THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY FOR THE EDUCATION OF HUMANITY is a controversial book. Hostile to the rationalism of the Enlightenment era, Herder directed his darts mainly against Voltaire and, no less violently, against the image of the past drawn in his historical works by Hume, Robertson and Iselin. He censures in all of them the narrowness of his horizon, the one-sidedness of his interpretations based exclusively on the experiences and ideals of the present, the blindness to the values of feeling, the insensitivity to perceive the poetic, the primitive, the popular.

A precursor book. It contributes, to a great extent, to the formation of historical consciousness, to awakening the sense of individuality and the meaning of evolution. He very happily associates the vision of the continuity of the course of time with the peculiar character of each epoch and each people.

It translates, at the same time, the faith of the believer and the hope of the patriot. Herder sees in history the work of Providence, and, like the man of his time and of his environment, he aspires to stimulate the development of vernacular values while respecting, faithful to his methodical premises, foreign national individualities. He courageously criticizes the enlightened despotism of his time and exalts the enduring significance of Christian ideas. He trusts in the education of man through culture and in the rescue and preservation of his primitive purity.

This work, which appeared anonymous in 1774, aroused lively controversies whose echo did not manage to extinguish the triumph of romanticism at all. Today it preserves its values intact and is a source of deep suggestion to meditate on the always exciting problems of the philosophy of history.