Titanismo e spinozismo: Prometeo come simbolo religioso attraverso l’idealismo tedesco

The publication of Goethe’s ode Prometheus in Jacobi’s Letters concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza (1785) opens a peculiar way in the reception in German culture of this Greek mythical figure. In the context of that Jacobian work Prometheus represents the refusal of divinity and the spinozistic view of the En kai pan professed by Lessing in the dialogue with Jacobi at the core of the text. Jacobian interpretation of Prometheus only partially corresponds to Goethean reading of the myth in his poem and generally to Goethean view of divinity. This peculiar way inaugurated by Jacobi is retraced through German Idealism. The essay deals in its second part with the quotation of the myth of Prometheus in Schleiermacher’s On religion (1799): Schleiermacher refuses the rebellious and atheist side of the mythical figure and therefore separates titanism and spinozism because he maintains the whole (the “Universe”) at the middle of his definition of religion. The third and last part of the essay deals with Fichte’s references to Goethe in some of his religious writings. In the essay of 1798 that caused the accusation of atheism against him, Fichte refers to a passage of Goethe’s Faust as expression of his convictions on divinity. In The Way Towards the Blessed Life (1806) Fichte identifies Prometheus with the Stoical view as moral conviction that destroys the personal God, but he leaves behind Goethe’s view of divinity as expressed in the poem Prometheus. Through this quotation probably Fichte refers to Jacobian view but also marks a difference to his former view of divinity. As consequence of Jacobi’s use of Goethean poem the myth of Prometheus interpreted by Goethe seems inevitably tied up with the history of Spinozism.