ABSTRACT
Lessing fashioned himself as a critic; together with Diderot, he can be considered as the first critic, in difference to Voltaire. A critic supposedly only reacts and educates, but Lessing had a hidden intention that was identified as the dissemination of mines at the heart of traditional aesthetics. The beauty of a human being includes the spirit, the soul and the whole personality, not just the body. The key to Lessing's personality, and its problems, start with a seemingly innocuous statement: in contrast to Leibniz, Lessing was not an original thinker. As a means of gaining recognition Lessing turned to the new divinity, the ultimate judge of the emerging metropolis, the public; in particular its favourite means of entertainment, the theatre. Goethe established the truly modern novel not as a way of education but as overcoming the way one became formed in the modern world.
