“Geschöpfe der Phantasie und des personifizierten Verstandes […] müssen sich durch sich selbst bewahren”. Herders Gedanken zur Allegorie von den frühen Schriften bis zur ‘Adrastea’

Starting from a 2007 article by Lothar van Laak, dedicated to Bildlichkeit und Bildkonzepte beim späten Herder, the proposed contribution intends to synthetically reconstruct Herder's confrontation with the ancient world and with allegorical representation in the last phase of his thought, passing for his reading of Winckelmann's Versuch einer Allegorie besonders für die Kunst (1766). One wonders what moral and anthropological-cultural value the allegory assumes when it, in Adrastea, is no longer just an object of discourse as a means of expression and artistic representation. The hermeneutical potential that is intrinsic to it becomes for Herder a material and spiritual means to develop a different historicist perspective on the past in relation to the present, but also to underline the importance of the relationship between allegory and "person".