Modern European Intellectual History

Lessing An Overview Gotthold Lessing can be considered to be one of the fathers of German Idealism during the Enlightenment having provided the foundation of a modern philosophy of religion and the beginning of a deeper observation of history. 1 He completed his career with The Education of the Human Race, and this essay is widely regarded as being the manifesto of his theological religious-philosophical thought. This work, alongside his other theological writings and dramas particularly the play Nathan the Wise, represent Lessings ideals of religious tolerance and shared humanity and a philosophy of religion that was firmly grounded in contemporary rationalism and characterized by the search for truth. During the Enlightenment the way people understood the world around them changed drastically, they began to consider things not in terms of faith but instead in terms of reason. People began to realise that not only was it possible to understand the world as never before but that it could also be changed and this shift in thinking is reflected throughout Lessings writings. Lessing wrote, If God held all Truth in his right hand, and in his left, nothing but an ever-restless striving after Truth with the condition of forever erring, and told me to choose, I would reverently choose the left hand and say: Father, give me this. Pure Truth is for Thee alone. 2

T. Yasukata, Lessing's Philosophy of Religion and the German Enlightenment, 2002, American Academy of Religion
2

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Eine Duplik (1778) in Gesammelte Werke, ed. Paul Rilla (Berlin: Aufbau, 1954-8), vol.8

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He believed that to claim possession of the One Truth showed that you didnt in fact care about truth, only about correctness which is not the same thing at all. In fact the problem with this is that it leads to anything that does not fit with a certain perception of the truth to be rejected. There are many faiths and many paths to seeking truth and to reject this idea is to reject the diversity of humanity. 3 In The Education of the Human Race, Lessing attempts to reconcile divine and human history and emphasises the relationship between revelation and education. What education is to the individual, revelation is to the whole human race .4 Lessing seems to be saying that revelation is Gods education of humanity which is possible through reason. Lessing contends that monotheism was the natural religion of man however through the development of early reason this dissolved into polytheism and was then retrieved through revelation. He argues that revelation does not contain all the content of rational religion from the beginning. The idea is that if human reason develops gradually and that concepts and theories that are now obvious to people were once things they were unable to comprehend then it must follow that only the basic concepts of religion would be revealed to mankind at first. Since human reason was too underdeveloped and too immature to handle certain truths, these would be withheld. God would reveal himself slowly by degrees in accordance with the degree of development of human reason.

3 4

Johnston, B., 2006. Nathan, Utopia and Enlightenment. The Education of the Human Race, translated by Fred W. Robertson, M.A.. London, C.K. Paul & Co., 1881.

Modern European Intellectual History

He puts forward the idea that God chose the Hebrew people as the people to reveal the idea of the One God although he believed that this was certainly a more primitive conception of the One God than the true transcendental conception . Furthermore Lessing writes that the fact that God did not reveal the doctrine of the immortality of the soul to the Hebrew people was not because it was not true but because human reasoning had not yet developed to the point of understanding it. Moreover although God did not reveal the concept of immortal life neither did he deny its existence and where individual Jews began to deny this concept, this was only proof of the progress of reason since it meant they were considering the possibility of such an idea. This sets Judaism up as the prelude to Christianity; in fact it can be compared with the idea of the Hebrew Bible being equated with the teaching of basic arithmetic while Christianity is the equivalent of teaching calculus. Lessing describes the Old Testament as an educational primer that the student had outgrown, after which a better instructor was required; this better instructor was embodied in Christ. He contends that it is necessary for each generation to believe their primer to be the ultimate one. The idea would then follow that Christianity is still an imperfect stage along the way to religious enlightenment. Among the most influential of Lessings writings was his play Nathan the Wise. The play is consciously ideological, with Lessing using the vehicle of drama to put forth his philosophy of religion and argument for religious tolerance. The central theme of the play is the concept of brotherhood among mankind and he uses the literary device of hidden identity to illustrate this. The fact that Nathan is a Jew and his adopted daughter Rachel and

