„il filosofo è tanto più bestia quanto più vuol esser dio“
— Johann Gottfried Herder
Another Philosophy of History and Selected Political Writings
Frasi di Johann Gottfried Herder
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Johann Gottfried Herder
Data di nascita: 25. Agosto 1744
Data di morte: 18. Dicembre 1803
Johann Gottfried Herder è stato un filosofo, teologo e letterato tedesco.
Frasi Johann Gottfried Herder
„Da un po' d'aria mossa dipende tutto quello che mai gli uomini hanno pensato, voluto, fatto e quanto faranno di umano sulla terra.“
— Johann Gottfried Herder
da Idee per la filosofia della storia dell'umanità
„È la natura che educa le persone, pertanto lo stato più naturale è la nazione, una famiglia estesa con caratte nazionale.“
— Johann Gottfried Herder
citato in AA.VV., Il libro della politica, traduzione di Sonia Sferzi, Gribaudo, 2018, p. 143. ISBN 9788858019429
„Calmly take what ill betideth;
Patience wins the crown at length“
— Johann Gottfried Herder
Context: Calmly take what ill betideth;
Patience wins the crown at length:
Rich repayment him abideth
Who endures in quiet strength.
Brave the tamer of the lion;
Brave whom conquered kingdoms praise;
Bravest he who rules his passions,
Who his own impatience sways.
"Die wiedergefundenen Söhne" [The Recovered Sons] (1801) as translated in The Monthly Religious Magazine Vol. 10 (1853) p. 445. <!-- * Tapfer ist der Löwensieger,<br/>Tapfer ist der Weltbezwinger,<br/>Tapfrer, wer sich selbst bezwang.— cited from Bernhard Suphan (ed.) Herders sämmtliche Werke (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877-1913) vol. 28, p. 237. -->
„Bravest he who rules his passions,
Who his own impatience sways.“
— Johann Gottfried Herder
Context: Calmly take what ill betideth;
Patience wins the crown at length:
Rich repayment him abideth
Who endures in quiet strength.
Brave the tamer of the lion;
Brave whom conquered kingdoms praise;
Bravest he who rules his passions,
Who his own impatience sways.
"Die wiedergefundenen Söhne" [The Recovered Sons] (1801) as translated in The Monthly Religious Magazine Vol. 10 (1853) p. 445. <!-- * Tapfer ist der Löwensieger,<br/>Tapfer ist der Weltbezwinger,<br/>Tapfrer, wer sich selbst bezwang.— cited from Bernhard Suphan (ed.) Herders sämmtliche Werke (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877-1913) vol. 28, p. 237. -->
„Whate'er of us lives in the hearts of others
Is our truest and profoundest self.“
— Johann Gottfried Herder
Was in dem Herzen andrer von Uns lebt,
Ist unser wahrestes und tiefstes Selbst.
"Das Selbst, ein Fragment", cited from Bernhard Suphan (ed.) Herders sämmtliche Werke (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877-1913) vol. 29, p. 142; Translation from Hans Urs von Balthasar (trans. Graham Harrison) Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988) vol. 1, p. 504.
„A person, who reads only to print, to all probability reads amiss“
— Johann Gottfried Herder
Context: With the greatest possible solicitude avoid authorship. Too early or immoderately employed, it makes the head waste and the heart empty; even were there no other worse consequences. A person, who reads only to print, to all probability reads amiss; and he, who sends away through the pen and the press every thought, the moment it occurs to him, will in a short time have sent all away, and will become a mere journeyman of the printing-office, a compositor.
Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betressend (1780-81), Vierundzwanzigster Brief; cited from Bernhard Suphan (ed.) Herders sämmtliche Werke (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877-1913) vol. 10, p. 260. Translation from Samuel Taylor Coleridge Biographia Literaria (London: Rest Fenner, 1817) vol. 1, ch. 11, pp. 233-34.
„How transitory all human structures are, nay how oppressive the best institutions become in the course of a few generations.“
— Johann Gottfried Herder
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91), Context: How transitory all human structures are, nay how oppressive the best institutions become in the course of a few generations. The plant blossoms, and fades: your fathers have died, and mouldered into dust: your temple is fallen: your tabernacle, the tables of your law, are no more: language itself, that bond of mankind, becomes antiquated: and shall a political constitution, shall a system of government or religion, that can be erected solely on these, endure for ever?
Vol. 2, p. 79; translation vol. 2, pp. 113-14.
„Every one loves his country, his manners, his language, his wife, his children; not because they are the best in the World, but because they are absolutely his own, and he loves himself and his own labours in them.“
— Johann Gottfried Herder
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91), Jeder liebt sein Land, seine Sitten, seine Sprache, sein Weib, seine Kinder, nicht weil sie die besten auf der Welt, sondern weil sie die bewährten Seinigen sind, und er in ihnen sich und seine Mühe selbst liebt.
Vol. 1, p. 13; translation vol. 1, p. 18
„"Tell me, O wise man, how hast thou come to know so astonishingly much?"
