The ethics of suicide and self-sacrifice in the eighteenth century: Problems in Lessing, Goethe, and Kleist

This study examines the ethics of suicide and self-sacrifice in works and correspondence of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, and Heinrich von Kleist. By concentrating on each author's problematization and thematization of suicide and self-sacrifice as expressed in letters and literature, I demonstrate how suicide is conceptualized and how it influences each author's view of the individual and one's existence. Through these three authors, I examine how the increasingly secularized view of suicide coincides with the individual's recognition of and assertion of himself.;In the first chapter, I lay the foundations for the literary study by reconstructing the eighteenth-century religious and philosophical discourse on suicide and the cultural context in which suicide was viewed. Under the influence of the Enlightenment, the eighteenth century initiates a discussion and re-thinking of suicide, whereby European intellectuals begin to address theological, philosophical, and judicial questions raised by suicide.;Chapter two deals with how Lessing's early drama Philotas (1759) appears as a medium for him to problematize suicide. By uncovering the essential paradoxical nature of the drama and of Philotas's behavior, I probe how Philotas reflects on suicide and manipulates his imminent suicide to appear as product of patriotic duty while covering his personal desires.;Chapter three focuses on Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werther (1774/1787) and his comments about suicide in Dichtung und Wahrheit. Werther develops a pathological sickness stemming from his inability to integrate himself into empirical reality and from the torment caused by his self-limiting view of it. Arising from his pathological sickness is a death instinct, a conviction that his suicide is irreversible and the only way to end his suffering caused by the clash of his self-constructed perspective of reality and reality itself. He ultimately commits suicide to self-construct his fragmented existence and to reestablish control over his life.;The subject matter for the final chapter is Heinrich von Kleist's evolving views of suicide and his ultimate suicide. I compare Kleist's views of suicide to those of Prince Homburg in his last drama Prinz Friedrich von Homburg (1811). By concentrating on Kleist's letters and the Prince's monologues, I show literal, figurative, and symbolic similarities between Kleist's and the Prince's language and thoughts as they pertain to suicide and self-sacrifice.