The German philosopher, dramatist, and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) was one of the most brilliant representatives of the German Enlightenment and stood on the threshold of the Sturm und Drang, or Storm and Stress, movement.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the son of a parson, was born on Jan. 22, 1729, in Kamenz in der Oberlausitz near Dresden, Saxony. After early education at the Fürstenschule St. Afra in Meissen, he attended the University of Leipzig from 1746 to 1748. This "little Paris" of 18th-century Germany was the stronghold of Johann Christoph Gottsched.

Early Works

In 1748 Frau Caroline Neuber's company performed Lessing's Der junge Gelehrte, a comedy about a haughty, pedantic young scholar, composed in the French manner and, to a degree, autobiographical, as Lessing himself was in danger of becoming a bookworm. From 1749 he was a feuilletonist and critic in Berlin; his friends and acquaintances included Karl Wilhelm Ramler, Christoph Nicolai, and Moses Mendelssohn, on whom Lessing modeled the noble Jew in his Lustspiel (comedy) entitled Die Juden (1749).

With Miss Sara Sampson (1755) Lessing introduced a new German genre, the bürgerliches Trauerspiel (domestic tragedy), which turned away from the French tragedy. The play is based on the Medea theme but in an English setting.

From autumn 1755 to May 1758 Lessing was in Leipzig, where he met Ewald von Kleist, the author of Der Frühling. Kleist, mortally wounded at the battle of Kunersdorf in 1759, was Lessing's model for Tellheim in Minna von Barnhelm. In Berlin from 1759 Lessing, with Mendelssohn and Nicolai, published the Briefe, die neuesteLiteratur betreffend (referred to as Literaturbriefe). These letters, concerning the most recent literature, attacked literary facades, mediocrities, and inflated celebrities, above all Gottsched. Nobody was supposed to deny that German theater owed many improvements to Gottsched, but Lessing, in the seventeenth Literaturbrief, claimed to be that "Nobody" and repudiated indebtedness to Gottsched, who, instead of pointing to Shakespeare as Lessing did, saw in the French theater the model for Germany.

At the end of the letters Lessing published his Doktor Faust fragment (1759), a brilliantly conceived work, unfortunately never completed. In Act II, scene 3, seven spirits of hell offer their services. Faust needs the swiftest: neither the finger through the flames, nor the arrows of the plague, nor the wings of winds, nor the rays of the sun, nor the thoughts of men, nor the revenge of the revenger can be as quick as the transition from good to evil, which he chooses as his quickest servant.

In the same year Lessing wrote Abhandlungen über die Fabel and Fabeln. Abhandlungen contains five "Essays on Fable": on the essence of fable; on the use of animals, for example, the wolf and lamb, to illustrate a moral truth; on the division of the stories; on their artistic presentation; and on their use in education. Lessing lets the readers discover the moral for themselves. In this respect and others he differs from Christian Fürchtegott Gellert's treatment of fable: Gellert imitated the easy, lengthy flow of Jean de La Fontaine's narrative, whereas Lessing is almost barrenly brief; Gellert wrote in verse meter, Lessing mostly in prose; Gellert's fables reflect his own age, Lessing's are timeless.

Zerstreute Anmerkungen über das Epigramm (1771), counterpart to Abhandlungen über die Fabel, reveals Lessing's unique mastery of succinct statements, pointed modes of expression, and witty sayings. According to Lessing the Sinngedicht (epigram) is a kind of headline or inscription (as on monuments) to arouse curiosity and attention.

Middle Period

The Laokoon (1766, first part) is, next to Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Lessing's most important literary and esthetic criticism. Poetry and paintings are interpreted as essentially different expressions: actions, or things which succeed one another, are the true subjects of poetry; bodies are the true subjects of painting and sculpture. Beauty, not Johann Joachim Winckelmann's "noble simplicity and serene greatness," is the highest principle of artistic presentation. Laokoon's death agony would distort his features to an unbearable degree. The sculptor is subject to artistic laws different from those of poetry. Bildende Kunst (pictorial art) depicts bodies adjacent to one another and presented in the most pregnant moment of time, whereas literature presents actions in succession.

