German Enlightenment

Recent studies pay particular attention to literarily staged religious disputations
in the Middle Ages. In these recent it seems to be politically correct or polite to criticize the way these fictional dialogues present the other religions ant the truth-claim of one's own religion. The following paper tries to put forward some critical remarks in regard to this recent trend. To this end, it compares mediaeval colloquies with the German Enlightenment's philosophy of religion and, as a result, analyzes by which means we are able to characterize reasons put forward in that kind of discussions as objective
reasons.

The sublime describes an aesthetic experience of extraordinary intensity and depth. Martin Fritz uncovers the ethical and metaphysical components of the classical concept and traces the religious character it has acquired in the course of its modern rediscovery. By doing this, he establishes the sublime as an idea of pivotal relevance for the philosophy of religion.

Der Ursprung des berühmten Streits über die Vernunftkritik, der seit dem Ende der 80er Jahre des 18. Jahrhunderts Johann August Eberhard beschäftigt hat und eines der wichtigsten Kapitel seines gesamten Denkweges bildet, geht auf ein anonymes Dokument zurück, das ihm erst vor kurzem zugeschrieben worden ist. Diese Schrift besteht nur aus zwei Blättern und betrifft die Lehre von Raum und Zeit, wie sie von Kant in der »Dissertatio pro loco professionis«, d.h. in »De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis« vom August 1770, noch vor ihrem Auftauchen in der KrV dargestellt wurde.

Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786), best known as Frederick the Great, was a prolific writer of philosophical discourses, poems, epics, satires, and more, while maintaining extensive correspondence with prominent intellectuals, Voltaire among them. This edition of selected writings, the first to make a wide range of Frederick’s most important ideas available to a modern English readership, moves beyond traditional attempts to see his work only in light of his political aims. In these pages, we can finally appreciate Frederick’s influential contributions to the European Enlightenment—and his unusual role as a monarch who was also a published author.

In addition to Frederick’s major opus, the Anti-Machiavel, the works presented here include essays, prefaces, reviews, and dialogues. The subjects discussed run the gamut from ethics to religion to political theory. Accompanied by critical annotations, the texts show that we can understand Frederick’s views of kingship and the state only if we engage with a broad spectrum of his thought, including his attitudes toward morality and self-love. By contextualizing his arguments and impact on Enlightenment beliefs, this volume considers how we can reconcile Frederick’s innovative public musings with his absolutist rule. Avi Lifschitz provides a robust and detailed introduction that discusses Frederick’s life and work against the backdrop of eighteenth-century history and politics.

This article shows that Johann Gottlieb Steeb supported different aspects of Kant's theory of race. Despite the growing research on Kant's racial and biological theory, one finds no mention of Steeb in these interpretations. However, his work is relevant because of his attempt in 1785 to synthesize Kant's preformationist terminology with Blumenbach's epigenetic theory. This article aims at understanding this synthesis. Recent interpreters of Kant presuppose that preformationism excluded epigenesis. But already in 1785 Steeb saw the possibility of integrating Kant's germs into a discourse that was to a large extent dominated by Blumenbach. Steeb's synthesis primarily implied that the concepts of germs and race could be amended to Blumenbach's understanding of human diversity.

A critical interpretation of Mendelssohn's relations with the city of Berlin and the German Enlightenment, under the perspective of the link between urban culture, fight for emancipation, religious minorities and cult of the (growing) German state.

In dem Aufsatz soll ein Beitrag zur Beantwortung der Frage geleistet werden, warum die Vollkommenheitsethik von Christian Wolff in unseren Tagen in systematischer Hinsicht nicht zur Kenntnis genommen wird. Mit meinem Versuch zu verstehen, warum Wolff in den heutigen Debatten keine Rolle spielt, möchte ich allerdings auch die These verknüpfen, dass im Falle der Rezeptionsgeschichte der Wolffschen Ethik ‚Vernunft in der Geschichte’ ist. Denn in systematischer Hinsicht sind, wie mir scheint, Wolffs Thesen entweder nicht gut begründet oder nicht originell. Die Absicht meines Textes ist jedoch nicht rein negativer Art. Vielmehr möchte ich durch meine Kritik an Wolff eine Diskussion zu fördern versuchen, in der andere Autoren in apologetischer Absicht auf seine Ethik Bezug nehmen. Sollte dies gelingen, müsste der Kanon moralphilosophischer Klassiker vielleicht um einen Autor bzw. eine Position erweitert werden.

