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

Have you ever soothed
The pain that burdened me?
Have you ever dried
My terrified tears?
… Here I sit, making men
In my own image,
A race that shall be like me,
A race that shall suffer and weep
And know joy and delight too,
And heed you no more
Than I do! (2005, pp. 11-13)
While it might be slightly hyperbolic to claim with Boyle that ‘neither Nietzsche or
Feuerbach will add anything of emotional or intellectual significance to this outburst
of an Antichrist’ (1991, p. 164), it is certainly correct to assert that the metaphysics,
theology and ethics underlying Ganymed are here rejected in their entirety.
Prometheus forms a race of men in his own image—the image of revolt and
autonomy. Humans are hardwired to impiety. Desire for God is transformed into
desire against or despite the gods. This is what is natural to humanity: to remain selfsufficient,
liberated from divine aid and divine demands. The human individual is
born free of the gods—and this is something to be celebrated, since the gods are
despicable creatures, feeding on sacrifice, prayer and hope only to give slavery in
return. We are far away from the pious desires of Ganymed. The allure of the
theological has been neutralised. If ‘philosophy of religion has no higher task than to