After reading Kant's What is Enlightenment and Lessing's Nathan the Wise
The most inspiring thing for me after reading Nathan the Wise is the idea of religious tolerance. When Saladin questions which religions is the true religion, Nathan, using a parable of three rings, argued that different religions can be only distinguished by their apparent aspects, but the ground truth is the same. Since choosing a religion is singly depended by the parents’ religions, religions are determined in a superficial way and the essence of religion is ignored after generations. However, Nathan argued that the absolute ground truth of all religions is still same which is to love the people. In this way, Lessing proposes religious tolerance since the hatred among different religions betrays the truth of religion itself, and if you love, you are holding the true religion. It is a surprise for me to see this artful argument of reasoning on the foundation of religion. But a question emerges: why do people tend to believe that their own religions are the truth while others are false?
Kant’s “What is Enlightenment” sheds light on my thinking on Nathan the Wise and makes me realize the importance of public freedom. Religion is, what Kant writes, the tutelage that deprives people from thinking freely and independently. Since the churches have such an authority that no one can publicly question about them, by Kant’s argument, followers are not enlightened and they blindly follow the dogmas. Nathan the Wise is a demonstration of enlightenment. It urges religious tolerance to open up a free space publicly for religions. The sultan Saladin listens to Nathan’s wisdom, which means he allows for a free space for public speaking. Living in such a enlightened era, Nathan dare to think and challenge Saladin’s belief of one single true religion. As a result, three religions coexist happily. But what enlightenment could benefit to the society? It makes me think of Frederick the Great who is the king of the time when Lessing wrote the play and he is the first king who integrated religious and nationality difference and his empire becomes the first enlightened state and this leads to a prosperous state. But it also reminds me of Hitler who controlled Germany by secret police where no one could speak anything publicly against Nazi, otherwise facing public humiliation or even death and as a result, Nazi only prospers in a short time. From this contrast, we see the effects of enlightenment. And it is also dreadful to see that my home country China is prohibiting free public space to speak online in recent two months.
Also, while the enlightened thinking of Lessing for questioning the essence of religions spellbound me, I feel doubtful that, correct me if I am wrong, in Lessing’s reason, why must religions hold the same essence, love? Is it necessary for them to trace back to the same origin, one single truth? Or an alternate answer, do all religions hold different truth where they are all absolute truth? If so, then Lessing’s argument on religious tolerance is only a great expectation. The hard truth is that every religion is different, hatred among different religions is inevitable and we only choose to use reason to deceive ourselves.