Einen digitalen Sonderdruck schicke ich auf Anfrage gern zu!

In: Cord-Friedrich Berghahn, Imke Lang-Groth (Hg.): Joachim Heinrich Campe. Dichtung, Sprache, Pädagogik und Politik zwischen Aufklärung, Revolution und Restauration. (Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift - Beiheft 102), Heidelberg: Winter, 2021, S. 101-125.

This paper demonstrates how Herder's unique position (in the 18th century) on moral philosophy is rooted in his understanding of the soul-body relationship. He rejects both Mendelssohn's conception of the soul as separate from the body and striving for an eternal perfection and his associated belief in a moral philosophy that consists of universal, rational principles. Herder construes the soul as deeply bound up with the body, and knowledge, including of morality, as rooted in the lower, sensuous regions of the soul. In the case of morality, moral norms and mores emerge from culturally and historically shaped quasi-physiological "moral feelings" (moralische Gefühle). The paper seeks to unpack the young Herder's reflections on moral philosophy, and show how they emerge from his conception of the soul-body relationship, which is, in part, critically worked out in dialogue with Mendelssohn.

The question of racism in Kant is predominantly discussed using the example of the Kantian race theory. This is a far too narrow perspective which neither gives consideration to the complexity and scope of racist arguments nor to their use by Kant. In order to grasp his contribution to modern racism, his race-related, antisemitic, antiziganist and orientalist thoughts and types of discrimination must be examined. The overall view shows that Kant advances a broadly based cultural racism. This racism also shapes his contribution on race theory and results in white supremacy. It prejudices Kant’s image of humanity to such a degree that he supposes that only Europeans can perfect the development of human abilities and that other races either have to be guided by them or perish.

Quaestio. Annuario di storia della metafisica (2014), 14: 315-327.

This review-article examines Daniel Novotný’s new book on entia rationis in Baroque-Age scholasticism. Novotný’s presentation of Francisco Suárez’, Pedro Hurtado’s, Bartolomeo Mastri’s and Bonaventura Belluto’s as well as Juan Caramuel’s theories of beings of reason is discussed. Beyond Novotný’s results, it is pointed out 1) that Suárez’ theory of the causation of beings of reason is anticipated by his explanation of the relationship between formal and objective concepts, and 2) that the traditional division of distinctions of reason lies in the background of some scholastic authors’ differentiation between entia rationis ratiocinatae and entia rationis ratiocinantis; this latter motif is echoed in German Enlightenment metaphysics.

The last text Gotthold Ephraim Lessing ever wrote – a short fragment entitled "Notes on An Assessment of the Current Movements of Religion" (Anmerkungen zu einem Gutachten über die itzigen Religionsbewegungen) – has long puzzled readers. While the first generation of Lessing scholars recognized the fragment’s importance, all attempts to decipher its allusions have failed because the historical context of the piece remained obscure. In my essay, I identify the text to which Lessing’s "Notes" are referring for the first time: a legal petition with the bulky title "Most Subservient Assessment Concerning the Current Movements of Religion, Especially Within the Protestant Church, As Well As Regarding the Imperial Commissional Decree in the Case Against Bahrdt" (archived in the Bavarian State Library, Munich). This discovery not only illuminates the historical background of Lessing’s final work and makes visible his previously unknown dialogue with Johann Jacob Moser, the petition’s anonymous author. It also shows that Lessing intended to forcefully intervene in what was arguably the most notorious religio-political legal battle of the 18th century – the Imperial Aulic Council’s case against the radical enlightenment thinker Carl Friedrich Bahrdt. Thus, Lessing’s last fragment sheds light on the rhetorical strategy that allowed Lessing, as opposed to Bahrdt, to avoid the most serious persecution during the famous “Fragments Controversy.”

