ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

"Weltweisheit": 18th Century German Popular Philosophy as a Special Case in the History of Sciences

• In Event: New Perspectives on Science in the Enlightenment

English Abstract

Commissioned by George II, the British monarch who also was Elector of Hanover in personal union, the University of Göttingen was founded in 1737. A new generation of scholars immediately settled in the little town of Göttingen, finding their scientific programs enriched and grounded by British and, in particular, Scottish philosophies and sciences.
The paper presents the Göttingen University scholarly community from its founding until 1800 as an example and, in a sense, as a Petri dish for the humanities of a German-speaking, empirically working, popular philosophical Enlightenment. The community of Göttingen University professors together succeeded in taking up fundamental impulses from the Scottish Common Sense School, translating them, transforming them and making them their own. In this way, they were able to bridge the emerging divide between the disciplines, enable collaboration between the early humanities and natural sciences, and work in a way that was both geared towards and appealing to the public. This work was also genuinely philosophical: A modern “Weltweisheit” – wisdom from and for the world.
After the Kantian turn, both Göttingen University and the Scottish academic institutions focussed on scientific work, while German-language philosophy took the path towards Idealism. This put an end to the empiric and popular Göttingen philosophical experiment. Still, it remains a historical realm of possibilities that deserves to be re-examined, especially against the backdrop of a difficult, ambivalent Enlightenment entangled with colonialism and imperialism.

Author

• Friederike Frenzel