Johann Friedrich Herbart (May 4, 1776August 11, 1841) was a
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
philosopher,
psychologistA psychologist is someone who studies the human mind and behavior. Research psychologists study human perception, cognition, attention, emotion, motivation, personality, behavior and interpersonal relationships...
, and founder of
pedagogyPedagogy is the study of being a teacher. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction.Pedagogy is also sometimes referred to as the correct use of teaching strategies . For example, Paulo Freire referred to his method of teaching adults as "critical pedagogy"...
as an academic discipline.
Herbart is now remembered amongst the post-Kantian philosophers mostly as making the greatest contrast to Hegel; this in particular in relation to aesthetics. That does not take into account his thought on education.
Life
Herbart was born at
Oldenburg|Oldenburg is an Independent City in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated in the western part of the state between the cities of Bremen and Groningen, Netherlands, at the Hunte river. It has a population of 158,341 which makes it the fourth biggest in Lower Saxony after Hanover, Braunschweig and...
. After studying under
FichteJohann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant...
at Jena he gave his first philosophical lectures at Göttingen around 1805, whence he removed in 1809 to occupy the chair formerly held by
KantImmanuel Kant was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg...
at
KönigsbergThe University of Königsberg was the university of Königsberg, East Prussia. It was founded in 1544 by Albert, Duke of Prussia, and was commonly known as the Albertina....
. Here he also established and conducted a seminary of pedagogy till 1833, when he returned once more to
GöttingenGöttingen is a college town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Göttingen. The Leine river runs through the town. In 2006 the population was 129,686.-General information:...
, and remained there as professor of philosophy till his death. He is buried in
Albanifriedhof CemeteryAlbanifriedhof is a cemetery in Göttingen, Germany just outside the city wall to the southeast. It is most famous as the final resting place of Carl Friedrich Gauss.Well known final resting place of:...
in Göttingen.
Philosophy
Philosophy, according to Herbart, begins with reflection upon our empirical conceptions, and consists in the reformation and elaboration of these, its three primary divisions being determined by as many distinct forms of elaboration.
LogicLogic, from the Greek λογική is the art and science of reasoning. More specifically, it is defined by the Penguin Encyclopedia to be "The formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning". As a discipline, logic dates back to Aristotle, who established its...
, which stands first, has to render our conceptions and the judgments and reasonings arising from them clear and distinct. But some conceptions are such that the more distinct they are made the more contradictory their elements become; so to change and supplement these as to make them at length thinkable is the problem of the second part of philosophy, or
metaphysicsMetaphysics investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science. Cosmology and ontology are traditional branches of metaphysics. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world...
. There is still a class of conceptions requiring more than a logical treatment, but differing from the last in not involving latent contradictions, and in being independent of the reality of their objects, the conceptions that embody our judgments of approval and disapproval; the philosophic treatment of these conceptions falls to Aesthetic.
Logic
In Herbart's writings logic receives comparatively meagre notice; he insisted strongly on its purely formal character, and expressed himself in the main at one with Kantians such as
FriesJakob Friedrich Fries was a German philosopher from Barby.-Life and career:Fries studied theology at the academy of the Moravian brethren at Niesky, and philosophy at the Universities of Leipzig and Jena...
and
KrugWilhelm Traugott Krug was a German philosopher and writer.He was born at Radis in Saxony, and died at Leipzig...
.
Metaphysics
As a metaphysician he starts from what he terms the higher scepticism of the
HumeDavid Hume was a Scottish philosopher, economist, historian and a key figure in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
-
KantianImmanuel Kant was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg...
sphere of thought, the beginnings of which he discerns in
LockeJohn Locke was an English physician and philosopher regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered the first of the British empiricists, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political...
's perplexity about the idea of
substanceSubstance theory, or substance attribute theory, is an ontological theory about objecthood, positing that a substance is distinct from its properties. This is part of essentialism in that ousia as a substance can also be a descriptor of an object's being and/or nature...
