LESSING, GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM. — German thinker, critic, poet, and playwright, b. at Kamenz on 22 Jan. 1729, d. at Wolfenbüttel on 15 Feb. 1781. A pupil of Wolff in Leipzig and a student of Spinoza, an indefatigable researcher in the fields of philological and theological sciences, he is one of the leading representatives of the Enlightenment (v.) in Germany. He belongs to that group of thinkers who were then designated as “Popularphilosophen,” writers free from the technicalities and jargon of the school; he was opposed to the system, even if sensitive to certain systematic tendencies of the Enlightenment philosophy, and a shrewd re-elaborator of the doctrines that characterize his age.
His thought, which constantly moves between Leibniz and Spinoza, attempts a reconciliation between the two philosophers through the unity of the one in the whole, that is, through the conception of the individual that expands to encompass the universal within itself. L. seeks inclusion in particular Spinozism through absorption into divinity, even if he continually lapses back into Spinozian pantheism. In his pamphlet *Über die Wirklichkeit der Dinge ausser Gott*, he maintains, despite his claim to adhere to Leibniz’s thought, that if a thing is real in God, the thing itself must also be in Him, and that therefore the concepts of things in God are the things themselves. In Jacobi’s words, L. could not tolerate the idea of a personal being absolutely infinite, and thus represented divinity as the soul of the whole.
L. devoted long attention to religious problems in writings that were partly propagandistic and partly polemical, inspired by the dominant motifs of the Enlightenment, even if here and there a personal note betrays the impatience he felt, despite all his rationalism, for the closed attitude of the century. Particularly in the *Anti-Goeze* (Leipzig 1778) and in the *Gespräche für Freimaurer* (Göttingen 1778), he combats the traditional orthodoxy of positive religions and elaborates a philosophy of religion that should be founded above all on the inner connection between nature and history. “The best revealed religion is that which contains the fewest additions to natural religion” (*Über die Entstehung der geoffenbarten Religion*, § 11).
Against the “fanaticism” of biblical erudition and the predominance of theology, he maintains that scriptural traditions must spring from inner truth, and not vice versa; that religion is true not because the Evangelists and apologists taught it, but that they taught it because it is true. In his polemic against Goeze, he affirms that Christianity must essentially concern the heart, and that the critique of historical and philosophical proofs must rest on principles other than those hitherto followed by the theologies of positive religions. The anti-dogmatic accents of the *Anti-Goeze*, of the *Gespräche für Freimaurer*, and his open struggle against orthodoxy resurface in artistic guise in *Nathan der Weise* (Berlin 1779), where the idea of natural religion is intended as a symbol of peace among the positive religions of humanity.
In *Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts* (ibid. 1780), which remains his philosophical masterpiece, religiosity rises to the level of a principle governing all human evolution. Education and religion serve to develop the natural faculties and aptitudes of man. Through Revelation, the human race is elevated from lower to higher stages; revealed truths must gradually become truths of reason if humanity is truly to make them its own. While God educated His people with elementary means, the other peoples of the earth advanced along the path of civilization with the sole light of reason. The two revelations are not substantially different; and when the age of *Vollendung*, of full maturity, arrives, there will no longer be any doubt about the inner rationality of religious revelation. In this work, L. was chiefly concerned with organizing his historical-religious experiences and his conception of religiosity and Christianity, whose value he saw as eminently ethical, in that it must educate one to do good for the sake of good itself.
Finally, mention must be made of L.’s *Laokoon* (1776), in which he delineates the boundaries between the visual arts and poetry, and the *Hamburgische Dramaturgie* (1767–69), in which he distinguishes poetry from history, and within poetry, drama from fable and moral tale.
L.’s personality is rich and complex, not lacking in genius and insights that, while betraying on the one hand his belonging to Enlightenment rationalism, on the other reveal a dark tendency to transcend II. He clearly expressed that bold and self-assured attitude characteristic of the century, but at the same time attempted to save man and every human value from the constraints of the narrow philosophy of the *Aufklärung*. From the most intransigent rationalism, which had inspired his entire thought, he ended by seeking liberation in pantheistic and naturalistic theses that foreshadow the awakening of the new century, and in the present, above abstract reason, he championed the rights of humanity. As an apostle of the Enlightenment, he had sensed the flaws widening within it and intuited the great questions that, only a few years later, would loom before the rigid canons of that doctrine. His concept of an incessant striving toward truth, even if on condition that it is never attained, is already an anticipation of the motif that Rousseau would pass on to the leaders of the *Sturm und Drang* and then to the Romantics: that of an interiority that is passion and revolt, thus contributing to a reevaluation, in contrast to the Enlightenment conception, of life, history, and tradition.