Subproject Dr. Andrea Renker

Abstract

Under the auspices of the Enlightenment being a transnational intellectual progressive movement, the 18th century is usually read as a decisive moment that paved Europe's way into modernity. Although this teleological historical narrative needs to be questioned, the intellectual bustle of the philosophes throughout Europe did indeed shape the awareness of a fundamental epistemic change that set to work decisive impulses, not least regarding the discussion of the nature of man. Analysing the works of Cornelius de Pauw (1739-1799), canon of Xanten, my research project focuses on an Enlightenment thinker whose Recherches philosophiques had a significant influence on the debate about the human species and its civilisations from the second half of the 18th century onwards.

In a contrastive reading against contemporary scholars who refer to his views in the German-, French- and Italian-speaking regions, I wish to investigate: firstly, how the possibilities of writing about humanity, its various espèces and civilisations are reconstituted between the epistemic poles of natural historiography and historiography; and secondly, to what extent the traditional humanistic knowledge culture is granted the potential for insights in this period of growing historical awareness on the one hand and of increasing technologization of the empirically based study of nature on the other. The keystone of my literary analysis is comparison, which plays a decisive role as a heuristic instrument and thus provides insights into the dynamics of this epistemic change, both as a figure of thought and of speech.