In 1767 Minna von Barnhelm, set in the Seven Years War, appeared, a landmark in 18th-century German drama - its first successful comedy, first truly national drama, and still a popular play. Doubtless the national elements are unmistakable, but they are not decisive in this comedy of situation (the deception with the ring, the apparent poverty, and so on) and of character (the teasing Minna and the chivalrous but rigid Tellheim). The vividly funny, mirth-provoking effects are mainly delegated to subaltern figures (Just, Franziska, and the retired sergeant major Werner), whose deeds are set against the serious, touching conflict between Tellheim and Minna, at times verging on tragedy. But their essentially generous characters assure an ultimately happy outcome.

From 1767 to 1770 Lessing was dramaturge of the national theater in Hamburg. His periodical, Hamburgische Dramaturgie, appeared on April 22, 1767, the day a national theater first opened in Germany. Lessing revealed himself as a champion of Shakespeare and a relentless critic of the slavishly observed French "three unities" of time, place, and action. For Lessing, Shakespeare was nearest to the Greek tragedians-thus in a sense a "classic" author.

It was not until the early German romantics that Shakespeare was fully understood as essentially akin to the German genius. But in a Literaturbrief Lessing maintained that, after Sophocles's Oedipus, no plays have more power over passions than Othello, King Lear, or Hamlet. Lessing translated Aristotle's fobos kai eleos as Furcht (fear; not Schrecken, or terror) and Mitleid (pity). The two terms are pivotal in the main discussions of the Hamburgische Dramaturgie: we are prompted by the fear that a similar fate may befall us; thus fear is pity transferred to ourselves.

Lessing's Letters of Antiquarian Content (Briefe anti-quarischen Inhalts, 1768-1769) arose from a bitter dispute in Halle with the antiquarian Christian Adolf Klotz, who attacked Laokoon. Another polemic against Klotz, who misunderstood a remark in Laokoon, is the inquiry into the theory about death and youth, Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet (1769), in which Lessing rightly maintains that skeletons portrayed by the ancient Greeks never were meant to symbolize death.

According to Lessing, the skeletons on sarcophagi, sepulchers, monuments, and the like portrayed lemures, or spirits of the dead. The Greeks showed death as the twin brother of sleep, as in Homer, namely as a youth. Klotz misread and deliberately obscured Lessing's statement about death in chapter 11 of Laokoon. There is no question of mawkishly glossing over the terrors of death. As a rationalist, Lessing faced the issue with unshrinking sentiment: death meant the end of suffering; Lessing, therefore, aptly concludes his erudite Untersuchung with a reference to Scripture in which an angel is the image of death.

Later Works

In the spring of 1770 Lessing went to the Brunswick Ducal Library in Wolfenbüttel, where he stayed until his death on Feb. 15, 1781. Emilia Galotti, a domestic tragedy based on the Virginia theme, appeared in 1772. Lessing's intention was to modernize the Roman story; rather than fall into the prince's seductive power, Emilia chooses to die at the hands of her father, Odoardo. The ultimate solution remains a rather unconvincing, highly intellectual exercise: Friedrich von Schlegel called it "a great example of dramatic algebra;" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spoke of a nur gedacht (thought-out) play.

Lessing's introduction of the theme of political power and arbitrary authority, however, must have found a ready response among the angry young men of his time, although the play does not advocate a violent break with traditional powers. Galotti sacrifices his daughter - he does not kill the prince. The real flaw is that Emilia Galotti has no hero. Emilia is clearly not the hero, nor is her father. Marinelli is too contemptible a villain, and the prince lacks personal stature as a ruler. Although he masters brilliant repartee, for example, in the conversation with the painter Conti, he reveals himself as a moody, irresponsible lover and ruler who is quickly ready to sign a death sentence.

From 1778 Lessing engaged in a vehement theological conflict with orthodox Protestants when he published fragments from the Apologia for the Reasonable Worship of God by the Hamburg professor Hermann Samuel Reimarus. Lessing's fearless attack on the Hamburg pastor Johann Melchior Goeze in Anti-Goeze (1778) and his noble defense of tolerance were, however, frustrated when the Protestants persuaded Karl I, Duke of Brunswick, to silence him. Lessing, cruelly condemned to refrain from answering the attacks, suffered a year of despair: his beloved wife, Eva König, widow of a Hamburg friend, died in January 1778. Lessing had married her in the autumn of 1776.

