https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2435-5573
![Sample our Language & Literature journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5941/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Language-Literature.jpg"})
Abstract
This article situates Herder’s little-read essay ‘Das Fest der Grazien’ (1795) in the conceptual history of grace between Schiller and Hölderlin. All three authors champion grace as an answer to modern conflict and division. But while Schiller articulates his theory of grace on the basis of Kantian dualisms, Herder and Hölderlin both turn to ancient Greek conceptions of charis and to an emphasis on the gratuitousness of grace, or of grace as gift and as gratitude. Herder argues implicitly against Schiller’s isolated observers of grace in order to emphasize interdependence rather than autonomy, participation rather than observation, and he stages a fictionalized scene of persuasion as a strategy to help persuade us of his claims. Hölderlin presents a similar understanding of grace but avoids strategies of persuasion, replacing them with a discourse of invitation, fidelity, and hope. Thus if for Herder grace in its gift-quality is always already present and need only be recognized, for Hölderlin grace is an event that happens to us, perennially unexpected and yet also surprisingly often even in a time of conflict and war.
Notes
1 Friedrich Schiller (ed.), Die Horen, Jahrgang 1795, erstes Stück (Tübingen: Cotta, 1795), pp. iii–iv.
2 Ibid., p. vii.
3 Friedrich Schiller, ‘Über Anmut und Würde’, in Sämtliche Werke 5: Erzählungen, Theoretische Schriften, ed. by Wolfgang Riedel (Munich: Hanser, 1962), pp. 433–89.
4 Johann Gottfried Herder, ‘Das Fest der Grazien’, Die Horen, 1. Jahrgang, 11. Stück (November 1795).
5 Cf. Steven D. Martinson’s summary of Herder’s relationship to Die Horen: ‘During this time Schiller and Goethe propagated in Schiller’s journal Die Horen (1795–1797) their concept of a Klassik, namely the idea of a ‘pure’ realm of artistic form that denied any pragmatic value to art and literature, an idea with which Herder disagreed completely. Schiller broke harshly with Herder in 1795 […]’. Steven D. Martinson, ‘Herder’s Life and Works’, in A Companion to the Works of Johann Gottfried Herder, ed. by Hans Adler and Wulf Koepke (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009), pp. 15–42, p. 37. One would never know from this that Herder made several contributions to Die Horen. Martinson is not unusual in this but reflects here a general trend in Herder scholarship.
6 Hans Adler speaks of this very briefly when he notes that ‘Das Fest der Grazien’ challenged Schiller but did not provoke the break with him. That happens with Herder’s next piece of writing, Iduna. Hans Adler, ‘Autonomie versus Anthropologie: Schiller und Herder’, Monatshefte, special issue: Begegnungen mit Schiller / Encounters with Schiller, 97.3 (2005); 408–16 (pp. 412–13).
7 Ulrich Gaier, ‘Rousseau, Schiller, Herder, Heinse’, in Hölderlin-Handbuch: Leben — Werk — Wirkung, ed. by Johann Kreutzer (Berlin: Metzler, 2020), pp. 82–89 (p. 86).
8 See Friedrich Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke, Briefe und Dokumente, Bremer Ausgabe IV: 1794–1795, ed. by D. E. Sattler (Munich: Luchterhand, 2004), pp. 193, 212.
9 Johann Joachim Winckelmann, ‘Von der Grazie in der Kunst’, in Winckelmann’s Werke in einem Band, ed. by Helmut Holtzhauer (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1982), pp. 47–54 (p. 47).
10 Heinrich von Kleist, ‘Über das Marionettentheater‘, in Sämtliche Werke und Briefe II, ed. by Helmut Sembdner (Munich: Hanser, 1993), pp. 338–45.
11 Eckart Goebel, Charis und Charisma: Grazie und Gewalt von Winckelmann bis Heidegger (Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2006), pp. 14, 53–56.
12 Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke, Briefe und Dokumente, Bremer Ausgabe IV, p. 74.
13 David Marno, Death Be Not Proud: The Art of Holy Attention (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), p. 19.
14 Ibid.
15 Cf. Alain Badiou’s Saint Paul: The Foundations of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), to which I will return briefly at the end of this article.
