Johann Gottfried von Herder's wiev of man and history

Historiography, in the classical sense, is the activity of keeping a chronological or autobiographical record in the Ancient Period, arranging the events that occurred in the context of partly cause-effect relationship. This activity is an occupation that is not respected especially by philosophers such as Aristotle. The reason for this is the thought that historical knowledge has no epistemological value. In the Middle Ages, the increasing interest in history and historiography provided the foundations of the philosophy of history. In the Modern Era, historiography and philosophy of history have turned into a political tool of the Enlightenment Movement. The Enlightenment Movement, which came to dominate in Europe in the eighteenth century, was criticized by J. G. Herder, the pioneer of the romanticism movement in Germany. The subject of this study is the history and human philosophy that Herder put forward in line with these criticisms. In this way, it is aimed to make a small contribution to the Turkish literature about Herder. Herder saw the reasons for the Enlightenment movement's interest in philosophy of history and opposed it. Through the philosophy of history, they will be able to discover human nature and the laws of history, and idealize political human institutions such as the state institution. However, this attitude has revealed "Enlightened Despotism" and has led to the danger of stereotyping or ignoring the peoples and cultures of the world. In the face of this danger, Herder's philosophy of human history started folk nationalism by uniting all the peoples of the world under the ideal of humanity with a historicist approach. Herder drew attention to the value of each people and culture arising from their uniqueness, and tried to ground the idea that the history of humanity is the operation of the divine plan by nature. While Herder was creating his unique philosophy; benefited from nature analogies and used materialist and empiricist methodology. In addition, he applied to metaphysics with a spiritualist attitude and created a synthesis system of philosophy.