Knud Haakonssen presents a paper on 'To know yourself – that’s a whole crowd! Ludvig Holberg as a case study of multiple authorial personae'

This is a revised and expanded version of a lecture that I gave at the Gotha Forschungszentrum in January. The reason for reviving the paper is that it addresses central issues discussed in the KFG plenaries preparing for the end time (cf. the theses from Martin Mulsow and me). The paper is thus not part of my project on natural law. Nor is it theoretical, or methodological, in character; rather, it provides a case study of multiple authorial personae, namely, the work of the Danish polymath Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754). I show how Holberg uses the techniques of contemporary eclecticism in a wide variety of works and genres of works. I suggest that this goes along with an espistemic attitude that is somewhat different from the usual moderate scepticism often associated with eclecticism. And I indicate how a many-sided ambiguity about the supposedly ‘real’ author is effected in order to secure space for a basic, somewhat simplistic but earnest religiosity without jeopardising the pervasive pluralism. A key factor here is the ‘creation’ of the audience, including the scholars who nearly three centuries later pursue the real Holberg. But he, too, is always a persona for an audience. The conclusion – if any – is that it is a kind of category mistake to ask what ‘he’ really believed.