Pasini, Enrico

Rumore, Paola

English

Institutional Research Information System University of Turin

Enrico Pasini / Paola RumoreForeword / PremessaPre-print version of the Foreword to “Quaestio”, 16/2016,special issue: Another 18th-Century German Philosophy?Rethinking German Enlightenment, ed. by E. Pasini/P.Rumore, p. vii-ix.Another 18th-Century German Philosophy? The papers collected here originated in a research project conducted in the years2012-2015 at the University of Turin, by the local fMOD Research Group on thehistory of Early Modern and Modern philosophical and scientific thought(Department of Philosophy and Education Sciences). They were first discussedat a conference organized in the frame of a German-Italian research partnershipthat was held in Turin in June 2014. The aim of the project was, briefly andsomewhat ambitiously stated, a re-interpretation of the development of 18 th-century German philosophy. In the traditional historiography, 18th-century German philosophy has long beenconsidered as a passing phase towards a Kantian and post-Kantian grand finale.Only the latter was seen as a crucial step in the autonomisation of modernspeculative philosophy. The revival of interest in pre-Kantian philosophy thathas occurred over the past twenty years, unfortunately, has mostly developed onthe basis of that same traditional conception. Roughly speaking, thedevelopment of 18th-century German philosophy has been seen as the all-inclusive opposition of two (properly ‘philosophical’) trends: a solidmetaphysically-based current (Wolffian philosophy); and a practically orientedphilosophy, strongly influenced by both the Aristotelian tradition and Britishempiricism. A recent and important widening of perspectives in intellectual history allowedfor a much better, more careful way of attending to the complex relationshipscharacterizing this philosophical landscape — that was itself still taken as agiven — with the variety of debates and controversies that entangled theGerman Enlightenment, Pietism, rationalist religious thought (Neologie), theearly clandestine literature.Our project aimed to produce a more integrated landscape, by means of theidentification of naturalistic and ‘scientific’ tendencies, which evolved alongsidethe well-studied mainstream currents. In our view, this long-overshadowedmanifold phenomenon has two major traits. First, it involved a more intensedialogue between philosophical thought, mathematics, science and medicine.Second, it was pervaded, despite the different positions of its major and minorprotagonists, by a shared fundamental naturalistic position in metaphysics andepistemology. The rediscovery of a German ‘scientific philosophy’ – that has beenovershadowed so far by the more visible traditional currents – also bearswitness to the presence in that cultural scene of many particular, apparentlyunrelated and secondary aspects of the intellectual production of the time, suchas naturalism, medical materialism, or anti-metaphysical scientism. Unexpectedalliances in controversies find a rationale, and the seeds of later 19 th-centurydevelopments become more visible.The following papers contribute to sketch a more detailed image of the Germandebate of the time, casting light on some of its more or less concealed episodes.The emerging of an increasingly explicit interest in the scientific explanation ofvarious aspects of human life, on the basis both of the growing inclinationtowards empiricism or of a strong commitment to a rationalistic mechanicalmodel, contribute to the development of new ideas, often understood asalternative stances or as crucial integrations of the philosophical mainstream.Being the reference point for further philosophical ideas (often not so far frommaterialist positions), Tschirnhaus’s early idea of philosophy as deeplyintertwined with empirical sciences such as experimental physics and medicine,and animated by an anti-metaphysical attitude is here considered the startingpoint of the process that led to the birth of this manifold new tendency. AsUrsula Goldenbaum shows in her contribution, Tschirnhaus’s idea of extendingthe mathematical method to natural science was one of the main sources ofinspiration for Bucher’s early project of a philosophical materialism, whichreferred much more to the classical rationalistic tradition of Hobbes andSpinoza, than to the empirical orientation of Locke’s Essay. NeverthelessLocke’s empiricism not only markedly influenced Wolff’s psychology, but actedalso as the very source of inspiration both for a sort of materialisticunderstanding of human nature – like Rüdiger’s – and for one of the earliestattempts at an empirical anthropology, Krüger’s Experimental-Seelenlehrewhich is discussed in Gideon Stiening’s contribution. Beside his interests inmedicine – the philosophical investigation of which, according to MatteoFavaretti’s paper, Wolff had actually contributed to with pioneering worksalready in the first decades of the 18 th century – Krüger’s rethinking of Wolff’sideas on the basis of a more ‘scientific’, experimental method had a deep effecton some central claims of Wolff’s metaphysics. But while Krüger only called intoquestion Wolff’s idea of mind-body interaction, Falk Wunderlich shows thatHupel’s materialistic view led him to reject the very basis of any metaphysicaldualism. While managing nonetheless to preserve the immortality of humansouls, this form of materialism moved one step further from the danger of astereotyped image of the man-machine that Wolff and his followers had put atthe centre of one of the most violent quarrels within the German debate just 20years earlier. According to their misunderstanding, La Mettrie’s scandalouswork seemed to bring back the debate to the point where Hobbes had left it: thedenial of spiritual substances, of immortality and free-will in favour of amechanical system of passive matter were the dangerous grounds of the threatagainst religion and morality. For obvious reasons the discussion on the natureof matter played a very central role in this debate, and found in Kant one of itsmost relevant solutions. Referring to this context, the paper by Paolo Pecereindicates that the transition from the monadological to the continuumdynamical theory of matter represented, among the rest, Kant’s way out of theoutgoing controversies about monads and materialism that characterized thephilosophical and scientific debate of the time. The variety of these attempts toprovide a ‘naturalistic’ description of human nature led to the generation of‘phantomatic’ forms of denunciations and invocations of materialism – such asthe ‘physiology of the understanding’, or the ‘mechanics of the soul’ – whichCharles Wolfe shows to be central topics of the philosophical debate evenoutside Germany. We are thus seeking to bring to light the tight interconnection betweenphilosophy and science, the ‘naturalistic’ roots of the increasing distrust towardsmetaphysics, and even the materialistic and anti-systematic tendencies of 18 th-century German philosophy, integrating them into a better explicativeframework. Neither our research, of course, nor the present collection, attemptto force these lines of investigation into the invention of some unitary andhomogeneous philosophical phenomenon. Instead of providing a picture inwhich Tschirnhaus and Bücher, Krüger and Tetens, Hupel and La Mettrie, canbe reconciled under one and the same flag, our intent is rather to show how theAufklärungsforschung, far from being tied to the more familiar, commonlyprovided homogeneous and monolithic image, can open itself a variety ofdifferent research directions, as we have sketched in this introduction – offeringin addition a first contribution to opening-up this terrain of historiographicalinquiry.We thank the editors of “Quaestio” for accepting this collection and the authorsfor their patient collaboration in the various phases of this common project.The Department of Philosophy and Education Sciences (and the PRIN-Project“Realismo e oggettività”) provided welcome financial support. Enrico Pasini Paola Rumore

Another 18th-Century German Philosophy? Rethinking German Enlightenment

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Another 18th-Century German Philosophy? Rethinking German Enlightenment

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