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PHILOSOPHY AND GERMAN

LITERATURE  –

Although the importance of the interplay of literature and philoso￾phy in Germany has often been examined within individual works

or groups of works by particular authors, little research has been

undertaken into the broader dialogue of German literature and phi￾losophy as a whole. Philosophy and German Literature –

offers six chapters by leading specialists on the dialogue between

German literary writers and philosophers through their works. The

volume shows that German literature, far from being the mouth￾piece of a dour philosophical culture dominated by the great names

of Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger and Habermas, has

much more to offer: while possessing a high affinity with philo￾sophy it explores regions of human insight and experience beyond

philosophy’s ken.

NICHOLAS SAUL is Professor of German and Head of Department

at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of Poetry and History

in Novalis and in the Tradition of the German Enlightenment () and

Literature and Pulpit Oratory in the German Romantic Age (). He is a

contributor to the Cambridge History of German Literature. He has also

edited volumes on literature and science, and the body in German

literature.

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN GERMAN

General editors

H. B. Nisbet, University of Cambridge

Martin Swales, University of London

Advisory editor

Theodore J. Ziolkowski, Princeton University

Also in the series

J. P . STERN: The Dear Purchase: A Theme in German Modernism

   

S EAN ALLAN ´ : The Plays of Heinrich von Kleist: Ideals and Illusions

   

W. E. YATES : Theatre in Vienna: A Critical History, –

   

MICHAEL MINDEN: The German ‘Bildungsroman’:

Incest and Inheritance

   

TODD KONTJE: Women, the Novel, and the German Nation –:

Domestic Fiction in the Fatherland

   

STEPHEN BROCKMANN: Literature and German Reunification

   

JUDITH RYAN: Rilke, Modernism and Poetic Tradition

   

GRAHAM FRANKLAND: Freud’s Literary Culture

    

PHILOSOPHY AND

GERMAN LITERATURE

–

EDITED BY

NICHOLAS SAUL

University of Liverpool

  

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge  , United Kingdom

First published in print format

ISBN-13 978-0-521-66052-5 hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-511-06644-3 eBook (NetLibrary)

© Cambridge University Press 2002

2002

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relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place

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ISBN-10 0-521-66052-1 hardback

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Published in the United States by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org

Contents

Contributors page viii

Acknowledgements x

List of abbreviations xi

Introduction: German literature and philosophy 

Nicholas Saul

 Criticism and experience: philosophy and literature

in the German Enlightenment 

John A. McCarthy

 The pursuit of the subject: literature as critic and perfecter

of philosophy – 

Nicholas Saul

 Two realisms: German literature and philosophy

– 

John Walker

 Modernism and the self – 

Ritchie Robertson

 The subjects of community: aspiration, memory, resistance

– 

Russell A. Berman

 Coming to terms with the past in postwar literature

and philosophy 

Robert C. Holub

Bibliography 

Index 

vii

Contributors

JOHN A. M cCARTHY is Professor of German and Comparative Litera￾ture, and Co-Director of German Studies at Vanderbilt University.

His teaching and research focus on Enlightenment, Sturm und Drang,

Weimar Classicism, Nietzsche, science and literature, the essay genre,

and the history of Germanics. Among his book publications are

Crossing boundaries: a theory and history of essayistic writing in German –

 () and Disrupted patterns: on chaos and order in the Enlightenment

(). Currently McCarthy is researching his next major project: the

reception of the Sturm und Drang movement, –.

NICHOLAS SAUL is Professor of German and Head of Department at the

University of Liverpool. He is the author of Poetry and history in Novalis

and the German Enlightenment () and ‘Prediger aus der neuen romantischen

Clique.’ Zur Interaktion von Romantik und Homiletik um  (). He has

also edited volumes on literature and science, threshold metaphors,

and the body in German literature, and published on authors from

Frederick the Great of Prussia to Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Botho

Strauß. He contributed the section on German literature –

to the Cambridge history of German literature ().

JOHN WALKER is lecturer in German at Birkbeck College, University

of London, where he served as Chair of Department in –. His

research interests focus on the interrelation between philosophy and

literary form in German literature –. He has published a

book on Hegel’s religious and historical thought, History, spirit and

experience (), and edited the collection of essays Thought and faith

in the philosophy of Hegel (). He has also contributed to books on

Hegel and Nietzsche, and published several articles on Lessing, Kleist,

B ¨uchner and B ¨oll.

viii

Contributors ix

RITCHIE ROBERTSON is Professor of German at Oxford University and

a Fellow of St John’s College. His publications include Kafka: Judaism,

politics, and literature (), Heine (), The ‘Jewish Question’ in German

literature, – (), and an anthology of texts in translation,

The German Jewish dialogue, – (). He contributed the sec￾tion on German literature – to the Cambridge history of German

literature ().

RUSSELL A. BERMAN holds the Walter A. Haas Professorship in the

Humanities at Stanford University, with appointments in German

Studies and Comparative Literature. He has written widely on topics

in modern German literature, culture and theory. His major publi￾cations include The rise of the modern German novel (), Modern culture

and Critical Theory (), Cultural studies of Modern Germany (), and

Enlightenment or Empire ().

ROBERT C. HOLUB teaches intellectual, cultural and literary history in the

German Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Among

his publications onthesetopics are books on Heinrich Heine, reception

theory, nineteenth-century realism, J ¨urgen Habermas, recent literary

theory, and Friedrich Nietzsche. He has also edited five volumes on

various topics from the Enlightenment to the present.

