Vigilance and Uncertainty in Early Modernity

Workshop des Teilprojekts C08

05.12.2024 – 06.12.2024

This workshop explores uncertainty as a constitutive dimension of texts, cultural practices, and political consciousness in the early modern period. It investigates how varying degrees of knowledge and uncertainty prompt expressions and practices of individual and state vigilance. What kinds of vigilance arise once a form of knowledge becomes suspect? How does the atmosphere of increasing uncertainty in the realms of politics, natural philosophy, religion and economics in the early modern period trigger vigilant responses? Which criteria of credibility do cultural practices of vigilance establish – and do they reflect on their own criteria of truth?