Philosophische Clandestina der deutschen Aufklärung

The Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th century actually took place in public, but it had an impact elsewhere as well. Radical approaches of tradition criticism, above all in religious matters, had no access to the public, and no forum in the legal publishing world. This resulted in the development of a literary underground, the francophone littérature clandestine and, in Germany as well, in the production and distribution of handwritten or illegally printed (clandestine) texts. They document developments in the philosophy of religion as well as in metaphysics and in practical philosophy which could not be expressed freely in public. Their authors often took extreme positions – to the point of atheism – which broaden the general view of the Enlightenment’s philosophical spectrum considerably.