The Discipline of Pious Reason: Goethe, Herder, Kant Daniel ...

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alternative ideals than union can ‘the most dangerous dream’ of infinite oneness be avoided. Neoplatonic piety and the increasing engulfment of God on which it is premised should be thwarted, in favour of keeping God at a distance. Humanity should strive for an artificial and improper relation to the deity which does not succumb to natural attraction. Moreover, by means of his ethics of friendship, Herder claims to have explained the mystery of individuation Hemsterhuis was unable to solve: individual existence is necessary for the experience of a different, more valuable relation than that which unification brings. Individuation is necessary for friendship, and so Herder concludes, ‘The supreme good that God could grant all creatures was and is individual existence.’ (ibid, 4:423-4; p. 120) [B] ‘Ethical Neo-Spinozism’ The dispute between the superiority of friendship and love is, as I have mentioned, of classical origin and was preserved in the humanist tradition. However, surprisingly, it is not on this tradition that Herder draws (at least explicitly); instead, Liebe und Selbstheit is littered with allusions to Spinoza’s Ethics. For example, Herder writes, By giving and acting, rather than receiving and being passive, our existence necessarily will become ever freer and more effective from stage to stage, our pleasure will become less damaging and destructive, and we will learn to taste ever more joy. (ibid, 4:423; p. 120) This juxtaposition of joy, activity, pleasure and freedom is extremely Spinozist. For example, Spinoza writes, ‘By joy, therefore, I shall understand… that passion by which the mind passes to a greater perfection’ (1994, IIIP11D), and by ‘greater
perfection’ Spinoza means the becoming more active of the mind (ibid, IIIP11) as well as its becoming freer (ibid, VP36). Linked here is Spinoza’s understanding of conatus. When Herder exclaims, ‘You are indeed a limited, individual creature… Pull yourself together and strive on!’ (1994, 4:420; 1993, p. 118), he alludes to Spinoza’s claim that ‘the striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing.’ (1994, IIIP6) Just like Herder, Spinoza conceives of individuals in terms of an endless striving; moreover, such desire is not for something that would annihilate the individual—such as fusion with or apotheosis into the divine—rather the desire is essentially finite. It is a desire to be as active and joyful as possible within the limits of finitude. However, (as with Goethe’s Prometheus) to call Herder’s model ‘Spinozist’ seems strange—for is not Spinoza the ultimate philosopher of the One, the most rigorous and extreme monist known to Western philosophy? How then can Herder’s defence of the multiple against the One be characterised as Spinozist? Herder, I seem to be arguing, is using Spinoza to argue against monism. Moreover, it is clear that Herder is unconcerned with historical and philosophical accuracy here. For example, the implicit contrast he establishes between Spinozism and neoplatonism, while plausible in some respects, cannot be maintained as sharply as he intends. Second, to align Spinoza with an ethics of friendship in opposition to an ethics of love is once more puzzling: since love (especially ‘the intellectual love of God’) plays a crucial role in the latter parts of the Ethics, while the concept of friendship does not (1994, IIIP59S, IVP37S1). Herder’s Spinoza is therefore inaccurate; indeed, ‘Spinoza’ is little more than the name of a ‘heretic’ whose attack on Orthodoxy Herder is here repeating (on a smaller scale). Spinoza is an ideological ally in the destruction of traditional
Page 1 and 2: The Discipline of Pious Reason: Goe
Page 3 and 4: More concretely, Goethe, Herder and
Page 5 and 6: that embrace human and God ascend b
Page 7 and 8: Your own majesty On sacrificial off
Page 9 and 10: question dominant pieties’ (Goodc
Page 11 and 12: Spinoza revival; this is one of the
Page 13 and 14: The similarity to Ganymed is immedi
Page 15 and 16: I conclude from this that everythin
Page 17 and 18: an improvement upon carnal ones pre
Page 19 and 20: Thus, having begun with the intenti
Page 21: 4:423; p. 120). Humanity’s finitu
Page 25 and 26: Or again, J.G. Müller reports the
Page 27 and 28: Winckelmann, Wieland and Mendelssoh
Page 29 and 30: In the lectures Kant gave on the Me
Page 31 and 32: Kant here almost falls into contrad
Page 33 and 34: The other must always be kept at th
Page 35 and 36: naming possible. 27 This is not a n
Page 37 and 38: unnecessary. Dogmatic philosophy of
Page 39 and 40: Bibliography Abrams, M.H. (1971), N
Page 41 and 42: Johnson, B. A. (2010), ‘Making al
Page 43 and 44: 1 As will become clear as the essay
Page 45 and 46: 18 Of course, I am not claiming tha

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