Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident Due to planned maintenance there will be periods of time where the website may be unavailable. We apologise for any inconvenience.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
The Lessing “legend” is grounded in paradox. It rests on his total dedication to the Enlightenment ideal of Sapere aude — dare to use one's own understanding—while at the same time he viewed himself as heir apparent to German Protestantism. Lessing was a religionist who depended on rationalism for the solution to every major problem. The unity of these apparently diverse perspectives was summed up in Lessing's program of seeking truth, not claiming its possession. “If God held in his right hand all the truth, and in his left hand the ever active longing for the truth, and said to me: ‘choose’, I should humbly grasp his left hand and cry: give me this, oh Father! the truth is for you alone”. If truth were relinquished to God, then at least Lessing could lay claims to salvaging history for man. In this form, what appeared to the philosophes as alien traditions, human revolution and divine revelation, were to be united.
1. Lessing Samtliche Schriften, edited by Karl Lachmann and Franz Muncker. (Stuttgart and Leipzig 1886–1924)Google Scholar; hereinafter referred to as LSS. Vol. XIII, p. 24.
2. Neujahrsgeschenk für das schöne Gesohlecht herausgegeben, edited by Fried-rich Nicolai. Cited in Heinrich Schneider, Lessing: Zwölf Biographiche Studien, (Bern 1951), p. 253.Google Scholar [The exact phrase is, “Wer einen Lessing denkt, Denkt sich zu Deutschlands Ehren”].
3. The following works offer an able introduction to the problem of the relation of history and religion in the eighteenth century: Cassirer, Ernst, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Princeton 1951)Google Scholar; Pascal, Roy, The German Sturm und Drang (Manchester 1953)Google Scholar; Hazard, Paul, European Thought in the Eighteenth Century: From Montesquieu to Lessing (New Haven 1954)Google Scholar. For more detailed studies of Lessing's treatment of this issue, see Chadwick, Henry, “Introduction” to Lessing's Theological Writings (Stanford 1957)Google Scholar; and Wailer, Marta, Lessings Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts, Interpretation und Darstellung ihres rationalen und irrationalen Gehaltes (Berlin 1935).Google Scholar
4. Mehring, Franz, The Lessing Legend (New York 1938), p. 50.Google Scholar See also his historical placing of Lessing in Zur Deutsehen Geschichie, in Gesammelie Schriften und Aufsätze (Berlin 1931), Vol. V, pp. 88–90.Google Scholar
5. Franz Mehring, Ibid., p. 51.
6. Heine, Heinrich, “Lessing,” in The Poetry and Prose of Heine (New York 1948), pp. 709–10.Google Scholar
7. Lessings Werke, edited by Julius Petersen and Waldemar Olshausen (Berlin and Leipzig, n.d.)Google Scholar; hereinafter referred to as LW. Vol. VI, p. 64 (No. 4).
8. LW., Vol. VI, p. 64Google Scholar (No. 1, 2).
9. LW., Vol. VI, pp. 80–1Google Scholar (No. 85, 86).
10. Cassirer, Ernst, The Philosophy of Enlightenment (Princeton 1951), pp. 191–92.Google Scholar
11. LSS., Vol XIII, p. 45Google Scholar; and Vol. XVI, p. 519.
12. LW., Vol. VI, p. 74Google Scholar (No. 51, 53).
13. LW., Vol. VI, p. 82Google Scholar (No. 98).
14. LW., Vol. VI, p. 75Google Scholar (No. 57, 58); p. 81 (No. 87, 88).
15. LW., Vol. VI, p. 65Google Scholar (No. 6).
16. LW., Vol. VI, p. 71Google Scholar (No. 36, 37).
17. LSS., Vol. XIV, pp. 292–3.Google Scholar
18. LSS., Vol. XVI, p. 371.Google Scholar
19. LW., Vol. VI, p. 70Google Scholar (No. 31).
20. Herzen, Alexander, Selected Philosophical Works (Moscow 1956), p. 34.Google Scholar
21. Nadler, Josef, Johann Georg Hamann: 1730–1788 (Vienna 1949), pp. 71–8.Google Scholar This is the definitive biography of Hamann. There are but two works on Hamann in English, both worthwhile: O'Flaherty, J. C., Unity and Language: A Study n the Philosophy of Johann Georg Hamann (Chapel Hill 1952)Google Scholar; and Lowrie, Walter, Johann Georg Hainann: An Existentialist (Princeton 1950)Google Scholar. Even though O'Flaherty sees Hamaun as a precursor of logical empiricism, while Lowrie's position is defined by the title, they prove, not so much that one thesis is correct and the other erroneous, but rather that positivism and existentialism have more in common than adherents of either camp are willing to admit.
22. Hamann's Sämtliche Werke, edited by Josef Nadler (Vienna 1951)Google Scholar; hereinafter referred to as HSW. Vol. III, pp. 303–04.Google Scholar
23. HSW., Vol. III, p. 284.Google Scholar
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. HSW., Vol. III, p. 283.Google Scholar
27. HSW., Vol. III, p. 32Google Scholar (“Des Ritters von Rosenereuz letzte Willensmeynung”).
28. HSW., Vol. III, p. 286.Google Scholar
29. Ibid.
30. HSW., Vol. III, p. 278Google Scholar (“Kritik der reinen Vernunft von Immanuel Kant”).
31. HSW., Vol III, p. 319Google Scholar (“Golgotha und Scheblimini”).
32. HSW., Vol. III, p. 289Google Scholar (“Metakritik über den Purismus der Vernunft”).
33. HSW., Vol. III, p. 305.Google Scholar
34. Erinnerungen aus dem Jahre 1790 in historischen Gemälden und Bildnissen. Cited in Schneider, loc. cit., p. 190.Google Scholar
