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, fellowcitizens, 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 earlier 22. 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 claim to 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 ].
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