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New German Critique

Enlightenment against Fundamentalism: The Example of Lessing

Author(s): Agnes Heller and David Caldwell

Source: New German Critique, No. 23 (Spring - Summer, 1981), pp. 13-26

Published by: Duke University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/487934

Accessed: 26-10-2015 13:42 UTC

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Enlightenment against Fundamentalism: The Example of Lessing*

by Agnes Heller

It was a double joy for me to be honored with the Lessing Prize by the Senate of the Free Hanseatic City of Hamburg. Honor and recognition previously had not been my companions in life, and it was precisely their absence which I took for an indication that the path I had decided to follow was more honorable than that of conformity, which I have avoided. Thus I have cultivated in my character an almost instinctive mistrust of all institutional honors, a mistrust bordering on arrogance. However, since, as the jury's decision states, politicially engaged philosophy is being honored with my award, a philosophy which also has political enlightenment as its goal, I am setting aside my arrogance quite willingly today and accept this prize with happy thanks.

I am doubly glad that the prize carries the name of Lessing. I was three years old when my father first told me the parable of the three rings. Perhaps he had started out on the third level of the education of human- kind. So it is no wonder that for several years the rapture of the Knight Templar was more appealing to me than the wisdom of Nathan. Even so, I believe that the subterranean influence of this story, which was told to me at such an early age, contributed to my liberation from a self-incurred immaturity. Since then my relationship to Lessing has always been an intimate one. The word "intimacy" is completely applicable here. The philosophical structures of Aristotle, Kant or Marx have influenced my thought profoundly. But I would not have been able to deal on a personal level with the people who created these structures: I never would have chosen them for my friends. Lessing, however, was and still is my friend. He extends his hand to us, he imparts no uneasiness in us with his greatness: he is on our level. In The Hamburg Dramaturgy Lessing writes the following about Socrates: "Beautiful aphorisms and morals are pre- cisely what we hear least from a philosopher such as Socrates; the way in which he leads his life is the only morality which he preaches. But knowing humanity and ourselves, to be attentive to our feelings; . . . to judge each thing according to its intention, this is what we -learn in association with

* Acceptance speech for the Lessing Prize, awarded February 20, 1981.

13

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14 Heller

him. This is what Euripides learned from Socrates. Happy is the poet who has such a friend and can call upon him for advice at any time." Lessing portrayed himself here, just as we see him today. Yet Socrates had written nothing, only his personal pupils were so fortunate as to be able to consult with him in daily conversations. But Lessing left us his writings. Although they are texts, they have the effect of the spoken word: Lessing speaks directly to us. In this way he honors us with his friendship two hundred years after his death. We can call upon him at any hour of any day.

How much has happened in these last two centuries! There were intermittent periods in which one arrogantly and mistakenly came to believe that there was nothing more to be learned from Lessing. Once more these times have passed. Today we anxiously enter into friendship with him again. His silent prayer to Providence comes also to our lips: Let me not despair of you, even though your footsteps would seem to me to be in retreat.

Fundamentalism is flourishing once again. Even its traditional forms, which the Enlightenment thought to have banished forever from the world, now hold sway over a wide following, not only in the West, but in the East, and in the Third World as well. The fundamentalist offensive affects every human relationship. From the bedroom to the courtroom, from our education to our decisions between social and political alternatives, the fundamentalists want to determine, regulate and control all those means by which we find expression for our lives. There are others who do this as well: non-traditional fundamentalists who derive their "singular truths," whether they be of nationalistic or idealistic nature, not from the god in heaven but from false deities here on earth. However, anyone who acknowledges the Enlightenment today is not likely to respond to the recent renunication of the Enlightenment with a cruelly misanthropic laughter, the kind of laughter which filled Minna von Barnhelm with terror. For misanthropy is in itself actually a way of renouncing the Enlightenment. Those who have remained true to the Enlightenment should learn instead to understand the human needs which find expression, even if in distorted form, in the modern fundamentalists.

