Il romanzo e la repubblica alla prova dei filosofi. Percorsi e progetti dello spirito critico nel Socrate delirante, nella Storia degli Abderiti e nell'Aristippo di Christoph Martin Wieland

Abstract

There is hardly any other writer within German late Enlightenment discourse who has put forward the image of non-conformist philosophers as prominently as Christoph Martin Wieland did. In several of his novels, he engages a fight with anti-intellectualism, mocking those who smugly despise unconventional ideas. Ancient Greek republics provide the scenery. By means of irony, Wieland’s witty philosophers attack forms of quaint old morality and indifference to new civic and aesthetic values. Uncouth bourgeois, lacking curiosity or delicacy, are targeted and satirised. Their narrow-minded assertions on life and politics are smilingly debunked and outwitted. This paper takes a sample of Wieland’s critique and is conceived as a foray into three of his novels, i.e. Sokrates Mainomenos oder Die Dialogen Des Diogenes Von Sinope (1770), Geschichte der Abderiten (1781) and Aristipp und einige seiner Zeitgenossen (1800-1801). In these novels, forward-looking cosmopolitans and politicized philosophers develop intriguing new projects in the fields of politics and aesthetics which in many re- spects are still to be charted.