Reconstruction of the dream theory of the Enlightenment, with a discussion of literary dreams in Richardson's "Clarissa", Rousseau's "Nouvelle Héloïse", Wieland's "Geschichte des Agathon", and Goethe's "Werther". A case study for the relation between knowledge in science and literature.

In 18th century Germany, the academic establishment of scholarly concern with the phenomena of government and state was closely bound up with the history of the Prussian State University of Halle. Here we find a paradigmatic instance of the way in which the engagement with the idea of state and government itself became an integral factor in the emergence of a particular form of polity. The study is at once a study of early-modern structural change in political science against the backdrop of the history of ideas and an analysis of the university in terms of the sociology of milieu. The transformation in methodological attitudes and the political model of civic order resulting from it show up clearly in the intersection between scholarship and bureaucracy.

The satirical writings of Lucian of Samosata had a tremendous influence on the literature of the Eastern European Haskalah, shaping its criticism of the burgeoning Hasidic movement in the nineteenth century as if there were no gap between it and the Roman Empire of the second century. Lucian’s criticism of false prophets, self-proclaimed philosophers, and common fools and frauds, like his satirical dialogues with the world of the dead, provided the perfect model for those Maskilim who opposed the revelations of the Hasidic movement in both theological and social realms. One particularly salient testimony to the classical satirist’s influence is the astounding translation of his story “Alexander the False Prophet” by the Maskilic writer Meir Letteris, the first translation of Lucian’s work into Hebrew. The translation, printed in full below, was based on the German edition of Christoph Martin Wieland and published in the journal Ha-Tsefirah, which Letteris edited in 1823. As with every translation, it is a new product, shaped in and by its own context. This essay discusses the tendencies and apparent goals of the translator, the additions and omissions he made to the text, and the influence of Lucian’s satirical style on the Haskalah.

Megaleh Temirin (Revealer of Secrets), first published in Vienna in 1819, is one of the sharpest and wittiest pieces of Jewish literature written in the first half of the nineteenth century, and is perhaps the most important piece of Hebrew prose composed before the stories of Mendele Mocher Seforim. A sly and complex story deriding Hasidism and Hasidim, it is told through the correspondence between the beadles of Hasidic courts and contemporary rabbis, and it presents a dark picture of  avaricious frauds and swindlers whose main concern was control over territory and the souls of believers, a goal achieved by beguiling the authorities and attacking all opponents. Perl lends his book a ‘Hasidic’ feel both in its physical design and in its language, presenting a Maskilic version of In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov that lays Hasidism bare so that no reader will ever be able to look at that, or any other Hasidic book, in the same way again. In addition to the book’s satiric sting, which would have been enough to bring its readers a dual pleasure, Perl’s hints at contemporary people and places, hidden within anagrams and numerological tricks. With the unraveling of these clues, which also include the use of actual Hasidic sources, the book is a valuable, contemporary view of historical reality. A meticulous reading of the book may therefore open a window on the hidden worlds of Hasidism and the Haskalah at the start of the nineteenth century.

The first volume (Imagined Hasidism) serves as an introduction to the complex satirical writings of Josef Perl of Tarnopol (1773-1839). At the center of the book stands an analysis of the satires, Megaleh Temirin (1819) and Bochen Tzadik (1838), including a systematic treatment of the ‘characters’ in the central works and a discussion of the dozens of manuscripts to be found in the Perl Archive in Jerusalem. Perl’s writings are analyzed here in the fuller context of Hebrew and Yiddish literature in general and Maskilic and Hasidic literature in particular, as well as other polemical writings and governmental records critical of Hasidism. The study thus presents a complex and nuanced picture of the relationship between literature and history, between the anti-Hasidic reports and the more complicated historical reality, and lays the groundwork for further research into the genre of nineteenth-century Maskilic satire.

