The article is devoted to the formation of aesthetic and philosophical texts in the era of the German Enlightenment: on the example of prose by H. Wolf, I. Winckelmann, G.E. Lessing, and I.G. Herder, the genre, syntactic and stylistic characteristics inherent in them are considered. The conversational, practical certainty and dialogical normativity of the then newly emerging German philosophical speech, in which the tone was set by educational speech genres, is clarified. It is substantiated that the texts of Chr. Wolf were distinguished by a new, implicitly dialogical stability of philosophical terminology (for example, the uniform rhythm of sentences). These texts were free from clutter of syntactic structures; as research shows, Wolf relied mainly on parataxis; one statement leads to the next and each is considered separately as something whole, in the unity of “the admirable style of rationalistic philosophy.” It then shows the correlation between the contemplative style of I. Winckelmann, a supporter of “noble simplicity and calm grandeur,” with the attitude of G.E. Lessing on truthful speech, active and dialogically effective. In conclusion, the article outlines the prospect of an interdisciplinary study of German aesthetic and philosophical texts of the 18th century (“dialogized”, as the analysis shows) texts as a kind of historical genre reality in its own philosophical speech genesis.
The article is devoted to the formation of aesthetic and philosophical texts in the era of the German Enlightenment: on the example of prose by H. Wolf, I. Winckelmann, G.E. Lessing, and I.G. Herder, the genre, syntactic and stylistic characteristics inherent in them are considered. The conversational, practical certainty and dialogical normativity of the then newly emerging German philosophical speech, in which the tone was set by educational speech genres, is clarified. It is substantiated that the texts of Chr. Wolf were distinguished by a new, implicitly dialogical stability of philosophical terminology (for example, the uniform rhythm of sentences). These texts were free from clutter of syntactic structures; as research shows, Wolf relied mainly on parataxis; one statement leads to the next and each is considered separately as something whole, in the unity of “the admirable style of rationalistic philosophy.” It then shows the correlation between the contemplative style of I. Winckelmann, a supporter of “noble simplicity and calm grandeur,” with the attitude of G.E. Lessing on truthful speech, active and dialogically effective. In conclusion, the article outlines the prospect of an interdisciplinary study of German aesthetic and philosophical texts of the 18th century (“dialogized”, as the analysis shows) texts as a kind of historical genre reality in its own philosophical speech genesis.