Self-observational life in eighteenth-century Germany

ABSTRACT

In recent decades historians of science have argued that observation became something of a way of life in the early modern period. This article expands this analysis by shifting focus from observational practices within natural and experimental philosophy to a number of discourses and practices of self-examination and self-observation in eighteenth-century Germany. While the initial aim of these was therapeutic rather than scientific, therapeutic connotations were partly replaced by epistemic virtues and techniques adopted from natural and experimental philosophy toward the end of the century. The article further argues that the subordination of self-observation to scientific modes of procedure reflected the increasingly radical interest in human subjectivity and, by extension, the emergence of a modern civic and individual self.

KEYWORDS:

• observation
• self
• spiritual exercise

Introduction

In the wake of recent attempts to historicize basic epistemic categories, historians of science have drawn attention to the way in which observation became something of a way of life for early modern natural and experimental philosophers.¹ The observational life revolved around systematic, disciplined and methodological observations of nature both in natural settings and in so-called experimental situations. To read the book of nature it was necessary to cultivate epistemic virtues such as discipline, control and disinterestedness, at the same time as technologies such as telescopes, microscopes and air-pumps called for the development of epistemic techniques for establishing and communicating new and potentially controversial facts to the larger community.² Observations were thus to be rigorously conducted, multiplied and varied, accumulated and documented, and meticulously described and circulated in published texts.³

This article contributes to but also complicates the history of early modern observational life by focusing not on observations of natural objects and experimental events, but rather on observations of the self. Focusing on a number of key authors in eighteenth-century Germany, the article highlights a discursive and epistemic transition from therapeutic self-examinations to scientific self-observations: while self-examinations traditionally served therapeutic purposes, in the second half of the century these connotations were challenged and partly replaced as epistemic techniques and virtues adopted from natural and experimental philosophy became the core of systematic self-observations. The article further argues that this development was intimately intertwined with the increasingly radical late eighteenth-century interest in the unique, individual experience. One seemingly paradoxical result of this development was that the individual and often sensual and affectual experience was affirmed and embraced at the same time as it was also restrained, controlled and subjected to systematic scientific study – reflecting a modern civic and individual self in the making.

Self-examination in early modern philosophy

In the 1980s the French historian of philosophy Pierre Hadot became internationally known for his pioneering interpretation of ancient philosophy.⁴ According to Hadot, philosophy in classical times was first of all a way of life in which regular spiritual exercises were used to cure the soul, moving it away from normal human nature and toward freedom from passion and desire. To effect this change, it was crucial to examine, treat and work on the self on a daily basis.⁵ While this approach to philosophy lost force through scholasticism, it continued to prosper within the spiritual branch of Christianity before eventually being picked up by early modern philosophers. Hadot’s bold and rigorously supported analysis struck a chord, and in the following decades a number of inspired readings emerged, first of the ancient case and then, from around 2000, of early modern philosophy. Hence it has been convincingly argued and confirmed that prominent early modern philosophers such as Francis Bacon, René Descartes, John Locke, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and many others were all deeply indebted to this view of philosophy.⁶

In Germany the approach to philosophy as an exercise-oriented culture of the soul or cultura animi was at the core of natural law discourse. In the 1680s Samuel Pufendorf and Christian Thomasius thus drew directly on Cicero’s classical definition of philosophy as cultura animi when discussing the duties toward the self in their monumental treatises.⁷ Four decades later, the philosopher Christian Wolff elaborated on the duties toward the self in his ethical works. Although he drew on Pufendorf and Thomasius, the immediate context was that of Leibniz’s metaphysics of perfection.⁸ In the German Ethics (Vernünfftige Gedancken von der Menschen Thun und Lassen, 1720) Wolff thus formulated the moral imperative, “Do what makes you and your state more perfect and avoid that which makes you and your state less perfect.”⁹ For Wolff the perfection of the self was intimately connected to regular self-examination.

1. When one wakes up early one shall consider what needs to be done during the day, and what else may occur as a result of it. 2. Thereupon one shall endeavor to examine [untersuchen] what each of these actions contributes to the perfection of our inward and outward state. … 3. When one wants to go to sleep, one should reflect on everything one has done and omitted during the day, and finally, 4. examine how much we have contributed to the fulfilment of our final goal. If one continues this work unceasingly, then the desired habit will soon be there.¹⁰

In the early modern age, self-examinations such as these were prominent within the spiritual branch of the Christian tradition but also figured within philosophy. Philosophical exercises typically distinguished themselves from their Christian counterparts by targeting the higher cognitive faculties and particularly reason, rather than will.¹¹ The underlying rationale was that vices derived from ignorance and misconceptions rather than from weakness of the will. Both the philosophical and the Christian examination of the self followed a certain logic that can fruitfully be compared to that of scientific observations. Similar to the observational life of the natural and experimental philosophers, self-examination took form as a spatially and temporally situated, methodologically regulated singular event. That is, as the example from Wolff illustrates, it was to be performed at certain times of the day in accordance with rigorous methods.

In the 1740s and 1750s the practice of examining and cultivating the self was further elaborated by the Wolffian philosophers Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten and Georg Friedrich Meier. In Philosophical Ethics (Ethica philosophica, 1740) Baumgarten drew on Wolff and the cultura animi tradition more broadly when remarking that the soul’s dispositions are to be cultivated through exercises.¹² Such exercises included the use of diaries and day-to-day notes of things pertaining to the self.¹³ When it comes to the examination and documentation of the self, by far the most detailed account was provided by Meier. In the monumental five-volume work Philosophical Ethics (Philosophische Sittenlehre, 1753–1761) he devoted over a thousand pages to the duties toward the self. In a particularly revealing section Meier stressed that he was not concerned with the kind of trivial knowledge about ourselves that we obtain through daily life, but rather a systematic form of self-knowledge that can only be obtained through diligence and hard work.¹⁴ Elaborating further, he remarked that some moral teachers have provided excellent instructions for how to structure daily life around regular and systematic self-examination.

[O]ne would every morning make oneself a reasonable and virtuous plan for the whole day and one would dutifully prepare oneself for this very day. Second, one gave the advice that one should often think of one’s present state during the day. One must thus compare one’s present state with the plan that was made early in the morning, and examine [untersuchen] whether one behaves dutifully. … And third, one gave the advice that one should end the affairs of the day in the evening by thinking about one’s past life and especially the past day, in order to examine how one has spent the time and what good one has done, where one has failed, how one could have done better, so that one becomes wiser and is better able to arrange and execute the plans of the following day.¹⁵

In connection with these recommendations Meier stressed the use of diaries, here again emphasizing the difference between unsystematic daily reflections and the writing of philosophical diaries pertaining to the self and to self-knowledge.