. The validity of even the forms of experience is called in question on account of the contradictions they are found to involve. And yet that these forms are given to us, as truly as sensations are, follows beyond doubt when we consider that we are as little able to control the one as the other. To attempt at this stage a psychological inquiry into the origin of these conceptions would be doubly a mistake; for we should have to use these unlegitimated conceptions in the course of it, and the task of clearing up their contradictions would still remain, whether we succeeded in our enquiry or not.
But how are we to set about this task? We have given to us a conception A uniting among its constituent marks two that prove to be contradictory, say M and N; and we can neither deny the unity nor reject one of the contradictory members. For to do either is forbidden by experience; and yet to do nothing is forbidden by logic. We are thus driven to the assumption that the conception is contradictory because incomplete; but how are we to supplement it? What we have must point the way to what we want, or our procedure will be arbitrary. Experience asserts that M is the same (i.e. a mark of the same concept) as N, while logic denies it; and so it being impossible for one and the same M to sustain these contradictory positions there is but one way open to us; we must posit several Ms. But even now we cannot say one of these Ms is the same as N, another is not; for every M must be both thinkable and valid. We may, however, take the Ms not singly but together; and again, no other course being open to us, this is what we must do; we must assume that N results from a combination of Ms. This is Herbart's method of relations, the counterpart in his system of the Hegelian
dialecticDialectic is a method of argument, which has been central to both Eastern and Western philosophy since ancient times. The word "dialectic" originates in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato's Socratic dialogues...
.
In the
OntologyOntology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as of the basic categories of being and their relations...
this method is employed to determine what in reality corresponds to the empirical conceptions of substance and cause, or rather of inherence and change. But first we must analyse this notion of reality itself, to which our scepticism had already led us, for, though we could doubt whether the given is what it appears, we cannot doubt that it is something; the conception of the real thus consists of the two conceptions of being and quality. That which we are compelled to posit, which cannot be sublated, is that which is, and in the recognition of this lies the simple conception of being. But when is a thing thus posited? When it is posited as we usually posit the things we see and taste and handle. If we were without sensations, i.e. were never bound against our will to endure the persistence of a presentation, we should never know what being is.
Keeping fast hold of this idea of absolute position, Herbart leads us next to the quality of the real:
- This must exclude everything negative; for non-A sublates instead of positing, and is not absolute, but relative to A.
- The real must be absolutely simple; for if it contain two determinations, A and B, then either these are reducible to one, which is the true quality, or they are not, when each is conditioned by the other and their position is no longer absolute.
- All quantitative conceptions are excluded, for quantity implies parts, and these are incompatible with simplicity.
- But there may be a plurality of reals, albeit the mere conception of being can tell us nothing as to this.
The doctrine here developed is the first cardinal point of Herbart's system, and has obtained for it the name of pluralistic realism.
The contradictions he finds in the common-sense conception of inherence, or of a thing with several
attributeThe word "attribute" can refer to:* In philosophy, property, an abstraction of a characteristic of an entity or substance* In art, an object that identifies a figure, most commonly referring to objects held by saints - see emblem...
s, will now become obvious. Take some thing, say A, having n attributes, a, b, c ...: we are forced to posit each of these because each is presented in intuition. But in conceiving A we make, not n positions, still less n+f positions, but one position simply; for common sense removes the absolute position from its original source, sensation. So when we ask, What is the one posited? we are told the possessor of a, b, c or in other words, their seat or substance. But if so, then A, as a real, being simple, must be equal to a; similarly it must be b; and so on.
Now this would be possible if a, b, c ... were only contingent aspects of A, as e.g. √64, 4+3+1 are contingent aspects of 8. Such, of course, is not the case, and so we have as many contradictions as there are attributes; for we must say A is a, is not a, is b, is not b, &c. There must then, according to the method of relations, be several As. But now what relation can there be among these several As, which will restore to us the unity of our original A or substance? There is just one; we must assume that the first A of every series is identical, just as the centre is the same point in every radius.
