Ere Nokkala, Jonas Gerlings (eds.) The Process of Enlightenment

 Ere Nokkala, Jonas Gerlings (eds.) The Process of Enlightenment. Essays by and inspired by Hans Erich Bödeker. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press 2024. ISBN: 9781802071863

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.

So glad to have participated in this project and excited to have my copy of our new book in hand! 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

HANS ERICH BÖDEKER, Enlightenment and modernity: an essay