Abstract

Chapter 4 shows why we must extend our genealogies of religion and race past the Enlightenment by comparing Johann Gottfried Herder and Schleiermacher on language and on the formation of groups. Both men are seminal figures in the linguistic turn in the humanities. Both argue that we think by applying concepts, but that these concepts are not innate but linguistic. Both follow the logic of this insight to its conclusion—people who have different mother tongues think and experience differently. Religious and national groups are formed by culture and language. Though Herder explicitly rejects Kant’s theories of race, this cultural turn ironically supplies a link missing from Kant’s race theories. Kant cannot say why individuals who belong to certain groups share the mental and moral characteristics of those groups. Herder and Schleiermacher open the possibility that this link is cultural and linguistic rather than biological.