[PHILOS-L] Online talk Günter Zöller, "From Political Theology to Civil Religion" (Reinhold, Schiller), 3 March 2026, 4pm CET

[Tinca Prunea-Bretonnet]

The online seminar of the MAPS project Enlightenment and Publicity: The Problem of Deception in Late Eighteenth-Century Political and Religious Thought 

(PIs: Ralf Bader, Tinca Prunea-Bretonnet, and Anna Tomaszewska)

3 March 2026, 4pm CET (on Zoom)

Günter Zöller (LMU Munich), "From Political Theology to Civil Religion. K. L. Reinhold and Fr. Schiller on the Hebrew Mysteries and the Mosaic Mission"

Abstract: The talk explores the Masonic background of K. L. Reinhold’s pioneering reception of Kant’s critical philosophy. The focus is on Reinhold’s obscure early publication, The Hebrew Mysteries or the Oldest Religious Freemasonry (Die Hebräischen Mysterien oder die älteste religiöse Freymaurerey; 1787), which seeks to retrieve the Mosaic founding of monotheism for the secret prehistory of modern freemasonry and proved a major inspiration for Fr. Schiller’s early essay, Moses’ Mission (Die Sendung Moses; 1790). Section 1 details Reinhold’s involvement with the Viennese late Enlightenment Masonic movement. Section 2 presents Reinhold’s (and Schiller’s) reading of Moses as a political renegate who turns the secret religion of the Egyptians into the public and political religion of the Hebrews. Section 3 analyses the transition from the ancient Hebrew conception of theocracy to the early modern conceptions of state religion and civil religion. Throughout the talk explores the complex relationship between secrecy and publicity, religion and politics, and theology and philosophy in European Enlightenment thought.

If you wish to attend, please write to alinpau...@gmail.com in order to register and receive the Zoom link.

For any question regarding the seminar or if you wish to be added to our mailing list, please write to:

alinpau...@gmail.com or michael...@unifr.ch or anna.tom...@uj.edu.pl

Our MAPS project No. IZ11ZO_230181 (site here: Home | Enlightenment and Publicity) is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and co-financed by UEFISCDI (The Romanian Ministry of Education and Research).

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