When Religion Had a Mind

ritten in 1779 by the playwright and philosopher Gotthold Lessing, Nathan the Wise http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1463609019 /ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325& creativeASIN=1463609019&linkCode=as2&tag=thenewrep08!20 ranks among the most powerful arguments for religious tolerance in the entirety of the eighteenth century. Germany in the age of Enlightenment was still trembling from the confessional disputes of earlier times. The Reformation motto “cuius regio, eius religio” (where the prince reigns, so too his religion) had not put an end to strife amongst Lutherans, Calvinists, and Catholics. But Lessing’s play extended the hand of tolerance even beyond the Christian fold, to Judaism and Islam. In a brilliant feat of displacement, he removed the dramatic action from the Germany of his own day and set his characters in a half-imaginary Jerusalem in the midst of the Third Photo: Universal Images Group/Getty Images By Peter E. Gordon