The so-called Fragments Controversy (1777/1778) marks the high point of the confrontation between the defenders of traditional Christianity and the advocates of the modern enlightenment movement in Germany. According to the poet and philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who published the seven Fragments by an Unnamed Author that sparked the controversy, all earlier attempts to attack the Bible pale in comparison: While there had been “assaults on individual bastions,” only the Unnamed Author mounts what Lessing describes as “nothing less than a full-scale onslaught on the Christian religion.”
Dr. Hannes Kerber will show that Lessing choreographed the scandalous controversy to show the reach and determine the limits of the enlightenment’s critique of religion.
Challenging the Enlightenment: G.E. Lessing and the Challenge of Christianity
Saturday, March 25th @ 3:00 PM
AAI, refreshments served
Dr. Hannes Kerber is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Government at Harvard University.
His research and teaching focus on the tension between philosophy, politics, and religion in ancientand early-modern thought. His first book, Die Aufklärung der Aufklärung: Lessing und die Herausforderung des Christentums (“The Enlightenment of the Enlightenment: Lessing and the Challenge of Christianity”), was published in 2021 by Wallstein Verlag, and won the 2022 Chodowiecki Prize by Interdisziplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies. His second book, Leo Strauss on Plato’s “Euthyphro”: the 1948 Notebook, with Lectures and Critical Writings, is forthcoming with Penn State University Press in April 2023.