Adorno and Horkheimer have already taken up this task. However, a justified despair, characteristic of their time, drove them so far as to see the blame for the renunciation of the Enlightenment as lying within the Enlightenment itself. They did not take the second, even more important step of challenging that tradition of the Enlightenment which recom- mended an undistorted and non-fundamentalist fulfillment of the needs which manifest themselves in fundamentalism. In the shadow of Sade's Justine, Emilia Galotti was forgotten. Not a single word in this critique of the Enlightenment refers to the case of Lessing. Lessing was far from being

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Enlightenment against Fundamentalism 15

a guardian of instrumental rationality. It was not true knowledge, rather the truth, or better put, truths in the plural, with which he confronted fundamentalism. Truth to Lessing was the unity of the true and the good. The highest expression of truth is not constructing an exact science, but being able to make oneself amiable and pleasing to others. Lessing considers the only good argument to be the one which leads to good deeds, which wants to accomplish good deeds. Moreover, goodness without cleverness stands higher in his hierarchy of values than does cleverness without goodness. Only the friar completely reveals himself to Nathan. He says, concerning the decisive tragedy of his life, "I tell it only from pious simplicity." And when he speaks of the tyranny of the "one ring," he does not only mean by that the fundamentalism of traditional religions. Lessing knew, he had foreseen, that the Enlightenment, too, can lead to the tyranny of the "one ring." Even the Freemason is not supposed to belong to just one lodge. The defense of Moliere's Misanthrope against Rousseau is also evidence of his farsightedness. The inhumanity of moral rigor was understood by Lessing as a new kind of fundamentalism. The Education of Humankind, no matter how very naively progressive its conception might seem to be, does have its widsom. The work is not concerned with denouncing the old laws as empty names and mere fancies after the model of instrumental rationality. The true idea of freedom is to free oneself completely from the utilitarian rationality found in human relations - even in its subtle form as a belief in personal immortality, a belief which always contains the relationship of means and ends. Lessing remarks in this connection, "It will come, it definitely will come - the time of comple- tion, because humans, the more convinced they are in their understanding of an increasingly better future, at the same time will not need to rely on this future as motivation for their actions, because humans will do what is good, because it is good..."

When Adorno and Horkheimer maintain that the Enlightenment failed to establish morality because it failed to establish general principles, it must be added that this was not at all Lessing's intention. Quite the contrary: these kinds of general principles again would have meant for him the tyranny of the one ring, the tyranny which he so resolutely opposed. If truth is the unity of the true and the good, then it can be confirmed only retrospectively. In the event that the truth is acknowledged as being amiable and pleasant, then today one cannot formulate commonly valid principles of morality. There are a variety of persuasions, and all of them have their own particularly appropriate principles. One can be good in a variety of ways, which means attaining the good; but one should be good, even if in different ways. There is a moral principle concealed here which, in defiance of pluralism, could be described as the regulative idea of truth. Though we do not know what truth is, we can nevertheless - making use now of Hegel's formulation - still be in the truth.

We can accomplish this in various ways. We can be in the truth on the

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16 Heller

basis of our different persuasions and personalities, but the attempt is possible for us all. One is in the truth when one reasonably applies one's own principles, argues on their behalf, and openly listens to the arguments of others. Openness of character, which after all makes rational discourse possible, is itself not grounded in this rational discourse, rather in religio, in the ties that bind human beings to fellow human beings. Lessing had already established as a fundamental principle something which Goethe would later formulate in these terms: Ideas cannot be tolerant, but character should be tolerant. If one has arrived at truth, one must be completely convinced that one's own principles, and not those of another, are the true ones. The idea of tolerance does not tolerate even the idea of intolerance. If this were to mean, though, that those who acknowledge the idea of tolerance did not tolerate the needs, and more especially the personal existence, of those who are intolerant, then the work of the Enlightenment would be futile from its very outset.