Namely, it consists in the preparation of a reasonable and pragmatic history [Historie] of one’s own heart and life. One would thus act very ludicrously when one would fill these with commonplaces, unusable trifles and things that one cannot relate to in a more reasonable way than when one would forget them. Instead, such history must be an orderly, coherent, and true account of our moral conduct. One must thus daily write down with entire honesty: what insights and other perfections we have acquired this very day; whether we have truly adhered to our duties; how we have sinned and how we have been led to do so; what state our passions are in, and so on. In short, such a history must be a true portrayal of our whole life. And when it is, then one can with right immensely praise such diaries.¹⁶

Meier’s discourse aptly illustrates the way in which self-examination unfolded as a methodologically regulated event structured by the cultura animi framework of the soul as diseased and in need of therapeutic cure. In sharp contrast to everyday reflection, self-examination targeted moral attitudes and behaviors. This held not only for the examination itself but also for its documentation in diaries, which functioned as strictly regulated literary tools for self-examination.¹⁷

To summarize, self-examination played an important role in early modern philosophical ethics. Deriving from a long, complex and miscellaneous tradition of spiritual exercises, philosophical self-examinations were perceived as spatially and temporally situated, methodologically regulated activities pursued to temper and cure the mind. To have the desired effect they must be practiced on a regular basis. They should also be recorded in diaries, or, as Meier put it, histories of the heart. In contrast to the literary technologies common in natural and experimental philosophy, where rigorous notetaking and documentation served to accumulate and secure public evidence, records pertaining to the self served an essentially therapeutic purpose.

Meier and the mediation of a civic regimen of self-examination

In the case of Baumgarten and Meier, the interest in self-knowledge and self-examination was not exclusively philosophical but took form within the larger context of a new generation of middle-class intellectuals engaged in the project of defining their own identity.¹⁸ As such it was only one aspect of a much broader endeavor that involved what scholars have referred to as a civic culture of emotion marked by sensibility as well as new ideals of sociability and friendship.¹⁹ Baumgarten and Meier both responded to and advanced these developments. While Baumgarten famously launched aesthetics as the science of sensual knowledge, Meier popularized aesthetics and explored sociability, friendship and selfhood in numerous writings.²⁰ Meier also mastered the new media forms of the public sphere, including both published collections of letters and moral weeklies. The moral weekly featured short stories or cases, often written to entertain the reading middle class, published on a weekly basis and bound together in thick annual volumes.²¹ Between 1748 and 1768 Meier, together with his colleague and friend Samuel Gotthold Lange, edited four moral weeklies.²² In a contribution on self-knowledge in volume 3 of The Sociable (Der Gesellige, 1749), the author stressed that a person who takes self-knowledge seriously

seeks to know himself and his powers and inclinations, is determined to enrich his understanding with wisdom, and uses his will in the exercises of virtue, and thus always obtains several perfections by learning to use and moderate his emotions properly.²³

Similar points regarding self-knowledge appeared in a contribution in volume 4 of the moral weekly Man (Der Mensch, 1752). To avoid being plunged into ruin by passion and desire it was important to keep a moral journal.

If only a person got used to writing down his moral life daily; then he would be urged to behave from morning to evening in such a way that he could go about this work with pleasure in the evening, and that he had no reason to be ashamed of himself at the description of his life story.²⁴

A third case in point is a contribution in volume 1 of the moral weekly The Blissful (Der Glückselige, 1763), in which Meier and Lange provided detailed instructions in how to examine the self with regard to the past, the present, and the future.

I therefore want every person to go through the past day every evening, to think through the past year at the end of each year, and to recall in his memory the time he has spent in life on each birthday. … Here you consider every joy that you have searched for and found, or missed: why did this come about? Why did it pass? Was it perishable in itself, or did we forfeit it ourselves? How did we use and enjoy it? What have we done to fortify it? It is fair that the past should teach us about the future. Man must know his own history: it is more instructive and far more useful than the best history in the world.²⁵

Here we again see an example of how the work on the self should be organized around regular specific instances of methodological self-examination and reflection. Concerning the examination of the present, the author stressed that “we have to ask ourselves how we are now? We have to examine [untersuchen] whether we are not deceiving ourselves, and we must think of how we should rightly enjoy the present happiness.”²⁶ That Meier and Lange discussed the practices of self-examination in moral weeklies indicates how the examination of the self, rather than being an exclusively philosophical affair, was communicated to a broader public.

This process, through which the examination of the self was communicated to reading middle-class men and women, provides important context for the emerging discourse on self-observation. Before addressing the latter, however, it is crucial to understand the transformation and adaptation of the classical cultura animi. In its original form this was a highly regulated regimen for tempering and controlling the passions of the mind. The exercise and examination of the self was performed strictly within this framework. What Baumgarten and especially Meier did – partly as a consequence of their engagement in aesthetics – was to make way for both a more positive view of the passions and the senses, and, crucially, a more open-ended interrogation of subjective experience as such. The message to the reading middle class thus advocated not only tempering the mind but also embracing and exploring the affectual and sensual self.

To sum up, from around the mid-eighteenth century, Meier and Lange played a key role in the crafting and promotion of a civic regimen of self-examination. Two points are particularly worth highlighting. First, in sharp contrast to the classical cultura animi, Meier and Lange’s regimen of self-examinations not only served to temper and control the passions but also encouraged the affirmation and exploration of the senses and emotions. Second, this civic regimen of self-examination was not only promoted in academic writings but also mediated in a more digestible form in moral weeklies. These periodicals played an important role in the dissemination of a civic morality that spoke to a new identity and sense of self in the making.

Lavater and the publicizing of the self-observational life

In this section we will shift focus and explore an intellectual who worked along the same lines as Meier but differed in one important respect: rather than a regimen of self-examination, he promoted and publicized a form of self-observational life. This way of life corresponded with a terminological transition from “self-examination” (Untersuchung, untersuchen; examinatio, examino), established within the philosophical and Christian cultura animi traditions, to “self-observation” (Beobachtung, Selbst-beobachtung, beobachten; observatio, observo). This shift is highly significant, as it implied the adoption not only of a term commonly used in natural and experimental philosophy and medicine but also of some of the epistemic virtues and techniques associated with it.