In Anti-Goeze Lessing uttered the proud statement: "If God in His right hand held all truth and in His left hand the ever-active quest for truth, although with the reminder that I shall for ever and ever err, and said to me: 'Choose,' I would in humility choose His left hand and say: 'Father, give. Pure truth is for You alone."' Lessing's views obviously had much in common with Baruch Spinoza's pantheism. Both believed that ultimate truth lay beneath all church dogmas.

Nathan der Weise: Ein dramatisches Gedicht (1779; Nathan the Wise), written in blank verse, demonstrates that idea. It is less a drama than a manifestation of Lessing's progressive thinking, religious tolerance, and enlightened humanitarianism. There is no doubt that Mendelssohn and Lessing himself were the models of Nathan's character. The play, in spite of comedy-like features, is no comédie larmoyante. It turns on the meaningful ring fable from Boccaccio's first day in The Decameron: the rings symbolize the three religions - Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan. This ring parable appears also in the Gesta Romanorum, an early-14th-century Latin collection of stories.

Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (1780) reaffirms Lessing's profound belief in the enlightenment and progress of the human race. Various forms of religion are merely stages in the striving toward perfection and truth. Lessing pretended to be merely the editor of the hundred paragraphs of "The Education of the Human Race." In fact, it summarizes his doctrines of faith. Does he uphold the dogma of immortality? He clearly believes in metempsychosis, that is, the transmigration of the soul of a human being (or animal) at death into a new body; and he strongly reasserts his trust in human progress and its highest stages: enlightenment and the purity of the heart. The doctrine of Erbsünde, the original sin, is demonstrated as the inability of man to be intelligently governed by moral law. Education is the key to Lessing's faith. There is a very personal note in the statements of religious conviction as regards the foundation of all certainty in knowledge and of faith in an eternal Providence that can never be rationally perceived. Lessing realizes that "the shortest line is not always the straight one."

Whether Lessing was the first critic in Europe, as Thomas Babington Macaulay claimed, is arguable, but he was certainly, with Goethe and Schiller, a most brilliant and fearless judge of artistic form and a great modern literary critic.

Further Reading

Important works on Lessing are Henry Burnand Garland, Lessing: The Founder of Modern German Literature (1937; 2d ed. 1963), and J. G. Robertson, Lessing's Dramatic Theory (1939). Interesting recent studies are Henry E. Allison, Lessing and the Enlightenment: His Philosophy of Religion and Its Relation to Eighteenth-century Thought (1966), and Peter Heller, Dialectics and Nihilism: Essays on Lessing, Nietzsche, Mann, and Kafka (1966). See also Kuno Francke, A History of German Literature as Determined by Social Forces (1897; 4th ed. 1927); W. H. Bruford, Germany in the Eighteenth Century: The Social Background of the Literary Revival (1935); Curtis C. D. Vail, Lessing's Relation to the English Language and Literature (1936); and E. L. Stahl and W. E. Wuill, German Literature of the 18th and 19th Centuries, edited by A. Closs (1970).

Additional Sources

Garland, Henry B. (Henry Burnand), Lessing, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1977.

For more information on Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, visit Britannica.com.

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (Kamenz, Saxony, 1729-81, Brunswick), the son of a Protestant pastor, was educated at St Afra's School, Meißen (see Fürstenschulen), from 1741 to 1746, and passed then to Leipzig University. He at first studied theology, but his interests were in letters and the theatre, and in 1748 he transferred to medicine. He soon left Leipzig to escape arrest for debt, spending a short time at Wittenberg University.