Such was certainly not Lessing's intent. With Lessing rational discourse is always accompanied by religio, by the bond between those who argue a point and all other human beings, by openness of character with regard to all human needs, feelings, and especially with regard to all human suffer- ing. For this reason morality becomes deed. At this point I would like to refer to Hannah Arendt's splendid essay and add a critical comment: Nathan had not sacrificed truth for friendship, because in Lessing's view friendship, in that it means a recognition of the needs of others, becomes a symbol for religio. Friendship belongs to truth, because it belongs to that which is good. In order that our own convictions might open doors to others and not close them, we must act in such a way that our truth can find acceptance and favor from humanity. Accordingly, we ourselves should also be pleasing and amiable, for that which is pleasing and amiable in us is part of the truth of our conviction. When Falk, in Conversations for Freemasons, explains his ideas to his friend Ernst, he adds that his cautious formulations should not be understood as a "lack of personal conviction." The feeling for tact which, as Lukics had already noted, played a central role in Lessing's ethics, is a decisive trait of the moral character. It contributes quite emphatically to making our convictions pleasing and amiable.

The fact that the two components of good are quite inseparable - that is, rational argument and openness of character toward all human suffering and need - has as a consequence a situation in which for Lessing the public and private spheres are indistinguishable. There is only a continuous step-ladder of spheres, which also overlap one another. It is not the historical function of his greatest dramas which makes them so attractive today. Of course, we know about the decisive role which the bourgeois drama played in the German theater of Lessing's time. But this interests us only as historical knowledge. In our emotional and intellectual world these dramas are more symbolic portrayals of universal human relationships; not

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Enlightenment against Fundamentalism 17

only in the usual sense of all great accomplishments of the human mind, but also in a more specific sense. To quote Conversations for Freemasons once again, Falk characterizes Freemasonry with these words: "For it is not based on external relations, which so easily deteriorate into bourgeois proscriptions, rather on the mutual feeling of sympathizing minds." One even could say that the bourgeois proscriptions mentioned above play only a very superficial role in most of Lessing's works. Of course, this superficial role also has a specific function, and I will return to it later.

However, the aforementioned bourgeois determinants do not at all define the quality of human relations. Those who are evil and those who are good confront each other as evil people and good people, as "naked souls," and not as representatives of their groups. In this sense, and of course only in this sense, Lessing is very close to Dostoevsky. The sudden catharsis of the tyrant at the end of Emilia Galotti can be understood only from this viewpoint, as long as one does not wish to ascribe a naive optimism to Lessing, which we have absolutely no reason to do. One certainly cannot imagine a Richard III, a Macbeth or even a King Philipp suddenly acknowledging Good at a drama's end. Alienated political power is totally incapable of making such a gesture. Still, in light of the death of innocence, the prince behaves not like a prince, rather like a guilty person - like Raskolnikov. With Lessing, the human being is not at all determined by the level of power or class. Power has no logic. There is only one logic: that of human relationships. For this reason people can deplete power as far as they are able, in order to support and preserve the Good in their human relationships.

Power exists only insofar as it is capable of crippling human relations. This it can do only when it is somehow internalized. The depletion of power is the process through which people free themselves of such internaliza- tion. All three of Lessing's greatest dramas vary this basically stoic idea, although always in a modernized fashion. However, in the final variation, Nathan the Wise, Lessing succeeds in overcoming seclusion, in which the old stoic notion is perpetually concealed. Emilia Galotti and Minna von Barnhelm portray the tragic and non-tragic possibilities for the depletion of power as they existed in Lessing's time. Nonetheless, the outcome of Nathan is a philosophical utopia. Power is depleted within the institutions of bourgeois society, and it is simultaneously humanized: That is why the story is conceived in the form of a fairy tale.

Today, no less than in Lessing's time, there arise boundary situations in which one can deplete power only by means of voluntary death. Suicide is the extreme variant of seclusion. However, if the only other alternative is the internalization of tyrannical power, the complete loss of one's own personality, the renunciation of moral obligations, precisely this kind of escape is the only choice worthy of humanity. Emilia Galotti shows herself to be a genuine and profound thinker when she designates the essence of power with these words: "Violence! Violence! Who cannot oppose vio-

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18 Heller

lence? Violence means nothing. Seduction is true violence." Emilia chooses death, not because she is incapable of defying violence, but because she feels herself too weak to defy seduction. She knows that were she to go on living, she would completely internalize the power of the tyrant and could be brought so far as to subjugate herself voluntarily to the man who murdered her lover. Voluntarily, yet not as a free person, for is a person free who voluntarily follows the siren-song of the tyrant?

