Merely Methodological Naturalism in Aesthetics: A Proposed Revision of Zuckert's Herder Interpretation

Abstract

In Herder's Naturalist Aesthetics, Rachel Zuckert presents Johann Gottfried Herder as offering an attractive normative naturalism in which philosophy, aesthetics included, is provisional and open to revision in light of empirical findings. Zuckert argues that Herder's methodological and explanatory naturalism can be reconciled with his theism, thereby providing a normative basis for an aesthetic theory that avoids speculative metaphysical appeals. I first question Zuckert's attribution of explanatory naturalism to Herder, arguing that Herder appeals to God in explanation. This is admissible for Herder according to his expansive methodological naturalism, in which one could provisionally appeal to aspects of the divine that one discovers empirically. However, the nature of these appeals indicates that Herder himself rejects explanatory naturalism. In the second part of these comments, I set aside Herder's own commitments to focus on the question of what is required by his aesthetics. I argue that Herder's aesthetics requires rejecting restrictive explanatory naturalism and endorsing only a more permissive methodological naturalism. What might be seen as stretching the meaning of the term naturalism is in fact of a piece with Herder's own open methods of inquiry, since it avoids a priori restrictions on the kinds of appeals that one can make in explanation.