The German Genius

genius of the Aufklärer was developed still further. It was in the genius that the two realms of the individual and the general came together. More and more, the genius was considered to have the qualities of a prophet. By 1760, the Aufklärer across a wide range of disciplines were involved in trying to understand the exact nature of genius. In his 1760 book, Versuch über das Genie ( Truth about Genius ), Friedrich Gabriel Resewitz argued that genius was characterized by “intuitive knowledge” ( anschauende Erkenntnis ), defined as the ability to grasp the general and the individual simultaneously. Resewitz was saying, in effect, that the product of genius is itself a form of perfect knowledge. In asserting this he implied that genius “samples” divine knowledge. 21
    The evolving concept of genius had a number of ramifications. First, the new understanding implied that historical change resulted from spiritual change, but it also carried the implication that change was not automatic, for genius was notoriously unpredictable. And since by definition (to the devout at any rate) every image of perfection could only be ultimately incomplete, direction was implied but the destination could never be reached. “Art as well as history had an infinite realm of future possibility.” 22
    Isaak Iselin, in Über die Geschichte der Menschheit (History of Mankind), published in revised form in 1768, characterized history as man’s spiritual struggle to overcome nature. Conceived in this way, he was led to consider three ideal types of human behavior: man ruled by his senses, man ruled by his imagination, and man ruled by his reason, producing a threefold periodization of history: the state of savagery (senses), of cultivation (imagination), of human maturity/harmony among the three faculties (reason). In arriving at this organization, Iselin contributed to the German (as opposed, say, to the British or American) idea of freedom. For him, freedom was to be acquired through knowledge; it was an internal freedom that concerned him, in contrast to an outward—political—freedom. * Furthermore, the realization of the future was for him, as for other Aufklärer, possible only through a conscious act. The future didn’t just happen; it was fashioned, fostered, crafted, and geniuses were to be the primary agents of this advance. 23 Here were two ideas that were to have powerful ramifications in German intellectual history.
    P OETRY VS . M ATHEMATICS
     
    At the center of the historicist approach is the conviction that a fundamental difference exists between the phenomena of nature and the phenomena of history, from which it follows that the social and cultural sciences are inherently different from the natural sciences. 24 The Aufklärer also made a further distinction—between rational or abstract understanding on the one hand, and moral or “immediate” understanding on the other. Rational thought, they believed, is best suited to exploring the world external to man, while immediate understanding lends itself to the exploration of the human world. On this view, mathematics represents the ideal form of rational understanding, whereas poetry is the ideal manifestation of intuitive understanding. History, which is concerned with both the external world and the spiritual world, must draw from both. For the Aufklärer, the genius is not so much the great speculative philosopher but more likely a great poet. “Poetry both preceded and was superior to reflection…The great poet provides his people with an intuitive representation of the truths of their times at a level approaching divine understanding.” 25 The historian’s task, then, becomes an investigation of a people’s national character according to its sacred and creative writings. For the Aufklärer, historical understanding came to be regarded as on a par with the achievements of poets and artists because it enabled people “to understand their own humanity by apprehending the humanity of others.” 26
    The importance of the poetic approach was central to the Romantic movement, and the difference between the cultural and natural sciences has been an important concern in Germany right up until the present day. In the late eighteenth century, the significance of poetry was highlighted early by the short-lived but intense flourishing of the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) movement. The title was taken from a play by Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, actually a