«Ne quid nimis – Nemesis adest» Zur Rezeption der Nemesis-Vorstellung Herders in den Jugendtagebüchern Franz Baaders (1786–1793).

This article examines the reception of Johann Gottfried Herder’s concept of Nemesis in the youth diaries (1786–1793) of Franz von Baader. While recent scholarship has emphasized the lack of a comprehensive understanding of Herder’s influence on post-Kantian philosophy, this study argues that Baader’s early writings—particularly his reflections on the ethical maxim ne quid nimis (“nothing in excess”)—constitute a key and previously neglected instance of such a reception. Beginning with Baader’s early natural-philosophical essay Vom Wärmestoff (1786) and continuing through his private notebooks, the article traces how Herder’s ideas concerning harmony, balance, and the moral order of the cosmos are transformed within Baader’s emerging theosophical framework. Through the influence of Saint-Martin, Lavater, and Hemsterhuis, Baader reinterprets Herder’s Nemesis as a cosmic law of equilibrium grounded in divine justice and continuous creation (creatio continua). This evolution marks the transition from Herder’s organic cosmology to Baader’s theosophical metaphysics and anticipates the Romantic synthesis of nature, spirit, and moral history. The study concludes by situating Baader’s reinterpretation of Herder against the backdrop of late eighteenth-century debates on mysticism, theology, and political symbolism, highlighting Herder’s ambivalent position between Enlightenment rationality and the rising tide of speculative mysticism.