The historiographical concept “Enlightenment” has for a long time wavered between the idea of a single unified Enlightenment and the notion of multiple competing enlightenments. This volume revisits this seeming contradiction by asserting that the Enlightenment should be understood as a shared process of communication, seeking ways to accommodate and mediate rival ideologies and orient enlightenment projects towards the betterment of humankind.
Taking the work of the eminent Enlightenment scholar Hans Erich Bödeker as their point of departure, the different chapters seek to explore this perspective through specific case studies of political communication. Readers are offered a selection of Bödeker’s texts never previously translated into English, along with a series of contributions from his former colleagues, students, and collaborators. In doing so the book displays the broad scope of Bödeker’s own work, as well as the multiplicity of themes captured within the framework of the Enlightenment. Genres, modes, and strategies of communication are contrasted with the institutions and cultural practices underpinning them.
In exploring the depth and scope of Bödeker’s work, the volume pays tribute to a German tradition rooted in historical semantics, while at the same time querying its present state and its future.
Table of Contents:
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
JONAS GERLINGS and ERE NOKKALA, Introduction: Enlightenment as process
ANTHONY J. LA VOPA, Aufklärung reconceived: the contribution of Hans Erich Bödeker
I. Enlightenment as a process of communication
HANS ERICH BÖDEKER, Enlightenment as a process of communication
AVI LIFSCHITZ, Pitfalls of a communication process: the illicit publication of Frederick II’s writings
JONAS GERLINGS, Critique as a process of Enlightenment: Kant’s philosophising as communication
LÁSZLÓ KONTLER, Entretiens with Fontenelle, 1688-1803: translating politeness into science
THOMAS KAUFMANN, The early-eighteenth-century image of Luther and the Reformation
PATRICE VEIT, The concert as cultural practice
ANNE SAADA, Göttingen before Göttingen: the negotiation of the imperial university privilege
II. Enlightenment as a process of politicisation
HANS ERICH BÖDEKER, Reinhart Koselleck’s Enlightenment
HELGE JORDHEIM, Communication, politicisation, Enlightenment: Vertrag on the move
MARTIN GIERL, Monks, Jews, polemics, Enlightenment
ADRIANA LUNA-FABRITIUS, Visions of sociability in early modern Neapolitan political thought
ERE NOKKALA, The politicisation of the Enlightenment in Sweden: political culture, publicity and freedom of the press
HAGEN SCHULZ-FORBERG, The inequalities of progress: Jean-Baptiste Say’s theory of capitalism and the entrepreneur
Epilogue
HANS ERICH BÖDEKER, Enlightenment and modernity: an essay
Bibliography
Index
