Menschenwissen

In the early modern age, religious knowledge was not limited to the prospective definition of metaphysical expectations. It served rather as the basis for reflection on, and normative description of, the human self in religious autobiographies and religious anthropology. This study demonstrates that for the 17th and 18th centuries the culture-historical dynamics of secularization consisted in the generation of tensions between edifying and literary writing, religious and medical anthropology, and religious and secular life. Social evolution occasioned the supplanting of religious concerns by autobiography and the Bildungsroman. This process took place in constant conjunction with the changing media landscape, replacing interactive patterns of observation with writing-based alternatives.