Unfortunately, we who live amid the tyrannical twists of twentieth- century fate can understand the message of Emilia Galotti only too well. What was the basis of Hitler's and Stalin's power, if not seduction? What would their violence have been without seduction? Nothing at all. The same people who were seduced by one of these two powers could not always defy the other power. But once one confronts seduction without any means of opposition, voluntary death remains as the only solution, as long as one wishes to maintain one's personal freedom. When I read Emilia Galotti, Koestler's Darkness at Noon comes immediately to mind. This book, too, deals with violence as seduction. "Die in silence" appears on the anonymous note which was passed to Rubashov before the trial. Yet Rubashov does not respond to the voice of moral law. Instead of breaking out of the Satanic circle, he once again submits to seduction. Rather than depleting the power that killed his loved ones, he legitimates that same power through his own voluntary and internalized obedience. For this reason his is not a tragic character, even though he, too, is killed. We are aware that a similar fate awaits Emilia Galotti. Countess Orsina had already warned Emilia's father that the prince was accustomed to leaving his seduced women to their fates after only a few days. Yet Emilia Galotti does not fear her demise, rather she fears that which comes between free choice and her demise. That is what Rubashov does not fear enough.

In Minna von Barnhelm power is depleted in a non-tragic way. The situation here is also an extreme one, although in a quite different sense than in Emilia Galotti. Power is disposed of in an extreme form, that is, it is not personified in any way in the comedy. It is present only in the mind and character of Tellheim as an idde fixe. Tellheim's fixation with power is both positive and negative. He feels offended by his power, even disgraced. The thought that power is capable of disgracing us legitimates it as a source of honor. The thought that power can offend us, legitimates it as a source of recognition. But for Minna power is empty from the very outset. She understands Tellheim's fixation, yet does not share it in the least. Even the concept of an honor bestowed by power is tautological for Minna. Con- sider this dialogue: von Tellheim: "Honor is not the voice of our con- science, not the pronouncement of a few righteous people . . ." Das Friiulein: "No, no, I know, Honor is - honor." This ironic tautology is no less a gesture of the depletion of power than was Emilia Galotti's tragic monologue. What sort of moral category is it, that does not contain the voice of our conscience, nor even the pronouncement of a few righteous people? As a moral category it can only be completely empty, and that

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Enlightenment against Fundamentalism 19

which is empty is not binding. A merely external honor is only the facade of power, because it says nothing about the human being, only something about the "bourgeois determinants" of the human being. At first Minna wants to use love to overcome Tellheim's fixation for power, which inter- twines itself with offenses. Yet she refuses to. She does not refuse, however, to follow through on her decision to cure the fixation with compassion. Tellheim remarks: Vexation and obstinate wrath had clouded all of my soul; love could create no light, even on the path of fullest fortune. But love sends her daughter, compassion, and opens once more all the passages of my soul to the touches of tenderness ... From this moment on, I will respond to the injustice which befalls me here with nothing but contempt. Is this country the world? Does the sun rise only here? With these words Tellheim's twofold power-fixation is broken. Power is now held in contempt, it is depleted. There is seclusion here as well, and though not of great significance, it is still important. The decision to withdraw from the world of power stands as Tellheim's last word, since the power which he now despises offers him satisfaction. At the end of the comedy, a good woman and a sincere friend are the values which comprise a life of human dignity for both Tellheim and Werner.

