Erzählte Menschenkenntnis. Moralische Erzählungen und Verhaltensschriften der deutschsprachigen Spätaufklärung (review)

This study provides a reassessment of German moral tales and a long-awaited investigation of moral tales and moral treatises from an anthropological perspective (cf. Riedel, "Anthropologie und Literatur in der deutschen Spätaufklärung," 1994). The monograph thus links studies of normalized social behavior and moral literature, for example, Manfred Beetz's Frühmoderne Höflichkeit (1990) and Wolfgang Martens's Die Botschaft der Tugend (1968), with anthropological and rhetorical investigations into literature and representation, such as Alexander Košenina's Anthropologie und Schauspielkunst (1995) or Ursula Geitner's Sprache der Verstellung (1992). Related studies on moral literature, including Dorothea von Mücke's Virtue and the Veil of Illusion (1991) and Katherine Astbury's The Moral Tale in France and Germany 1750–1789 (2002), look at the topic in a comparative context. Berg's monograph highlights German sources and works across disciplines to reintroduce behavior manuals and moral tales to intellectual historians, philosophers, theologians, and literary historians. The study evaluates normative codes in the context of Enlightenment anthropology. It departs from the typical recovery of anthropological themes to instead address an anthropological problem.

Berg argues that the complex interactions between the theoretical justification of moral action and pragmatic norms of action, between behavior and character assessments and their moral evaluation, intensified after 1750. New problems in the translation of anthropological knowledge, such as the unverifiable relationship between some emotional states and desires and bodily movements and expressions, make the basis for character assessments uncertain. Deception also causes complications. It can be a useful tool in exploring another's character or in limiting obligations to strangers, but can also make character judgments especially difficult. Berg's thesis is that in the face of increased epistemological and representational complexity of the individual, moral treatises no longer provide an encompassing model for evaluating human behavior, nor a fully persuasive case to prescribe it. Instead, moral tales increasingly provide a way to integrate the prescription of moral norms, the representation of moral action, and the evaluation of moral/civil behavior.

The book is well organized in three sections. Part One, entitled "Moral und Verhalten," introduces the thesis, describes the selected text genres, and surveys sources of morality in eighteenth-century Verhaltensschriften. This sketch notes that the moral code throughout the century transitions from a primary concentration on correct behavior in Christian Wolff, Feder, and the reception of Machiavelli and Gracián, to an increasing consideration of ethical motivation by Thomasius, Gellert, and Kant (28). Building on Beetz's conclusion that the range of desired social behaviors shows little change from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, Berg summarizes unchanged moral standards, such as the golden rule, while also noting some exceptions. In addition, she challenges the notion that the "empfindsame Interaktionsmuster" (Wegmann, Diskurse der Empfindsamkeit) replaces the sociability of the nobles. Instead, the reasons for the behaviors change, while the behaviors themselves remain similar (Berg, 63).

Part Two, entitled "Verhalten und Urteilen," investigates the epistemological difficulties evoked by the judgment of other persons and their actions. Compared with other studies of Enlightenment moral tales, this approach is new. This section recalls how philosophers Thomasius and Wolff attempt to solve the challenges of knowing the other through logic. Thomasius argues that self-knowledge is the prerequisite for judging others, while Wolff reduces character judgment to logical procedure. Thus for Thomasius, comparison, and for Wolff, formal reason leads to proper judgment of another person. Another problem, Berg contends, is that by mid-century, the developing field of philosophical anthropology questions the validity of judgments based on a direct relationship between body and soul. For G.F. Meier, observer prejudices make the body an inconclusive source to describe changes in the soul. For Chladenius, unique observations and reasoning could lead individual thinkers to divergent judgments.

Berg argues that the combined problematic of a concentration on moral knowledge and of insufficient investigative and evaluative practices to judge self and other provokes varied...