As a theology student, the Swiss philosopher, pastor, poet and writer Johann Caspar Lavater was a deeply devout Christian believer. His first diary, written in his twenties, testifies to a young person’s struggle to forge his own identity and sense of self through a broad spectrum of Christian spiritual exercises.²⁷ The recorded prayers, meditations and confessions exemplify the pietistic endeavor to articulate one’s personal relationship to God, while some passages also bear traces of Christian Enlightenment thought. Over time, this latter influence became increasingly important, as Lavater took on the role of a public writer focused on publicizing the seemingly private and personal. The first concrete expression of this development was the moral weekly The Rememberer (Der Erinnerer, 1765–1766).²⁸ As Lavater pointed out in the opening contribution, the work featured numerous observations and self-observations conducted to morally interrogate and edify the self. Some focused on exposing and extirpating corruptions and prejudices, but others featured more open-ended existential investigations of the self. Although Lavater does not appear to have had any close association with Meier and Lange, he had come into contact with their periodicals and also published a submission that directly replicated a piece from Meier and Lange’s moral weekly The Realm of Nature and Morals (Das Reich der Natur und der Sitten, 1757–1762). The piece drew particularly on Seneca to argue for the necessity of systematic self-examinations.

[E]very morning, as soon as one wakes up, one should think about what one wants to do during the day, and how one can best arrange it, so that one keeps in mind the most noble duties that one has to observe according to Christianity and according to one’s particular profession. … In the way described above, a person always remains aware of himself, his true state, his duties and his relationship with God, and keeps a good conscience within himself, which is a priceless treasure.²⁹

Interestingly, the contribution that immediately followed was a commentary in which the author pointed out that “nothing better will be suitable, and the Christian readers of this sheet will not be more pleased than if I give them the benefit of an impartial self-interrogation [unpartheyischen Selbstprüfung] in an example.”³⁰ Accordingly, the contribution was structured as a long series of self-critical questions.

In general, what are my actions like? Do I do them for the glory of God, that is, in fear and obedience to Him? Do I seek to benefit my neighbor and to encourage and build him up for good? … What are my favorite inclinations? – Which sins do I commit most often and easily? … What is my heart most preoccupied with? What do I think about most often? What do I seek most eagerly?³¹

Particularly worth noting here is the vacillation between traditional Christian self-examination and a more open-ended questioning of one’s thoughts, feelings and desires. Like Meier and Lange, Lavater also periodically underscored the importance of keeping a moral diary.

Keep a moral diary [moralisches Tagbuch] about yourselves, about your actions, your speeches, your desires and thoughts; but record not only your virtuous, but also your evil and faulty actions – not only the external, but also the internal, the motives, motivations and intentions of the same. – Do not lie to yourselves! – Write it down as it is written down by the truth in the book of your life. – Let this be your most pleasant book – once it will certainly be the most instructive! You will learn the most necessary and the most interesting science [Wissenschaft] that a mortal can learn, the knowledge of yourself.³²

While Meier and Lange had contented themselves with advocating and providing instructions for a moral diary, Lavater took matters to a new level in the following decade by publishing the Secret Diary of a Self-Observer (Geheimes Tagebuch von einem Beobachter seiner Selbst, 1771). As the editor put it in the preface, the text contributed to the “history of the human heart” by providing a detailed account of the author’s day-to-day spiritual struggle as a devout Christian.³³ The work was a success, and two years later Lavater published the sequel Unchanged Fragments of the Diary of a Self-Observer (Unveränderte Fragmente aus dem Tagebuche eines Beobachters seiner Selbst, 1773). As Ursula Caflisch-Schnetzler has pointed out, a clear line of development runs from Lavater’s first journal through the moral weekly and on to the published diary.³⁴ While the former is in many respects a pietist journal, the latter constitutes an attempt to publicize the private and personal, often in an exaggerated and sometimes even farcical tone, that is clearly aligned with the culture of sensibility and the romantic tradition. This tendency is further illustrated by the differences between the first and second part of the Diary of a Self-Observer; the latter represents a clear step away from regulated Christian spiritual exercises to what Lavater himself describes as more fragmented events and experiences.

I no longer have the time to make a complete diary; I will therefore only, as much as my remaining moments, which I cannot use better, allow, record my strangest moments, activities, situations, incidents, impressions, weaknesses, rashnesses, mistakes, as briefly and for me as instructive as I can.³⁵

Far from being an outlier, Lavater was in fact one of many intellectuals whose concern with the individual, unique and often sensible experience is considered crucial to the emergence of a new form of subjectivity, or even of modern subjectivity and selfhood as such.³⁶

While Lavater, like Meier and Lange, advocated a form of civic cultura animi revolving around the unique individual experience, he nevertheless represents an important shift, in arguing that this very experience should be explored with the impartial gaze of the observer. As historians of science and medicine have pointed out, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the term “observation” (observatio, Observation, Beobachtung) became increasingly established in natural and experimental philosophy and medicine, where it was used to signify specific singular events.³⁷ A similar development applies to the term “impartiality” (Unpartheylichkeit), which was originally used in law and historiography – disciplines in which it was considered especially important to give judgements that were not influenced by interests and prejudices – but which was adopted as an epistemic virtue in natural and experimental philosophy in the seventeenth century.³⁸ While Meier and Lange sometimes stressed impartiality, Lavater repeatedly emphasized that the self-observer must adopt a “cold” (kalt), “cold-blooded” (kaltblutig) and “impartial” (unpartheyisch) attitude toward the object of study. This attitude is directly related to his principal project to establish physiognomy as a science. In the 1770s Lavater thus published On Physiognomy (Von der Physiognomik, 1772), followed by the four-volume work Physiognomic Fragments for the Promotion of Human Knowledge and Human Love (Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntniß und Menschenliebe, 1775–1778). His physiognomy revolved around the attempt to study human appearance – in particular as regards faces but also facial expressions and behavior more generally – and to draw from this information conclusions concerning the personality and inner life of individuals. While Lavater’s physiognomy has often and rather unfairly been written into the long history of phrenology, I would instead like to highlight that physiognomy and the Secret Diary were united by a common interest in the unique individual self.³⁹ While the diary approached the self from the perspective of subjective experience, physiognomy did so instead through the disinterested gaze of the scientific observer. Lavater was keen to present his new and somewhat controversial discipline as a science, and in this effort he adopted exactly those epistemic techniques and virtues that dominated within natural/experimental philosophy and medicine. Especially worth mentioning here is On Experience in Medicine (Von der Erfahrung in der Arzneykunst, 1763–1764), a two-volume work published by Lavater’s close friend and mentor, the physician Johann Georg Zimmermann. Zimmermann’s extensive discourse on how to refine the spirit of observation (Beobachtungsgeist), preferably by cultivating epistemic virtues such as control, accuracy, impartiality and detached coldness, provides an immediate backdrop to Lavater’s own writings. Just as the natural philosopher and the physician should systematically cultivate these virtues, so should the observer and self-observer organize his life around disciplined interrogation and documentation of his own and others’ inner lives.

