‘Denn Gehorsam ist die erste Pflicht freier Männer’: Eulogius Schneider as a Paradigm for the Dialectic of Enlightenment
In: The Radical Enlightenment in GermanySearch for other papers by Peter Höyng in
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Abstract
Eulogius Schneider (1756–1794), an educated monk from Franconia who became a professor and then radical Jacobin in Strasbourg before falling victim to the guillotine in Paris, does not fit into Jonathan Israel’s bifocal differentiation between the promulgated Radical and the disparaged Moderate Enlightenment. Whereas Schneider’s ending of his political career serves as a paradigm for the dubious realization of radical philosophical ideas through radical political action, his earlier life can be viewed as a model of and for Volksaufklärung. While Schneider’s public and political life points us to Israel’s blind spots in his Enlightenment narrative, Israel helps us to see Schneider’s biography within the larger context of the Enlightenment.