Aufklärung als Dialog

The study describes Christoph Martin Wieland's (1733-1813) complex narrative strategies and essays a new overall picture of this committed 'enlightener' and artistically ambitious novelist. All his texts are imbued with the dialectics of the Enlightenment, pitting the commandment of rationality and moralism against the practical aporia involved in the overcoming of a purely instrumental use of Reason. In the place of the usurpation of authority and the manifestation of truth, his protagonists embark on an unprotected 'quest' for truth and a just social order. In the late novel 'Aristipp', polyperspectivism takes over from the authorially filtered binary constellations prevalent heretofore. This pluralist form of discourse prefigures, reflects on and legitimizes the constitutive principle of dialogue and antithesis.