Moritz’s cold-blooded psychological self-observations

The transition from therapeutic self-examination to scientific self-observation is further illustrated by the influential work of the literary critic and professor of art and linguistics Karl Philipp Moritz. In 1781 Moritz published Contribution to the Philosophy of Life (Beiträge zur Philosophie des Lebens), in which he criticized the tendency to speak of happiness in general rather than attending to and exploring those moments when we are actually happy. “None of our moments is exactly the same as the other. But who will notice? Who takes time to describe the history of his thoughts and make himself the object of his observations [Gegenstande seiner Beobachtungen]?”⁴⁰ To remedy this lack, Moritz presented his work as a systematic examination of his own moral-psychological life. The Philosophy of Life testifies to the same tendency that we saw in Lavater.

Whoever wants to make observations of himself [Beobachtungen über sich selber] for the benefit of other people must be free of all passions during the time he observes, but have strong passions at other times, otherwise the history of his thoughts and feelings will not be so useful. He must therefore learn the art of suddenly pulling himself out of the whirl of his desires at certain moments of his life, in order to play the cold observer for a time, without taking the least interest in himself.⁴¹

The passage spotlights the way in which natural- and experimental-philosophical vocabulary, epistemic techniques and virtues fed into and became part of the exploration of subjectivity. As Moritz put it, the self-observer must lead an intense and passionate life while at the same time taking the role of the cold observer. Robert Scott Leventhal and others have pointed out that Moritz’s references reflected the aesthetic conception of disinterestedness as a specific attitude wherein the beautiful object is enjoyed for its own sake without any particular interest.⁴² While it is true that Moritz later referred to disinterestedness in an aesthetic context, the references from the early 1780s seem rather to reflect Lavater and Zimmermann’s discourse on “cold,” “cold-blooded” and “impartial” observations.

Moritz, Lavater and Zimmermann all operated in the wake of what scholars have referred to as the anthropological turn.⁴³ This label has been used to capture the broad and eclectic early and mid-eighteenth-century interest in the human being as a complex whole that emerged in the intersection between Wolffian philosophy and Hoffmanian and Stahlian medicine. The so-called philosopher-physicians typically combined the deductive reasoning that characterized Wolffian philosophy and psychology with iatromechanical theory and analyses of extraordinary medical cases.⁴⁴ In the mid-1750s, this strand of thought was pursued by the Wolffian physiologist Johann Gottlob Krüger, who sought to base an experimental psychology on extraordinary medical cases, and by the end of the decade the philosopher Johann Georg Sulzer remarked in Concise Conception of all Sciences (Kurzer Begriff aller Wissenschaften, 1759) that “it would also be useful if some extraordinary psychological cases [außerordentliche psychologische Fälle], which cannot yet be explained through the known properties of the soul, were studied in detail in specific contributions.”⁴⁵ While the idea of an empirical psychology based on extraordinary cases was thus far from new, it was Moritz who carried it out on a large scale. In 1782 Moritz published the short Prospect of an Experimental Psychology (Aussichten zu einer Experimentalseelenlehre). In this programmatic text he stressed the value of a psychology based on extraordinary cases. “From the combined rapports of many scrupulous observers [sorgfältiger Beobachter] of the human heart could an experimental psychology [Experimentalseelenlehre] emerge, whose practical utility would exceed everything that our ancestors have achieved in this field.”⁴⁶ As Moritz saw it, a new journal of experimental psychology should be based on a large collection of medical cases from history and literature: suicides, dreamers, bankrupt or rich people, dying people and so on.⁴⁷ Psychology would derive information from all these sources, but, for all, it should be based on real observations; as Moritz pointed out, one real observation was more important than a thousand made in books.⁴⁸ Concerning the role of the observer, Moritz basically plagiarized his earlier statement in remarking that the self-observer must be able to pull himself out of the vortex of impressions and view himself with a cold and disinterested eye.⁴⁹

Two things are particularly worth noting at this point. First, a new strand of systematic self-observations here challenges the therapeutic self-examinations that marked the cultura animi tradition and that survived in revised form in both Meier and Lange and Lavater. Second, while Krüger, Sulzer and other representatives of the mid-century anthropological turn had stressed the value of extraordinary medical cases, Moritz radically expanded this category both by including various observations, reflections and diary accounts, and by actively producing cases through observations and self-observations.⁵⁰

The first volume of the journal was published the following year, under the title Know Thyself or Journal of Empirical Psychology (ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ oder Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde, 1783–1793).⁵¹ What justified the journal in relation to the “present flood of books,” Moritz argued, was that it delivered “facts, and no moral gibberish, no novel, and no comedy.”⁵² The journal presented a vast number of cases, discussed alongside short biographies, letters, observations and self-observations. As regards the latter, they often unfolded as accounts of the fluctuating inner life. In one self-observation the author thus recounts in detail the impressions experienced during a walk.

While walking, I gradually managed to suppress the thoughts that made me sad. Others took their place and pushed them aside. I found how small and insignificant my present distress was in relation to my plans. The plans all followed on one another in my soul, and the thought of their likely execution granted me a sweet delusion. But all this happened to me only after I had walked quickly for a while.⁵³

Another more radical example of self-observation depicts the highly fragmentary and fluctuating stream of inner thoughts and feelings.

Overweight of the imaginative forces. – Tendency to peculiarity. – Slow change of ideas. – Firmness of once established opinions and habits, because such positions of the ideas, in which inclinations begin, are rare, thus existing ones persist more easily than new ones arise. – Separation of thought from feeling and action. … Little vanity, much pride. – Vivid expression and feeling of own defects; concealment of good; a certain shame to seem good, and sensations of showing zeal with words that might receive applause.⁵⁴

Both the above passages illustrate the production of cases through systematic self-observations. Replacing the therapeutically oriented self-examiner is here the systematic self-observer who reports in minute detail the never-ceasing stream of perceptions with the impartial and disinterested gaze of the natural philosopher.

