Grace in a Time of War: Herder’s ‘Das Fest der Grazien’ between Schiller and Hölderlin

Abstract

This article situates Herder’s little-read essay ‘Das Fest der Grazien’ (1795) in the conceptual history of grace between Schiller and Hölderlin. All three authors champion grace as an answer to modern conflict and division. But while Schiller articulates his theory of grace on the basis of Kantian dualisms, Herder and Hölderlin both turn to ancient Greek conceptions of charis and to an emphasis on the gratuitousness of grace, or of grace as gift and as gratitude. Herder argues implicitly against Schiller’s isolated observers of grace in order to emphasize interdependence rather than autonomy, participation rather than observation, and he stages a fictionalized scene of persuasion as a strategy to help persuade us of his claims. Hölderlin presents a similar understanding of grace but avoids strategies of persuasion, replacing them with a discourse of invitation, fidelity, and hope. Thus if for Herder grace in its gift-quality is always already present and need only be recognized, for Hölderlin grace is an event that happens to us, perennially unexpected and yet also surprisingly often even in a time of conflict and war.