Herbart, Johann Friedrich (EN)

Herbart Johann Friedrich, *4 May 1776 Oldenburg, †14 August 1841 Göttingen, German philosopher, psychologist and teacher. From the age of eight, he took lessons in piano, violin, cello and harp. At the age of 11, he began performing at private concerts as a pianist and cellist. He studied music theory and improvisation under the guidance of the local organist Carl Meineke, who also mentored his early vocal compositions. From 1794, he studied law and philosophy at the University of Jena, where J.G. Fichte was then lecturing (speculative philosophy). In Jena, he also became acquainted with Schiller’s writings on aesthetics and met the poet himself. As a member of the Jena literary society, Herbart made a name for himself as a pianist and composer. Between 1797 and 1800, he lived in Bern, where his psychological and pedagogical interests took shape through his contact with J.H. Pestalozzi. Herbart was the first person in Europe to be awarded a habilitation degree (in 1802 in Göttingen) as a lecturer in pedagogy. Under the influence of J.N. Forkel, he began to study early music and the works of J.S. Bach, whilst continuing to compose his own music. In 1808, he moved from Göttingen to Königsberg, where in 1809 he took up the chair of philosophy following I. Kant. At that time, he limited his musical interests to attending Saturday evenings at the ducal court and making music with Prince A. Radziwiłł; at a farewell soirée on 4 May 1833, he demonstrated his improvisational skills. In 1833, Herbart returned to the University of Göttingen. His reflections on the psychology of sound, contained in Psychologische Untersuchungen (1833 and 1840), date from the 1830s. After Forkel’s death, Herbart continued to take an interest in J.S. Bach, corresponding on the subject with F.C. Griepenkerl, a scholar of the Leipzig cantor’s work. Herbart’s final work (on his deathbed) was the study of Beethoven’s music notebook.

The small number of Herbart’s surviving musical works does not allow for a full assessment of his compositional talent and artistic taste; however, the Piano Sonata in D major demonstrates the composer’s ingenuity and sensitivity to the latest developments in European music. This piece shows stylistic influences from C.P.H. Bach’s sonatas, whilst the developed pianistic texture brings to mind the early Beethoven, whom Herbart quickly came to appreciate. The contrapuntal works are weaker in terms of melodic invention; the Fugue in A major is a typically academic, formulaic piece, whereas the Double Fugue in C minor already demonstrates a good command of contrapuntal technique (diminution, inversion, augmentation) and greater rhythmic variety.

In his scholarly work, Herbart devoted considerable attention to music, exploring its many facets. In his pedagogical works, he emphasised the indispensability of musical education based on solid theoretical foundations, extending as far as the study of strict forms of counterpoint. The aim of such an education was to prepare a wide audience for passive and active engagement with outstanding works of art.

Herbart’s aesthetics does not constitute a closed system. As a proponent of rationalised metaphysics, Herbart focused on the formal structure of beauty and on the imagination as a fundamental psychological category. He linked aesthetics with ethics; he believed that a taste for beauty – just like a taste for goodness – is disinterested and immediate. Aesthetic judgement is supra-individual in nature, determined solely by the quality of the representation of the object. The object itself (i.e. the work of art) possesses no aesthetic properties. Aesthetic preferences are not aroused by simple elements, but by the relationships between them. Hence, in Herbart’s aesthetics, the concept of form comes to the fore, whilst the concept of content, in his view, is of a non-aesthetic nature. Herbart supports his arguments mainly with examples from the field of music. A consonant or dissonant interval – this is a perfect example of relationships which, for centuries, have naturally and unquestionably aroused either pleasure or aversion. Herbart holds up music, or rather the study of music, as a model for students of other arts: “It would then be the task of aesthetics to have the aspiring artist begin with the very simplest exercises in the particular counterpoint proper to each art, as carefully as musicians are accustomed to do in theirs“ (Kurze Enzyklopädie der Philosophie) [all translations of quotations are provided by the translator of this entry from the source languages, unless otherwise indicated], and, referring to J.G. Albrechtsberger’s Gründliche Anweisung zur Komposition… (1790), he adds that “a thorough [treatise on] aesthetics should look just like this book” (ibid.).