During the second half of the decade, Moritz worked, in parallel with his magazine, on the literary project Anton Reiser: A Psychological Novel (Anton Reiser. Ein psychologischer Roman, 1785–90). The four-part Anton Reiser provided a detailed account of Reiser’s psychological development from childhood to adulthood.⁵⁵ It thereby contributed to “the inner history of humans” and could “be called a biography, because most of the observations have been taken from real life.”⁵⁶ In relation to Philosophy of Life, Anton Reiser comes into view as a literary exploration of the fluctuating struggle between exaggerated sensibility – with its concomitant passions and desires – and the attempt to control it through reason. One passage thus describes how Reiser decided to keep a moral journal. While at first he did not know what and how to observe,

his diary improved over time, in that he began to record not only the events, but also his intentions and resolutions, in order to eventually see what he had achieved. He thus made laws for himself, which he wrote down in his diary in order to bring them to fruition. He also occasionally made solemn vows to himself, e.g. to get up early, to divide the day into proper hours, and so on.⁵⁷

Another passage makes similar points regarding the difficulties of pulling oneself out of the vortex of impressions.

[T]he impressions themselves were still too vivid for him to perform cold-blooded reflections [kaltblütige Reflexionen] – also his power of thought was not yet trained and not strong enough to subordinate the rising images to the imagination properly – in addition there was a certain indolence and immersion in the comfort of pleasure, which also inhibited his reflections.⁵⁸

The story of Reiser displays an interesting and (for the time and context) characteristic tension between the affirmation of the passionate and sensual self and the subordination of this very self to disciplinary techniques and quasi-scientific scrutiny. In a close reading of Anton Reiser, Cristina Fossaluzza has used the phrase “subjective antisubjectivism” to capture this very tendency.⁵⁹ Similar points regarding the disinterested observer of the sensible mind have been made by Leventhal and Alexander Košenina, who have both situated Anton Reiser in the context of a new genre of narrative psychological case histories connected with the emergence of the modern notion of the individual.⁶⁰

Taken together, Moritz’s work further illustrates the transition from therapeutic self-examinations to systematic self-observations. Although the therapeutic approach still remains, as is made clear not least in Anton Reiser, it is considerably challenged by the cold and impartial self-observer who seeks to accumulate and systematize knowledge of the soul. That said, it is not entirely clear how this position should be understood. Is it scientific, literary or cultural in a broader sense? Moritz’s work, like Lavater’s, is in fact marked by a strong eclecticism in which academic and purely literary genres, discourses and concepts are mixed. As a consequence, the scientific self is not bound to academic settings. On the one hand, it can be situated in the context of the early modern observational life, or of the more specific late eighteenth-century observational regimes that Christoph Hoffmann has highlighted.⁶¹ Thus seen, it constituted a specific eclectic expression or offshoot of a much broader way of life typically pursued by physicians and natural and experimental philosophers. On the other hand, it can also be situated in the context of the German culture of sensibility, the romantic movement and the wider interest in subjectivity and selfhood. As Fossaluzza, Leventhal, Košenina and others have remarked, it seems in fact that the exploration of subjectivity played out through a dialectics of affirmation and subordination of the subjective and often sensible self. It is precisely this intimate tension between subjective affirmation and distanced control that seems at once to drive and characterize both the modern self and the associated dichotomies between subject and object, subjectivity and objectivity.⁶²

Toward a psychology of self-observation

So far, we have seen how therapeutic self-examination was gradually challenged by a new strand of self-observation in the second half of the eighteenth century. Deeply influenced by the culture of sensibility of the time, eclectic writers like Lavater and Moritz depicted a playful, almost voyeuristic, dynamic between the affirmation of the sensible self and its subordination to the gaze of the disinterested self-observer. Displaying this dynamic in a broad spectrum of genres and discourses, they contributed to making the self-observational life a broader cultural ideal. In this last section we shift focus from this larger context to a stricter and more distinct discourse on self-observation as a systematic method within empirical psychology. Those exploring and promoting this method were typically Kantian philosophers who took a narrower technical and epistemological approach and who left little or no room for therapeutic aspects. Instead, as we shall see, it was by adopting a wide range of epistemic techniques and virtues that self-observation qualified as an empirical scientific method.⁶³

The first to provide a more comprehensive and systematic discussion of self-observation as a method in empirical psychology was the writer and literary critic Christian Gottfried Schütz. In 1770–1771 Schütz published a two-volume translation of Charles Bonnet’s Analytical Essay on the Faculties of the Soul (Essai analytique sur les facultés de l’âme, 1760). Bonnet is often highlighted as one of the most dedicated and influential practitioners of observation as a way of life, and in the preface to this work he emphasizes that “I have undertaken to study man, as I have studied insects and plants. The Spirit of Observation [l’Esprit d’Observation] is not limited to one kind: It is the universal spirit of the sciences and arts.”⁶⁴ In the German translation Schütz writes that Moses Mendelssohn (who would later be involved in Moritz’s journal) had rightly remarked in a letter to Lavater that much of what is covered in Bonnet’s work had already been introduced by the Germans.⁶⁵ This said, Schütz not only found the work worth translating into German, but in the second volume he also provided his own critical comments titled Reflections on the Various Methods of Psychology (Betrachtungen über die verschiednen Methoden der Psychologie).⁶⁶ Schütz’s text is an early example of the new discourse on systematic self-observations as the principal method of empirical psychology. The development of systematic methods was typically framed as a direct response to the extraordinarily complex and challenging nature of the soul. Being in constant flux, without beginning or end and without clearly distinguishable parts, the soul was not only a challenging object but compromised the very act of observation itself. To meet these difficulties, Schütz established three rules for how to conduct observations.

So first: One must collect a great number of individual observations [einzelne Beobachtungen] before one can deduce a certain result from them, and never forget that the incidents which one observes are individual cases [individuelle Fälle], from which the general can be inferred only with great care and caution. … Second: One must rather notice the phenomena of the soul with all their ancillary features than tearing them out of context, where they often get a completely different appearance. Without observing this rule, it is often impossible to get out of apparent contradictions. … Third: One must not ignore trifles and accidental manifestations, no matter how minor they may appear.⁶⁷

Stripped of any references to therapeutic cultivation, the perspective is here that of the disciplined and meticulous observer. The observer, as well as the method of self-observation, was often explicitly modeled on roles and methods used in natural philosophy.

In 1777 the philosopher Johann Nicolas Tetens further elaborated on the method of self-observation (also in relation to Bonnet) in the preface to Philosophical Inquiries into Human Nature and Its Development (Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwickelung).

