telos 4. Time and Bildung in the Thought of Johann Gottfried Herder 5. Human History and Extra-terrestrial Temporalities in Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit 6. Nemesis in Herder’s Approach to Time, or How “To Enjoy the Ocean in a Nutshell” 7. “Die Welt eines Fühlenden ist bloß eine Welt der unmittelbaren Gegenwart”: Past Made Present in Herder’s Aesthetic Experience 8. Historical Finitude Plus Divine Transcendence: Temporality and ‘Double Origin’ in Herder’s Biblical Writing