By way of concrete illustration Herbart instances the common observation that the properties of things exist only under external conditions. Bodies, we say, are coloured, but color is nothing without light, and nothing without eyes. They sound, but only in a vibrating medium, and for healthy ears. Colour and tone present the appearance of inherence, but on looking closer we find they are not really immanent in things but rather presuppose a communion among several. The result then is briefly thus: In place of the one absolute position, which in some unthinkable way the common understanding substitutes for the absolute positions of the n attributes, we have really a series of two or more positions for each attribute, every series, however, beginning with the same (as it were, central) real (hence the unity of substance in a group of attributes), but each being continued by different reals (hence the plurality and difference of attributes in unity of substance). Where there is the appearance of inherence, therefore, there is always a plurality of reals; no such correlative to substance as attribute or accident can be admitted at all. Substantiality is impossible without causality, and to this as its true correlative we now turn.
The common-sense conception of change involves at bottom the same contradiction of opposing qualities in one real. The same A that was a, b, c ... becomes a, b, d ...; and this, which experience thrusts upon us, proves on reflection unthinkable. The metaphysical supplementing is also fundamentally as before. Since c depended on a series of reals A,+A3+A, ... in connection with A, and d may be said similarly to depend on a series A4+A4+A4 ..., then the change from c to d means, not that the central real A or any real has changed, but that A is now in connection with A4, etc., and no longer in connection with A3, etc.
But to think a number of reals in connection (
Zusammensetz) will not suffice as an explanation of phenomena; something or other must happen when they are in connection; what is it? The answer to this question is the second hinge-point of Herbart's theoretical philosophy.
What actually happens as distinct from all that seems to happen, when two reals A and B are together is that, assuming them to differ in quality, they tend to disturb each other to the extent of that difference, at the same time that each preserves itself intact by resisting, as it were, the others disturbance. And so by coining into connection with different reals the self-preservations of A will vary accordingly, A remaining the same through all; just as, by way of illustration, hydrogen remains the same in water and in ammonia, or as the same line may be now a normal and now a tangent. But to indicate this opposition in the qualities of the reals A+B, we must substitute for these symbols others, which, though only contingent aspects of A and B, i.e. representing their relations, not themselves, yet like similar devices in mathematics enable thought to advance.
Having thus determined what really is and what actually happens, our philosopher proceeds next to explain synthetically the objective semblance (
der objective Schein) that results from these. But if this construction is to be truly objective, i.e. valid for all intelligences, ontology must furnish us with a clue. This we have in the forms of Space, Time and Motion which are involved whenever we think the reals as being in, or coming into, connection and the opposite. These forms then cannot be merely the products of our psychological mechanism, though they may turn out to coincide with these. Meanwhile let us call them intelligible, as being valid for all who comprehend the rot! and actual by thought, although no such forms are predicable of the real and actual themselves.
The elementary spatial relation Herbart conceives to be the contiguity (
Aneinander) of two points, so that every pure and independent line is discrete. But an investigation of dependent lines which are often incommensurable forces us to adopt the contradictory fiction of partially overlapping, i.e. divisible points, or in other words, the conception of Continuity. But the contradiction here is one we cannot eliminate by the method of relations, because it does not involve anything real; and in fact as a necessary outcome of an intelligible form, the fiction of continuity is valid for the objective semblance. By its help we are enabled to comprehend what actually happens among reals to produce the appearance of water. When three or more reals are together, each disturbance and self-preservation will (in general) be imperfect, i.e. of less intensity than when only two reals are together. But objective semblance corresponds with reality; the spatial or external relations of the reals in this case must, therefore, tally with their inner or actual states. Had the self-preservations been perfect, the coincidence in space would have been complete, and the group of reals would have been inextended; or had the several reals been simply contiguous, i.e. without connection, then, as nothing.
Herbart gave the name
synechology to this branch of metaphysics, instead of the usual one,
cosmologyCosmology is the study of the Universe in its totality, and by extension, humanity's place in it...
.
Principles of Education
Herbart’s pedagogy emphasized the connection between individual development and the resulting societal contribution. In Platonic tradition, Herbart espoused that only by becoming productive citizens could people fulfill their true purpose: “He believed that every child is born with a unique potential, his Individuality, but that this potential remained unfulfilled until it was analysed and transformed by education in accordance with what he regarded as the accumulated values of civilization” (Blyth p. 70). Only formalized, rigorous education could, he believed, provide the framework for moral and
intellectual development. The five key ideas which composed his concept of individual maturation were Inner Freedom, Perfection, Benevolence, Justice, and Equity or Recompense (Blyth 72).
