The Dialogues of the Dead of the Early German Enlightenment

Starting from the little reliable information available, Riccarda Suitner conducts an exciting investigation of the authors, production, illustrations, circulation and plagiarism of a series of anonymous "dialogues of the dead" in the intellectual world of the early eighteenth century, proposing a new image of the German Enlightenment. Contents 6 Acknowledgements 8 Illustrations 9 Introduction 14 1 Cheap Prints, Dialogues of the Dead, Pamphlets: The Anonymous World of the Early 18th-Century German Book Trade 14 2 The Dialogues of the Dead of the Early German Enlightenment (1729–1734): An Unknown Corpus of Sources 18 Chapter 1 From Antiquity to the Enlightenment 27 1 Lucian of Samosata (c. 120–180/192 ce): The Νεκρικοί διάλογοι 27 2 Fontenelle: The Nouveaux dialogues des morts (1683) 28 3 David Fassmann: The Gespräche im Reiche der Toten (1718–1739) 31 Chapter 2 The Examen Rigorosum 41 1 The Judgment of Apollo 41 2 The Business of “Pirated Editions” 53 3 Student Rivalries 59 Chapter 3 The War of the Biographers 64 1 The Pietist Front: Christian Gerber and the Historia derer Wiedergebohrnen in Sachsen 64 2 The First Literary Depictions of the Lives of Christian Thomasius and August Hermann Francke 66 3 The World of the Copper Engravers 69 4 The Harsh Laws of Competition 79 5 Eulogies, Dialogues of the Dead, (Auto)Biographies: The “Instability” of Literary Genres 90 Chapter 4 The Wolffian Leibniz 99 1 S. W. 100 2 The Argument with Johann Franz Budde 109 3 Eclecticism, the Mathematical Method, Atheism 117 4 How Many Authors? 125 Chapter 5 The Two Faces of Leibniz 128 1 1745: Leibniz Becomes the Protagonist of a Dialogue of the Dead Once Again 128 2 The Conversation with Ludwig Philipp Thümmig 131 3 Gottsched, Mylius, Hagedorn, the “Swiss” Poets: The Disputes of the 1740s 140 Chapter 6 The Argument between Descartes and Rüdiger 150 1 Arriving among the Stars 150 2 Descartes as a Wolffian Philosopher 156 3 Pietism and Materialism 162 4 The Background of the Dialogue 168 5 Role Play 178 Chapter 7 The Restoration of All Things 181 1 Prefaces to Dialogues of the Dead: The Dialogue between Mayer and Petersen 181 2 Ἀποκατάστασις πάντων: Origen, Leibniz, and Petersen 194 Chapter 8 Balthasar Bekker’s Remorse 200 1 The Exorcism on Peter Otte 200 2 Cartesianism and Demonology in 18th-Century Germany 206 3 The Pact with the Devil 211 4 More on the Engravers: The Identity of “M. B.” 217 5 Some Deliberations on the Origin, Authorship, and Dissemination of the Dialogue 226 6 Necromancy and Conversations in the Realm of Spirits 230 Conclusion 236 1 The “Underworlds” of the Dialogues of the Dead: Which Level of Clandestineness? 236 2 Four Reasons for Anonymity 239 3 “Material” Evidence and Intellectual History 241 4 The Question of Authorship 245 Bibliography 254 Index 285 "For the first time, this book reconstructs the fascinating story of a series of anonymous "dialogues of the dead" published in Germany in the early eighteenth century. The texts stage fictional debates between some of the most famous thinkers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, such as Descartes, Leibniz, Thomasius and Bekker. The dialogues were originally published as cheap prints and very few copies now survive; until today the links between these texts and the very existence of this textual corpus have remained unknown. Starting from the little reliable information available, Riccarda Suitner conducts an exciting investigation of the authors, production, illustrations, circulation and plagiarism of these texts in the intellectual world of the early eighteenth century, proposing a new image of the German Enlightenment. The German edition of this book was awarded the prestigious Geisteswissenschaften international prize"-- Provided by publisher