Aestheticisation of religion in German modernism

Abstract

Rationalistic individualism—called “unhappy consciousness” by Hegel—experienced a deep crisis in the second half of the 18th century, caused by the secular culture of the “death of God” (Hegel) era. The main goal of the modernist programme was to overcome the rational individualism and the secularisation of culture and to establish a new holistic worldview, a new religion that could combine the antinomies of rational consciousness and reconcile the contradictions between nature and culture, man and God. The basis of this neo-religious consciousness was the idea of the fusion of man and God, expressed in concepts such as the “Universum” (Fr. Schlegel), “intellectual contemplation” (Fr. Schelling), “one and all” (Εν και Παν) (Fr. Hölderlin) and reflected in the book “On religion” by Fr. Schleiermacher, who defined it as “feeling and contemplation of the Universe.” The sources of the holistic perception of the world were connected with the modernist reinterpretation of Spinoza’s philosophy and refracted through I. Kant’s transcendentalism. Modernism turns aesthetics into a religion of art, the doctrine of the Absolute and the fusion of the finite and the Infinite. Thus, modernism gives art back its religious function which was initially inherent in it, but was lost with the development of rational consciousness and a pragmatic outlook. In contrast to the rational Enlightenment, modernism especially emphasises the ancient—coming from Plato—doctrine of the primary unconscious nature of creativity and forms the image of a contemplative (passive) artist. In contrast to rational Enlightenment, the artist is interpreted it as a medium of the divine language and a vehicle of divine revelation. This article discusses some scenarios of the modernist interpretation of genius as a contemplative artist based on the works of H. Wackenroder, Novalis, W. Humboldt, M. Heidegger and E. T. A. Hoffmann.