Where the Body touches the Spirit: the Role of Imagination in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile: or On Education and Christoph Martin Wieland’s Geschichte des Agathon by Andrea Marie Speltz Athesissubmittedtothe Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada October 2012 Copyright c Andrea Marie Speltz, 2012 Abstract This dissertation o↵ers a re-evaluation of the role of the imagination in Jean- Jacques Rousseau’s Emile: or On Education (1762) and Christoph Martin Wieland’s Geschichte des Agathon (1794). My central claim is that both novels develop a pedagogy of the imagination in order to overcome the dilemmas of Cartesian dualism, that is, to form a beautiful soul in whom sensuality and reason, the body and the spirit, coexist in harmony. I demonstrate that both texts highlight the important but potentially damaging role played by the imagination in the development of religious thought, moral sentiments, and sexuality. The texts suggest that while a malformed imagination results in materialism, egotism, libertinism, and despotism, a well-formed imagination provides the foundation for natural religion, cosmopolitan enthusiasm, sentimental love, and a just political constitution. Consequently, I argue that for Rousseau and Wieland, harnessing the power of the imagination becomes the key to reconciling human nature and civil society. In addition to elucidating the role of the imagination in Emile and Agathon, this dissertation also contributes to an understanding of the intellectual affinities between Rousseau and Wieland more generally. In preparation for the comparative reading of Emile and Agathon, I survey Wieland’s private and public responses to Rousseau and contend that although the two authors di↵er significantly in their narrative and i philosophical approach, they nevertheless share similar moral and political ideals. Both authors acknowledge the ability of the imagination to drive a wedge between the individual’s natural inclinations and moral duties, causing fragmentation of the self and society in turn. Yet the imagination, the motor of cultural progress, is not only the source of man’s alienation, it is also the remedy for his dividedness. If properly harnessed, the imagination can cease to be the cause of human depravity and become the basis of peaceful human relations, both at the level of the individual and that of society as a whole. In conclusion, I propose that the role of the imagination in forming the beautiful soul has consequences for the collective, and that we can read the moral constitutions of Emile and Agathon as negotiating the possibilities of various political constitutions, including that of a democratic state. ii Acknowledgments This is thesis about the formation of character. Consequently, I would like to acknowledge all of the individuals who have made significant contributions to the formation of mine. I would like to thank my supervisors, Dr. David Pugh and Dr. Jill Scott, for making me into a scholar who both respects and enjoys intellectual exchange. I would also like to thank my fellow graduate students, Marie-Therese Ferguson, Joan Gladwell, Rebecca H¨ugler, Sarah Jacoba, Laura Kinderman, Stefanie Kullick, Margaret Maliszewska, and Eva Sattelmayer, for creating a rich, challenging, and supportive academic environment, in which I was able to develop and share my ideas. On a more personal note, I would like to thank the members of my family: my mother for teaching me kindness, my father for teaching me humility (tinged with a biting sense of self-irony), and my siblings for providing me with kindred spirits or, as Wieland would say, “sympathische Seelen.” Last but not least, I want to express my profound gratitude to my life partner, Jean-Pierre Hickey, for accompanying me on this adventure. He and the other Jean in my life, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, have helped me to understand what it truly means to be good. iii Contents Abstract i Acknowledgments iii Contents iv Chapter 1: Introduction 1 1.1 PedagogiesoftheImagination . 1 1.2 NatureandEducation .......................... 4 1.3 AligningReasonandImagination . 23 1.4 Overview of Chapters . 34 Chapter 2: Rousseau and Wieland: Critical and Historical Per- spectives 38 2.1 Multiple Rousseaus . 38 2.2 The Critical Reception of Wieland’s Relationship to Rousseau . 40 2.3 The Rousseau of Wieland’s Personal Correspondence . 51 2.4 Wieland’sPublicResponsestoRousseau . 58 2.4.1 Wieland’s Beytr¨age:SuperficialPolemicsorInsightfulRefuta- tion? . 58 2.4.2 AddressingtheHypothesisonNaturalMan . 62 2.4.3 The Interconnectedness of Human Vice and Virtue: Wieland’s “Koxkox und Kikequetzal” . 65 2.4.4 From Natural to Civilized Man: the Role of Imagination in the Fictional Beytr¨age ........................ 70 2.4.5 The Nature/Culture Dichotomy in Wieland’s Beytr¨age .... 77 2.4.6 Tlantlaquacapatli’s Excursus on Moral Beauty . 80 2.4.7 Moral Pessimism versus Political Optimism . 84 2.5 Fellow Perspectivists and Moralists . 