Religion, Reason, and Culture in the Age of Goethe ed. by Elisabeth Krimmer and Patricia Anne Simpson (review)

Krimmer and Simpson’s editorial collaboration brings together an eclectic group of scholars, who focus on the significant theme of religion in German writing from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and represent numerous perspectives on this vast topic. The editors identify their chronological field, the “long eighteenth century,” as the period extending from Wieland through Goethe and Hegel, or from Sentimentality through Romanticism (7). However, as one might expect with such a historically weighty subject, the boundaries set by the title are elastic. If we take into account Frederick Amrine’s compelling discussion of Spinoza and Fichte and their reception in Deleuze, one acquires a sense of the great temporal expanse that the discussion of religion necessarily takes on: few subjects depend upon such an enormous tradition for their underpinnings.

The volume is composed of an introduction and ten essays, subdivided into four main sections: “I: Wieland and Herder,” including contributions by Claire Baldwin on the former and Tom Spencer on the latter; “II: Schiller and Goethe,” comprising three essays on the Weimar classicists, one each by Jeffrey High, Elisabeth Krimmer, and Jane K. Brown; “III: Kleist and Hölderlin,” with essays by Helmut Schneider, Lisa Beesley, and Patricia Anne Simpson; and “IV: Leibniz, Spinoza and Their Legacy,” which includes chapters by John H. Smith and Frederick Amrine. It is unclear why these divisions are necessary, since the essays generally address interdisciplinary topics, especially philosophy and literature; corralling them into such categories does little to elucidate their connections to one another or even to the overarching headings the sectional labels imply.

The essays range in quality from good to excellent, although the span of the subjects they treat may not be as comprehensive as the title suggests. The topics tend to be linked to specific authors, necessarily limiting the ground covered, but the articles themselves compensate for this by delving deeply into often-neglected writers such as Wieland and Stolberg. Clear writing characterizes the entire volume, and since some of the essays treat the same works or authors from different perspectives (e.g., Schneider and Beesley on Kleist’s Die heilige Cäcilie, Spencer and Smith on Herder, and several who address, at least in passing, aspects of Goethe’s Faust), the volume achieves an evenness and cohesion that contribute strongly to its overall unity.

The editors’ introduction to the volume, situating religion in the context of the social secularization that flourished in the eighteenth century, emphasizes the central role played by religious discourse throughout the period, despite copious efforts to minimize or reject it consciously. While authors such as Goethe have become iconographic for their irreligiosity, having been ascribed unorthodox, even “pagan” beliefs, they nevertheless deal copiously with religion in many of their works. As the essays clearly reveal, religion is not synonymous with orthodoxy but obtains a great variety of nuanced and dynamic significations over time, whether through historical treatments of biblical figures or outright attempts to define the psychology of spirituality.

Following the introduction, the essay by Claire Baldwin, “‘Über Glaubenssachen filosofieren’: Wieland on Reason and Religion,” addresses Wieland’s acceptance of religion’s importance in contemporary intellectual life and his insistence that it not be dismissed as superstition and thereby relegated to an irrational extreme. Instead, he brings up religious questions in essays and novels and treats religion as a powerful emotional force and a matter worthy of “filosofieren.” Next, in “Personal Impersonalism in Herder’s Conception of the Afterlife,” Tom Spencer outlines how Herder’s view of life after death evolved, as revealed in his letters to Mendelssohn and Lavater and in later philosophical writings. According to Spencer, Herder’s philosophical statements suggest a “progressive-yet-impersonal continuance of substance beyond death” (69) even while his poetic writings imply, apparently incongruously, that one may embrace death with hope and even joy. Underlying Herder’s discourse is the attempt...