Lessing Liked God and Drama

The story so far...

In his quest to discover the meaning of Dramaturgy, Gareth K Vile has gone back in time to the eighteenth century. Noticing that Lessing first used the term in the 1740s, he is tracing the relationship between Enlightenment thought and the functions of Dramaturgy. He's convinced that placing Dramaturgy within the context of its genesis, he'll be able to create a working definition that allows him to further his studies. 

My suspicion is that the past is constantly in a process of revision. Rather like in those X-Men adventures when a character goes back in time to prevent a particular event, which then changes history, contemporary thinkers re-evaluate their ancestors in an attempt to prove their own position.

I've been looking up Lessing, and just discovered the other academic discipline that is still interested in his writings. Turns out that the son of a preacher-man did some theology. In 1961, Irving Louis Horowitz examined Lessing's theology (Lessing and Hamann: Two Views on Religion and Enlightenment: Church History, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Sep., 1961)). Far from being a complete religious sceptic, Lessing attempted to reconcile religious revelation and reason. He's kind of a compromise between the anti-clerical thoughts of Diderot and a more philosophical - and mystical - Christian tradition.

Apart from challenging the mythology of a 'secular Enlightenment', Horowitz's essay notes that Lessing identified God as 'immanent' rather than 'transcendental'. Roughly, his notion is that God exists within the Universe, and doesn't sit on a big throne stroking his beard. Immanence ranges across a wide set of models, from a pagan pantheism where God is the physical universe (and nothing more) to a Christian view of the divine as incarnated within the world. 

There might be a big 'so what?' about to follow, but here's the thing. The Enlightenment - say in Anthony Pagden's Big Cool Tome - is often interpreted as a break with religious thought. Kant's reply to the question 'what is enlightenment?' (TL;DR: 'grow up') is taken as a rejection of the 'authority through revelation model' encouraged by churches. But Lessing doesn't go that far. He sustains a dialogue with religious thought. 

He doesn't dethrone reason, but he does see it in collaboration with spiritual faith. His ability to integrate the two approaches makes him more Reasonable than some of the more explicitly atheistic thinkers, and while he locates religious sentiment within the personal rather than social sphere, he's not abandoning the Christian tradition for an all-new, sparkling godless universe. 

I fear we are still in the 'so what?' zone.

Well, there's the idea that continuity is important when considering the Enlightenment. Then there is the question of how a theological thinker might perceive theatre. Knowing that Lessing rejected the more Catholic notion of 'religion as social process' but accepted a personal engagement with the spiritual might help make sense of how he would then interpret various plays. It's all conjecture, but give it a chance...

Diderot Diddles Dialogue

'Despite the official Vile Arts' line on the enlightenment (it inevitably led to both fascism and the corporate takeover of culture), today's guest has been revivified from the era of the philosophes. Denis Diderot wrote a book that stated the necessary conditions for creativity - sadly, his dictum that 'he who needs rules will never get far' is rather negated by the rules he then describes. However, it is a good place to begin today's discussion. Denis, can you tell us about Rameau's Nephew?'

'Thank you, Gareth. It's a dialogue between myself, a philosopher and a cheeky ruffian called Rameau. It is what you might call an ontological representation of a mental reality.'

'It is actually what Professor Boden might call it, in the chapter after the one I'm ripping off for this post. What I feel is that the two characters represent different aspects of the human psyche: the rational and the emotional.'

'It is exactly that. Elsewhere, I remark on the paradox of theatre - it is a lie that tells the truth. The actor pretends, the audience pretend that the actor is not pretending and so learns a truth. Here, I leave unresolved another interior tension, between the passions - the romantic sensibility, if you will - and the intellect - the more classical mode of thinking.'

'You might not give an answer to which one is right, but by using the dialectical form, you are situating your work in the classical tradition, like Plato. This implies that the intellect is necessary even to frame the conflict. So, you give implicit victory to the philosopher.'

'But look again. What is a dialogue but an argument. And is not argument the very domain of passions?'

'Interestingly, I see a parallel between Rameau's Nephew and the ancient Hindu myth of Shiva and Shakti. Shiva is like Rameau - naughty, lower-class, feckless. And Shakti is the householder, patiently awaiting the return of her passionate lover.'

'Yes. But that is religion. I am an academic.'

With thanks to The Concept of Dialogue by Magnus Florin, Bo Goranzon and Per Sallstrom.