Depletion of power is a theme composed in double orchestration in the philosophical utopia of Nathan the Wise. It breaks down into primary and secondary themes which respond to each other, raising the problem to a theoretically, though not artistically, higher niveau, and solving it there. A humanly dignified seclusion appears in one of the secondary themes of the play, namely in the fate of El-Hafi, who relinquishes his fortune and position of power and returns to the desert. Nathan, however, does not go into the desert, even after sending El-Hafi off with the exquisite statement that the only true king is the true beggar. El-Hafi depletes power in a stoic fashion but does not contribute to the humanization of power. The destiny of the patriarch is just as much a story of the depletion of power. As long as the friar obeys the patriarch, as long as the Knight Templar turns to him for advice, he is a typical and frequently recurring Machiavellian-fundamental- ist combination, a power no less threatening than the prince in Emilia Galotti. From the moment at which he is no longer obeyed, his position of power becomes a mere shell, depleted of the seed of evil. His terrible threat to have the Jew burned at the stake sounds almost comical, because a leader without a following is always comical. Here we find ourselves at the maximal moral possibilities of the times - of Lessing's time and of contemporary times. But in the dialogue between Saladin and Nathan, the story is raised (aufgehoben) to a philosophical utopia. "Raised" is meant here in the Hegelian sense of the word. Nathan also had the opportunity to deplete Saladin's power through his own voluntary death, but he chose to follow a different course. On the one hand he depletes the power which is directed against humanity, but at the same time he humanizes this power by converting it into a power which benefits human- ity. He knows that Saladin will use the truth for entrapment. So he

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20 Heller

presents Saladin with a truth which in no way can be used as a trap. Once this truth becomes a regulative conception of power, it no longer can be directed against humanity. Then power no longer can serve people as a mere means. This is that utopia which I designated as the "humanization of power." Power is depleted in that it is pluralized. There is no power, rather there are powers, just as there also is no longer a truth, there are only truths. In order to reach truth, power must make itself pleasing and amiable to people, and it must be capable of entering into a relationship with other truths and powers which would allow for exchange among them.

It is easy to see that this philosophical utopia also contains within it a kind of skepticism. In Conversations for Freemasons we read the following dialogue: "Falk: Thus order must be able to exist even in the absence of government. Ernst: If each individual knows how to govern himself, why not? Falk: Do you think people will ever come to such a point? Ernst: I hardly think so. Falk: A pity. Ernst: Yes, it is." The pluralization and humanization of powers is the maximum of which the human race is capable. As Falk puts it, "The sum total of the individual happinesses of all the members is the happiness of the state. Other than this happiness there is none. Every other happiness of the state in which even only a few individual members suffer, and must suffer, is the cloaking of tyranny. Nothing else!"

In the above sentence the word "must" was emphasized by Lessing. Indeed, were the powers to be humanized, then no individual members of the state would have to suffer. But even the best state is a balance of power. The state cannot unite the people without simultaneously dividing them. As Falk expressed it: "People would then still be Jews and Chris- tians, and Turks and such . . they will behave not as mere people against mere people, but as this kind of person against that kind of person. They will make a certain spiritual preference contentious and then base their rights on it . . ." Only in the light of Conversations for Freemasons does the theoretical implication of Nathan's statement, "I am a human being!" become really clear. This statement is not to be understood as a denial of his Jewishness. In the sphere of humanized power, he is a particular kind of person, a Jew, a merchant. But humanized power is also inhuman, because it still divides people in the process of uniting them. To be simply "a human being" is an acknowledgement of the relative depletion of humanized power through direct personal relations. The human being should rebuke inhuman power, resist its temptation, be free of its determinants. How- ever, if humanization of power is possible, then one shares it; then one does not go into the desert; then it is not necessary, as Nathan says, for truth to die. As Hannah Arendt accurately noted, the discourse of the plural truths and powers is the form assumed by discussion among all separate entities. But friendship, this symbol of direct human relations, does not exhaust itself in this discourse. "Mere human beings" can extend their hand to other "mere human beings" only when they do not identify

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Enlightenment against Fundamentalism 21

themselves with their roles in the political discourse. The Aristotelian distinction between the good citizen and the good person appears here once again. The latter implies the former, but is also something more. That is why I have said that the concept of depletion of power in the philosophi- cal utopia of Nathan the Wise is raised in a Hegelian sense: it is negated, but also preserved on a higher level. Discourse and religio are combined once again.