The second and third volumes (Megaleh Temirin) present for the first time an annotated edition of Megaleh Temirin. It is based on the first edition and the scattered manuscripts and it includes a comparison to its Yiddish translation. The book is accompanied by appendices on its origins and contents, including fundamental treatments of several passages: an explication of the encoded names, the Hasidic sources used by the author, and the variants found in the manuscripts and in the only edition of the book in Yiddish.

The editor of the book, Professor Jonatan Meir, teaches in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University. He has published several articles on the Haskalah of Eastern Europe, Hasidism, and a number of varied topics in twentieth-century Kabbalah.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Contents


Introduction                                                                                     
Scholarship on the anti-Hasidic writings of Josef Perl • Hasidic hagiography and the emergence of satire • Two-fold reading of Perl’s writings and the gematriyot • Satire, literature, and history • ‘Holy Books’ and subversive books

Chapter 1: Josef Perl, Rabbi Nathan of Nemirov, and the ‘Holy Books’
Prayer of the fall of Hasidism and the expungement of their books • Sefer Shivhe ha-Besht and the critique of hagiography • Sefer Sipurey Ma‘asiyot and the parodic response to it • Rabbi Nathan of Nemirov, ‘heretical books’ and the ‘Holy Books’ • In praise of the true Tsaddikim • ‘Laughter of the heretics’: testimonies about the polemics against Sefer Shivhe ha-Besht • ‘Holy Books’, ‘sacredness of hagiography’, and parodies of hagiography • Appendix: Parodic manuscript about an opponent of the ‘Holy Books’ who was reborn as a horse

Chapter 2: Speaking Names in Sefer Megale Temirin                             
Time of the composition of Megale Temirin, censorship, and a note on the Buch • Hasidic books and the emergence of parody • Structure of Sefer Megale Temirin • The Introduction to Sefer Megale Temirin • Main Hasidic courts • The court in Żołyń (Łożne) and the peregrinations of the Buch • The court of Dishpal (Międzyboż), moneyboxes of the Besht, the holy relics • The court in Aklo (Olika) and the ritualized reading of Sefer Shivhe ha-Besht • Function of the footnotes and the parodic hagiography • History of the rabbis – clandestine opponents of Hasidism • The Besht in Tarnopol • Rabbi Meir Jacob of Zasław and the letters from Galicja  • Zaddikim in Galicja • Ciphered stories • ‘Holy Places’: reincarnations of a praise from Sefer Shivhe ha-Besht • The revelation of the Buch and the death of the secretary • ‘Gang of criminals’: another death and an escape to the Land of Israel • The End: Ovadia Ben Petahia and the rabbi of Opatów

Chapter 3: Joseph Perl, Hirsh of Zydaczów, and the Polemics of Gematriyot
Reb Zevi Hirsh of Zydaczów and Hasidism in Galicja • Maskilic opposition to the Zydaczówer • Letters concealed in Sefer Megale Temirin • A manuscript about the misdeeds of the Hasidim • Books, education, and a note on Reb Nathan of Nemirov • Zydaczówer’s ban on the Maskilim and the first Gematria • Parodic letter of Perl and the second Gematria • About the parodic letter and the jumble of gematriyot • Denunciation and expulsions of R Zevi Hirsh • ‘Father of impurity’: Joseph Perl and the writings of the rabbi of Komarno • Final note • Appendix: Parodic letter against the Zydaczówer

