Review of Klassische deutsche Philosophie (2): Lessing and Herder

Gottfried Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781)

Part 2 of a review of Wolfgang Förster, Klassische deutsche Philosophie: Grundlinien ihrer Entwicklung [Classical German Philosophy: The Basic Lines of Its Development] (2008)

Gottfried Ephraim Lessing is best known for his poetry, dramas and literary criticism. He is one of the outstanding literary figures of the German Enlightenment. His play Nathan der Weise [Nathan the Wise] (1779) is probably his best-known work. It features a dialogue among a Christian, a Muslim and a Jew and suggests that it’s possible for followers of these Abrahamic religions to co-exist in an atmosphere of tolerance and respect, tolerance being a key concept of the Enlightenment. At this time, the notion of full religious tolerance was a radical concept in the kingdoms, principalities and duchies of Germany. Stephan Cornelius writes that Nathan der Weise “bis heute die Schlüsselparabel für die Toleranzidee” (still remains until today the key parable for the idea of tolerance). (Angst vor dem Islam Süddeutsche Zeiting 27.09.2006)

Lessing was the son of a Protestant pastor and studied theology and medicine. Förster describes Lessing’s piece Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlects (1780) as opposing the concept of revelation in religion but argued that it had the value of bringing the thinking of humanity along faster than it otherwise would have developed. Lessing wrote:

Also gibt auch die Offenbarung dem Menschengeschlechte nichts, worauf die menschliche Vernunft, sich selbst überlassen, nicht auch kommen würde: sondern sie gab und gibt ihm die wichtigsten dieser Dinge nur früher.

[So revelation gives the human race nothing which to which human reason left to itself would not also have come: but rather it only gave and gives them the most important of these things earlier.]

This did not mean Lessing was an atheist; he was not. But he was part of the Enlightenment project to reconcile revealed religion with reason. Lessing understood the process of development in religion to be the process of the development of human self-determination in thought.

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819) accused Lessing’s rationalism of inevitably leading to atheism.

A great deal of the philosophical and political debates of these decades in Germany concerned religion and specifically Christianity, which in both its Catholic and Protestant forms at this time were heavily identified with the old feudal order.

Förster concentrates on Lessing’s criticism of revealed religion. He saw religion’s past purpose as educating humanity in good conduct. But he argued against the idea of revelation that is so central to Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Instead, he argued for the primacy of “natural religion” which people would develop along rational lines. Förster credits Lessing’s religious ideas and his concept of human history developing in accordance with laws of social development to a higher level as being key contributions to the development of German philosophy.

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803)

Johann Gottfried Herder’s most lasting contribution was his articulation of a theory of historical development as proceeding according to scientific laws. A Protestant minister and theologian, Herder studied under Immanuel Kant and Johann Georg Hamann (1730–88) at the University of Königsberg and was a direct acquaintance of Goethe, all of whom greatly influenced Herder’s thinking. Herder argued for a poetic interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures, criticized the social evils of his day arising from both feudalism and capitalism, opposed war, and favored the democratic impulses in the French Revolution. He also criticized a Eurocentric worldview, although perhaps at the cost of romanticizing the East.

With the assistance of Goethe’s influence, Herder was transferred to a Weimar post in 1766, where he became part of Goethe’s “Sturm und Drang” intellectual circle. Förster argues that the Protestant Reformation made the particular developments of this period of German philosophical development possible. Understanding and interpreting and disputing the religious understanding of the dominant Protestantism of Prussia and other northern German areas was a central preoccupation of most of these thinkers. Even those who gave more attention to political events found themselves dealing with the prominent role of both Protestant and Catholic Churches of the time as conservative-to-reactionary supports of the established order.

Herder attempted to approach the study of language according to the scientific standards of his time. And his study Über den Ursprung der Sprache [On the Origin of Language] (1772) is still considered a key text in German linguistics today. Herder’s philological work contributed greatly to the Romantic understanding of the history of German culture, as did the work of the Grimm brothers. Herder also published a two-volume collection of German folk music. Herder’s philological studies played an important point in the early development of German nationalism. He took language to be an expression of the spiritual identity of a people. His literary ideas with their emphasis on the Volksgeist (spirit of the people) made him an important part of the Sturm und Drang movement in Weimar.

It’s important to recognize that in Continental Europe, the modern concept of nation was defined in terms of national culture, and not just in Germany. This contrasts to the American conception of nationality as based on place of birth and allegiance to the American Constitutional democratic system of government. And the development of democratic ideas was intimately bound up with nationalism. However, Förster emphasizes that Herder understood German history far more in terms of democratic and nationalist understanding than most German thinkers of the 18th century.

Herder speculated on the origin of human language, which he saw as a long process of development, as had Rousseau and others. The notion of human evolution from a lower state of being, even evolution from animal origins, was far from generally accepted but was also far from unknown during this period. What was revolutionary about Darwin’s and Alfred Lord Wallace’s discovery and documentation of evolution by natural selection was that it founded the theory of evolution on an empirical basis far more solid than previously. Herder also recognized the universe itself as well as the earth could well have had a very long history of development, in line with the geological discoveries of his time.

Herder argued for the unity of mind and body known as a “vitalist” theory in which the mind and body interacted in a complex way. This may sound banal today, when so much more is understood and generally accepted about the mind-body connections. But in his time, this was an important departure from the radical dichotomy of body and soul that was so strongly emphasized in Protestant theology and philosophies derived from it. Herder saw mind and body as both representing different manifestations of power, which was a central concern of the physical science and technology of the time. The Scottish inventor James Watt (1736-1819) patented his steam engine in 1769. The first intercity railway link in Germany was established in 1835 between Nurenberg and Fürth.

But it is in Herder’s four-volume Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit [Another Philosophy of the History of Humanity)] (1784-1791) and his Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit [Ideas for a Philosophy of History of Humanity] (1784–91) articulating his theory of historical development that became his most important works. The German Enlightenment attempts to articulate a theory of historical development had focused on cause-and-effect causality, part of the “mechanical” theories of development which the philosophers of the German classical philosophy period struggled to replace in their scientific theories generally, not just in historical studies. Herder stressed the need for a holistic view which took full account of the relevant influences producing key historical developments and events. Again, if this seems a fairly banal concept now, it’s because innovators like Herder advocated the idea effectively. He also argued for the essential equality of peoples. He specifically criticized the colonial exploitation practiced by European powers of the time, including slavery.

Herder thought that history developed from lower to higher stages and that it was possible and necessary to evaluate earlier periods in light of later and “higher” standards, including the Enlightenment holy-of-holies, Reason. But he also contended that to understand other cultures and earlier times, the historian must put himself into their world of values and grasp how they understood themselves. As a result, Herder departed from the Enlightenment approach that polemically condemned the European Middle Ages as primarily a time of intellectual, political and social stagnation. It was also a rejection of the idealized vision of ancient Greece as being a Golden Age of reason and even harmony between humanity and nature that some thinkers of the period found attractive as a way of criticizing the shortcomings of the present. Though Herder did take ancient Greek democracy as the basis of much of his argument for democratic ideas.

Building on his own interpretation of the philosophy of Spinoza, Herder argued that God was a force immanent in nature, not a transcendent existence. This was his attempt to reconcile science and Christianity, and in particular a rejection of the transcendental concept of God particularly stressed by German Protestantism. He also saw religion as an expression of the highest values of humanity and understood that part of religion was projection of human qualities onto the divine.

Lessing and Herder both had some idea of a set of stages in historical development, Herder tying it closer to the transition out of the feudal system than Lessing. Lessing basically saw an Old Testament period, a New Testament period and an age of reason.

Tags: herder, lessing