Oldal 110 [110]
OCR
HANS ERICH BÖDEKER Goethe closely followed the contemporary theological debate about original sin. He rejected the doctrine “that by the fall human nature has been so corrupted to its innermost core, so that not the least good could be found in it, and that therefore man must renounce all trust in his own powers.” ** The deliberate suppression of man’s moral capacity seemed to him particularly pernicious, for this impaired human autonomy and made man totally dependent on divine arbitrariness, which Goethe rejected. His complete confidence in human nature came through again in his rejection, based on a total misunderstanding, of Kant’s image of “radical evil”. Goethe was offended by the fact, that as he saw it, Kant in the end, “dirtied his clean philosopher’s mantle with the blemish of ‘radical evil’”.®° “However different the other paths they followed — in their condemnation of the pessimism based on the notion of sinfulness and their optimistic belief in the capacity of human nature for development... all the spirits of the age, from Goethe ... to Nicolai, from Herder to the simple village priest, were united.””° Ultimately, the image of the sinner was replaced by that of a free and self-reliant human being, created by God. The Enlightenment’s firm condemnation of pessimism based on a notion of sinfulness was the main prerequisite for its belief in the capacity of human nature for development, and thus for the Enlightenment enthusiasm for education. For Enlightened theologians and philosophers, for Johann Gottlieb Töllner (1724-1774), Eberhard, Schleiermacher etc., rejecting the doctrine of original sin meant that “original sin” became a pedagogical problem.”! “Behind education”, Kant stated, “lies the immense secret of the perfection of human nature. It is delightful to imagine that human nature will be better and better developed by education and that it can be given a form that is appropriate to humanity. This opens up a prospect of a happy humankind in future.” Corresponding to the explicit emphasis on human dignity was the fact that Enlightenment theology placed the traditional dogma of man as made in the 88 Cf. GOETHE, Dichtung und Wahrheit; Werke HA, vol. 10, 43f. This English translation is from J. W. von Goethe, Poetry and Truth. From My Own Life, introduced and edited by Karl Breul, revised transl. by Minna Steele Smith, vol. 2, 174. 89 GOETHE, Werke JubA, vol. 37, 288. ®° ANER, Theologie der Lessingzeit (note 3), 288. 1 Cf. TÖLLNER, Johann Gottlieb, Theologische Untersuchungen, Vol. 1, Part 2, Riga, Hartknoch, 1773, 56-105, 159-200.; SALZMANN, Johann Daniel, Kurze Abhandlungen über einige wichtige Gegenstände aus der Religions- und Sittenlehre, facsimile reprint of the 1776 edn., with an afterword by A. Fuchs, Stuttgart, Metzler, 1966; EBERHARD, Apologie (note 56), 282ff. Kant cited in Johann Bernhard Basedow’s Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. by Hugo Göring, Langensalza, Hermann Beyer & Söhne, 1889, II f. 92 - 108 +