As for the method I have used, I consider it necessary to explain it in advance. It is the observational [beobachtende], which Lock has followed regarding the mind, and our psychologists in empirical psychology [Erfahrungs-Seelenlehre]. Notice the modifications of the soul as they appear through self-reflection [Selbstgefühl]; repeat, observe and perceive these under different circumstances, notice the way they emerge and the laws of operation of the forces that they produce; then compare and resolve the observations, and from these try to discover the most elementary abilities and effects as well as their relations to one another. These are the most essential performances in the psychological analysis of the soul, which is based on experience. This method is the method of natural philosophy [Naturlehre].⁶⁸

As Lorraine Daston has remarked, careful attention to parts and the synthesizing of them into more complex wholes were at the very core of the observational practice advocated by Bonnet and many others.⁶⁹ Instead of dismissing these and other epistemic techniques as inapplicable to the soul as an object of study, Tetens rather saw the solution in their rigorous application.

In the case of the inner sense there are, if not more, at least more productive sources of delusion than in the case of the external senses; I know no means effective enough to guard against these, other than the repetition of the same observation, both under similar and different circumstances, each time made with the firm determination to distinguish and strongly acknowledge what is real perception from what is added fantasy. Whoever cannot do this is not suitable as an observer of the soul [Beobachter der Seele].⁷⁰

Schütz’s and Tetens’s discourses illustrate an important epistemic shift: whereas the raison d’être of self-examination was intimately connected to the cultura animi, the kind of self-observations that figure here are completely stripped of any such references. Replacing the cultura animi framework, be it in classical or reformed civic form, is psychology as an empirical science whose practitioners systematically conduct, accumulate, document and analyze a large number of singular observations from which new facts can then be established.⁷¹ In other words, empirical psychology claimed status as an empirical science by adopting the epistemic techniques and virtues that historians of science have highlighted as the very hallmark of early modern natural and experimental philosophy.

In the following two decades, a number of authors made similar points regarding self-observation as a systematic method in empirical psychology.⁷² A final, particularly relevant, example is the Kantian philosopher Carl Christian Erhard Schmid’s extensive Empirical Psychology (Empirische Psychologie, 1791). In comparison with his predecessors, Schmid provided by far the most extensive and detailed discussion of methods. Schmid also expanded the scope of the empirical method to incorporate not only self-observation but also observations of other people, including their physical constitution, their behaviors and even their writings. When it comes to self-observation, however, Schmid, like his forerunners, stressed the difficulties connected to the soul as a constantly changing immaterial object. To meet these difficulties, Schmid presented a list of twelve rules for the observer, among which he counted the following: to be “attentive to details,” “not to despise the every-day and common,” and to prioritize “complete and exact” observations over “superficial, carelessly collected, indefinite” ones.⁷³ Observers must also be cautious not to be misled by “common and personal prejudices or the impact of inclinations and passions.”⁷⁴ Hence “no presumed result must stand in the way of the continuous observation or destroy its impartiality, but only give the spirit of observation new inspiration and new directions.”⁷⁵ In addition, Schmid emphasized the importance of “recording in writing one’s observations and compiling them in a well-prepared and organized psychological journal [psychologischen Magazin].”⁷⁶ Such a journal was useful in several respects:

1) It fixes the attention. … 2) It is precisely through this that more appropriate associations are evoked and thus the stock of useful material is increased. 3) The common, indeterminate, deficient and incoherent in our remarks are more noticeable to us when we write them down; we are prompted to bring more precision, completeness and connection into them. 4). … Who could keep all these little things, which only become interesting through compilation, comparison and classification, if one did not keep them outside memory? 5) The overview, the renewal and the use of the accumulated material is thereby facilitated.⁷⁷

Schmid further illustrates the tendency that we have already seen in Schütz and Tetens. That is, replacing the cultura animi examination of the self is a discourse on self-observation as a systematic scientific method. Here the epistemic techniques were those of the natural philosopher who performs, varies and accumulates many singular observations and who in each case attends to every minor detail. These are then to be rigorously noted down, documented and systematically refined into general facts, truths and, if possible, laws concerning the human soul.⁷⁸ Moreover, the empirical psychologist should cultivate the same kinds of skills and virtues as the experimental and natural philosopher, just as he should similarly devote himself to the collection, analysis, production and circulation of new facts and truths to the wider community.

Concluding remarks

This article contributes to the scholarly analysis of epistemic categories in the early modern period by focusing on self-observational life in eighteenth-century Germany. Early and mid-eighteenth-century discourses and practices of self-examination reflected the cultura animi tradition, according to which philosophy provided a therapeutic regimen. Around the mid-eighteenth century, however, the classical cultura animi was gradually transformed into a civic cultura animi in which the extirpation of the passions was replaced by a more open-ended exploration of subjective experience. In the second half, and particularly toward the end of the century, this exploration of subjectivity existed in parallel with attempts to subordinate the self to systematic scientific self-observations. Not only did intellectuals adopt the epistemic techniques and virtues used in natural and experimental philosophy, but, due to the extraordinarily complex nature of the human soul, it became particularly important to cultivate a disinterested scientific gaze, to make numerous observations under similar and different conditions, and to document these in journals.

How should we understand the transition from therapeutic self-examinations to scientific self-observations? As I have tried to illustrate throughout this article, the new strand reflects both the broad observational life of the eighteenth century, in which a range of different observational regimes coexisted, and the increasingly radical exploration of subjective experience and selfhood. While the former provided the epistemic virtues and techniques necessary to subordinate the self to rigorous scientific study, the culture of sensibility and the romantic movement more broadly encouraged the affirmation and exploration of the unique, individual, and often sensual and affectual experience. As a consequence, subjectivity was at the same time to be embraced and explored, restrained and controlled. While this tension characterizes Lavater’s and Moritz’s discourses in particular, the new strand of textbooks in empirical psychology clearly tilted the balance in favor of the systematic and disciplined scientific observer, who typically claims a meta-perspective. One clear indication of this is that Schmid and other authors after him often provided long reading lists that included therapeutically oriented works as well as sensibility literature.⁷⁹ What made these works interesting, however, was not the therapeutic cure or the cultivation of a sensible self per se, but rather the way in which the material could be analyzed as cases revealing important facts and truths of the soul. This approach, whereby the scientific perspective is established as a view from above, with the self-ordained right to evaluate and judge other perspectives and strands of thought, appears as one of the hallmarks of modern scientific objectivity.

Acknowledgments

This study would not have been possible without insightful feedback from colleagues at the Department of History of Science and Ideas at Uppsala University. The author also wishes to thank two anonymous reviewers for valuable suggestions and criticism.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Vetenskapsrådet: [Grant Number 2018-01187].

Notes on contributors

Andreas Rydberg

Andreas Rydberg is a researcher at the Department of History of Science and Ideas at Uppsala University, Sweden. His work focuses on the relation between spiritual exercises and scientific practices in early modern Germany. This article is a part of the project “Selfknowledge and the emergence of modern objectivity”.