In the three Lessing dramas analyzed above, power appears in three totally different forms. In Nathan the Wise it is fundamentalist, in Minna von Barnhelm it is bureaucratic, and in Emilia Galotti it is cynical and tyrannical. Percisely for this reason the critique of Dialectic of Enlighten- ment is not at all applicable to Lessing. When Lessing goes to battle against fundamentalism, he wants to follow a course which will prevent the bureaucratic, as well as the cynical or tyrannical principle from taking the place of fundamentalism. The differentiation between the "immoral" and the "unmannered" in Anti-Goetze is also intended in this sense. Only fundamentalism identifies the unmannered with the immoral. One should avoid the immoral, even if this can be accomplished only in an "unman- nered" way.

The distinction between the "moral" and the "mannered" later be- comes a basic thought in Kant's philosophy of morality. Lessing is no less radical on this point. But the morality which he places opposite "manners" is conceived as the unity of reason and the sum of the individual's feelings. Manners and morality stand opposed to each other in name and in essence. Manners are merely a rubric and are non-essential. Morality is that which is essential, even if it is not designated with a single name, that is, even if it cannot be attributed to any one concrete social idea or conviction. The moral authority is not the law, rather the good person, the person who does Good. In The Education of Humankind, Lessing describes Christ as the first dependable, practical teacher of the immortality of the soul: "The first practical teacher. - For the immortality of the soul as a philo- sophical speculation, as assuming, wishing and believing, is something else. It is something else to order one's deeds, both internal and external, accordingly." And he adds, "An inner purity of the heart, which served to recommend a different life, was something reserved specifically for Christ." Conversely, Sittah, in Nathan the Wise, characterizes the Chris- tians of her time in these words: "Not his virtue, rather his name should be spread everywhere... They are only concerned with the name, just the name." I must also quote from Conversations for Freemasons once more: "Falk:... This disclosure, this illumination will put you at ease and make you happy, even without being called a Freemason. Ernst: You put so much emphasis on being called something. Falk: Because one can be

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22 Heller

something without being called by that name." In one of the most sublime moments in Nathan the Wise, the problem of the unessential nature of names again appears: "Friar: Nathan! Nathan! You are a Christian! By God, you are a Christian! There was never a better Christian! Nathan: It is well with us! For what makes me a Christian in your eyes, also makes you a Jew in mine!"

I have already indicated the different between bourgeois determinants and the religio of the bond with one's fellow human beings. It is only in the sphere of the religio that the human being is, without being called anything. Only there is one "simply a human being." But we should also unremit- tingly relativize our naming of things in the bourgeois world, the world of bourgeois determinants, where it is not simple "human beings" who confront each other, but "this kind of person" confronting "that kind of person." "Are you a Freemason?" asks Ernst. And Falk answers, "I believe that is what I am." The question "What are you?" always should be answered this way, for example, "I believe I am a Christian, I believe I am a socialist, I believe I am a liberal, I believe I am a democrat." When we can answer that question merely by saying "This is what I am," then we are dealing either with organic determinants which we were not at all free to choose or rechose, or we are operating in the belief that we are quite representative of the truth, the absolute truth in our special determinants. In either event we are dealing with a kind of fundamentalism. One could answer the question as Nathan did, "I am a human being!", but with this answer we put ourselves outside bourgeois determinants and convictions, and into the sphere of the religio, the sphere of the bonds which unite human beings to one another.

Can I answer the question, "Are you your father's daughter?" with an answer such as, "I believe that I am"? No, and then again, yes. The answer is inappropriate for confirming organic relationships. In such cases a clear "yes" is the only answer. But when the question implies the free choice of a given organic relationship, then the answer "I believe that I am" is quite fitting. When one takes this into consideration, the plot development in Nathan the Wise will no longer appear to be dramatic convention, rather a symbolic confirmation of profoundly philosophical thought. Neither the Knight Templar, nor Recha, nor Nathan are that which they appear to be. The Knight Templar is not a Franconian, he is a Turk. Recha is not a Jew; she is a Christian and the daughter of a Moslem Turk. Nathan is not Recha's father. And when Recha asks, "But is it only blood that makes a father? Only blood?", she is choosing Nathan as her father, just as Nathan had chosen her as his daughter. Recha could just as well have said, "I believe that I am Nathan's daughter," and this would have meant the following: "I have accepted the teachings of Nathan freely, and today I again accept them freely. I want to remain true to him of my own free will. I want to prove myself worthy of his goodness. I am Nathan's daughter, even if I am no longer called his daughter." According to Lessing, the merely organic relationships, a quiet acceptance of them, and an identification

