Paola Rumore

The chapter focuses on the figure of Princess Wilhelmine of Prussia (Friederike Sophie Wilhelmine, 1709–1758), Frederick the Great’s older and favourite sister, then Margravine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth. Wilhelmine plays a central role within the German philosophical debate in the 1740s. Her intellectual engagement comes out in an extraordinary clear way in her commitment to making Bayreuth one of the main intellectual centres of the Holy Roman Empire. The chapter focuses on Wilhelmine’s cultural and institutional engagement in the philosophical debate of the German Enlightenment on the basis of her philosophical reflections both in her correspondence with the most representative personality of the time and in her works.

Georg Friedrich Meier’s approach to prejudice in 18th century German philosophy represents a significant departure from the typical views of the Enlightenment, which often regarded prejudice as a logical or psychological obstacle to knowledge. The philosophy of Christian Wolff, which was prevalent during this period, emphasized that knowledge should be clear, distinct, and well-ordered, with prejudice seen as an error to be eradicated through rigorous scientific methods. However, Meier, while aligned with Wolffian logic, challenged this view by reassessing the role of prejudice. He argued that while prejudice should be avoided in philosophical and scientific reasoning, it is an unavoidable aspect of common knowledge shaped by unexamined beliefs and early experiences. Meier suggested that prejudice, although a negative element of knowledge, may play a more complex role in human understanding. His view reflects a more cautious and humble attitude towards human reason, recognizing its inherent limitations and the challenge of achieving absolute clarity in every realm of knowledge.

Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–1777) galt schon den Zeitgenossen als Universalgenie von europäischem Rang. Tatsächlich forschte und publizierte Lambert als Mathematiker und Philosoph, und zwar vor allem zur Logik und Metaphysik, zur Erkenntnis- und Sprachtheorie, als Astronom und Physiker. Seinem Aufklärungsverständnis gemäß wirkte er nicht nur mit einer Vielzahl von Publikationen in die Wissenschaften, sondern als Popularphilosoph darüber hinaus auch in die sich ent- wickelnde Gesellschaft und den Staat der Aufklärung hinein. Dass Lambert vor dem Hintergrund dieses Selbstverständnisses als Aufklärer auch Gedichte verfasste, überrascht dabei nicht. Der Band versammelt erstmals Studien zu allen Werkteilen des Berliner Gelehrten.

The paper focuses on Wolff’s empirical psychology, analyzing its contents both from an historical, and a theoretical point of view. Considering the discipline the main innovation that Wolff introduced in the ‘science of the soul’ in his time, the paper presents on the one hand the distance it displays between Wolff’s metaphysical statements and Leibniz’s monadology, and on the other hand the central role played by the connubium rationis et experientiae. This peculiar methodological purpose of Wolff’s philosophy finds in the relation between the empirical and the rational science of the soul one of its most remarkable realizations. The final part of the paper presents the contents of the main sections of Wolff’s Psychologia empirica, and briefly sketches the stages of its influence on the later philosophical and anthropological discussion.

The paper focuses on the reception of Priestley in Germany, which is remarkable for the huge and assiduous interest it raised in different philosophical milieus. Priestley’s dynamical conception of matter, his explanation of the functioning of the brain, and of the production of material ideas are at the basis of the new form of materialism that develops in Germany in the late 1770s, and which differs completely from the model of mechanical materialism Germany was used to in earlier decades. Indeed, the German reception of Priestley’s ideas begins surprisingly early, just one year after the publication of his edition of Hartley’s Observations on Man (1775), and traverses the two final decades of the eighteenth century with a considerable number of reviews and references in the main philosophical journals and works of the time. In 1778, his introduction to the Observations was translated into German and presented in the form of a manifesto of a new materialistic philosophy compatible with the claims of morals and religion. Within a few years, Priestley became the unavoidable reference point for the most relevant theological and philosophical discussions concerning the nature of matter and spirits, the place of God, the possibility of human freedom, and the legitimacy of free thinking.

The relationship between Baumgarten and Kant is famously as fruitful as any in the history of philosophy. It is well known that Kant adopted the former's Metaphysica for his lectures on metaphysics and anthropology almost uninterruptedly for about 40 years. Baumgarten's textbook represents a reference point for what a groundbreaking book of many years ago called "Kant's way to transcendental philosophy", and a key for the investigation of a considerable part of Kant's conceptual and terminological heritage. This historical circumstance has deeply influenced the destiny of the studies on Baumgarten, who—beside...

The paper focuses on the role of Kant’s refutation of materialism in his understanding of the Enlightenment, meant to be the necessary condition that allows human beings to express their proper dignity, i.e. to cultivate the urge for and the vocation of free thought. Sketching the main moments of the German struggle against the threat of materialism, the paper places Kant’s refutation within this tradition, and reconstructs the steps of his critique from the very beginning of his reflection – still dealing with the main topics of Wolff’s metaphysic – up to the definitive refutation he develops on the basis of the transcendental idealism of the first Critique. The shift from the «obscure reasons» pointed out in the Dreams, that allow a refutation of materialism on moral grounds, to the statement of the meaninglessness of the question in a transcendental perspective reveals that the attempt to find a solution to the problem of materialism – most of all in its psychological meaning –represents a neverending challenge within Kant’s reflection.

The paper focuses on the role of Kant’s refutation of materialism in his understanding of the Enlightenment, meant to be the necessary condition that allows human beings to express their proper dignity, i.e. to cultivate the urge for and the vocation of free thought. Sketching the main moments of the German struggle against the threat of materialism, the paper places Kant’s refutation within this tradition, and reconstructs the steps of his critique from the very beginning of his reflection – still dealing with the main topics of Wolff’s metaphysic – up to the definitive refutation he develops on the basis of the transcendental idealism of the first Critique. The shift from the «obscure reasons» pointed out in the Dreams, that allow a refutation of materialism on moral grounds, to the statement of the meaninglessness of the question in a transcendental perspective reveals that the attempt to find a solution to the problem of materialism – most of all in its psychological meaning –represents a neverending challenge within Kant’s reflection.

ABSTRACTThe paper focuses on the gradual separation between materialism and mechanism in early modern German philosophy. In Germany the distinction between the two concepts, originally introduced by Leibniz, was definitively stated by Wolff who was the first to provide a definition of the new philosophical term Materialismus, and of the related philosophical sect. In the first part I describe the initial identification of mechanism and materialism in German philosophy between the last decades of the seventeenth century and 1720. Mechanism is here mostly conceived within a monistic metaphysics of body, which refers mainly to Hobbes and to some interpretations of Spinoza’s pantheism. This tight connection between a mechanical explanation of nature and the Deus sive natura issue leads to a negative judgement on mechanism and its materialistic implications, both charged with a form of more or less explicit atheism. In the second part I describe the gradual emancipation in Germany of mechanism fro...