Notes

1 For the history of epistemic categories, see Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Shapiro, A Culture of Fact: England, 1550–1720 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000); Daston and Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2007); Dear, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Pomata and Siraisi, eds., Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005). For the more specific case of the history of observation, see Daston, Observation as a Way of Life: Time, Attention, Allegory (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 2011); Daston and Lunbeck, eds., Histories of Scientific Observation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump; Dear, Discipline and Experience; Hoffmann, Unter Beobachtung: Naturforschung in der Zeit der Sinnesapparate (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006); Retzlaff, Observieren und Aufschreiben: Zur Poetologie medizinischer Fallgeschichten (1700–1765) (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2018); Poser, “Observatio, Beobachtung”, in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Ritter et al. (Basel: Schwabe, 1984).

2 Daston and Galison, Objectivity, 39–42; Shapin, Social History of Truth.

3 Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, 25–79.

4 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. For Hadot’s reception and influence, see the introductions in Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life; Chase, Clark and McGhee, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Ancients and Moderns: Essays in Honor of Pierre Hadot; Sharpe and Ure, Philosophy as a Way of Life: From Antiquity to Modernity.

5 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 83.

6 Hunter, Rival Enlightenments: Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany; Gaukroger, Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early-Modern Philosophy; Jones, The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution: Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, and the Cultivation of Virtue; Corneanu, Regimens of the Mind: Boyle, Locke, and the Early Modern Cultura Animi Tradition.

7 Pufendorf, De jure naturae et gentium libri octo by Samuel Pufendorf: Volume Two; The Translation of the Edition of 1688, 232; Thomasius, Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence: With Selections from Foundations of the Law of Nature and Nations, 155.

8 For an account and interesting analysis of Leibniz’s metaphysics of perfection, see Hunter, Rival Enlightenments.

9 Wolff, Vernünfftige Gedancken von der Menschen Thun und Lassen, zu Beförderung ihrer Glückseligkeit, den Liebhabern der Wahrheit mitgetheilet, 16, § 19.

10 Wolff, 105–6, § 173.

11 For broad accounts of will and reason, see Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy; Saarinen, Weakness of Will in Renaissance and Reformation Thought. For the Christian and particularly Lutheran context, see Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development, 249; Dragseth, The Devil’s Whore: Reason and Philosophy in the Lutheran Tradition.

12 Baumgarten, Ethica philosophica, 222, § 403.

13 Baumgarten, 67, § 160.

14 Meier, Philosophische Sittenlehre. Anderer Theil, 353, § 391.

15 Meier, 391–2, § 407.

16 Meier, 408, § 414.

17 That notes and documentation played an important role in the practice of self-examination has been highlighted by both Hadot and Foucault. For a recent and wide-ranging study of the role of literary technologies in self-formation, see Heehs, Writing the Self: Diaries, Memoirs, and the History of the Self.

18 Schenk, Leben und Werk des halleschen Aufklärers Georg Friedrich Meier, Kertscher, “Georg Friedrich Meiers Platz im geistig-kulturellen Leben der Stadt Halle”, 25–41; Schwaiger, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten – ein intellektuelles Porträt: Studien zur Metaphysik und Ethik von Kants Leitautor.

19 The research on these topics is vast. For middle-class identity, sociability and friendship, see Aurnhammer et al., Gefühlskultur in der bürgerlichen Aufklärung; Meyer-Krentler, “Freundschaft im 18. Jahrhundert. Zur Einführung in die Forschungsdiskussion”, 1–22. For the scholarly discussion of sensibility, see Kemper, Deutsche Lyrik der frühen Neuzeit. Band 6/1 Empfindsamkeit; Sauder, Empfindsamkeit: Band I Voraussetzungen und Elemente; Beetz, “Anakreontik und Rokoko im Bezugsfeld der Aufklärung – Eine Forschungsbilanz”, 1–17.

20 Schenk, Georg Friedrich Meier; Kertscher, “Georg Friedrich Meiers Platz”; Schwaiger, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten.

21 Martens, Die Botschaft der Tugend; Maar, Bildung durch Unterhaltung: Die Entdeckung des Infotainment in der Aufklärung; Hallenser und Wiener Moralische Wochenschriften in der Blütezeit des Moraljournalismus, 1748–1782. One of the first to connect the moral weeklies to the public sphere was Habermas, in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, 37.

22 Zenker, “Zwei Jahrzehnte Volksaufklärung (1748–1768). Meier als Herausgeber und Autor Moralischer Wochenschriften”, 55–80.

23 Lange and Meier, Der Gesellige: Eine Moralische Wochenschrift herausgegeben von Samuel Gotthold Lange und Georg Friedrich Meier. Teil 3 und 4 (1749), 90, part 107.

24 Lange and Meier, Der Mensch: Eine Moralische Wochenschrift herausgeben von Samuel Gotthold Lange und Georg Friedrich Meier. Teil 3 und 4 (1752), 326, part 168.

25 Lange and Meier, Der Glückselige, eine moralische Wochenschrift. Erster Theil, 65–6, part 5.

26 Lange and Meier, 67–70, part 5.

27 Schnetzler, Johann Caspar Lavaters Tagebuch aus dem Jahre 1761, 10–41.

28 Lavater, Johann Caspar Lavater Ausgewählte Werke in historisch-kritischer Ausgabe. Band 1/2 Jugendschriften 1762–1769. Der Erinnerer.

29 Lavater, “Der Erinnerer. Eine Wochenschrift. Erster Band”, 136–7 [95]. See also Lange and Meier, Das Reich der Natur und der Sitten, eine moralische Wochenschrift. Siebenter Theil, 57–64.

30 Lavater, “Der Erinnerer. Eine Wochenschrift. Erster Band”, part 12, 139 [97].

31 Lavater, part 12, 142–3 [101].

32 Lavater, “Der Erinnerer. Eine Wochenschrift, Auf das Jahr M DCC LXVI”, 470 [12].

33 Lavater, “Geheimes Tagebuch. Von einem Beobachter seiner Selbst (1771)”, 71 [5].

34 Caflisch-Schnetzler, “Einführung”, 23–55; Schnetzler, Johann Caspar Lavaters Tagebuch, 10–41.

35 Lavater, “Unveränderte Fragmente aus dem Tagebuche eines Beobachters seiner Selbst (1773)”, 841 [81].

36 The research on the modern self is extraordinarily rich, complex and multifaceted. As Thiel has pointed out, it can be divided into intellectual longue durée or in-depth studies, and more culturally and literarily oriented works. For some of the most comprehensive and thorough studies, see Thiel, The Early Modern Subject: Self-Consciousness and Personal Identity from Descartes to Hume; Seigel, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century; Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity; Heehs, Writing the Self. For the specific context regarding the modern individual self in the eighteenth century, see in particular Schneewind, Invention of Autonomy; Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England; Leventhal, Making the Case: Narrative Psychological Case Histories and the Invention of Individuality in Germany, 1750–1800.