While at Leipzig and, for a brief period, at Berlin, Lessing collaborated with his cousin C. Mylius. On leaving Wittenberg he returned to Berlin, earning his living by journalism. He edited Beyträge zur Historie und Aufnahme des Theaters and contributed to Das Neueste aus dem Reiche des Witzes. His first comedy, Der junge Gelehrte (1748), was performed while he was still a student. In 1749 he wrote Der Freigeist and Die Juden, two competent and original comedies, and began an interesting experiment in tragedy on a contemporary subject, Samuel Henzi, which remained unfinished. He made lasting friendships with M. Mendelssohn and F. Nicolai, and fell out with Voltaire. He published Die Theatralische Bibliothek (1754) and his Schriften (6 vols., 1753-5), which contained his poems, Briefe (often termed Briefe 1753 or Kritische Briefe, which include a defence of S. Lemm), the Rettungen of Horace, Cardanus, the anonymous Ineptus Religiosus, and Cochläus (1754; see Rettungen), and the plays written up to 1755, including Miß Sara Sampson (1755), his domestic tragedy (see Bürgerliches Trauerspiel). With his Vademecum (1754), directed against S. G. Lange, he first proved himself to be a formidable literary controversialist.

Grown weary of Berlin, Lessing set out to travel in 1756 as a young man's companion, but the outbreak of the Seven Years War (see Siebenjähriger Krieg) curtailed the journey, and he spent some time in Leipzig, where he formed a close friendship with the poet Ewald von Kleist, then a Prussian major. In 1758 Lessing returned to Berlin, and in 1759 edited and partly wrote a new critical journal, the Literaturbriefe. In the same year he published his fables with a treatise on the fable (Abhandlungen über die Fabel) and the quasi-classical tragedy Philotas. The latter part of the war and the post-war period (1760-5) he spent in Breslau as secretary to General Tauentzien (1710-91).

In 1766, hoping for appointment as royal librarian in Berlin, Lessing, to support his claim, published his epoch-making essay on poetry and the plastic arts, Laokoon (1766), which earned him the nickname ‘Scheide-Kunst’. But he was disappointed in his hope of appointment. His studies of classical art had as an aftermath the Briefe antiquarischen Inhalts (1768-9), directed against C. A. Klotz, and the essay Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet (1769). His comedy of the post-war period, Minna von Barnhelm, was published in 1767; at the same time he became engaged in critical writing on the theatre in a new capacity as house critic to the National Theatre at Hamburg. The outcome of this activity was the Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767-8).

In 1770 Lessing accepted the post of librarian to the Duke of Brunswick at Wolfenbüttel. There he wrote his tragedy Emilia Galotti (1772) and engaged in scholarly work based on material in the library. In 1775-6 he accompanied the Duke's son on an Italian tour, and towards the end of 1776 he married a widow, Eva König, but she died in childbirth at the beginning of 1778.

In 1777 Lessing began to publish fragments from a book by the free-thinker H. S. Reimarus; these provoked a storm of criticism, to which Lessing responded with the polemical essays Über den Beweis des Geistes und der Kraft, Eine Duplik, and Eine Parabel (all 1778). The climax of this theological argument was the bitter controversy with Pastor J. M. Goeze of Hamburg, to whose animadversions Lessing replied with the eleven essays of Anti-Goeze (1778). The Duke intervened, silencing Lessing, who after a time constructively closed the wrangle with his drama of tolerance and intolerance, Nathan der Weise (1779). In his closing years Lessing wrote a dialogue on freemasonry (Ernst und Falk, 1778) and his moral testament, Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (1780).

Lessing possessed a formidable intellect and great versatility. He made his mark on the German theatre with his four great plays, writing the first domestic tragedy and the first truly modern comedy, as well as introducing blank verse to German drama. His self-deprecatory comments have tended to obscure his real creative ability. As a critic Lessing may be said to have lifted German criticism from a provincial to a European level. He exercised a lasting influence on aesthetics with his Laokoon, and he gave to Aristotle's views a modern interpretation. In his philosophical and theological writings he pleaded powerfully for balance and tolerance. His rigorous mind had immense destructive power, but negation was always followed by an impulse to construct.

Sämtliche Werke, historisch-kritische Ausgabe, ed. K. Lachmann and F. Muncker, appeared 1886-1924 (23 vols., reissued 1968) and includes the letters. Lessings Werke, ed. J. Petersen and W. von Olshausen (25 vols., 1925-35, reissued 1970), contains additional writings by Lessing. Gesammelte Werke (10 vols.), ed. P. Rilla, appeared 1954-8 and Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe in fünfundzwanzig Teilen (8 vols.), ed. H. G. Göpfert et al., 1970-9. Werke und Briefe (12 vols.), ed. W. Barner, 1985 ff.

