4-5 September 2025

DFG project Edition and Annotation of Sources to the Berlin Wednesday Society

Prof. Dr. Kristina Engelhard, Prof. Dr. Damien Tricoire, Armin Emmel

Since the publication of Jürgen Habermas’ monograph The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in 1962 at the latest, the term “Enlightenment” has been closely associated with the term “public sphere”. Habermas’ aim was to use the eighteenth century to develop a model of the public sphere that was viable for democracy and could serve as a counter-model to totalitarian dictatorships. Public rational and fact-orientated discussion, which tended to lead to progress and a free society, seemed possible to him if the public sphere was freed from the obligation to represent rank and power, as in the Age of Enlightenment, and political communication was not controlled ‘from above’.

In historical research of the late twentieth century, Habermas’ normatively charged model of the Enlightenment was often criticised for misrepresenting the Enlightenment era by ignoring the exclusion of women from the new “bourgeois” public sphere, the participation of the lower classes in political controversies or developments in the public sphere before the eighteenth century. While these critiques still agreed with the Habermasian model in essential premises, research in the twenty first century has moved further away from it: it now emphasises that the novelty of the public sphere in the eighteenth century and its ‘bourgeois’ and reason-oriented character should not be overestimated. It takes a closer look at social hierarchies, the still omnipresent patronage and the role of the princely courts in the Enlightenment and is also interested in secret societies, esoteric circles and the Enlightenment underground. It has been shown that the creation of exclusivity for the purposes of group and elite formation was an integral part of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century.

In view of these historical findings and the transformation of the political public sphere in our time, it seems necessary to rethink the relationship between the Enlightenment and the public sphere and to develop a more complex historical model that takes into account both the Enlightenment in and through the public sphere and non-public processes. In our modern public sphere, characterised by fake news, abusive speech and the fragmentation of discourse spaces in digital media, liberation from the representation of rank and power appears to be a utopian project that, moreover, could not even create sufficient conditions for the establishment and development of rational and free discourse. In the light of this critique, however, the public sphere of the eighteenth century also appears to be far less rational and free than in Habermas’ idealised model: even among Enlightenment philosophers, public discussions were always linked to the negotiation of social status; and even among them, it was a common practice to resort to the means of invective in order to gain discourse sovereignty and prestige. There are good reasons to be sceptical that freedom of discourse could be achieved under these conditions.

However, a new model of the free public sphere should remain historically informed and benefit from reflection on the perceived difficulties, limitations and dangers of the Enlightenment. After all, the promoters and contemporaries of the Enlightenment were also aware of the issues and problems and developed communication strategies that were tailored to different publics and fulfilled different functions. They also looked for ways to realise the ideal of freedom of discourse and rational communication beyond the public eye. An example of such endeavours in the Protestant part of Germany is the Berlin ‘Wednesday Society’, whose existence was to remain hidden from the public, although its aim was to promote the Enlightenment everywhere, and perhaps also to direct it. We take the ongoing Trier project of editing the most important source for their internal discussions as the occasion for a conference that asks:

• What sub-publics existed during the Enlightenment and what conditions did they provide for the discussion of moral, religious, political and social issues? Which ideas were propagated in which sub-publics and why? What functions did communication in these different public spheres fulfil for Enlightenment philosophers and other Enlightenment groups?
• How did philosophers of the Enlightenment reflect on public discourse and freedom of speech, its problems and challenges? How do their concepts of the public and of freedom of opinion relate to the habermasian ideal of freedom of discourse? What strategies did they develop to establish freedom of speech and spaces of free discussion? In what contexts and why did they resort to practices of secrecy?
• What social and philosophical logics did the production of exclusivity follow? To what extent and how was Enlightenment group formation intertwined with exclusive modes of interaction?
• What were and are the conditions for freedom of discourse and rational discussion in the eighteenth century and today?

Invited Speakers

Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire (Nice)
Thomas Biskup (Hull)
Ursula Goldenbaum (Emory)
Martin Mulsow (Gotha-Erfurt)
Markus Meumann (Gotha-Erfurt)
Ulrich Port (Trier)
Dietrich Schotte (Regensburg)

Please send a proposal of up to 500 words until 28 February 2025 to: emmel@uni-trier.de