37 Pomata, “Observation Rising: Birth of an Epistemic Genre, 1500–1650”,45–80; Daston, “The Empire of Observation, 1600–1800”, 81–113; Poser, “Observatio, Beobachtung”. That the term “observation” was used in this context also in Germany is indicated in Zedler, “Observation”.

38 For this historiography, see Murphy and Traninger, eds., The Emergence of Impartiality; Shapiro, Culture of Fact; Schneiders, Aufklärung und Vorurteilskritik: Studien zur Geschichte der Vorurteilstheorie. For the more restricted historiography of disinterestedness in natural philosophy, see Shapiro, Culture of Fact; Daston and Galison, Objectivity; Shapin, Social History of Truth; Dear, “From Truth to Disinterestedness in Seventeenth Century”, Social Studies of Science 22, no. 4 (1992): 619–31.

39 The research on Lavater still largely revolves around his physiognomy. For two historically critical and context-oriented studies, see; Percival and Tytler, eds., Physiognomy in Profile: Lavater’s Impact on European Culture; Erle, Blake, Lavater and Physiognomy.

40 Moritz, Beiträge zur Philosophie des Lebens, 3–4.

41 Moritz, 4.

42 Leventhal, Making the Case, 293–7. See also Strube, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte: 148–74.

43 The research on the anthropological turn is too extensive to discuss in detail here. For some of the most comprehensive studies, see Zelle, “Vernünftige Ärzte”: Hallesche Psychomediziner und die Anfänge der Anthropologie in der deutschsprachigen Frühaufklärung; Geyer-Kordesch, Pietismus, Medizin und Aufklärung in Preussen im 18. Jahrhundert: Das Leben und Werk Georg Ernst Stahls; Nowitzki, Der wohltemperierte Mensch: Aufklärungsanthropologien im Widerstreit; Borchers, Die Erzeugung des “ganzen Menschen”: Zur Entstehung von Anthropologie und Ästhetik an der Universität Halle im 18. Jahrhundert; Leventhal, Making the Case.

44 Zelle, Vernünftige Ärzte.

45 Sulzer, Kurzer Begriff aller Wissenschaften, 159, § 207. See also Krüger, Versuch einer Experimental-Seelenlehre. Krüger’s attempt to establish an experimental psychology based on extraordinary medical cases has been studied extensively and will not be discussed in more detail here. See Nowitzki, Der wohltemperierte Mensch; Zelle, Orbis Litterarum: 93–105; Retzlaff, Observieren und Aufschreiben.

46 Moritz, Aussichten zu einer Experimentalseelenlehre, 6.

47 Moritz, 11.

48 Moritz, 10.

49 Moritz, 16.

50 One way of understanding the relation between observations of others and self-observations is that they fall under the logic of the medical case, in the sense that both served to produce and accumulate empirical case descriptions. Although the methods differed, there is no evidence that Moritz attributed any difference in epistemic status to them. Rather, each complemented the other by providing potentially important information about the self.

51 The change from experimental to empirical was the direct result of discussions with Moses Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn’s advice illustrates the abandonment of experimental psychology in favor of a psychology based on self-observations. For a recent study of Moritz’s journal, see Dickson et al., “Fakta, und kein moralisches Geschwätz”: Zu den Fallgeschichten im “Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde” (1783–1793).

52 Moritz, ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ oder Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde. Ersten Bandes, part 1, 2.

53 Moritz, 45.

54 Moritz, ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ oder Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde. Sechster Band, 56–7.

55 For in-depth studies of Anton Reiser, see Fossaluzza, Subjektiver Antisubjektivismus: Karl Philipp Moritz als Diagnostiker seiner Zeit; Košenina, Karl Philipp Moritz: Literarische Experimente auf dem Weg zum psychologischen Roman.

56 Moritz, Anton Reiser, ed. Christof Wingertszahn, Band 1, Karl Philipp Moritz Sämtliche Werke: Kritische und kommentierte Ausgabe, 10.

57 Moritz, 210.

58 Moritz, 247–8.

59 Fossaluzza, Subjektiver Antisubjektivismus.

60 Leventhal, Making the Case, 273–308; Košenina, Karl Philipp Moritz.

61 Daston, Observation as a Way of Life; Hoffmann, Unter Beobachtung.

62 A similar point about the link between the modern individual and subjective self and the modern concept of objectivity has been made in Daston and Galison, Objectivity.

63 This section draws on my recent work on epistemic logics, techniques and virtues in eighteenth-century German empirical psychology. See Rydberg, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences: 383–403; Rydberg, History of European Ideas: 980–97.

64 See the preface in Bonnet, Essai analytique sur les facultés de l’âme.

65 See the introduction in Schütz, Herrn Karl Bonnets verschiedener Akademieen Mitglieds Analytischer Versuch über die Seelenkräfte. Erster Band.

66 Schütz, “Betrachtungen über die verschiedenen Methoden der Psychologie”, 187–273.

67 Schütz, 264–5.

68 Tetens, Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwickelung, Erster Band, preface, 4.

69 Daston, “Observation and Enlightenment”, 657–78.

70 Tetens, preface, 17.

71 Immanuel Kant is well known for criticizing empirical psychology, which he argued could never be a science in the strict sense but only a simpler form of empirical discipline. The authors discussed in this section agreed that empirical psychology could not become a science in the same way as mathematics, but tended to acknowledge it as an empirical science. For the debate on the scientific status of psychology see Sturm, Kant und die Wissenschaften vom Menschen; Hatfield, “Empirical, Rational and Transcendental Psychology: Psychology as Science and as Philosophy”, 200–27.

72 For an unprecedented, rich review of relevant sources, see Carus, Nachgelassene Werke. Dritter Theil. Geschichte der Psychologie.

73 Schmid, Empirische Psychologie, 120–2.

74 Schmid, 122.

75 Schmid, 122–3.

76 Schmid, 124. In fact, Schmid actually launched his own short-lived journal of empirical psychology. Although he portrayed this as the heir to Moritz’s journal, it was more focused on analysis than on the mere collection and accumulation of empirical data. See Schmid, Psychologisches Magazin.

77 Schmid, Empirische Psychologie, 124–5.

78 Schmid, 126–7.

79 Schmid, 128–50.