By never being ashamed to ask of those that knew!“
— Johann Gottfried Herder, Der Weg zur Wissenschaft
Sag' o Weiser, wodurch du zu solchem Wissen gelangtest?
"Dadurch, daß ich mich nie andre zu fragen geschämt."
"Der Weg zur Wissenschaft"; cited from Bernhard Suphan (ed.) Herders sämmtliche Werke (Berlin Weidmann, 1887-1913) vol. 26, p. 376; Translation by Thomas Carlyle, from Clyde de L. Ryals and Kenneth Fielding (eds.) The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995) vol. 23, p. 160.
„The craving for a delicate fruit is pleasanter than the fruit itself.“
— Johann Gottfried Herder
Der Appetit nach einer schönen Frucht ist angenehmer als die Frucht selbst.
Christoph Martin Wieland (ed.) Der deutsche Merkur vol. 20 (1781) p. 214; cited from Bernhard Suphan (ed.) Herders sämmtliche Werke (Berlin Weidmann, 1888) vol. 15, p. 307. Translation from Maturin M. Ballou Pearls of Thought (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1881) p. 13
„Should there not be manifest progress and development but in a higher sense than people have imagined it? … No one is in his age alone, he builds on the preceding one, this becomes nothing but the foundation of the future, wants to be nothing but that — this is what we are told by the analogy in nature, God’s speaking exemplary model in all works! Manifestly so in the human species!“
— Johann Gottfried Herder
"This Too a Philosophy of History for the Formation of Humanity" ["Auch eine Philosophie zur Geschichte der Menscheit"] (1774), as translated by Michael N. Forster, in Johann Gottlieb von Herder: Philosophical Writings (2002), edited by Michael N. Forster, p. 299
„The two grand tyrants of the Earth, Time and Chance.“
— Johann Gottfried Herder
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91), Die zwei größten Tyrannen der Erde, der Zufall und die Zeit.
Vol. 1, p. x; translation vol. 1, p. xi
„We live in a world we ourselves create.“
— Johann Gottfried Herder
Wir leben immer in einer Welt, die wir uns selbst bilden.
Übers Erkennen und Empfinden in der menschlichen Seele (1774); cited from Bernhard Suphan (ed.) Herders sämmtliche Werke (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877-1913) vol. 8, p. 252. Translation from Roy Pascal The German Sturm und Drang (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959) p. 136
„Air, fire, water and the earth evolve out of the spiritual and material staminibus in periodic cycles of time. Diverse connections of water, air, and light precede the emergence of the seed of the simplest plant, for instance moss. Many plants had to come into being, then die away before an animal emerged. Insects, birds, water animals, and night animals preceded the present animal forms; until finally the crown of earthly organization appeared—the human being, microcosm. He is the son of all the elements and beings, Nature’s most carefully chosen conception and the blossom of creation. He must be the youngest child of Nature; many evolutions and revolutions must have preceded his formation.“
— Johann Gottfried Herder
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91), Book 1, as cited in Frank Teichmann (tr. Jon McAlice), "The Emergence of the Idea of Evolution in the Time of Goethe" http://www.waldorfresearchinstitute.org/pdf/BAIdeaEvolTeich.pdf
„Jesus Christ is, in the noblest and most perfect sense, the realized ideal of humanity.“
— Johann Gottfried Herder
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 54
„I am no longer misled, therefore, by the mechanism of revolutions: it is as necessary to our species, as the waves to the stream, that it becomes not a stagnant pool. The genius of humanity blooms in continually renovated youth.“
— Johann Gottfried Herder
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91), Das Maschinenwerk der Revolutionen irret mich also nicht mehr: es ist unserm Geschlecht so nötig, wie dem Strom seine Wogen, damit er nicht ein stehender Sumpf werde. Immer verjüngt in neuen Gestalten, blüht der Genius der Humanität.
Vol. 1, p. 294; translation vol. 1, p. 416
„The nature of man remains ever the same: in the ten thousandth year of the World he will be born with passions, as he was born with passions in the two thousandth, and ran through his course of follies to a late, imperfect, useless wisdom. We wander in a labyrinth, in which our lives occupy but a span; so that it is to us nearly a matter of indifference, whether there be any entrance or outlet to the intricate path.“
— Johann Gottfried Herder
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91), Die Natur des Menschen bleibt immer dieselbe; im zehntausendsten Jahr der Welt wird er mit Leidenschaften geboren, wie er im zweiten derselben mit Leidenschaften geboren ward, und durchläuft den Gang seiner Thorheiten zu einer späten, unvollkommenen, nutzlosen Weisheit. Wir gehen in einem Labyrinth umher, in welchem unser Leben nur eine Spanne abschneidet; daher es uns fast gleichgültig sein kann, ob der Irrweg Entwurf und Ausgang habe.
Vol. 2, p. 186; translation vol. 2, pp. 266-7