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Enlightenment against Fundamentalism 23

with them are the breeding grounds of fundamentalism. The opposite pole to the organic relationship is not, however, the "mechanical" relationship, but those relationships which are freely and reasonably chosen. When something is freely chosen, then there exists an authority behind the choice: the free personality. Thus I cannot and should not say that I am what I am called, only that I believe that is what I am. With the words "I believe that is what I am," I express my determination to remain true to the profound and free movtivations of my choice, and so to remain true to myself.

I have already mentioned Lessing's concept of friendship as a symbol of purely human relationshps, of sublime relationships which exist beyond all bourgeois determinants. Friendship is freely chosen and contains nothing organic. But for this reason friendship could still be considered a symbol of bourgeois determinants, because, as we have seen, Lessing intended these determinants to be freely chosen, or newly chosen ones. In the bourgeois sphere, however, the norm of equality should be the valid one, because time and time again, bourgeois relationships give rise to inequality. Equal- ity and inequality are determinants of reflection. But friendship is a rela- tionship which stands above these determinants of reflection. It is a similar situation with love, which contains friendship. Tellheim's words, "Equality is always the most enduring bond of love," are repeated irritatingly and derisively by Minna. Equality is a quantitative determinant, but love and friendship are not quantifiable obligations. Equality is the category of business contacts, but in friendship there are no business contacts; there is only giving. One might be amazed at the important role which wealth, material goods and money play in Lessing's dramas. Only by this means could the non-essential nature of wealth, property and money within friendship be made clear. "We have, when our friend has," says Werner. When Nathan finds a friend in Saladin, he gives him more than Saladin once had wanted to forcibly take from Nathan. In friendship and in love between friends there is no "mine" and "yours." That which sepa- rates people in the bourgeois world unites them in friendship. Friend- ship is no less a reciprocal relationship than is a contract. But it is the highest form of reciprocity. It is the reciprocity of the essential. Marx expresses the same thought in his early writings. In Economic and Philo- sophic Manuscripts he writes, "Once you assume that human beings are human beings and that their relationship to the world is a human one, then you can exchange love only for love, trust only for trust, etc." And I hardly think I am going too far with my speculation when I recognize the theme of The Education of Humankind in the following sentence from Marx: "The entirety of history is the history of the preparation and development of the human being into an object of material awareness, and of the awareness of the 'human being as human being' into a necessity." Of course the young

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24 Heller

Marx was much less skeptical than Lessing. For him, the direct unity of the individual and the species was, at least in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, a social project which was universal in scope. As we know, Lessing was more modest. He imagined the direct union of the species and the individual personality within a society which - despite the plurality of truths and of powers, despite the rational and discursive relationships between these truths and powers, despite the fact that no single member of the state should have to be unhappy - nonetheless can unite its citizens only by dividing them, thus within a society where bourgeois hierarchies cannot be suspended. Today Lessing's rational utopia appears not only more worldly to us, but there also appear to be more ties between it and us than was the case with the exaggerated utopia of the young Marx. Precisely for this reason Lessing's utopia, in all its rationality, paradoxically appears more radical to us.

Lessing's utopia obliges us to perform a twofold task. On the one hand it obliges us to participate in the process of humanizing power. Lessing offers no general prescription for how we ought to go about this. We do know that in the case of a tyrannical power which can be depleted only through our self-sacrifice, we should not spare ourselves. We also know that when bureaucratic power can be depleted only by contempt and indifference, then we should learn to acquire such contempt and indiffer- ence. But we know, too, that the humanization of power has perhaps the best chance of success when one is capable of pluralizing powers and truths and entering into rational discourse with them. We are aware that in order to be true to our obligations, we must free ourselves from every kind of fundamentalism and from all identification with our organic determinants, thus answering the question whether we are this or that with the statement, "I believe this is what I am." We should keep in mind yet another paradox from Lessing's Conversations for Freemasons: "Whatever has blood as its price, is certainly not worth blood."

