Wieland and Sceptical Rationalism

NotesCf. Eislers Handwörterbuch der Philosophie, 2. Auflage (Berlin, 1922), p. 520, article “Rationalismus”: “Nur das reine, begriffiiche Denken, nicht die sinnliche Erfahrung erfaßt die Realität, das Wesen der Dinge.”Cf. Ernst Cassirer, Die Philosophie der Aufklärung (Tübingen, 1932), p. 7. After discussing the a priori deductive Rationalism of the seventeenth century, Cassirer remarks: “Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert hat auf diese Art und auf diese Form der Deduktion, der systematischen Ableitung und Begründung verzichtet.”The Encyclopédie of Diderot and D’Alembert, Selected Articles, ed. Lough (Cambridge, 1954), article “Expérimental,” p. 73. Note in the same volume the inference of Cartesian Rationalism in the article “Ecole (Philosophie de 1’)”: “Ce grand homme [i.e., Descartes] nous a détrompés de la philosophie de l’école (et peut-être même, sans le vouloir, de la sienne ...)” (pp. 40–41).Dictionnaire philosophique, Éditions de Cluny (Paris, 1930), II, 89, article “Enthousiasme.”Cf. Helvétius, De l’esprit, Discours II, ch. xxii: “Les moralistes doivent le sentir et savoir que, semblable au sculpteur, qui d’un tronc d’arbre fait un dieu ou un bane, le législateur forme à son gré des héros, des génies et des gens vertueux.”For the consciousness of the contrast between physical order and human disorder, cf., e.g., Bayle in Beller and Lee, Selections from Bayle’s Dictionary (Princeton, 1952), p. 171, article “Manichees”: “The heavens, and the rest of the universe, declare the glory, power, and the unity of God; man alone, that master-piece of his creation among things visible, Man alone, I say, affords the greatest objection against the unity of God. The matter is thus: Man is wicked and unhappy ...”Or Diderot, Selected Philosophical Writings, ed. Lough (Cambridge, 1953), p. 5: “... si les merveilles qui brillent dans l’ordre physique décèlent quelque intelligence, les désordres qui règnent dans l’ordre moral anéantissent toute Providence” (Pensées Philosophiques).The contrast will also be found in Mendelssohn’s Phädon, 3. Gespräch. Cf. Gesammelte Schriften (Leipzig, 1843–1845), II, 182.Textual references will be to Wielands Werke, 4 vols., ed. Klee, Bibliographisches Institut (Leipzig, 1900), and to C. M. Wieland’s Sämmtliche Werke, 36 vols. (Leipzig, 1853–58). The first will be cited as Klee; the second merely by volume and page.Cf. J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (London, 1920), p. 165, where the optimism of the Encyclopedists is based on their theory of “the indefinite malleability of human nature by education and institutions. This had been ... assumed by the Abbé de Saint-Pierre. It pervaded the speculation of the age, and was formally deduced from the sensational psychology of Locke aud Condillac ...”Cf. Hans M. Wolff, Die Weltanschauung der deutschen Aufklärung (Bern, 1949), p. 112: “Dieser feste Glaube an den Erkenntniswert der Begriffe bildet von Wolff bis zu Mendelssohn die Grundlage des Denkens der deutschen Aufklarung.”It will have been noticed that the terms “Lockean” and “Lockeanism” are used in this paper in a general representative way for the view of man as unspoiled subject ready to be decisively molded by education and institutions.Cf. Fritz Martini, “C. M. Wieland und das 18. Jahrhundert,” in Festschrift Paul Kluckhohn und Hermann Schneider (Tübingen, 1948), pp. 243–265; and Friedrich Sengle, Wieland (Stuttgart, 1949), p. 479.Cf. St. Augustine’s Christian opposition to “apathy” in The City of God, Book XIV, Ch. ix. The opposition is summed up in the sentence: “When there shall be no sin in a man, then there shall be this apathy.”See, for example, Mercier, L’an 2440 (London, 1772), ch. xxi, on the treatment of atheists who refuse, against the obvious truth, to believe in the God of natural religion.Cf. Wieland’s favorite Lucian in Demonax: “Though he assailed sins, he forgave sinners, thinking that one should pattern after doctors, who heal sicknesses but feel no anger at the sick.” Lucian (Loeb Classical Library), I, 147

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• Christoph Martin Wieland as the Originator of the Modern Travesty in German Literature

  Eugene E Reed, Charlotte L Craig et al.•The German Quarterly•1971

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