Orthodoxie, piétisme, Aufklärung

Dominique Bourel : Orthodoxy, pietism, aufklärung. The Aufklärung is a fiction in the same way as are the notions Orthodoxy and Pietism which preceded it and prepared it by their excessive rigidity or sentimentalism, and rejected it for destroying an original message. The secondary «canonical » literature has been for too long an obstacle to the understanding of a number of difficult texts which are worth rediscovering and studying, from Gerhard to Spener and from Keckermann to Sack. The Aufklärung itself cannot be understood as a single phenomenon ; we must rediscover a fragmented Aufklârung in which Göttingen, Hamburg and Halle, and also Lippe and the towns of Iselin and Schlosser constitute a multitude of focal points presenting unexpected problems — those of the Jews, of Origen, Free-masonry, the rise of criticism, . . . and Johann Sebastian Bach.