Lessing, Gotthold Ephram (1729-81) German dramatist and critic. Lessing is not remembered for any first-rate philosophy, but he was a major influence on German thinking of his time. His Laokoön (1766) espouses the view that whilst classical ideals of noble static harmony serve well for painting, poetry is concerned with action and passion. His conversion towards the end of his life to the philosophy of the then shocking Spinoza was reported by F. H. Jacobi in 1785, and precipitated the Pantheismusstreit, or row over pantheism, in which Mendelssohn attempted to defend the dead Lessing from the charge.

(gôt'hôlt ā'fräĭm) , 1729–81, German philosopher, dramatist, and critic, one of the most influential figures of the Enlightenment. He was connected with the theater in Berlin, where he produced some of his most famous works, and with the national theater in Hamburg. His series of critical essays, Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767–69), attacked the French classical theater and claimed that it had failed to capture the true spirit of Aristotelian dramatic unities. From 1770 he was librarian at Wolfenbüttel, writing there Zur Geschichte und Literatur [on history and literature] (1773–77). Other significant critical works are Literaturbriefe [literary letters] (1759–65) and Laokoon (1766). Lessing differentiated between the poet as interpreter of time and the artist as interpreter of space; he found different aesthetic criteria applicable to each. His plays include Miss Sara Sampson (1755), Minna von Barnhelm (1763, tr. 1799), Emilia Galotti (1772, tr. 1909), and Nathan the Wise (1779, tr. 1781), which was partly the result of the numerous theological controversies into which he was drawn by his insistence on freedom of thought. A deist, Lessing took theology seriously. His Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts [education of the human race] (1780) applied Enlightenment ideas of progress and evolution to religion. Lessing's introduction in Germany of English literature, especially of Shakespeare, was an important contribution.

Bibliography

See studies by H. E. Allison (1966), A. F. Brown (1971), and H. B. Garland (1949, repr. 1973).

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim

(1729–1781), German dramatist, critic, theologian, and most prominent proponent of the German Enlightenment. A son of the city's chief Lutheran pastor, Lessing was born in Kamenz in the Electorate of Saxony on 22 January 1729. After attending the local Latin school and the famous ducal school of St. Afra in Meissen, Lessing entered the University of Leipzig in 1746 in order to study theology. Having discovered his love for the theater, he left the university without a degree and, to the dismay of his father, started to make a living as a freelance writer and critic, moving back and forth between the cities of Leipzig, Berlin, Wittenberg, and Breslau.

Scholars emphasize Lessing's role in the development of German theater and drama and his aesthetic theory. His earliest tragedy, Miss Sara Sampson (1755), which foreshadowed his rise to literary prominence, constituted a shift from the prevalent French classicist models to an advocacy of Shakespeare and the English theater. Miss Sara Sampson can be called an early example of bourgeois tragedy. Lessing argued that the essence of tragedy—pity—depended on the depiction of human suffering and not on the social milieu of the protagonists. It was important, however, to create situations and characters with which the audience could identify.

This new concept is best exemplified in his last tragedy, Emilia Galotti (1772). The play is an indictment of an immoral prince who ruthlessly pursues his love interest, the virtuous bourgeois girl Emilia. Seeing no other way of defending his daughter, her father kills her in order to preserve her morality. The play shifts the focus from the court milieu of the heroic play into the private realm of the middle-class family. Later writers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) equally acknowledged the play's success in depicting an emancipated bourgeoisie of the Enlightenment rebelling against the corruption of court society.

Lessing outlined his thoughts on theater and drama in his Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767–1769; Hamburg dramaturgy), which he wrote while serving as a theater critic at the German National Theater in Hamburg from 1767 to 1769. Despite the fact that the Hamburgische Dramaturgie is not a systematic work, it provides many insights into Lessing's thought. Its main concern is the critique of French classical drama and the reinterpretation of Aristotle's work on tragedy.

Lessing's interest in the classics reveals itself in his work on aesthetics. In his Laokoon: oder über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie (1766; Laocoon: or the limits of painting and poetry), Lessing emphasized the differences between the visual arts and literature. According to Lessing, literature focuses on action, whereas the visual arts focus on static objects. Lessing concluded that literature is superior to painting or sculpture because it can represent the full spectrum of human emotions.