85 Chapter 3: The Pedagogy of Emile’s Imagination: From Nature to Natural Religion, Compassion, and Love 91 iv 3.1 Emile through the Lens of Agathon ................... 91 3.2 TheFoundationofEmile’sEducation . 92 3.3 The Trajectory of Emile’s Education . 98 3.4 “Such is the Empire and Influence of the Imagination” . 102 3.4.1 Rousseau’s Ambivalence toward the Imagination . 102 3.4.2 The Imagination: Gateway to the Divine or Cause of Religious Deformities? . 108 3.4.3 “Pity is sweet [. ] Envy is bitter”: Compassion, Amour- propre andtheFoundationofSocialJustice . 118 3.4.4 “There is nothing beautiful except that which is not”: or, of Love and Sublimation . 144 3.5 “Everything is rooted in politics” . 162 Chapter 4: The Pedagogy of Agathon’s Imagination: From Pla- tonic Schw¨armerei to Natural Religion, Cosmopolitan Enthusiasm, and Love 167 4.1 Agathon through the Lens of Emile ................... 167 4.2 DistrustofImaginationinImaginativeFiction . 178 4.3 TheFoundationofAgathon’sEducation . 190 4.4 The Trajectory of Agathon’s Development . 199 4.5 Imagination . 203 4.5.1 Wieland’s Ambivalence toward the Role of the Imagination in Moral Development . 203 4.5.2 NaturalImagination=NaturalReligion . 204 4.5.3 “Was ist das Mitleiden, welches uns zur Gutth¨atigkeit treibt?”: From Compassion to Cosmopolitan Enthusiasm . 217 4.5.4 Seducing a Schw¨armer ...................... 239 4.6 Excursus: The Wisdom of Mentors and the Ideals of their Pupils . 261 4.7 Morality and Politics . 273 Chapter 5: Conclusion 287 Work Cited 291 v 1 Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Pedagogies of the Imagination Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile: or On Education (1762) and Christoph Martin Wieland’s Geschichte des Agathon (1794) both explore the conflict between human nature and social existence, between natural inclinations and moral duties.1 Further- more, both texts promote narratives of education as a means of overcoming man’s dualistic nature, of creating a beautiful soul in whom nature and culture, sensuality 1The first version of Agathon was published in 1766/67, followed by a second in 1773, and a third in 1794. I focus on the third and final version from 1794, the so-called “Ausgabe letzter Hand.” Although many scholars agree with Friedrich Sengle in assigning superior aesthetic value to the novel’s first version (Wieland 196), I follow Klaus Schaefer’s and Walter Erhart’s proposal to assess the aesthetic qualities of each version in its own right (Wieland 44 and Entzweiung 19, respectively). The main thesis of Erhart’s Entzweiung und Selbstaufkl¨arung: Christoph Martin Wielands ‘Agathon- Projekt’ is that each version should be viewed as a di↵erent answer to the same question: “Die formal-¨asthetischen Abweichungen der einzelnen Fassungen gewinnen ihre Bedeutung [. ] zur¨uck, wenn man sie nicht als Ausdruck wachsender Skepsis oder einer gewandelten Philosophie, sondern als unterschiedliche literarische Antworten auf eine mit der ersten ‘Geschichte des Agathon’ gestellte – moralphilosophische und literarische – Frage versteht” (Entzweiung 19). I have chosen the version from 1794 because I believe that it provides the most interesting comparison with Rousseau’s Emile. All Wieland quotations are taken from the Hamburg edition C.M. Wieland S¨ammtliche Werke (1984), abbreviated SW, unless otherwise stated. The first number refers to the volume, the second to the page number. For example SW 3:242 refers to volume 3, page 242. I employ a similar notation system for Wieland’s Briefwechsel, Der Teutsche Merkur, and other multivolume works. 1.1. PEDAGOGIES OF THE IMAGINATION 2 and reason, coexist in harmony.2 Yet despite similar goals, Rousseau and Wieland di↵er significantly in their basic portrayals of education. With respect to the founda- tions and the trajectories of their protagonists’ development, Rousseau and Wieland o↵er contradictory educational models. Moreover, they also assume widely di↵ering positions on the structure and function of narrative.3 However, what remains con- stant in Emile and Agathon is the pivotal role assigned to the imagination in the formation of a moral individual. The central claim of this dissertation is that despite fundamental di↵erences in pedagogical and narrative method, Rousseau and Wieland ultimately come to similar conclusions about how to reconcile human nature and civil society. Both authors develop their own pedagogy of the imagination in an e↵ort to move beyond the nature/culture dichotomy. 2When discussing Emile, I do not avoid the masculine term “man” or the corresponding masculine pronoun “he.” Although I believe Rousseau’s analysis has relevance for all human beings irrespective of gender, it is important to remember that Rousseau did not. The following quotation suffices to demonstrate the strength of his gender stereotypes: “When women are what they ought to be, they will limit themselves to things within their competence and will always judge well. But since they have established themselves as the arbiters of literature, since they have set about judging books and relentlessly producing them, they no longer know anything” (Emile 341).