Acknowledgements

I have many debts of gratitude to acknowledge. TheDeutscher Akademischer

Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service, London Office) gener￾ously funded a term’s leave at the University of W ¨urzburg in spring ,

without which my own contributions to this volume could not have been

written. During this time I profited from unlimited access to the minds

(and wine cellars) of Helmut Pfotenhauer and Wolfgang Riedel. Thanks

go also to Kate Brett, from whose original suggestion this book is de￾scended. Finally, no project of this kind ever reaches fruition without the

teamwork of all the contributors. I thank them for their energy, cognitive

skills both analytic and synthetic, and their Langmut.

Nicholas Saul

University of Liverpool

x

Abbreviations

CD Johann Jakob Breitinger, Critische Dichtkunst,  vols.,

Z ¨urich: Orell, ; facsimile reprint, ed. Wolfgang

Bender, Stuttgart: Metzler, .

Ethics Baruch de Spinoza, Ethics, trans. Andrew Boyle,

revised G. H. R. Parkinson, London: J. M. Dent,

.

F Theodor Fontane, Romane, Erz¨ahlungen, Gedichte,

ed. Walter Keitel,  vols., Munich: Hanser, .

H Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Gesammelte Werke in

Einzelb¨anden, ed. Bernd Schoeller,  vols.,

Frankfurt: Fischer, .

HA Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Werke (Hamburger

Ausgabe), ed. Erich Trunz et al.,  vols., Munich:

Beck, –.

Hinske-Specht Raffaele Ciafardone, Die Philosophie der deutschen

Aufkl¨arung. Texte und Darstellung, ed. Norbert Hinske

and Rainer Specht, Stuttgart: Reclam, .

JGH Johann Gottfried Herder, S¨amtliche Werke,

ed. Bernhard Suphan,  vols., Berlin: Weidmann,

; repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, .

K Immanuel Kant, Werke, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel,

 vols., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche

Buchgesellschaft, .

KFSA Friedrich Schlegel, Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe,

ed. Ernst Behler, Hans Eichner and Jean-Jacques

Anstett,  vols., Paderborn, Munich, Vienna and

Z ¨urich: Sch ¨oningh, –.

KrV Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, in

Werkausgabe, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel,  vols.,

xi

xii Abbreviations

Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, , vols. III–IV

( pages numbered consecutively).

L Leibniz, Philosophical writings, trans. Mary Morris

and G. H. R. Parkinson, ed. G. H. R. Parkinson,

London: J. M. Dent, .

LW G. E. Lessing, Lessings Werke, ed. Kurt W ¨olfel,  vols.,

Frankfurt am Main: Insel, .

M ThomasMann,GesammelteWerke, vols., Frankfurt:

Fischer, .

N Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke, ed. Karl Schlechta,

 vols., Munich: Hanser, .

NS Hardenberg, Friedrich von, Novalis. Schriften,

ed. Paul Kluckhohn, Richard Samuel et al.,  vols.,

Stuttgart, Berlin, Cologne and Mainz:

Kohlhammer, –.

PW Immanuel Kant, Philosophical writings, ed. Ernst

Behler, New York: Continuum, .

R Rainer Maria Rilke, Werke, ed. Manfred Engel et al.,

 vols., Frankfurt and Leipzig: Insel, .

S Arthur Schopenhauer, S¨amtliche Werke, ed. Julius

Frauenst¨adt,  vols., Leipzig: Brockhaus, .

SE The Standard edition of the complete psychological works of

Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey,  vols., London:

Hogarth Press, –.

Introduction: German literature and philosophy

Nicholas Saul

‘[T ]he intermingling of philosophical and literary ideas’, Peter Stern

once wrote, is a ‘commonplace of German literary history’. Apart from

his own studies of the ‘traffic between literature and philosophy’, a

long list might be compiled of studies which aim somehow to explain

German literature since  in philosophical terms, from (to name but

a few) Hermann August Korff ’s Geist der Goethezeit (–; Spirit of the

Goethean age), via Nicholas Boyle’s philosophical reading of Goethe’s

‘Verm¨achtniß’ (; ‘Testament’) to G´eza von Moln´ar’s Goethes

Kantstudien (; Goethe’s Kant studies). The list of studies which look at

German philosophy from a literary angle of some kind might not be quite

as long, but would still be impressive. Now such lists would scarcely prove

that German literature, by comparison with literature in other languages,

exhibits some special relationship with philosophy (however defined), still

less an intrinsic one. And yet how often do modern German writers signal

that their literary works were prompted by reading philosophy. Johann

Christoph Gottsched (not a great writer, but an important one) builds the

early eighteenth-century reform of German literature on the intellectual

reforms of Leibniz-Wolffian philosophy. Schiller is the very paradigm of

the poeta philosophus. The Romantic Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis)

founds his entire literary œuvre on an intensive study of Fichte. Kleist

becomes a poet only after having endured a crisis of knowledge in the

name of Kant. Thomas Mann is habitually read through Nietzsche and

Schopenhauer. And this is not to mention other well-known or popu￾larly accredited cases such as Goethe and Spinoza (or Leibniz), Heine

and Hegel, Hofmannsthal and Mach, Brecht and Marx, Bernhard and

Wittgenstein, Jelinek and Freud (or Marx), Botho Strauß and Adorno.

But even if we allow for heuristic purposes the claim of a special

relationship between German literature and philosophy, of what kind

might their relation be? Co-operation between equals on the basis of an

agreed division of intellectual labour? Subordination of one discourse

