Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) already had an attentive British readership in 1800, when the first translation of his Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784–91) was published in London. This curious episode in Anglo-German literary relations and the reasons why there was a market for this German philosophical book at the turn of the nineteenth century have not been analysed in detail before. The article examines how Herder was first received in Britain as an intellectual ally of liberal Presbyterians and ‘rational’ dissenters and later attacked and rejected on political grounds by the conservative Anglican establishment. An overview of the earliest reviews of Herder’s Abhandlung uber den Ursprung der Sprache (1772) in the Monthly Review in 1775 and 1784 is followed by an analysis of how Herder’s theology, Biblical studies and philosophy of history were first received in journal reviews, usually in small fragments and often prior to the availability of English translations. By the time Thomas Churchill’s translation of the Ideen appeared in 1800, Herder and some of his ideas were already the subject of intense discussion in intellectual Presbyterian and Unitarian circles in the politically heated aftermath of the French Revolution.

中文翻译：

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“理性虔诚的朋友”：英国新教异议人士对牧民的早期接纳

约翰·戈特弗里德·赫尔德（Johann Gottfried Herder，1744-1803 年）早在 1800 年就已经拥有一批专注的英国读者，当时他的《人的哲学思想》（Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit，1784-91 年）的第一个译本在伦敦出版。英德文学关系中这一奇怪的插曲以及这本德国哲学著作在 19 世纪之交有市场的原因之前没有详细分析过。这篇文章探讨了赫尔德最初是如何在英国被接受为自由派长老会和“理性”异议者的知识盟友，后来又是如何被保守的圣公会建制派以政治理由攻击和拒绝的。在 1775 年和 1784 年的月刊中，对 Herder 的 Abhandlung uber den Ursprung der Sprache（1772）的最早评论进行了概述，然后分析了 Herder 的神学如何，圣经研究和历史哲学首先是在期刊评论中收到的，通常是小片段，并且通常在英文翻译可用之前。到 1800 年托马斯·丘吉尔 (Thomas Churchill) 的《艾迪恩》(Ideen) 译本出现时，在法国大革命后政治激烈的余波中，赫尔德和他的一些思想已经成为长老会和一神论知识分子圈子中激烈讨论的主题。