Prof. Günter Zöller (University of Munich)

Abstract

The talk explores the Masonic background of K. L. Reinhold’s pioneering reception of

Kant’s critical philosophy. The focus is on Reinhold’s obscure early publication, The Hebrew

Mysteries or the Oldest Religious Freemasonry (Die Hebräischen Mysterien oder die älteste

religiöse Freymaurerey; 1787), which seeks to retrieve the Mosaic founding of monotheism

for the secret prehistory of modern freemasonry and proved a major inspiration for Fr.

Schiller’s early essay, Moses’ Mission (Die Sendung Moses; 1790). Section 1 details

Reinhold’s involvement with the Viennese late Enlightenment Masonic movement. Section 2

presents Reinhold’s (and Schiller’s) reading of Moses as a political renegate who turns the

secret religion of the Egyptians into the public and political religion of the Hebrews. Section

3 analyses the transition from the ancient Hebrew conception of theocracy to the early

modern conceptions of state religion and civil religion. Throughout the talk explores the

complex relationship between secrecy and publicity, religion and politics, and theology and

philosophy in European Enlightenment thought.

Reference

Reinhold, Carl Leonhard: Die Hebräischen Mysterien oder die älteste religiöse

Freymaurerey, ed. and comm. Jan Assmann. Appendix: Friedrich Schiller, Die Sendung

Moses. Series „GegenSatz“, vol. 4. Second, enlarged edition. Neckargemünd: Edition

Mnemosyne, 2006.