Friedrich Hölderlin (1770 – 1843)

As a young man, Hölderlin shared a room at the Tübingen Stift theological college with the two future philosophers, Hegel and Schelling. And there is a fragmentary document, dating from 1796 – after the three of them had left Tübingen – the actual authorship of which is uncertain. This interesting text has come to be known as the ‘Earliest System-Programme of German Idealism’. It survives in Hegel’s handwriting, and may well be by Hegel himself. Or it may be by either Schelling or Hölderlin, and then sent to Hegel, who copied it out. At that period the three were intellectually very close. But, of the three, it is clearly Hölderlin who, subsequently, held closest to the programme here adumbrated.

   Thus, whoever the author is, he writes [as H. S. Harris translates it, in an appendix to Hegel’s Development, vol. 1]:

... I am now convinced that the highest act of Reason, the one through which it encompasses all Ideas, is an aesthetic act, and that truth and goodness only become sisters in beauty – the philosopher must possess just as much aesthetic power as the poet ...

We are told so often that the great mob must have a religion of the senses. But not only does the great mob need it, the philosopher needs it too. Monotheism of Reason and heart, polytheism of the imagination and of art, this is what we need.

Here I shall discuss particularly an idea which, as far as I know, has never occurred to anyone else – we must have a new mythology, but this mythology must be in the service of the Ideas, it must be a mythology of Reason.

Until we express the Ideas aesthetically, i.e. mythologically, they have no interest for the people, and conversely until mythology is rational the philosopher must be ashamed of it. Thus, in the end enlightened and unenlightened must clasp hands, mythology must become philosophical in order to make the people rational, and philosophy must become mythological in order to make the philosophers sensible [sinnl<ich>]. Then reigns eternal unity among us. No more the look of scorn [of the enlightened philosopher looking down on the ‘mob’], no more the blind trembling of the people before its wise men and priests. Then first awaits us equal development of all powers, of what is peculiar to each and what is common to all. No power shall any longer be suppressed for universal freedom and equality of spirits will reign! – A higher spirit sent from heaven must found this new religion among us, it will be the last <and> greatest work of mankind.

‘Monotheism of Reason and heart, polytheism of the imagination and of art’: Hölderlin’s great poetry, all written prior to his nervous breakdown in 1805, remains Christian, and yet, at the same time, also belongs to the dream of a ‘new religion’ adumbrated here. Infused with nostalgia for Ancient Greece, the gods who have departed, this is a Christianity made strange by the extravagance of its discontent.