Approaching Humanity--the Research On Herder's Philosophy Of History

We are trying to analyse Herder's philosophy of history from two basic questions: first, why do human possess historicality? Secondly, what's the aim of the human history as a whole?Herder's thinking on the first question is expressed in his thought on life and language. Herder's thought on life is his own ontology through which he wants to solve the epistemological and ontological problems of the age of Enlightenment, and whose main idea is the emphasis on the ontological 'interdependency' between human and world. This ontological'interdependency'makes people from different regions and times construct their selves and understand the worlds differently, which is called the historicality of human existence. In Herder's understanding, language, as results of human's encountering with his living world, has two significance:one is that language is the expression of human existence, only through language can human beings understand himself; the other is that language is the recognition of the world, through language the world is lighted. So corresponding to the historicality of human existence, language expresses the historicity of human's understanding about himself and world. The historicality of human existence and the historicity of human's understanding about himelf and world embody human's historicity.When trying to answer the second question Herder seeks the thought resources from Christian Theology.Based on the view that seeing the whole human history as the secret plan made by God, Herder develops his thinking on'humanity'.'Humanity ', not only as a kind of potential which human beings possess from birth but also as the ideal state which human beings are trying to attain, includes two functional concepts:reason and fairness. With'reason', God placed into human being's hands their own destinies, and human beings must figure out what their destinies are and what humanity is by using their own reason; but human's understanding about the law of God is based on trial and error due to the limit of human reason, so only through' fairness', could human beings correct their error continually, and find their way leading to the humanity on and on; with the functioning of'reason'and'fairness'as two principles, human beings are discovering and approaching humanity.In the last chapter we discuss herder's influence on German Romanticism concisely.