Neology vs. Radical Enlightenment: Gotthilf Samuel Steinbart, Jakob Mauvillon, and Frederick the Great’s Essai sur l’Amour-propre envisagé comme Principe de Morale (1770)

ABSTRACT This article discusses a pirated translation and edition of a work by the German theologian Gotthilf Samuel Steinbart (1738–1809) and shows that it can be attributed to Jakob Mauvillon (1743–1794), an important figure of the late Radical Enlightenment in Germany. In this Examen des motifs à la vertu (1774) Mauvillon submerges the primary text in a flood of commentary, with the aim of discrediting Steinbart’s claims. Steinbart’s work was itself a response to a treatise by Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786). Mauvillon’s intervention was intended to warn against the alliance between church and state that he saw emerging in Frederick’s treatise and Steinbart’s response