Responses to Reason? The European Enlightenment and Beyond The case of Germany from the 1770s

today’s lecture By the end of the 18th century, intellectual and literary/aesthetic impulses of the Enlightenment led to some key transitional moments in the Enlightenment. Evolution of two ideas – rise of the subject (philosophy and literature) and the rise of nationhood – represented a degree of challenge to some earlier Enlightenment values (pure reason) Germany (1770 ff.) – ‘universal’ Enlightenment entangled with Germany’s search for national identity and culture. French Revolution, 1789. Enlightenment tradition of self criticism: an end to Enlightenment and the move to Romanticism?

Thinking about the Enlightenment: I Increasing dissatisfaction amongst key German thinkers of the later eighteenth century re. a doctrine of ‘pure reason’. (Descartes, Leibniz, Wolff) Immanuel Kant – a criticism of pure reason, an emphasis on the human subject: the faculty (and necessity) of the individual subject to construct it’s own knowledge of the universe/ itself (also moral and aesthetic judgements) Kant and the so-called ‘Copernican Shift’ in philosophy (Critique of Pure Reason, 1781/7). Kant begins to undermine some of the corner stones of Enlightenment thinking – though perhaps unwittingly: he still sees himself as an Enlightenment thinker ….

Thinking about the Enlightenment: II “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment. Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all their lives, long after nature has freed them from external guidance. They are the reasons why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor. If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on--then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me.” Immanuel Kant, ‘What is Enlightenment,’ 1784.

The ‘Revolution’ of mind continues Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Foundations of the Science of Knowledge (1794) The subject as a radicalized centre of experience. Still reason? Still enlightened?

The Universal Enlightenment Enlightenment often seen as a universal and trans-national movement. The concept of Cosmopolitanism in thought, politics and art. Literary works: Voltaire’s Candide (1759) and Lessings’ Nathan the Wise (1779) – imagine enlightened cosmopolitan utopias. Philosophy: Kant’s On Perpetual Peace (1795) – the foundation of international law theory

National Enlightenment: The Case of Germany Germany’s ‘regional particularism’ in the 1780-s Lack of a ‘national culture’ – looking to France Germany as the ‘belated nation’ – a generation of writers and thinkers who call for the German ‘voice’ to be heard

Germany’s Responses I The Storm and Stress literary movement An intense decade of literary and theoretical writing (from the mid 1770s) in which Germany becomes a new cultural centre in Europe: still enlightenment values in place (social and political critique), all produced by a generation of German thinkers who were themselves the product of Enlightenment education but a new enthusiasm for the German language – as an expression specifically of the German soul or national character

Germany’s Responses II Johann Gottfried Herder Excerpt Three: Outlines of a Philosophy of a History of Man (1803) Topography and climate – national character – history of a people or ‘Volk’ Language as the key marker of the unique essence of a people – literature as the highest form of language Arguably exists in tension with some cosmopolitan traditions of the Enlightenment Would later be abused in the 19th and 20th centuries Did signify a newly emerging sense of nationhood and national pride Excerpt four: Goethe’s poem ‘Prometheus’ a classical theme, but turning away from neoclassical French influences (and authority in general) – the spawning of a ‘new race’ of poets and thinkers

Revolution and Terror: 1789 (-1790s) 1789 French Revolution: La Terreur (1793-94) – over 40,000 executed as supposed enemies of the revolution Occupation of German Territories A range of responses amongst German intellectuals: anti-French (pro-German) nationalist feelings Reaction: the revolution as the errant child of the Enlightenment Distaste for violence and chaos Art as a response in itself Art as a way of healing/ revitalising/ stabilizing the German nation (Weimar or German Neo-Classicism) Art as an attempt to carry forward revolution in a new context (Romanticism)

Germany’s Reponses III Friedrich Schiller and Germany’s neo-classicism A dislocated subject in theological and cognitive terms A socially destabilized subject A neo-classical aesthetics as a solution: Schiller offers us a quasi psychological/ anthropological model of how art is produced and appreciated. The human faculty for producing and experiencing art comprises a twofold instinct, one sensuous, one formal. The sensuous is more material, physical to do with sensation – often associated with the ephemeral (Letter XII) The formal is more rationally predicated, brings ‘rules’ and ‘limits’ and permanence to experience. (Letter XII) Art should seek to balance the two, creating a specific form of ‘beauty’

Germany’s Reponses III Neo-Classical dramas: history plays (Maria Stuart, The Virgin of Orleans) – traumatic experience at one removed – mollifying effect An aesthetics of rich sensual experience but governed by proportion and rendered timeless

Germany’s Reponses IV: Romanticism Mid 1790s – University town of Jena – the circle of Early Romantics Ingredients: radical subjective philosophy (Kant, Fichte); the ‘great Revolution’ of France and the growing platform provided by Germany’s cultural scene Friedrich Schlegel is the first to define in writing what Romanticism is (becoming) in his fragment

Germany’s Reponses IV: Romanticism “Romantic poetry is a progressive universal poetry. Its destiny is not merely to reunite all of the different genres and to put poetry in touch with philosophy and rhetoric. Romantic poetry wants to and should combine and fuse poetry and prose, genius and criticism, art poetry and nature poetry. It should make poetry lively and sociable, and make life and society poetic. It should poeticize wit and fill all of art's forms with sound material of every kind to form the human soul, to animate it with flights of humour. Romantic poetry embraces everything that is purely poetic, from the greatest art systems, which contain within them still more systems […]” Early Romantics in Germany were often political radicals, though rejected revolution. They saw themselves as Enlightenment thinkers – though also as something more. Complicates a simply dualistic relationship between Enlightenment and Romanticism – sets the scene for a fuller discussion next week.