On the Literature and Thought of the German Classical Era

Hugh Barr Nisbet

Description

This volume provides a valuable contribution to our knowledge of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century intellectual life inside and outside Germany.

—Prof. Karl S. Guthke, Harvard University


This elegant collection of essays ranges across eighteenth and nineteenth-century thought, covering philosophy, science, literature and religion in the ‘Age of Goethe.’ A recognised authority in the field, Nisbet grapples with the major voices of the Enlightenment and gives pride of place to the figures of Lessing, Herder, Goethe and Schiller.


These eleven essays range widely in their compass of thought and intellectual discourse, dealing incisively with themes including the philosophical implications of literature and the relationship between religion, science and politics. The result is an accomplished reflection on German thought, but also on its rebirth, as Nisbet argues for the relevance of these Enlightenment thinkers for the readers of today.

The first half of this collection focuses predominantly on eighteenth-century thought, where names like Lessing, Goethe and Herder, but also Locke and Voltaire, feature. The second has a wider chronological scope, discussing authors such as Winckelmann and Schiller, while branching out from discussions of religion, philosophy and literature to explore the sciences. Issues of biology, early environmentalism, and natural history also form part of this volume. The collection concludes with an examination of changing attitudes towards art in the aftermath of the ‘Age of Goethe.’

The essays in this volume have been previously published separately, but are brought together in this collection to present Nisbet’s widely-acclaimed perspectives on this fascinating period of German thought. It will be of interest to scholars and students of the intellectual life of Europe during the Enlightenment, while its engaging and lucid style will also appeal to the general reader.

Sujets

• Göethe
• 19th century
• Philosophy
• Environmentalism
• Locke
• Natural history
• Friedrich Schiller
• 18th century
• Voltaire
• Germany
• Lessing
• Enlightenment
• Herder
• Johann Joachim Winckelmann
• Schiller
• John Locke
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Open Book Publishers
• Date de parution: 20 mai 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783747726
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

On The Literature And Thought Of The German Classical Era

On the Literature and Thought of the German Classical Era
Collected Essays
Hugh Barr Nisbet





https://www.openbookpublishers.com
© 2021 Hugh Barr Nisbet




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:
Hugh Barr Nisbet, On the Literature and Thought of the German Classical Era: Collected Essays . Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2021, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0180
In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0180#copyright
Further details about CC BY licenses are available at, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web
Updated digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0180#resources
Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher.
ISBN Paperback: 9781783747696
ISBN Hardback: 9781783747702
ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781783747719
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781783747726
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9781783747733
ISBN XML: 9781783747740
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0180
Cover image: Photo by Nathaniel Shuman on Unsplash at https://unsplash.com/photos/vZvNSeXzmwY
Cover design: Anna Gatti

Contents
Foreword
vii
1.
Lucretius in Eighteenth-Century Germany: With a Commentary on Goethe’s Poem ‘Metamorphosis of Animals’
3
2.
On the Rise of Toleration in Europe: Lessing and the German Contribution
35
3.
On the Function of Mystification in Lessing’s Masonic Dialogues, Ernst and Falk
57
4.
The Rationalisation of the Holy Trinity from Lessing to Hegel
81
5.
Lessing and Misogyny: Die Matrone von Ephesus
109
6.
The German Reception of an Irish Eccentric: The Controversy over Thomas Amory’s The Life of John Buncle, Esq. (1778–79)
129
7.
Herder’s The Oldest Document of the Human Race and his Philosophy of Religion and History
145
8.
The Ethical Foundation of Goethe’s Scientific Thought
163
9.
Natural History and Human History in Goethe, Herder, and Kant
179
10.
Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy’: A Reappraisal
215
11.
Laocoon in Germany: The Reception of the Group since Winckelmann
241
List of Illustrations
291
Bibliography
295
Index
321

