Another 18th-Century German Philosophy? Rethinking German Enlightenment

The papers collected here originated in a research project conducted in the years 2012-2015 at the University of Turin, by the local fMOD Research Group on the history of Early Modern and Modern philosophical and scientific thought (Department of Philosophy and Education Sciences). They were first discussed at a conference organized in the frame of a German-Italian research partnership that was held in Turin in June 2014. The aim of the project was, briefly and somewhat ambitiously stated, a re-interpretation of the development of 18th- century German philosophy. Our project aimed to produce a more integrated landscape, by means of the identification of naturalistic and ‘scientific’ tendencies, which evolved alongside the well-studied mainstream currents. In our view, this long-overshadowed manifold phenomenon had two major traits. First, it involved a more intense dialogue between philosophical thought, mathematics, science and medicine. Second, it was pervaded, despite the different positions of its major and minor protagonists, by a shared fundamental naturalistic position in metaphysics and epistemology. The rediscovery of a German ‘scientific philosophy’ – that has been over- shadowed so far by the more visible traditional currents – also bears witness to the presence in that cultural scene of many particular, apparently unrelated and secondary aspects of the intellectual production of the time, such as naturalism, medical materialism, or anti-metaphysical scientism. Unexpected alliances in controversies find a rationale, and the seeds of later 19th-century developments become more visible.