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Lessing's Retrieval of Lost Truths

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Edward S. Flajole
Edward S. Flajole*
Affiliation:
Seattle University, Washington
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Extract

Early in the year 1771 Lessing manifested a lively interest in the Scottish moral philosopher, Adam Ferguson. He was eager to obtain a certain work of Ferguson's, and his patience was taxed for several weeks until the book arrived. When he finally had it in his hands, he quickly leafed through it and was delighted with what his cursory examination revealed. His comments, occasioned by this first glance through the volume, have given rise to a number of conflicting opinions.

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Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , March 1959, pp. 52 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1959

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References

I am going to study Ferguson thoroughly. It is even now clear to me from the table of contents that this is the sort of book I have needed here. For the most part I have only works that sooner or later deaden my mind and waste my time. When you stop thinking for a long time, you reach a stage where you cannot think at all. But I wonder if it is wise to reflect on, and become seriously preoccupied with, certain truths, when, for the sake of peace, our lives have been and will continue to be their constant contradiction. I see even now, as if from afar, many such truths in the Englishman's book.

1 Letter to Moses Mendelssohn, 9 Jan. 1771, G. E. Lessings sämtliche Schriflen, ed. K. Lachmann, 3rd ed., F. Muncker (Leipzig: Göschen, 1904), xvii, 364 f. All parenthetical volume and page references in the text will be to this work unless otherwise identified; in the notes I shall cite the work as LM plus volume and page.

2 T. W. Danzel and G. E. Guhrauer, G. E. Lessing: Sein Leben una seine Werke, 2nd ed., eds. W. V. Maltzahn and R. Boxberger (Berlin: Hofmann, 1881), II, 369; W. Dilthey, Das Erlebnis una die Dichtung, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1907), p. 71.

3 Die Theologie der Lessingzeil (Halle/Saale: Niemeyer, 1929), pp. 350 f.

4 Lessings Werke, eds. J. Petersen and W. v. Olshausen (Berlin: Bong, 1919), xxiv, Introd., 10 ff., 43 ff.

5 Lessings Weltanschauung (Leipzig: Meiner, 1931), pp. 114 ff.

6 In Des Andreas Wissowatius Einwürfe wider die Dreieinigkeit Lessing, in speaking of Leibniz' belief in the Christian mysteries, refers ironically to these beliefs as “Vorurteile seiner Jugend” (LM, xii, 98).

7 Die Theologie der Lessingzeit, pp. 173–176. See LM, IV, 382 f.; v, 15 ff., 328; xiv, 157 f.

8 LM, II, 367; Lessings Werke, Petersen-Olshausen, xxiv, 169, 171.

9 LM, xiv, 292 f., 312 f., 314 ff.

10 “Lessing's Attitude in the Lavater-Mendelssohn Controversy,” PMLA, LXXIII (June 1958), 201–214.

11 Lessings Werke, ed. Carl C. Redlich (Berlin: Hempel, 1879), xx, 2. Abt., 448.

12 See also Karl G. Lessing, G. E. Lessings Leben (Berlin: Vossische Buchhandlung, 1793), i, 322 f.

13 A similar passage in the Gegensätze shows what Lessing probably means by “belief” (“Glaube”) in the essay on Leibniz and Wissowatius (LM, xii, 428 f.). Lessing does not condemn a faith that is based largely on feeling, and thus leaves an important part to what Koch and others have designated as Irrationalismus in Lessing's concept of personal religion.

14 See also Lessings Werke, Petersen-Olshausen, xxiv, 176: “Ich bleibe ein ehrlicher Lutheraner.”

15 G. E. Lessings Leben, I, 430. See Fl. Biedermann, Lessings Gespräcke (Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1924), pp. 71, 174.

16 “Lessing als Theolog,” Jahrbuch des freien deutschen Hochstifls (Frankfort a.M., 1906), p. 10.

17 In his preface to the last of the Wolfenbüttler Fragmente Lessing says that Goeze is the only one who blames him for trying to run the flood through the dam by degrees rather than let the dam be flooded over in one big wave (LM, xiii, 220; see also XVIII, 281).

18 (London: Printed for T. Becket, P. A. Dehondt, and T. Cadell, 1770) i, 166 f., 129 f., ii, 205 f.

19 Ibid., i, 238 f., iii, 80 f.

20 Die Theologie der Lessingzeit, p. 3.

21 Lessing-Studien (Bern: Hüber, 1862), p. 75.

22 Lessings Werke, Petersen-Olshausen, xxiv, 169.

23 Spinoza: Opera, Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, ed. Carl Gebhardt (Heidelberg: Winter 1925), iii, 10 (preface), 174, 179 f., 184 f.

24 Ibid., pp. 15, 31 f., 35 f., 159 f., 187.

25 Ibid., pp. 10, 11, 168, 174, 175, 179 f.

26 Ibid., pp. 168, 174, 178 f., 11.

27 Ibid., pp. 184 f., 188.

28 Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung, p. 71.

29 xi, i (1770), 154–168; xvii, ii (1772), 319–342.

30 Lessings Werke, xxiv, Introd., 45.

31 Lessings Weltanschauung, pp. 117 f.

32 Lessings Werke, xxiv, Introd., 44 f.

33 Leisegang, Lessings Weltanschauung, p. 118.

34 LM, xiv, 157 ff. (Gedanhen über die Herrnhuter).

35 (Edinburgh: Printed for A. Millar and T. Cadell, London, and A. Kincaid and T. Bell, Edinburgh, MDCCLXVII), pp. 1 f.

36 Edinburgh: Kincaid and Bell, 1769.

37 Lessings Werke, Petersen-Olshausen, xxiv, 172 f. See ibid., Introd., p. 50.

38 For Spinoza's similar accommodation of ideas to traditional philosophical terminology see H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1934), ii, 344 f., 348, 350, 353.

39 See Spinoza: Opera, ii, 277, 281 ff; also Wolfson, Philosophy of Spinoza, ii, 231 f., 262 ff.