Foreword
These are my essays on some of the central products of the German Classical Era. The topics they explore are key to the literature and thought of that period. All the essays have previously been published in journals or collections, dating from 1979 to 2010, and therefore span a considerable portion of my research into the German Enlightenment. I have selected them as the most important items in connection with problems presented by the major thinkers and writers working at that time.
In so doing, I wished to provide as wide a coverage as possible of topics and authors within the German classical period. The essays consequently deal with literature (including lyric poetry, the verse epic, the novel, drama and prose dialogue), philosophy, history, history of science, history of ideas, art history, theology and religion, and with writers and thinkers including Lucretius, Winckelmann, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Hegel, and many others. I have in addition tried to include only those items the main conclusions of which have not, to the best of my knowledge, been superseded or substantially qualified by later research. In re-editing the work, I have confined myself largely to minor corrections, essential updating, and deletion of some passages which I no longer consider strictly relevant.
I would not have assembled this collection of essays without the encouragement and wisdom of Professor Roger Paulin. Bringing together a selection of my key research in a single volume provides an opportunity to review some of the most important developments in western thought. I hope that this book will help to shed light on the historical and philosophical context in which ideas that are of fundamental significance to the world in which we live were originally developed. I am therefore most grateful to Roger for his foresight in identifying the value of such an initiative. Equally, I wish to thank him for his kindness in supporting the arrangements for preparing and editing the manuscript of these essays.
I would also like to thank Karl Guthke, a colleague of many decades and a great support to me, who has been instrumental in the approval of this collection for publication. My thanks extend to Alessandra Tosi of Open Book Publishers for her professional guidance and forbearance as I have gone through the time-consuming process of revisiting my past research and preparing this volume for publication. I am also greatly indebted to Dr John Williams of the University of St. Andrews. John is an old friend and colleague as well as a leading authority on the German Enlightenment. He has generously spared a considerable amount of his time to assist me in compiling a detailed index to this collection. I wish to thank him for his tireless and meticulous work and for accomplishing the task with impressive resolve. My colleagues at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, have provided friendship and kindness to me for many years. I am particularly grateful to the College for organising funding for the work necessary to finalise the manuscript of these essays. I also wish to thank my son, Marcus, who has assisted me in co-ordinating many of the practical steps necessary to bring this project to fruition.
Finally, I would like to pay tribute to my late wife, Angela, who was a dear companion to me for nearly thirty years and a devoted supporter of my endeavours. I duly dedicate this volume to her.
H. B. Nisbet December 2020



Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Etching by W. Unger after G. O. May (1779). Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe._Etching_by_W._Unger_after_G._O._Wellcome_V0002292.jpg
1. Lucretius in Eighteenth-Century Germany: With a Commentary on Goethe’s Poem ‘ Metamorphosis of Animals’ 1

© 2021 Hugh Barr Nisbet, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0180.01
John Ruskin, who had read Lucretius’s De rerum natura in his student days as a set book at Oxford, commented in later years: ‘I have ever since held it the most hopeless sign of a man’s mind being made of flint-shingle if he liked Lucretius’. 2 Such antipathy to the Roman poet was nothing new, of course, particularly towards his philosophy. Though his poetry was admired from when it first appeared around the middle of the first century BC, his Epicureanism was unacceptable to the Stoics who so often dominated Roman philosophy. And his materialism was obnoxious to the Christians—so much so that his work was fortunate to survive the Middle Ages. But it is not just that many people have admired his poetry and rejected his philosophy. His reception is more complex than that—more complex, in fact, than that of any other poet I am familiar with. For De rerum natura contains so many and disparate strands that it has of necessity appealed in part to many, but as a whole to few. It incorporates a metaphysics of nature and a system of physical science; a moral philosophy with practical guidance on living; numerous observations on natural history; a conjectural history of human society; and a powerful statement on religion, culminating in a denial of human immortality and, to all intents and purposes, of the gods. As poetry, it is almost as varied: it contains superb lyrical passages in a descriptive, idyllic, or hymnic vein, along with tracts of abstract—and at times arid—philosophical verse, and there are fiercely satirical and polemical passages as well. Consequently, this unique composition has tended to be used over the centuries as a quarry by poets, philosophers, and scientists, rather than endorsed as a whole or imitated directly in the way that more homogeneous forms such as the elegy, epigram, satire, or ode have been.
Nevertheless, Lucretius had a particular appeal to the eighteenth century, 3 and the reasons are not hard to identify. His uncompromising intellectualism, his belief that knowledge alone—especially knowledge obtained through causal, scientific explanation—is the path to human salvation, was congenial to the post-Newtonian age. The Enlightenment’s increasing preoccupation with nature to the detriment of theology, and the immense popularity of didactic poetry as a means of disseminating the new knowledge, made his work more accessible than ever before. In Germany, however, which was generally more conservative than France or England in the century of the Enlightenment, there were greater obstacles than elsewhere to his reception—above