‘Das Orakel der Deisten’: Shaftesbury und die deutsche Aufklärung by Mark-Georg Dehrmann

Abstract

272 Reviews An interesting analysis of Burkhard Waldis's Deparabell vam verlorn Szohn (1527), which introduces a repentant brothel-keeper to serve as a stark contrast to the self-righteous elder brother, thus exemplifying the inadequacy of a works-based approach to justification, is followed by discussion of a Catholic response to this text. The study concludes rather disappointingly with a very short discussion of sub sequent developments, mentioning the influence of Jesuitdrama, and the changes brought about by the introduction of fixed stages and troupes of professional play ers. Although Washof wants clearly to distinguish the earlier from the later plays, the brief treatment suggests an over-simplified discontinuity. For themost part this is a useful and clearlywritten study,which offers an introduction to the genre and discusses little-known plays. But one cannot help wondering whether the dramatic strategies employed by thewriters to convey theirhomilies would not have merited greater attention. King's College London Anna Linton 'Das Orakel der Deisten: Shaftesbury und die deutsche Aufklarung. By Mark Georg Dehrmann. Gottingen: Wallstein. 2008. 499 pp. 52. ISBN 978-3 8353-0233-4. Shaftesbury has long been cited as a major influence on eighteenth-century Ger man literature and thought, but no comprehensive study of his reception has yet existed. Mark-Georg Dehrmann's monograph remedies this deficiency. A Whig and opponent of High Church Anglicanism and royalist Toryism, Shaftesbury was perceived by some inGermany as a dangerous subversive (J.L. Mosheim called him 'das Orakel der Deisten'), and by others as a progressive thinkerwho based morality on secular principles. Leibniz, who discovered him in 1709, shared his Platonic proclivities and welcomed him as an ally in the defence of optimism against the scepticism of Bayle. Gottsched praised him forgrounding taste not on courtly convention but on our natural appreciation of cosmic harmony. Towards themiddle of the century,Gleim, Ramler, and Sulzer found confirmation of their own Empfindsamkeit in Shaftesbury's rhapsodic sentiments, and through the Berlin theologian J. J.Spalding, Shaftesbury influenced the rise of neology, that tendency in Lutheran thought to reduce Christian theology to natural reli gion. Mendelssohn, Nicolai, and Lessing were impressed by Shaftesbury's informal manner, and his dialogic style, subtle irony, and elegant diction were imitated by Mendelssohn inhis Briefe tiberdie Empfindungen. Contrary to received opinion, Shaftesbury's influence rapidly waned during the second half of the century. From the start, his reception had been partial and diffuse. Until a more or less complete translation of his Characteristics appeared in 1776-79, readers without access to the original had to rely on second-hand accounts and scattered translations of thework's constituent items such as 'The Moralists' and the 'Letter concerning Enthusiasm'. His unsystematic thought had MLR, 105.1, 2010 273 limited appeal to German philosophers, and his ideas were often assimilated to Wolffian rationalism. Two figures nevertheless continued to take him seriously, namely Wieland and Herder. He played a vital part inWieland's 'metamorphosis' in the early 1760s from ethereal religiosity to a combination of Platonic idealism and wry scepti cism, andWieland's fundamental concepts of 'moral grace', kalokagathia, and the 'virtuoso' are avowedly borrowed from Shaftesbury. In the frequent deflations, in Wieland's novels and poems, of obsessive idealists and Schwarmer, Shaftesbury's 'testof ridicule' is applied as a heuristic device to overcome delusion and restore the victim to normality. In short, from his 'metamorphosis' onwards, Wieland remained Shaftesbury's closest German adherent. For over a century, Shaftesbury's definition of the poet as 'a second Maker, a just Prometheus under Jove' has been described as a major inspiration of the Sturm und Drang cult of genius and ofGoethe's presentation of Prometheus as a rebel against divine authority. It has also been claimed that Shaftesbury was the main source of the nature pantheism ofHerder and Goethe in the 1780s (thereby providing an Aryan substitute for Spinoza as an ancestor ofWeimar classicism). But as Dehrmann convincingly demonstrates, the young Herder's image, subse quently adopted byGoethe, of the genius as a defiant Prometheus stealing fire from heaven is derived not from Shaftesbury, whom he had not yet encountered, but fromEdward Young's Conjectures on Original Composition. And although Herder's 'Hymn...