The rational utopia of Lessing obliges us on the other hand to form our personal contacts as true friendships, as bonds between "mere human beings" in order that, at least here, shedding our bourgeois determinants, we can realize the unity of the individual and the species; not tomorrow, but today. However, neither of these two obligations is based purely on reason. Both stress openness of character, love of one's fellow human beings, and compassion for all human suffering. They are not identical to the rigorous demands of the categorical imperative. There are tragic situations; yet most conflicts are not tragic, and friendship is a basically serene venture. "What could the Creators more gladly see than a happy creature!" says Minna. Yes, why not happiness, when it is coupled with reason, love and compassion? If we do not trust our own senses and our character, how can we put our trust in anyone else? And without trust there is no friendship, and also no discourse.

So we must apply Lessing's words about Socrates to Lessing himself:

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Enlightenment against Fundamentalism 25

"The only morality which he preaches is the way in which he leads his life." But why should this morality be inferior to some set of generally applicable principles? Moral principles are completely empty unless they actually are upheld by at least a few active people. In order to become a practical teacher of the human race, one does not need to know how to resolve one's conflicts with the philosophical wisdom of a Nathan, rather one only needs to know how to resolve conflicts with the worldly and commonplace wisdom of a Minna. None of us is a Baron Miinchhausen, who can pull himself out of the quagmire by the tufts of his own hair: we need the hands of others. By the same token, others also need our hands. No moral philosophy, regardless of how complete and consistent it might be, can accomplish for us what another person with clear reason and open charac- ter is always capable of accomplishing for us. By leading our lives the way Lessing led his, we gain more footholds in a humanly worthy and practical ethics than we would gain from all purely philosophical principles. Inter- preting the universal norms of freedom in such a way that the interpretation is tailored to the needs of others is a simple, yet reliable rule of conduct. Still, it is no guarantee of goodness. There simply is no such guarantee. But when we do not find the better choice in some particular situation, we still always can say, along with the Knight Templar, "What I have done, I have done! Pardon me, Nathan." Is that commonplace? Nathan, in his wisdom, says, "The ultimate miracle is that true and genuine miracles can become so commonplace, and should become so commonplace."

Goethe wrote that the divine talent of the poet is to express that which he suffers. As a man of the Enlightenment, Lessing translated this divine talent into a human, a freely chosen undertaking: in his dramatic writings he bestowed this divine talent upon those who are not autonomous. With a friendly gesture he gave them the language, the word, the argument, and as a result, those who were not autonomous began to progress, to articu- late their sufferings and joys in poetic illumination. In Lessing's major dramas all the protagonists are drawn from those contemporaries of Lessing who were not autonomous. Three of them are women, and one is a Jew. Women and Jews, the outcasts of bourgeois society, who are op- pressed in every social group and class, whose contributions had been only silence and obedience, the pariahs of the world, the symbols of futility, entities which were always defined in the terms of others, who were themselves incapable of defining their own existence - these are the ones portrayed in Lessing's dramas as being morally and humanly superior. This by itself means that Lessing's art is evidence of a practical morality.

Those who were not granted this divine talent for expressing that which the human being suffers, still have the same obligation, though they do not have the same means at their disposal. To mention the problem of the

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26 Heller

theoreticians for one, they cannot give autonomy to those who do not have it, they can only speak for these people, and in their stead. Always lurking in this situation is the danger that we might impute certain needs to someone, or that we might attribute to a person a consciousness and interests, or wishes and ideas. Indeed, there is the danger here that we might fource our ring, as the only true one, onto people who are not autonomous. Relativizing truths is hardly a panacea, because this offers a solution only where there is discourse with people who already have become autonomous. There is no panacea whatsoever, but there is an idea which could serve as a rule of conduct for theoretical discourse. This idea is a deliberate partiality for reason, together with a deliberate partiality for those who suffer the most, and it means acting in the spirit of these two obligations. And this idea is Lessing's gift to us.

Translated by David Caldwell

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