The Parable of the Rings: Sigmund Freud Reads Lessing

Summary

Sigmund Freud knew Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Nathan the Wise well. In this drama, the Sultan of Jerusalem asks Nathan, a Jewish merchant, to demonstrate his wisdom by telling him which of the three religions— Judaism, Christianity, Islam—is true. In return, Nathan tells the parable of the three rings. This essay focuses on Freud's reception of Lessing's parable by analyzing three instances: Freud's secret engagement with Martha Bernays, his shaping of the psychoanalytic institution, and his concept of Judaism and the Jewish people.

NATHAN THE WISE (1779) is perhaps the most famous of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's works, and it certainly belongs to the classical canon of German literature. Lessing described the play not as a drama, but as a “dramatic poem,” and it is best known for a parable. This parable is inserted into a conversation between Nathan, a Jewish merchant, and the Sultan of Jerusalem. The Sultan calls for the trader, compliments Nathan on his wisdom, and asks him a question that is both honest and provocative: Which of the three major religions is the true one, Judaism, Christianity, or Islam?

Only a decade earlier, Lessing's friend, the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, was urged by the Swiss minister Johann Caspar Lavater to confirm that Christianity was the true and superior faith, and to convert. Nathan the Wise in turn is set at a time of religious strife, during the Third Crusade, and here, a third religion enters the discussion. But the Sultan does not want Nathan to declare Islam to be true, nor to challenge him to conversation. He simply asks a question. In response, Nathan offers a lesson in diplomacy. He does not choose among the three religions, he does not decide or put them into a hierarchical order. Nathan tells a story instead.

Nathan's story is the parable of the three rings, and it is easily summarized. According to a family tradition, a father was supposed to pass on an old ring to the next generation before dying; he was to give it to the son whom he loved best.