In terms of the moral strictures of German enlightenment, knowledge of human nature was equivalent to judgment on it. The study demonstrates that moral narratives exemplify the resulting epistemological problem besetting moral philosophy, social ethics, and anthropology: the impossibility of truly knowing the Other. They reflect and engage with the contradiction between morals, morality, and judgment inherent in the philosophy of the Enlightenment. By combining morality and behavioural doctrine with a fictional view of the inner life of the Other they compensate for the lack of human knowledge prevalent at the end of the 18th century.