The scientific culture of the Enlightenment and the justification of normative orders

Project manager: Prof. Dr. Moritz Epple

The central question of the project was to determine the extent to which the encyclopaedic order of knowledge in the French Enlightenment was transformed from a framework of thought into a framework of action for the philosophes, and the extent to which the appearance of modern science thereby made a specific contribution to the development of social and political modernity. The question was addressed primarily on the basis of Jean Le Rond d’Alembert’s “Essai sur les Elements de Philosophie”. The Essai was written by d’Alembert in 1759 after he gave up his co-editorship of the Encyclopédie and was later supplemented by the author with extensive “Eclaircissements”, and it is one of the few systematic texts of Encyclopédism. The aim of the project is to produce an annotated translation and edition of this key work of the Enlightenment.

The reasons for the Essai’s marginal reception in German-speaking countries – there is only one almost forgotten contemporary translation by Joseph Maria Weissegger (Vienna 1787) – represent a further research question of the project. While the new translation and annotation of the Essai have largely been completed, the overarching research question of the connection between epistemic and political revolution in the French Enlightenment will also be addressed in the follow-up project and pursued further in various directions (“The political philosophy of the Encyclopédie” and “The connection between the exact sciences and the development of the norm of equality”).

In the years 2008-2012, the following publications, among others, were published: Comtesse, Dagmar (2012): The order of knowledge as critique. The order of human knowledge according to Jean d’Alembert (Normative Orders Working Paper 01/2012); Comtesse, Dagmar/Epple, Moritz (2013): “Auf dem Weg zu einer Revolution des Geistes? Jean d’Alembert as a test case”, in: Andreas Fahrmeir/Annette Imhausen (eds.), The diversity of normative orders. Conflicts and dynamics from a historical and ethnological perspective (Series: Normative Orders vol. 8), Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 21-47 and Epple, Moritz (2010): “Links and Their Traces: Cultural Strategies, Resources, and Conjunctures of Experimental and Mathematical Practices”, in: Moritz Epple/Claus Zittel (eds.), “Science as Cultural Practice. Vol. 1: Cultures and Politics of Research from the Early Modern Period to the Age of Extremes “, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 221-245.

The following events were organized in 2008-2012: Cooperation with the Groupe d’Alembert (French research network for the new edition of Jean d’Alembert’s Œuvres complètes at the CNRS): workshops in Lyon (June/ 2009) and Montpellier (January/ 2010); lecture by Moritz Epple at the cluster’s PI conference in 2009: Geometry and Equality. Some Remarks on the Relation between Enlightenment Science, Politics, and Norms, ca. 1757; 1st Junior Researchers’ Conference of the Cluster (October 2009): Organization and chair of the panel “Sanctioned Justifications: Censorship and Hegemony”; 1st Junior Researcher Workshop of the Cluster (July 2010): Organization and lectures by the two staff members (Dagmar Comtesse/ Marianne Schepers) and PI lecture series of the Cluster, lecture Moritz Epple (June 2012): The Morality of Equality.