Radical enlightenment in German literature 1771-1811

Abstract

The Enlightenment was an intellectual and social movement that had a profound impact on the development of Western society, yet its complexity and impact on literature are not often fully understood. The values of freedom, equality, and brotherhood as well as the rise of the roles of reason, science, and tolerance are products of the European Enlightenment, but the Enlightenment has become a villain blamed for abuses against many of those same principles by many scholars. It is therefore important to understand what the Enlightenment was, and what its true legacy is. This study makes use of recent research on the Radical Enlightenment by Princeton historian Jonathan Israel and others to investigate if German literature of the late Enlightenment supports the idea that the Enlightenment is better understood as having a Radical and a Moderate side. The following works of German literature serve as primary historical evidence in considering Jonathan Israel’s Radical Enlightenment hypothesis: Lessing’s Nathan der Weise, Schiller’s Die Räuber, Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, La Roche’s Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim, and Kleist’s Die Verlobung in St. Domingo. Each work is examined for an exchange of Radical and Moderate Enlightenment ideas regarding specific philosophical issues discussed in each work such as religion, politics, nature, aristocratic privilege, and race, among other topics. This study discusses the recent hypothesis of a prominent intellectual historian, as well as scholars from other fields, while also investigating closely the discussion of important philosophical issues in German literature of a time that brought Western society many of the values it still holds today.