Radical Enlightenment in German Literature 1771-1811

RADICAL ENLIGHTENMENT IN GERMAN LITERATURE 1771-1811 BY ADAM D. CHAMBERS DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in German in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2013 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Carl Niekerk, Chair Associate Professor Stephanie Hilger Associate Professor Laurie Johnson Associate Professor Anke Pinkert Associate Professor Bruce Rosenstock ii ABSTRACT The Enlightenment was an intellectual and social movement that had a profound impact on the development of Western society, yet its complexity and impact on literature are not often fully understood. The values of freedom, equality, and brotherhood as well as the rise of the roles of reason, science, and tolerance are products of the European Enlightenment, but the Enlightenment has become a villain blamed for abuses against many of those same principles by many scholars. It is therefore important to understand what the Enlightenment was, and what its true legacy is. This study makes use of recent research on the Radical Enlightenment by Princeton historian Jonathan Israel and others to investigate if German literature of the late Enlightenment supports the idea that the Enlightenment is better understood as having a Radical and a Moderate side. The following works of German literature serve as primary historical evidence in considering Jonathan Israel’s Radical Enlightenment hypothesis: Lessing’s Nathan der Weise, Schiller’s Die Räuber, Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, La Roche’s Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim, and Kleist’s Die Verlobung in St. Domingo. Each work is examined for an exchange of Radical and Moderate Enlightenment ideas regarding specific philosophical issues discussed in each work such as religion, politics, nature, aristocratic privilege, and race, among other topics. This study discusses the recent hypothesis of a prominent intellectual historian, as well as scholars from other fields, while also investigating closely the discussion of important philosophical issues in German literature of a time that brought Western society many of the values it still holds today. iii For Mark iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ……………………………… ………………………………………….…...1 CHAPTER 1 – NATHAN DER WEISE, LESSING …………………………...........................17 CHAPTER 2 – DIE RÄUBER, SCHILLER …………………………….............................…..58 CHAPTER 3 – DIE LEIDEN DES JUNGEN WERTHERS, GOETHE …................................99 CHAPTER 4 – GESCHICHTE DES FRÄULEINS VON STERNHEIM, LA ROCHE ……...138 CHAPTER 5 – DIE VERLOBUNG IN ST. DOMINGO, KLEIST ………………………......173 CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………………………………..210 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………………………..218 1 INTRODUCTION The structure of the Enlightenment is one of the most disputed topics in intellectual history, and for good reason: whatever is decided necessarily entails a pronouncement about the periods preceding it as well as an assertion of influences exercised upon periods to follow. Much discussion has focused particularly on the question of whether or not one can speak of one, two or multiple strains of thinking in the Enlightenment. The general consensus presently seems to be that there is only one strain of “Enlightenment thought,” which stood in opposition to the conservative forces of absolute monarchy, aristocracy, and church power. Such an oversimplifying understanding of the Enlightenment does no justice to the diverse beliefs and goals of those advancing reason's role in society and is likely rooted in a trend that began with the publication of Dialectic of Enlightenment in 1947 by Horkheimer and Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment is pessimistic about the possibility of human emancipation and progress, and while it is not anti-Enlightenment per se, it stresses the difficulty the Enlightenment experiences in practicing effective critical self-reflection. It emphasizes that the ideals of the Enlightenment can become abusive if proper self-criticism is not exercised while simultaneously acknowledging the benefits the Enlightenment period brought. Renewed discussion of the intellectual history of the Enlightenment in response to a half- century of robust criticism has been initiated in the last decade or so, of which a prime example is the Radical Enlightenment trilogy by the Princeton historian Jonathan Israel. Israel has received significant attention and reception in the fields of history and philosophy, but his work remains noticeably ignored in literary and cultural studies. Israel's work, as well as other scholarship on the intellectual history of the Enlightenment, should be of great concern to literary 2 scholars, one of whose tasks it is to trace intellectual and