Among his generation of intellectuals, the eighteenth-century German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder is recognized both for his innovative philosophy of language and history and for his passionate criticism of racism, colonialism, and imperialism. A student of Immanuel Kant, Herder challenged the idea that anyone – even the philosophers of the Enlightenment – could have a monopoly on truth.

In Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism, John K. Noyes plumbs the connections between Herder’s anti-imperialism, often acknowledged but rarely explored in depth, and his epistemological investigations. Noyes argues that Herder’s anti-rationalist epistemology, his rejection of universal conceptions of truth, knowledge, and justice, constitutes the first attempt to establish not just a moral but an epistemological foundation for anti-imperialism. Engaging with the work of postcolonial theorists such Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gayatri Spivak, this book is a valuable reassessment of Enlightenment anti-imperialism that demonstrates Herder’s continuing relevance to postcolonial studies today.

John K. Noyes is a professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto.

John K. Noyes' profile page

• Winner, Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Germanic Languages and Literatures

‘A profound source of philosophical interpretation, which is very close to the source, in which Herder’s significance for the current discourse of global history and anti-imperialism is of surprising actuality.’

H-Soz-u-Kult March 2017

‘While displaying a remarkable suppleness, Noyes strikes a cogent, yet nuanced balance between probing, sensitive readings of Herder’s and his Enlightenment contemporaries’ texts on the one hand, and, on the other, deliberative, thought-provoking critical commentary on current Herder scholarship.’

Arcadia vol 52:03:2017