This collection brings together a series of cutting-edge studies on the most significant controversies and prize essay contests of the German Enlightenment. It sheds new light on the role of and practices arising from the philosophical debates of the period, while analysing specific theoretical questions. In doing so, it focuses on controversies as a condition for the advancement of knowledge, framing the era as one that structured the Republic of Letters.

Chapters address questions such as the condition of possibility of the debates, their institutional support and their aims. They demonstrate how these debates did not lead to reconciliation, but rather the creation of a common territory of an epistemic community. This volume also offers novel perspectives on the major role played by the Berlin Academy not only on the European intellectual scene, but primarily within the German Enlightenment. By introducing several relatively unknown but key figures such as Johann Heinrich Abicht, Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval, Guillaume Raynal and H.S. Reimarus, it advances our understanding of the richness and complexity of the period.

Set out into four parts on natural law and belles-lettres, metaphysics, psychology, and mathematics and physics, the essays provide new material on areas such as anthropology, the problem of language, colonialism and the origins of aesthetics for the wider study of 18th-century intellectual and philosophical life.