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Thirteen scholars offer new essays exploring the question at the heart of J. G. Herder´s thought: How can philosophy enable an understanding of the human being not simply as an intellectual and moral agent, but also as a creature of nature who is fundamentally marked by an affective openness and responsiveness to the world and other persons?

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J. G. Herder is enjoying a renaissance in philosophy and across the humanities. This book offers important new insights into the complexity and depth of his thought. This unprecedented collection fills a gap in the secondary literature, highlighting the genuinely innovative and distinctive nature of Herder´s philosophy. Not only does Herder offer highly original answers to important philosophical questions, such as the mind-body problem and the role of sensibility in
cognition and ethics, he also opens up rich resources for thinking about the very nature of philosophy itself and its connections to other fields in the humanities and social sciences. Herder: Philosophy and Anthropology brings together a set of original essays that centre on the question at the
heart of Herder´s philosophical thought: How can philosophy enable an understanding of the human being that does not narrowly focus on its rational and moral capacities, but rather understands these in the context of its existence as a creature of nature that is fundamentally marked by a sensuous and affective openness and responsiveness to the world and other persons.

The first part of the volume examines the various dimensions of Herder´s philosophical understanding of human nature through which he sought methodologically to delineate a genuinely anthropological philosophy. The second part then examines further aspects of this understanding of human nature and what emerges from it: the human-animal distinction; how human life evolves over space and time on the basis of a natural order; the fundamentally hermeneutic dimension to human existence; and the
interrelatedness of language, history, religion, and culture.

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This collection does much of what one would like a collection of essays to do. First, and importantly, it provides a nice, representative cross-section of Herder scholarship today, including pieces by established scholars whose work initiated and promoted philosophical scholarship on Herder - such as Taylor, Heinz, Bollacher, Zammito, Forster, and Beiser - as well as contributions from newer scholars (or scholars newer to Herder). It correspondingly treats many central themes in Herder´s philosophical corpus, and does so from differing perspectives ... It not only represents the - encouragingly flourishing - state of scholarship on Herder, as noted, but also contributes fruitfully to that discussion, both in providing informative historical contextualization of Herder´s views (Herder was a thinker deeply engaged with the thought of his contemporaries) and in raising interesting philosophical and interpretive questions. Rachel Zuckert, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

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