The German Enlightenment struggles to abandon traditional arguments. This applies to theology and metaphysics just as much as to politics and history. Precisely for this reason, however, not so many arguments are lost, and for this reason, the German Enlightenment cannot help but adapt to the standards of traditional arguments – which, by the way, does not harm the Enlightenment. But such an adaptation is two-faced: The strength of historically inherited arguments leads to the unprecedented success of theodicy, but this success only makes the subsequent burdens of purely theological-metaphysical arguments more apparent and culminates at the end of the Enlightenment in the paralysis of metaphysical rationality, in the suspicion of nihilism.