Faith and Reason: Schiller's “Die Sendung Moses”

Abstract

In Schiller's re‐interpretation of Moses' life, Moses becomes the archetypical poet/writer who, like Schiller himself, was committed to converting his audience to “truth” by appealing to their base instincts and ingrained habits. In “Die Sendung Moses” Schiller uses a widely known biblical source to reinterpret the beginnings of monotheist religion in a way that supports his Enlightenment anthropology. The question is whether Schiller's elevation of reason to the status of a Vernunftreligion prepares the path for the tyranny of reason, and whether the concomitant devaluation of “bare life” (Agamben) paves the way for a political theology that justifies human sacrifice in the name of ethical ideals, thus creating a fertile ground for nineteenth‐century imperialist and, even worse, racist fantasies. My reading of “Die Sendung Moses” suggests that while Schiller seems to favor an abstract universal truth over and against the particular rights of individuals, the text shows also the price that this favoring exacts from the individual and thus points to Schiller's own struggle with the Enlightenment's coercive potential.