Abstract

I argue in this article that Georg Friedrich Meier's formal concept of »prejudice« alters within various literary, philosophical, and popular genres and during more than 25 years that he was dealing with the problem. In the German Enlightenment, Meier's concept was seminal because he was the first to formalize the concept of prejudice by, on the one hand, demonstrating that it should not be seen simply as a wrong or harmful mental attitude and, on the other hand, by integrating this concept in a theory of prejudice. This article demonstrates that Meier's concept of »prejudice« deals with issues of rationality, of moral theology, and of social pragmatics. His theory, contradictory as it may seem, was decisive for the rehabilitation of prejudices and for the transformation of the discourse in the second half of the 18th century.