Abstract

Explicates Lessing's basic thought as set forth in his theological and religious‐philosophical manifesto, The Education of the Human Race. A meticulous and thoroughgoing analysis of the text unravels Lessing's dialectical conception of the relationship between revelation and reason. For Lessing, the human race finds fulfillment in a developmental process induced and propelled by divine revelation. Hence he introduces the novel concept of the development of human reason as a gradual appropriation of divine revelation. The chapter concludes that the ideal of Lessingian enlightenment is the attainment of an “autotheonomy” in which “autonomy is at the same time theonomy.”