Modern European Intellectual History

the Christian Templar are brother and sister as well as the niece and nephew of Saladin who is a Muslim, portrays the religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as all members of one family. The confusion of identities and the fact that at the end of the play they all dissolve is central to the idea that none of these identities or creeds which have created so many conflicts, spanning centuries and continents, constitutes our intrinsic humanity. This is clearly illustrated when Nathan tells the Templar, We neither of us chose our people. Must Jews and Christians be always Jews and Christians and only humans afterwards?5 The message of the play is that the value of an individual as a human being is paramount over their belonging to any group or religious denomination. People should be able to coexist harmoniously in mutual respect whether they are a Christian, Jew or Muslim as this is secondary to their humanity. The moment in the play where the recognition of the existence of a common humanity despite differences in doctrine occurs is when the Templar who throughout the play referred to Nathan simply as Jew calls him by name, thus acknowledging his individuality beyond the fact that he is Jewish.

A key passage of Nathan the Wise is the Parable of the Three Rings. When Saladin poses the question of which religion is the best to Nathan, instead of giving an answer which would offend Saladin or call his own integrity into question he tells the Parable of the Three Rings. Three sons are promised a ring by their father that will make the owner beloved of man and God. All three sons are given an identical ring since the father is unable to choose
5

Lessing, G.E., Nathan the Wise: a dramatic poem in five acts, translated by Adolph Reich. London, A. W. Bennett, 1860.

Modern European Intellectual History

between them and an argument ensues as to which son is the owner of the real ring. The three sons of the parable are representative of the three main European religions at the time, Judaism, Christianity and Islam while the ring symbolizes the ultimate truth of religion . Saladin questions the comparison of three identical rings to three religions with as many differences as similarities. However Nathan argues that while the teachings and practices may differ they are all based on faith and beliefs each of which are rooted in the same thing. The judge of the parable concludes that since all three rings have brought only hatred and strife, the opposite of what the true ring was to have done, none of these rings is real. Or that one is real and two are duplicates but it is impossible to tell these apart and therefore they should just live their lives in such a way that merits the love of God. Through this parable Lessing suggests that while none of these religions may be perfect or may be proven to be absolutely true in any historical sense, the search for truth takes precedence over the actual possession of it. The same or a similar version of this parable is told in a number of other works including Giovanni Boccaccios The Decameron.6 However what is interesting in Lessings adaptation of the tale is that unlike its precedent in Lessings version the assertion is made that all three rings and therefore all three religions could be false. Lessing used the Parable of the Three Rings that Nathan tells to Saladin, as his starting point when writing his play as it perfectly illustrates his argument for religious

Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron. Trans. Mark Musa and Thomas G. Bergin. New York: Signet Classic, 2002.

Modern European Intellectual History

tolerance, he then wrote the rest of the play around the parable which is why it is seen as the key to Nathan the Wise and so much emphasis has been placed on it . Lessing is widely considered to be the father of religious tolerance in Europe, he was an opponent of anti-Semitism taking up the cause of the Jews through both Nathan the Wise and his earlier play The Jews which showed deep antipathy towards the unreasonable hatred directed towards the Jews of Europe. The hero of Nathan the Wise is Nathan, a prosperous Jew living in Jerusalem who adopts a Christian orphan despite the fact that his wife and sons had been slaughtered by Christians. Nathan is a character who rises above this to act in the interests of humanity. Lessing based the character of Nathan on his friend Moses Mendelssohn, a fellow intellectual at the forefront of the German Enlightenment . The characterization of a Jew as the hero of the play, who through reason and personal example represents humanity while the villain is the Christian patriarch of Jerusalem representing the insidious hatred and intolerance passed down through generations, has caused much controversy. However for Lessing, putting across a nondogmatic view of religion based on the importance of shared humanity rather than creed or race was more important than the risks inherent in courting such controversy. It could be said that for Lessing the question of the Jews who he describes in The Education of the Human Race as the most rude and the most ferocious but also as the teachers of the human race . He believed that Christianity had its genesis in Judaism and portrays it as the stepping stone on which the tradition of Christianity rests. 7

W. Goetschel, Lessing and the Jews; A companion to the works of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. 2005, Camden House

Modern European Intellectual History

Today Lessings philosophy of religion remains a subject of dispute, one thing that is clear however is that for Lessing the goal of Enlightenment was a mature independence of thought that recognised the importance of the search for truth over the certainty of clinging to religious dogma.