cultural shifts as they manifest themselves within literature. In his books, Israel proposes that there are two major streams of thought within Enlightenment thinking: Radical and Moderate Enlightenment. Radical Enlightenment thought wholly rejects the preservation of aristocratic privilege in any form and strives for the distribution of free education to all people so that ability, and not the accident of birth, may decide fates. It also demands that reason be applied judiciously in all matters, including metaphysics, and it prizes the findings of empirical science. The application of reason and empirical science to metaphysical questions led Radical Enlightenment thinkers both to reject the question of God's existence as fundamentally unknowable (agnosticism, a term which would not be termed until Thomas Huxley in 1860) and not to possess a belief in his existence (atheism). Radical Enlightenment thinkers believed that religious belief was harmful for all members of society, and that it should ultimately be replaced by a reason-based value and belief system. Moderate Enlightenment thought values empirical science and a democratization of the political process as well, at least to some extent, but it characteristically stops short of encouraging the application of reason to matters of faith for all portions of the population and of abolishing monarchy entirely. Voltaire, for example (whom Israel holds to be a figure of the Moderate Enlightenment), argues that religion provides a valuable service to the lower classes, which lack the sensibility to lead moral lives in the absence of divine reward and punishment. Connected to this is the Moderate Enlightenment belief in the preservation of privilege for some. Many thinkers in this strain argued for forms of constitutional monarchy, and for the necessity of class distinctions. Widespread education was promoted to varying degrees. Moderate Enlightenment thinkers sought to make society more rational without completely overthrowing 3 society's main sources of authority. Frederick the Great, who favored the idea of enlightened monarchy, and Kant, who criticizes the notion of complete equality in many of his writings, are examples of Moderate Enlightenment thinking. It is these differences that make Israel's division a meaningful advance in understanding the intellectual history of the Enlightenment. Such a compelling new view of the nature of the Enlightenment, if true, would have significant influence on many aspects of culture, and certainly upon literature. German literature of the Enlightenment era, particularly the later era in the 1770s and 1780s, does indeed reflect the differences between Radical and Moderate Enlightenment in a number of works, which shows that these debates were known widely among Germany's intellectuals. Indeed, Israel provides evidence that Radical Enlightenment discussions of such works as Bekker's De betoverde wereld and Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus were known widely not only in the university setting, but also among the common people to the degree that it filtered down from pulpits. A large number of works of German literature reflect the penetration of the two “degrees” of Enlightenment within German society. Israel’s scholarship on the intellectual history of the Enlightenment does not, however, stand in a vacuum. Jörg Schönert describes Enlightenment research in Germany in the latter half of the 20th century with the key words “Historisierung, Politisierung und Soziologisierung,” beginning in the early 1960s with its focus changing from 1975-1985, and then changing again after 1985.1 Schönert writes that from the early 1960s to approximately 1975 scholarship focused on portraying a unified image of the Enlightenment as one period (Schönert 41). Enlightenment research in the period from the early 1960s to 1975 was very “politicized” (Schönert 41). Schönert also writes of a “Soziologisierung der Aufklärung” (Schönert 41) 1 Jörg Schönert, “Konstellationen und Entwicklungen germanistischen Forschung,” der Aufklärungsforschung in Deutschland, ed. Holger Dainat and Wilhelm Vosskamp. Heidelberg, Germany; Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1999: 39-48. 4 beginning in the mid-1960s and proceeding in part from the reception of the writings of Jürgen Habermas. As with the aforementioned politicized research, the sociologized research particularly focused on “jene Momente der Modernität, die bis in die Gegenwart weiterwirken”.2 The period from 1975-1985 is, according to Schönert, defined by the “theoretische Begründung” and “methodologische Reflexion literaturgeschichtlicher Forschungen” (Schönert 42). Wilhelm Voßkamp’s studies into the connection between literary and societal history are an example of this focus. Concerning the period following

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