One of Herbart’s fundamental premises is that beauty has nothing to do with what is pleasant or what is useful. His views on the nature of the aesthetic experience are based on this premise. According to Herbart, this issue belongs to the realm of psychology and is related to aesthetics solely because of the evaluative nature of this experience. The author describes them using phrases such as “unforced imagination”, “calm contemplation” and “mature assimilation” (Allgemeine Pädagogik). To achieve this state, the recipient should detach themselves from everything that has hitherto surrounded and occupied them. “The listener and viewer are expected to form within themselves a picture of the individual series of ideas, such as voices, figures or characters and their actions, with the same precision and clarity as the work of art presents them. Then the convergence of the various spiritual movements (…) evokes the genuine feeling of the unique approval (…) and thus beauty is brought into being, which does not exist at all apart from the imagination” (Kurze Enzyklopädie…). Herbart again illustrates the contemplation and analysis of beauty using the example of music, “for here it is sufficient merely to read the score in order to perceive soprano, alto, tenor, and bass separately. Thus, even the elaborate, powerfully surging fugue is laid bare before one’s eyes, broken down into its very smallest components” (Kurze Enzyklopädie…). The above assertions are complemented by Herbart’s doctrine of apperception, that is, the process of assimilation, which is a synthesis of new ideas with those lying just below the threshold of consciousness, which, under the influence of the former, are recalled by the recipient. Apperception, unlike perception, is not of an aesthetic nature; the more consciously it is set aside, the more accurate the aesthetic judgement becomes. The consequences of this assertion are particularly significant for Herbart’s conception of music. He decisively rejects the possibility that sound art could have any beyond-musical content or meaning. “To this day, even connoisseurs of music repeat the claim that music expresses emotions, as if the emotion it might evoke – and which it might (…) serve to express – were grounded in the general rules of simple or double counterpoint, on which its true essence rests” (Kurze Enzyklopädie…). Thus, Herbart does not deny the role of emotion in the recipient’s engagement with art; however, in his view, it has nothing whatsoever to do with beauty.

Herbart’s aesthetic formalism did not gain widespread recognition during his lifetime. It was not until 1865 that R. Zimmermann took it up in Allgemeine Ästhetik als Formwissenschaft. E. Hanslick referred to Herbart’s aesthetic ideas in Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (1854), whilst their radical opponents were: Th. Vischer, J. Folkelt and Th. Lipps.

Herbart also drew on his musical experience in the field of psychology. He used examples from the fields of harmony (intervals, consonant and dissonant chords) and melody to support his theory of the mechanics of ideas in mental life.

Literature: G. Hartenstein Kleinere philosophische Schriften, vol. 1, Leipzig 1842; R. Zimmermann Über den Einfluss der Tonlehre auf Herbarts Philosophie, «Sitzungsbericht des Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Klasse» LXXIII, Vienna 1873; O. Hostinský Über die Bedeutung der praktischen Ideen Herbarts für allgemeine Ästhetik, Prague 1883; O. Hostinský Herbarts Ästhetik in ihren grundlegenden Teilen, quellenmässig dargestellt und erläutert, Hamburg 1891 (contains texts by Herbart); Ch.A. McMurry The elements of general method : based on the principles of Herbart, Bloomington (Illinois) 1892, e-book Norderstedt 2019, revised edtion New York/London 1914; E. Wagner Vollständige Darstellung der Lehre Herbarts, Langensalza 1896; W. Kinkel Johann Friedrich Herbart. Sein Leben und seine Philosophie, Giessen 1903, e-book Berlin 2015; O. Flügel Herbarts Lehre und Leben, Leipzig 1908; A. Ziechner Herbarts Ästhetik, Leipzig 1908 (dissertation); F. Francke J.F. Herbart: Grundzüge seiner Lehre, Leipzig 1909, reprint e-book 2012; G. Bagier Herbart und die Musik mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Beziehungen zur Ästhetik und Psychologie and W. Kahl Herbart als Musiker. Neue Beiträge mit einem unveröffentlichen Brief Herbarts, «Pädagogisches Magazin», issue 430 and 1078, Langensalza 1911, 1926; D. Roberto Filosofia e Musica, “Rivista di Storia della Filosofia” LXII no. 4 (2007), pp. 769–771; Lee Rothfarb Nineteenth-Century Fortunes of Musical Formalism, “Journal of Music Theory” LV, no. 2 (2011) pp. 167–220; A. English Discontinuity in learning: Dewey, Herbart, and education as transformation, Cambridge 2013; R. Körrenz, R. Coriand Johann Friedrich Herbart: Einführung mit zentralen Texten, Padeborn, Boston 2018; Texte der formalistischen Ästhetik: Eine Quellenedition zu Johann Friedrich Herbart und zur herbartianischen Theorietraditio, ed. I. Stöckman, Cambridge 2019; F.C. Beiser Johann Friedrich Herbart : grandfather of analytic philosophy, Oxford 2022; M.-M. Thura Le formalisme en musique: genèse et problème : Kant, Herbart, Hanslick, dissertation at the Sorbonne University 2022; J. F. Herbart Kurze Encyklopädie der Philosophie, Halle, 1831 in: Sämtliche Werke vol. 9, ed. Karl Kehrbach, pub. Hermann Beyer & Söhne, Lagensaza 1897.