Herder and the Poetics of Thought: Unity and Diversity in On Diligence in Several Learned Languages

At the first and most basic level this work is a close reading of Herder's early essay "Uber den Fleiss in mehreren gelehrten Sprachen" (On Diligence in Several Learned Languages) of 1764.

Morton offers the first extended examination of Herder's distinctive philosophical and rhetorical idiom. He argues that Herder's often difficult style is not the mere hindrance to understanding it has often been taken to be, but rather that the substance of his thought is in fact integrally bound up with p...