With Lessing's acceptance of the post of ducal librarian at Wolfenbüttel in 1769, theological and religious themes emerged as the overriding concerns of his writings.

During his stay in Hamburg, Lessing had become a close friend of the children of Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768), a renowned Lutheran theologian and professor of Oriental languages at the academic gymnasium in Hamburg. Influenced by English deism, Reimarus had secretly written an attack on the veracity of revealed religion. After their father's death, Reimarus's children entrusted Lessing with the manuscript, from which Lessing published several parts under the title Fragmente eines Ungenannten (1774–1778; Fragments from an unnamed author). Most of the fragments criticized different parts of the Old and New Testament on moral as well as historical grounds. The publication created a stir in religious circles so that Lessing's employer, the duke of Brunswick, withdrew Lessing's censorship privileges. Forced to silence, Lessing wrote his most famous play, the epic poem Nathan der Weise (1779; Nathan the wise). Modern scholarship views the play essentially as a call for religious tolerance. By taking characters from the three major religious denominations, Lessing stressed his conviction that religious differences obscure the fact that all belief systems share a set of moral values. Lessing's last work, his Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (1780; The education of the human race) has often been viewed as his literary testament. The work addressed the theological issues raised during the Fragmente controversy and in Nathan der Weise, namely the problem of the relationship between reason and revelation. According to Lessing, religion is part of the process of the spiritual growth of mankind. Whereas ancient religions needed textual codification in order to provide human beings with guidance in their lives, eventually reason would free humankind of this necessity.

Lessing is justifiably regarded as one of the most distinguished representatives of the Enlightenment. His advocacy of basic humanitarian values such as tolerance illustrates that some proponents of the High Enlightenment not only debated their ideas and values behind the closed doors of the reading societies and salons, but also defended unpopular positions and values in public.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. Emilia Galotti: A Tragedy in Five Acts. Translated by Edward Dvoretzky. New York, 1962.

——. Gesammelte Werke. Edited by Paul Rilla. Berlin, 1954–1958.

——. Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. Translated by Edward Allen Mc Cormick. Indianapolis, 1962.

——. Miss Sara Sampson: A Tragedy in Five Acts. Translated by G. Hoern Schlage. Stuttgart, 1977.

——. Nathan the Wise. Translated by Walter Frank Charles Ade. Woodbury, N.Y, 1972.

——. Sämtliche Schriften. Edited and revised by Karl Lachmann and Franz Muncker. 3rd ed. Stuttgart, 1886–1924. Reprinted Berlin, 1968.

——. Theological Writings: Selections in Translation with an Introduction. Translated by Henry Chadwick. Stanford, 1956.

Secondary Sources

Albrecht, Wolfgang. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Stuttgart, 1997.

Allison, Henry E. Lessing and the Enlightenment: His Philosophy of Religion and Its Relation to Eighteenth-Century Thought. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1966.

Batley, Edward M. Catalyst of Enlightenment, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Productive Criticism of Eighteenth-Century Germany. Bern, 1990.

Eckhart, Jo-Jacqueline. Lessing's Nathan the Wise and the Critics: 1779–1991. Columbia, S.C., 1993.

Engel, Eva, and Claus Ritterhoff, eds. Neues zur Lessing-Forschung. Ingrid Strohschneider-Kohrs zu Ehren am 26. August 1997. Tübingen, 1998.

Fick, Monika. Lessing-Handbuch: Leben-Werk-Wirkung. Stuttgart, 2000.

Lamport, F. J. Lessing and the Drama. Oxford, 1981.

Ugrinsky, Alexej, ed. Lessing and the Enlightenment. New York, 1986.

Yasukata, Toshimasa. Lessing's Philosophy of Religion and the German Enlightenment: Lessing on Christianity and Reason. Oxford, 2002.

—ULRICH GROETSCH

Quotes:

"It is not the truth that a man possesses, or believes that he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forward to reach the truth, which constitutes the worth of a man. For it is not by the possession, but the search after truth that he enlarges his power, wherein alone consists his ever-increasing perfection."

"A single grateful thought toward heaven is the most perfect prayer."

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