16 Schiller, ‘Über Anmut und Würde’, p. 433.
17 Ibid., p. 463.
18 Ibid., p. 459.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Schiller, ‘Über Anmut und Würde’, p. 486.
22 Ibid., p. 450.
23 Ibid.
24 Schiller, ‘Über Anmut und Würde’, p. 452.
25 Goebel, Charis und Charisma, p. 50.
26 Ibid., p. 53.
27 Ibid., p. 52.
28 Herder, ‘Das Fest der Grazien’, p. 1.
29 Ibid., p. 2.
30 Ibid., p. 3.
31 Ibid.
32 Herder, ‘Das Fest der Grazien’, p. 4.
33 Ibid., pp. 4–5.
34 Ibid., p. 6.
35 Ibid.
36 Herder, ‘Das Fest der Grazien’, pp. 6–7.
37 Ibid.
38 Schiller, ‘Über Anmut und Würde’, p. 482.
39 Herder, ‘Das Fest der Grazien’, p. 9.
40 Ibid., p. 20.
41 Ibid., p. 9.
42 Johann Georg Hamann, Sokratische DenkwürdigkeitenI, in Sämtliche Werke II: Schriften 1758–1763, ed. by Josef Nadler (Vienna: Thomas-Morus-Presse im Verlag Herder Wien, 1950), pp. 57–82.
43 Herder, ‘Das Fest der Grazien’, p. 7.
44 Ibid., pp. 16–17.
45 Ibid., p. 5.
46 Ibid., p. 10.
47 Ibid., pp. 20, 21.
48 Lucius Anneaus Seneca, On Benefits, trans. Miriam Griffin and Brad Inwood (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 4.2.
49 Seneca, On Benefits, 2.4.
50 Ibid., 3.2–5.
51 Ibid., 32.1–4.
52 Ibid., 5.5.
53 Herder, ‘Das Fest der Grazien’, p. 11.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Humans Need The Virtues (Peru, IL: Open Book, 1999), p. 120.
57 Herder, ‘Das Fest der Grazien’, pp. 12, 13.
58 Ibid., p. 13.
59 Cf. Heidegger’s claims such as the following: ‘Das Wort “Denken” [verweist uns] in den Wesensbereich von Gedächtnis, Andacht und Dank.’ Martin Heidegger, Was heisst denken? (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1954), p. 102.
60 Herder, ‘Das Fest der Grazien’, p. 14.
61 Ibid.
62 Herder, ‘Das Fest der Grazien’, pp. 14–15.
63 Ibid., p. 15.
64 Ibid., p. 10.
65 Pindar, Olympian Odes, Pythian Odes, ed. and transl. William H. Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 1.30–32; Herder, ‘Das Fest der Grazien’, p. 20.
66 Hölderlin, Sämtliche Gedichte, p. 479; Martin Heidegger, ‘ … dichterisch wohnet der Mensch … ’, in Vorträge und Aufsätze (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2009), pp. 181–98 (pp. 197–98).
67 Friedrich Hölderlin, ‘Brot und Wein’, in Sämtliche Gedichte, ed. by Jochen Schmidt (Frankfurt a. M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2005), line 122.
68 Hölderlin, Sämtliche Gedichte, p. 205 (emphasis added).
69 Hölderlin, ‘Brot und Wein’, line 136.
70 Friedrich Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke XII: Empedokles I, Frankfurter Ausgabe, ed. by D. E. Sattler (Frankfurt a.M.: Roter Stern, 1985), p. 185.
71 David Farrell Krell, The Death of Empedocles: A Mourning-Play / Friedrich Hölderlin, transl. with introduction, notes, and analysis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008), p. 233.
72 Pindar, Olympian Odes, 1.33–34.
73 Hölderlin, ‘Die Wanderung, in Sämtliche Gedichte.
74 Hölderlin, ‘Die Wanderung’, lines 50–56.
75 Ibid., lines 57–60.
76 Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundations of Universalism, pp. 15, 63, 90m 106.
77 Ibid., p. 111.
78 Ibid.
79 Hölderlin, ‘Die Wanderung’, lines 115–117.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
James Rasmussen
James Rasmussen teaches German literature and culture at the U.S. Air Force Academy. His research interests include aesthetic theory, theories of modernity, charisma, and the cultural histories of grace. He has recently completed a monograph titled Charis and Charisma: Max Weber and the German Aesthetic Discourse on Grace from Winckelmann to Nietzsche.