Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- I Wieland and Herder
- II Schiller and Goethe
- III Kleist and Hölderlin
- IV Leibniz, Spinoza, and Their Legacy
- 9 Leibniz Reception around 1800: Monadic Vitalism and Aesthetic Harmony
- 10 “The Magic Formula We All Seek”: Spinoza + Fichte = x
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
9 - Leibniz Reception around 1800: Monadic Vitalism and Aesthetic Harmony
from IV - Leibniz, Spinoza, and Their Legacy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- I Wieland and Herder
- II Schiller and Goethe
- III Kleist and Hölderlin
- IV Leibniz, Spinoza, and Their Legacy
- 9 Leibniz Reception around 1800: Monadic Vitalism and Aesthetic Harmony
- 10 “The Magic Formula We All Seek”: Spinoza + Fichte = x
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Summary
O meine Freunde, warum sollten wir scharfsinniger als Leibnitz … scheinen wollen…?
[O my friends, why should we try to appear more sharp-witted than Leibniz…?]
—Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, “Leibnitz von den ewigen Strafen”[Leibniz] ein materieller Idealist von der subtileren Art… [a most subtle materialist Idealist…]
—Jacobi, Über die Lehre des Spinoza in BriefenIn chapter 10 of The Romantic Imperative, “Religion and Politics in Frühromantik,” Frederick Beiser argues for the significance of Herder in the crucial process of reinterpreting Spinoza at the end of the eighteenth century in Germany. Specifically, Herder's 1787 Gott: Einige Gespräche (God: Some Dialogues) introduced a “vitalistic” reading of Spinoza and “self-consciously fuse[d] him with his great metaphysical contemporary: Leibniz.” However, besides another brief mention of Herder's belief in “combining Spinoza's monism and naturalism with Leibniz's vitalism” (182), Leibniz falls out of Beiser's story. In Beiser's earlier Fate of Reason Leibniz suffers the same fate, disappearing in the excellent and gripping tale of the so-called Pantheism controversy around Spinoza. Given the weight of Beiser's account, this essay undertakes what many a novel has done with, say, Jane Austen or Gone with the Wind, namely, a shift in focus onto a minor or at least somewhat neglected character in order to let Leibniz emerge from the immense shadow cast by Spinoza.
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- Religion, Reason, and Culture in the Age of Goethe , pp. 209 - 243Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013