Title: The problem of being modern, or, The German pursuit of Enlightenment from Leibniz to the French Revolution
First published: 1997
Description: “Saine’s book consists of a revised translation of a German version published in 1987 combined with articles published elsewhere. However, in its new Gestalt, it is nothing less than a milestone in the scholarship on the German Enlightenment. Saine’s close reading of texts representing main-stream German enlightened thought proves that much of what modern interpreters have attributed to the Enlightenment is little more than myth. His study reveals that as a whole and in its most dominant German schools, the Enlightenment has been both overrated as the breakthrough of the mind to rationality and science as well as unjustifiably demonized as the eliminator of the subject for the sake of instrumental reason. [...] Saine’s most important insight is, however, his recognition that enlightened thinkers in general, not only Germans, were as unwilling to accept the intellectual consequences of the Copernican Revolution as were adherents to traditional Christianity. […] For Saine, the agenda of the Enlightenment can, therefore, not be understood as a pursuit of the perfection of rational philosophy, mathematics and scientific inquiries. Even its greatest philosophers and scientists were, for the most part, preoccupied with accommodating their new scientific knowledge with theology. The main legacy of the Enlightenment is, therefore, a new paradigm integrating faith and science, metaphysics and physics, the supranatural and the natural. This paradigm is — as Saine points out — contradictory in itself. […] Saine's book is as informative as it is inspirational. No one who studies or teaches the German Enlightenment will be able to ignore it. Hopefully, it will also lead to more and equally fresh investigations into this most interesting and certainly ‘unfinished’ period.”
From review by Franz Futterknecht in the *South Atlantic Review*, Vol. 63, No. 3 (Summer, 1998), pp. 116-118.

“While aware both of recent developments in the methodology of intellectual history and critiques of the Enlightenment, Saine’s treatment of the movement is very sympathetic. On the one hand, this leads to some significant insights. Especially impressive is Saine’s treatment of Christian Wolff, whom he removes from Leibniz’s shadow, allowing us to appreciate both Wolff’s originality and the often daring nature of his philosophical position. On the other hand, this sympathy has its limitations. […] His understanding of the tension between Enlightenment science and Christian beliefs may have been more insightful had he shown a better grasp of the variety of Christian beliefs in this period. [...] Saine's volume should be read by students of the German Enlightenment for its presentation of numerous marginal figures and for its insightful treatment of the giants of the period. But one would also like to see a theory of Enlightenment developed from this, as well as a response from someone less sympathetic to the Enlightenment project.”
From review by David W. Koeller in *German Studies Review*, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Feb., 1999), pp. 118-119

“Saine tackles the central question raised by German intellectual development in the fail to develop the kind of radical political eighteenth century: why did the *Aufklärung* and social thrust that characterized Enlightenment thinking in France? In its early phases it lacked nothing in the radicalism of its engagement with religious issues and in a far-reaching assessment of the implications of the new scientific paradigms for virtually every dimension of thought. Yet it never challenged the existing social and political order. On the contrary, Saine notes, even before the outbreak of the French Revolution the German scene is characterized by a loss of intellectual cohesiveness and by a turn away from principles the *Aufklärer* previously held dear. Saine discerns the causes of this reticence among German intellectuals in the framework within which they lived. He argues that the Thirty Years’ War retarded the German development into the early eighteenth century, leaving a legacy of economic and political backwardness that overshadowed the German territories for a century or more. […] the constraints imposed by the political and institutional environment prevented leading intellectuals, whether by censorship or by self-censorship, from moving beyond a critique of Christianity to a critique of politics and society. By the 1770s also, as classificatory geology, botany, and zoology began to supplant grand theorizing physics, astronomy, and mechanics, science became removed from the grasp of the average educated individual. What remained of *Aufklärung* was a rational system of ethics that increasingly seemed simplistic. of *Aufklärung* was a rational system of ethics that increasingly seemed simplistic. Even before *Aufklärung* became suspect in the wake of 1789 it was *passé*.”
From review by Joachim Whaley in *The Modern Language Review*, Vol. 95, No. 3 (Jul., 2000), p. 881
Subjects: Afklärung, Aufklärer, authority, Christianity, criticism, critique, Enlightenment, French Revolution, German, Germany, German Enlightenment, history, history of ideas, intellectual life, modernity, personal identity, philosophy, politics, political life, public intellectuals, quietism, reason, religion and science, revolution, science, social institutions, society, theodicy, theology, war, History of doctrines, Germany, intellectual life
Places: Europe, France, Germany
People: Christian Wolff Freiherr von (1679-1754)
Time periods: 18th century, 1700s
LC classification: B2621 .S3213 1997