10/07/2025 14:00
- 17:30
HALL: Senate Hall
Chair:
Smith A.
Proponent:
Bossoletti F.,
De Souza A.,
Lindsay I.,
Livieri P.,
Smith A.
Speaker:
Bossoletti F.,
De Souza A.,
Kilburn-Smith G.,
Lindsay I.,
Livieri P.,
Sawczynski P.,
Smith A.
In 1780, Gotthold Lessing famously wrote that "revelation gives nothing to the human race which human reason could not arrive at on its own." The correspondence established between the divine and the human in German Idealism catalyzed a secularized understanding of revelation. Revelation was brought into the realm of the immanent, transposed to the social-political and the progressing developments of national communities.
In this panel, we invite papers that explore this novel rethinking of the concept of revelation in German Idealism in the wide-ranging ramifications associated with it in the domains of religion, theology, politics, ethics, and nationalism. Centering on (but not necessarily limited to) the philosophies of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling, this panel welcomes papers that address the question of revelation in German Idealism from three related angles: (i) the religious, philosophical, and theological inheritances of German Idealism; (ii) the philosophical developments and innovations regarding the concept of revelation in German Idealism; (iii) the receptions of these newly drawn coordinates, especially in novel religious, political, or national contexts (e.g., secularization debates, religious nationalism, etc.).
The medieval consensus between revelation and reason was brought into question in a radical way within philosophy by Spinoza in his 1670 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. In 1775, Lessing's views on Spinoza and revelation became the subject of a heated debate between Mendelssohn and Jacobi that went on to engulf almost the whole of the German intelligentsia and had a determinative effect on the trajectory of German thought. In tracking the revision of the concept of revelation that this controversy precipitated, we hope to facilitate discussion on both the meaning and significance of this re-thinking of revelation in secular terms within Europe and beyond.