PREAMBLE: MAPPING THE TERRAIN

To write an introductory chapter on philosophy, literature, and Enlightenment in the eighteenth century is a daunting task. Realistically, one can offer at best a blueprint for reading individual works of the eighteenth century. Since Pythagoras, Aristotle and Plato, thinkers have had a direct and above all an indirect impact on the intellectual life of subsequent generations in every sphere. It was no different for René Descartes (1596–1650), John Locke (1632–1704), Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), Benedictus de Spinoza (1632–77), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1714), Charles de Montesquieu (1689–1755), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–88) or Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715–71). These thinkers launched scholarly debates which spilled over into the more general realm of literature and the public sphere, giving birth to what the Swiss aesthetician Johann Jacob Breitinger (1701–76) labelled ars popularis (popular art) around 1740. Fifty years later Christian Garve (1742–98) lauded this style and tone as the best approach for reaching the majority of educated readers – whether of literature or philosophy. Popularity in this sense was grounded in the desire to be read outside the academy and to be of practical use.