Berlin, Herder, and the Counter-Enlightenment

Abstract

This short essay discusses the usefulness and contemporary relevance of the notion of the Counter-Enlightenment, taking as its starting point Isaiah Berlin’s broader politico-intellectual concerns and interests in popularizing this term (the foundations of liberalism, moral relativism/pluralism, the origins and varieties of nationalism). It argues that all these issues are still relevant today, but that we are better off exploring them without this highly problematic category. Not only does it posit an illegitimate divide between French and German moral and political thought in the eighteenth century, but it also proves deeply misleading about the ideas of individual authors such as Johann Gottfried Herder.