Chapter 4: Speaking Names in the Book of Sefer Bohen Zaddik               
The manuscript of Sefer Bohen Zaddik and the difficulties with its publication • Structure of the book • In search for the true Zaddik and the rabbi of Opatów • Travels of Ovadia Ben Petahia between the towns of Galicja • Kromcza Ruska (Zaleszczyki) or the entrance to Galicja • ‘Briks’ (Tarnopol): Rabbi Jehoshua Heschel Babad and the school • ‘Bicik’ (Lemberg) Rabbi Jacob Orenstein and a ban on the Maskilim • ‘Abdera’ (Brody) Rabbi Ephraim Zalman Margaliot and Sefer ha-Zoref • The explanation of the names of the rabbis • Utopia and dystopia • The hidden butcher and his kabbalistic writings • The discovery of the colonies • The image of the disciples of the Gaon and the ‘true Hasid’ • ‘The solution for the East’ or heterotopia •  The will to flee and the emissary

Chapter 5: The Imaginary Influence of Sefer Megale Temirin                     
The myth about the success of the book • Pamphlet Megale Sod • The manuscript about the misdeeds of the Hasidim • Dialogues about Sefer Megale Temirin • For whom Sefer Megale Temirin was intended and who read it • Note concerning Sefer Megale Temirin in Yiddish • Influence real and imagined • Was Sefer Shivhe ha-Besht written by a parodist? • Temerl Bergson and Sefer Megale Temirin • Writ of defense of Hasidism • Sefer Megale Temirin and the Hebrew literature • Appendix: writ of defense of Joseph Judah Lob Sossnitz

Afterword: Note on the Anti-Hasidic Outlook                                       

Bibliographic Abbreviations   

Reviews:
(1) Dan Meron, 2013, ‘Megaleh Temirin’, Kivunim Hadashim 29, 55 pages (Hebrew)
(2) David Assaf, 2014, ‘Hasidim will not Read it but Tear it’, Haaretz, Tarbut ve-Sifrut, p .6 (Hebrew) http://onegshabbat.blogspot.co.il/2014/04/blog-post_18.html
(3) Eliezer Brodt, 2014, 'New book Announcement- Megale Temirin', The Seforim Blog http://seforim.blogspot.co.il/2014/01/new-book-announcement-megale-temirin.html
(4) Matan Hermoni, 2014,  הסבתא המופקרת של הספרות העבריתHaaretz, Sfarim (Hebrew) http://www.haaretz.co.il/.premium-1.2382365
(5) Shinichi Yamamoto, 2015, 山本　伸一, "ヨナタン・メイール編著『想像のハシディズム』", ユダヤ・イスラエル研究　第28号  http://www.waseda.jp/assoc-jsjs/jistudies.html
(6) David Biale and David Assaf,, 2015, 'Revealer Revealed', Jewish Review of Books, pp. 17-21  http://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/1454/revealer-revealed/
(7) Hillel Halkin, 2015, "Sex, Magic, Bigotry, Corruption- and the First Hebrew Novel', Mosaic Magazine,  http://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2015/05/sex-magic-bigotry-corruption-and-the-first-hebrew-novel/
(8) Tomer Persico, 2015, "Interview", Lula'at haEl http://tomerpersico.com/2015/08/10/meir_perl/
(9) Ariel Evan Mayse, 'Review', Jewish History (2015)ת  http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10835-015-9245-2
(10) Review - Gal-Ed

With a new Study Translation by Katherine Firth and a Preface by N. T. Wright
This Theological Commentary is the first full-length work in English to consider Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion in its entirety, both the words and the music. Bach’s oratorio is a globally popular musical work, and a significant expression of Lutheran theology.

The commentary explains the Biblical and poetic text, and its musical setting, line by line. Bach’s Passion is shown to be the work of a master craftsman and trained theologian, in the collaborative and cultural milieu of eighteenth-century, Lutheran Leipzig.

For the first time, this work makes much German scholarship available in English, including archival sources, and includes a new scholarly translation of the libretto. The musical and theological terms are explained, to enable an interdisciplinary understanding of the Passion’s meaning and continued significance.

This dossier contains the critical edition of
the first text on aesthetics written by the
argentine philosopher Luis Juan Guerrero. "A
Panorama of the German Classical-Romantic
Aesthetics as an Introduction to the Study of
Current Aesthetic Trends" was published only once in the Bulletin of the National University of La Plata in 1934. It is preceded here by a
long essay that reconstructs its historical-philosophical
context, fixed its sources and discusses
its place in the evolution of the ideas of the
author of Estética operatoria en sus tres direcciones
(1956). In appendix we reproduce the
complete programs of courses on “History of
Modern Aesthetics” Guerrero gave at that
university in 1933 and 1934.

