Johann Georg Zimmermann’s Therapeutics of Solitude in the German Enlightenment

This essay charts the German eighteenth-century physician and writer Johann Georg Zimmermann’s monumental work on solitude. The essay draws on but also challenges recent historiography on two counts. First, it situates Zimmermann’s discourse on solitude in the context of the early modern cultura animi tradition, in which philosophy provided a cure for a soul perceived as diseased and perturbed by passion and desire. Placed in this context, solitude comes into view not primarily as a passive state of rest and tranquillity connected to the rural life, but as active, therapeutic and exercise-oriented work on the self. Second, it argues that Zimmermann also shaped his discourse in relation to the increasingly radical late eighteenth-century exploration of subjectivity and selfhood, an exploration that reflects the emergence of the modern conception of the unique individual and autonomous self.

From Atheists to Empiricists: Reinterpreting the Stoics in the German Enlightenment

From the 1670s Stoic philosophy had been closely associated with atheism and the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. However, in 1771 the historian Christoph Meiners published a short essay on the concept of apatheia that revived interest in Stoic philosophy within the German lands. Over the following years, he and his colleague Dieterich Tiedemann developed a novel interpretation claiming that Stoicism closely prefigured the philosophy of John Locke and represented a source of valuable philosophical ideas. Immanuel Kant, his allies, and later Idealists such as Hegel adopted this empiricist interpretation, despite their otherwise deep philosophical disagreements with Meiners and Tiedemann. Tracing eighteenth-century German debates around Stoicism reveals how it came to be considered a form of empiricism. As well as contributing to recent scholarship on the reception of Stoicism, the article suggests a major point of intersection between currents of the Enlightenment usually only treated separately.

Frontispieces in German Enlightenment Logic Textbooks as Programmatic Visual Aids

В статье показано, каким образом во фронтисписах логических компендиумов как особых визуальных средствах отразились основные споры и проблемы в понимании предмета, задач и роли логики в немецкой философии эпохи Просвещения. Антропологический характер логики, наличие теологических оснований, понимание логики как средства справедливости, поиск правильного пути исследования, поиск новых истин, положение логики среди других философских и нефилософских дисциплин, связь логики с задачами Просвещения - различные позиции по этим вопросам автор демонстрирует, анализируя фронтисписы из логических произведений Хр. Томазия, Хр. Вольфа, Хр. Вайзе, Н. И. Гундлинга, И. П. Ройша, А. Рюдигера, А. Ф. Хоффмана, Хр. А. Крузия, И. Г. Дарьеса, И. Ланге, И. Хр. Ланге, А. Бёма, И. Хр. Эшенбаха и др. В заключительной части проводится сравнение немецких фронтисписов из логических компендиумов, а также отраженный в них образ Просвещения, с фронтисписами в «Умословии или умственной философии» И. С. Рижского и «Российской грамматике» М. В. Ломоносова. The paper’s issue is how the main debates on the understanding of the logic subject, tasks and role have been reflected in frontispieces of logical compendiums in the German philosophy of the Enlightenment era. I argue that frontispieces are special visual aids that help to demonstrate various positions on such problems as the anthropological character of logic, the existence of theological foundations, logic treatment as an instrument for achieving justice, search for the right way of inquiry, discovery of new truths, the place of logic among other philosophical and non-philosophical disciplines and its connections with the aims of the Enlightenment. I analyze frontispieces from logical works of Chr. Thomasius, Chr. Wolff, Chr. Weise, N. H. Gundling, J. P. Reusch, A. Rüdiger, A. F. Hoffmann, Chr. A. Crusius, J. G. Darjes, J. Lange, J. Chr. Lange, A. Boehm, and J. Chr. Eschenbach. The final section compares the German frontispieces from logical compendiums and the Enlightenment image, which is introduced there, with the frontispieces in I. S. Rizhsky’s Umoslovie, or Rational Philosophy and M. V. Lomonosov’s Russian Grammar.

Commemorative and Anniversary Philosophical Medals as a Visual Aid and Philosophical Source

The paper demonstrates the significance of commemorative and anniversary philosophical medals that are seen as a special visual aid for problematic issues in the history of philosophy specification. The author puts forward the thesis that such medals can clarify the perception of philosophical doctrine and the context of philosophical doctrine consideration at a particular time. So, they greatly assist as an additional historical and philosophical source, but they can hardly be helpful with the interpretation of either various aspects of a philosophical doctrine or a particular statement of a particular philosopher. The rationale for the thesis presents the analysis of four philosophical medals: the medal commemorating the foundation of the alethophile society (1740), A. Abramsonʼs medal in honor of I. Kantʼs sixtieth anniversary (1784), A. Abramsonʼs medal for the death of I. Kant (1804), A.L. Heldʼs medals in honor of the sixtieth anniversary of G.W.F. Hegel (1830). If the first three medals contribute to a better understanding of the philosophical traits of the German Enlightenment, the reasons for appealing to Horace's words “sapere aude”, Kant's peculiarity as an Enlightenmentist, philosophical meaning of the Kantian Copernican Revolution and the transformation of the perception of the “Critique of Pure Reason” in the late 18th century, expectations regarding the fourth medal has proved misplaced. It cannot clarify the Hegelian phrase about reason as a rose on the cross of modernity and reconciliation with reality. In addition, in the course of clarifying the meaning of the four aforementioned medals, the author also turns to the commemorative medal of Chr. Wolff by J. Dassier (c. 1733), the medal for the return of Chr. Wolff to Halle by J.Chr. Koch (1740) and the medal for Kantʼs death by F.W. Loos (1804).

Wilhelmine of Bayreuth and the German Enlightenment

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.

Nietzsche and Luther: Reading, Counter-Text, Hermeneutics

In what way is Nietzsche's infamous late aphorism, ‘God is dead’, related to a general attack on theology and its intellectual practices? In Twilight of the Idols, he remarks: ‘I'm afraid we're not rid of God because we still believe in grammar.’ Reason, he decries, has become mired in linguistic rules long determined by the requirements of scholastic philosophy, whether of medieval theology or of Immanuel Kant. Nietzsche dismisses these as die Sprach-Metaphysik (‘metaphysics of language’). In this essay I examine Nietzsche's attack on theology via his long-term struggle with the ideas of Luther, once the idol of Goethe's German enlightenment, and now, Nietzsche insists, its arch-enemy. To do this, I re-examine Luther's theology of language, especially in the early Lectures on Romans (1515–1516). Luther's own attack on scholasticism is founded on a theology of reading which has unexpected affinities with Nietzsche. By placing this in a revised genealogy of hermeneutics from Nietzsche to Heidegger, it is possible to see theology as less deterministic and metaphysical.