According to Herbart, abilities were not innate but could be instilled, so a thorough education could provide the framework for moral and intellectual development. In order to develop an educational paradigm that would provide an intellectual base that would lead to a consciousness of social responsibility, Herbart advocated that teachers utilize a methodology with five formal steps: “Using this structure a teacher prepared a topic of
interest to the children, presented that topic, and questioned them inductively, so that they reached new knowledge based on what they had already known, looked back, and deductively summed up the lesson’s achievements, then related them to moral precepts for daily living” (Miller 114).
In order to appeal to learners’ interests, Herbart advocated using literature and historical stories instead of the drier basal readers that were popular at the time. Whereas the moralistic tales in many of the primers and readers of the period were predictable and allegorical, Herbart felt that children would appreciate the psychological and literary nuances of the masterpieces of the canon (Smith 111).
Though he died in 1841, his pedagogy enjoyed a renaissance of sorts in the mid-
nineteenth century; while Germany was its intellectual center, it “found a ready echo in those countries such as the United Kingdom, France, and the United States in which the development of Individuality into Character appeared particularly well attuned to the prevailing economic, political and social circumstances” (Blyth 77). The combination of individual potentiality and civic responsibility seemed to reflect democratic ideals.
Though the emphasis on character building through literary appreciation diminished somewhat after the movement toward utilitarianism following World War I, Herbart’s pedagogy continues to influence the field by raising important questions about the role of critical thinking, and literary appreciation in education.
Bibliography:
Blyth, A. (1981). From individuality to character: the Herbartian sociology applied to education. In British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 29, No. 1. pp. 69-79. Retrieved September 7, 2007, from J-Stor database.
Miller, E.J. (2003). Teaching methods, the Herbartian revolution and Douglas Clay Ridgley at Illinois State Normal University. In Journal of Geography 102. pp. 110-120. Retrieved September 7, 2007, from J-Stor database.
Smith, N.B. (2002 / 1965). American reading instruction / Nila Banton Smith: [with prologue by Richard Robinson, epilogue by Norman A. Stahl, and history of reading since by P. David Pearson]. Newark: International Reading Association.
Aesthetics and ethics
Aesthetics elaborates the ideas involved in the expression called forth by those relations of object which acquire for them attribution of beauty or the reverse. The beautiful is to be carefully distinguished from the allied conceptions of the useful or the pleasant, which vary with time, place and person; whereas beauty is predicated absolutely and involuntarily by all who have attained the right standpoint. Ethics, which is but one branch of aesthetics, although the chief, deals with such relations among volitions (
Willensverhältnisse) as thus unconditionally please or displease. These relations Herbart finds to be reducible to five, which do admit of further simplification; and corresponding to them are as my moral ideas (
Musterbegriffe), as follows:
- Internal Freedom, the underlying relation being that of the individual's will to his judgment of it
- Perfection, the relation being that of his several volitions each other in respect of intensity, variety and concentration
- Benevolence, the relation being that between his own will and the thought of another's
- Right, in case of actual conflict with other
- Retribution or Equity, for intended good or evil
The ideas of a final society, a system of rewards and punishments, a system of administration, a system of culture and an animated society, corresponding to the ideas of law, equity, benevolence, perfection and internal freedom respectively, result when we take account of a number of individuals. Virtue is the perfect conformity of the will with the moral ideas; of this the single virtues are but special expressions. The conception of duty arises from the existence of hindrances to the attainment of virtue. A general scheme of principles of conduct is possible, but the sublimation of special cases under these must remain matter of fact. The application of ethics to things as they are with a view to the realization of the moral ideas is moral technology (
Tugendlehre), which the chief divisions are Paedagogy and Politics.
Theology
In
theologyThe term "theology" literally means the study of God, deriving from the Greek word theos, meaning 'God', and the suffix -ology from the Greek word logos meaning "discourse", "theory", or "reasoning"...
Herbart held the argument from design to be as valid of divine activity as for human, and to justify the belief in a supersensible real, concerning which, however, exact knowledge is neither tenable nor on practical grounds desirable.