Although its origins stem from theological debates, the general will would ultimately become one of the most celebrated and denigrated concepts emerging from early modern political thought.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau would make it the central element of his political theory, and it would take on a life of its own during the French Revolution before being subjected to generations of embrace or opprobrium.  James Farr and David Lay Williams have collected for the first time a set of essays that track the evolving history of the general will from its origins to recent times.  These essays include attention to the general will’s theological, political, formal, and substantive dimensions with a careful eye to the concept’s virtues and limitations as understood by its expositors and critics, among them Pascal, Malebranche, Locke, Spinoza, Montesquieu, Constant, Tocqueville, Adam Smith, and John Rawls.

Summary, page 467: "This book is concerned with the influence of Hume’s metaphysics and moral philosophy in 18th-century Europe and it is divided into two main parts. The first part is focused on the exposition of Hume’s metaphysics and moral philosophy in their historical context, because this topic is still mostly unknown in Croatia. The second part deals with the influence of Hume’s metaphysics and moral philosophy on selected European thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment until the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789."

Eighteenth-century Epicureanism is often viewed as radical, anti-religious, and politically dangerous. But to what extent does this simplify the ancient philosophy and underestimate its significance to the Enlightenment?

Through a pan-European analysis of Enlightenment centres from Scotland to Russia via the Netherlands, France and Germany, contributors argue that elements of classical Epicureanism were appropriated by radical and conservative writers alike. They move beyond literature and political theory to examine the application of Epicurean ideas in domains as diverse as physics, natural law, and the philosophy of language, drawing on the work of both major figures (Diderot, Helvétius, Smith and Hume) and of lesser-known but important thinkers (Johann Jacob Schmauss and Dmitrii Anichkov).

In einer wichtigen Passage des Abschnitts über die „Paralogismen der reinen Vernunft“ in der zweiten Auflage der Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1787) behauptet Kant, dass das „Ich denke […] ein empirischer Satz“ ist und „den Satz, Ich existiere, in sich“ (KrV B 422 Anm.) enthält. Dieser „Existentialsatz“ (KrV B 423 Anm.) ist, wie zu zeigen sein wird, zentral für Kants Verhältnisbestimmung von Natur und Freiheit. Wir können nach Kant unsere im Aktus des ‚Ich denke’ bewusste Existenz nicht nur als Erscheinung erkennen, indem wir das Mannigfaltige unserer im inneren Sinn gegebenen Vorstellungen durch Urteilsakte verknüpfen. Wir können diese Existenz auch durch die Kausalität aus Freiheit in einer Weise bestimmen, die uns in praktischer Hinsicht als noumenale Wesen zu erkennen gibt.

Im Zeitalter der Globalisierung gewinnt die Weltgeschichtsschreibung in besonderem Maße an Bedeutung. Vor diesem Hintergrund untersucht André de Melo Araújo das bislang unerforschte Gesamtspektrum des spätaufklärerischen universalhistorischen Denkens an der Universität zu Göttingen. Dabei geht er den Debatten um die Weltgeschichtsschreibung nach, die hier auf die Spitze getrieben wurden, und eröffnet den Blick auf eine dynamische Vielfalt an konkurrierenden Wissensformen.

»Ohne Zweifel schließt die Arbeit eine deutliche Lücke in der Geschichte der Göttinger Universitätsgeschichte.«
Hermann Wellenreuther, Jahrbuch für Europäische Überseegeschichte, 14 (2014)

»Araújo wollte einen ›Beitrag zur Genealogie des universalhistorischen Denkens [...]‹ leisten. Dies ist ihm in vollem Maß gelungen.«
Martin Gierl, Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, 266/3-4 (2014)