In Ramsay’s oration, the world is seen as a “Grande République”, with nations as


families and individuals as children.Wieland expands this vision even further, on a truly universal scale: the cosmos is a state that is inhabited by reasonable beings, fellow- citizens, ruled by the laws of nature. Each of these beings promotes the perfection of the whole while being involved in the augmentation of its own wealth. Ramsay and Wieland are both referring to natural law in their formulations of the cosmopolitan ideal. The mutually integrating approaches between the citizens of the universe are not based upon territory or concepts of territoriality, but instead upon an imagined community, or rather a sense of unity. Wieland’s text on the secret of the Order of Cosmopolitans published in Der


Teutsche Merkur is divided into three parts. In the introduction, he recapitulates the content of the novel “Geschichte der Abderiten” (“History of the Abderites”), which was published as a series of articles fourteen years earlier22. The second part of the essay deals with the “secrets” themselves, whereas the third part is devoted to the political foundations of the cosmopolitans and their relationship to society. Since the days of the Abderites, the “invisible society” of cosmopolitans has existed for thousands of years,Wieland claims. And true cosmopolitans never would organise themselves in the traditional way. Their “invisibility is a result of the nature of the thing”. From the moment a cosmopolitan enters another secret society, he ceases to be a cosmopolitan. Hence, it is not possible to establish a society of cosmopolitans, and Wieland attacks those who had claimed to represent such an organisation and their secrets (which apparently had been the case). Thus, in the name of the Order, Wieland now aims to reveal the secrets of the cosmopolitans


so that no one else can claimto represent them. Wieland invests a lot of effort into explaining the differences between “real” secret


organisations and the secrecy of the cosmopolitans. Secret Orders are only secret because they want to be. The only secret of the cosmopolitans is constituted by the ignorance of the masses. There will always be people who – no matter how open the revelation of the cosmopolitan message is – still would not be capable to understand its message. It is this inability of comprehension that creates its only “secret”. Unlike secret Orders, it is not possible to be initiated into or instructed about cosmopolitanism: “you are in their society, because you are a cosmopolitan. You are born to be it, and any


1788, pp. 97–115, the quotation is on p. 107. 22 History of the Abderites, trans. Max Dufner (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1993). See also the web


page lehigh.edu/ library/ lup/ BookPages/ DufnHist.htm?Literature [accessed 4th May 2008]. 73


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130