Lessing and Nathan the Wise : An Essay on Lessing’s “Idea of Humanity”

Regarding Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s best-known dramatic work Nathan the Wise, Friedrich Schlegel once made the following noteworthy comment: “Nathan the Wise is not only the continuation of his Anti-Goeze, number12: it is also, and it is indeed, a dramatized primer of higher cynicism.” This comment by one of the most conspicuous exponents of German Romanticism suggests, it seems to me, a very important point of view from which to interpret this classic work of Lessing. That is to say, the dramatic masterpiece not only needs to be interpreted in close connection with, and as a prolongation of, his theological controversy with Goeze; it also needs to be regarded as a crystallization or embodiment of a new sublimate idea of universal validity. Indeed, Nathan the Wise was, as the author himself stated, “a son of his impending old age, to whom the polemic helped to give birth” (ein Sohn seines eintretenden Alters, den die Polemik entbinden helffen). The initial impetus to write this play came when Lessing’s heated controversy with the “Papst Hammoniens” or the “Inquisitor” reached an impasse. When the tide of controversy had turned in favor of Lessing, the adversary suddenly appealed to the civil authorities for political intervention. Having thus been prohibited from open discussions, Lessing decided to return to “his old pulpit, the theater” to resume the theological battle and wrote “a play, the content of which has some analogy with his present disputes.” This is, briefly, the story behind the coming-into-existence of the most famous classic work in the German theater. On the other hand, this “dramatic poetry” which Schlegel regarded as “a product of sheer intelligence” is a drama à thèse with its own literary value and ideational validity. It has a universal quality which transcends its immediate historical context. As suggested by Wilhelm Dilthey in his now-classic monograph, it is in Lessing’s Nathan the Wise that “the idea of humanity which made the heart of the best people of our nation throb audibly in their breasts” took vivid and definite form for the first time in German intellectual history. Hence the play must be construed as an embodiment of “Lessing’s ideal of a new life,” “a new feeling of life,” and “a new world-view.” As a result, Lessing’s Nathan the Wise must be seen from two points of view: first, it must be observed in close connection with his theological disputes with Goeze; second, it must be construed as an embodiment of the emergent idea of humanity. This study sets out to accomplish this double task, in the hope the Lessing’s idea of humanity will be demonstrated to have a sublimate connotation of higher Christian piety.departmental bulletin pape