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ABSTRACT
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.
Notes on contributor
Paola Rumore is Associate Professor for the History of Modern Philosophy at the University of Turin. She works primarily in the history of 18th-century German philosophy, with a special focus on the Kantian and pre-Kantian debate on metaphysics, psychology, and materialism. She is the author of L'ordine delle idee. La genesi del concetto di ‘rappresentazione' in Kant attraverso le sue fonti wolffiane (1747-1787), Firenze 2007; Materia cogitans. L’Aufklärung di fronte al materialismo, Hildesheim 2013; Idea, «Lessico della filosofia», Bologna 2017. She has published the critical edition and the Italian translation of Georg Friedrich Meier's Beyträge zu der Lehre von den Vorurtheilen des menschlichen Geschlechts, Pisa 2005 (with N. Hinske and H.P. Delfosse), the volume Kant und die Aufklärung, Hildesheim 2011 (with L. Cataldi Madonna), and the special issue of the international Journal «Quaestio», Another 18th-century German Philosophy? Rethinking German Enlightenment, (XVI, 2016, with E. Pasini). She is currently working on a monograph on the debate concerning the immortality of the soul in 18th-century Germany.
Notes
1 Priestley’s scientific works had a broad circulation in Germany, first and foremost through an intensive activity of translation that includes, among others, the Geschichte und gegenwärtiger Zustand der Optik by the mathematician Georg Simon Klügel (1775–1776); the Versuche und Beobachtungen über verschiedene Gattungen der Luft (1778–1780); and the Geschichte und gegenwärtiger Zustand der Electricität by Johann Georg Krünitz (1772). Very often, the methodological introductory essays, in particular the one prefaced to the Geschichte und gegenwärtiger Zustand der Electricität, include important philosophical considerations.
2 Cf. Thiel, “Kant und der Materialismus des 18. Jahrhunderts”; Thiel, “Varieties of Inner Sense”; Thiel, “Hißmann und der Materialismus”; Wunderlich, “Assoziation der Ideen und denkende Materie”. Still useful is Zart, Einfluss der englischen Philosophen seit Bacon.
3 On Buhle’s idea of the history of philosophy and the reception of his work, cf. Piaia and Santinello, Models of the History of Philosophy, 787–838.
4 Cf. Buhle, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, vol. V, 369–481.
5 Alluding to the problems raised by Priestley and solved by Kant, Buhle has in mind the Kantian attempt to reconcile the doctrine of philosophical necessity with the realm of freedom by recognizing the two-sided character – empirical and intelligible – of every natural existence (KrV A 538–541/B 566–569; the explicit reference to Priestley concerning this topic is in KrV A 745/ B 773).
6 The “three Bs” were Bouterwek, Buhle, Bürger; cf. Marino, Praeceptores Germaniae, 187. The expression goes back to Feder’s autobiography (Leben, Natur und Grundsätze, 129). It is interesting to see how Buhle interprets Priestley’s compatibilism between fatalism of the will and moral responsibility on the basis of Kant’s distinction between the causal series that go on in the realms of phenomena and noumena; cf. Buhle, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, vol. V, 446.
7 Cf. Buhle, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, vol. V, 372–373.
8 Cf. Buhle, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, vol. V, 375.
9 On the dispute, cf. the standard work by Bianco, Fede e sapere. More recently, with a special focus on the relevance of the charge of materialism, Favaretti Camposampiero, “La chaîne des causes naturelles”; Rumore, “Between Spinozism and Materialism”.
10 For the central role played by Wolff in the introduction of the term “materialism” in German philosophy, cf. Rumore, Materia cogitans, ch. 1; Rumore, “Mechanism and Materialism in Early Modern German Philosophy”.
11 As a representative entry defining the meaning of materialism, one can consider the article Materialisten written in 1739 by the historian of Wolffianism Carl Günther Ludovici for the monumental Universal-lexicon published by Zedler: “Materialists [Materialisten, materialistae] are a wicked sect among the philosophers. They do not admit anything but bodies, and deny both that spirits exist and that human soul is different from body. They also consider the so-called spirits and souls a mere physical power (cörperliche Krafft), and not a self-subsisting being. Since they cannot deny that human beings have the power of understanding and a will, they ascribe them to the body rather than to the soul, as a spiritual being; or they claim that thoughts are produced by bodies by means of a mere physical power and that, on this basis, even a subtle matter, or a mere machine could think and want, and thus the body can move itself thanks to its mere mechanic structure […]. Doing so, they do not only extinguish the idea of freedom and immortality of the soul; but from these premises derive many further detrimental consequences for religion and virtue” (Zedler, Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon, vol. XIX).
12 On the distance between La Mettrie’s position and the Cartesian model of mechanism, cf. Vartanian, La Mettrie's l'Homme Machine, 18–24; Thomson, Materialism and Society in the mid-eighteenth Century, 40–6; Thomson, Bodies of Thought, ch. 6. On Wolff’s misunderstanding of La Mettries’ materialism and on the influence of his misinterpretation in Germany, cf. Rumore, “In Wolff’s footsteps”.
13 Buhle, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, vol. V, 373. In the present context, we shall not go further into the main lines of Priestley’s materialism; for a very clear and precise presentation, cf. Yolton, Thinking Matter, 107–26.
14 Cf. Buhle, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, vol. V, 376.
15 For solutions provided by the so-called British mortalists, Priestley was well acquainted with, cf. Thomson, “Matérialisme et mortalisme”, and also Thomson, Bodies of Thought, ch. 4.
16 Cf. Buhle, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, vol. V, 383.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid, vol. V, 381.
19 Ibid, vol. V, 394.
20 Ibid, vol. V, 395.
21 On the topic, cf. Thomson, “Priestley, Paine et les Philosophical Unbelievers”.
22 Buhle, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, vol. V, 404–5.
23 Cf. Rivers and Wykes, Joseph Priestley, Scientist, Philosopher, and Theologian; in particular, the contribution by Dybikowski, “Joseph Priestley, Metaphysician and Philosopher of Religion”. Cf. McEvoy, “Joseph Priestley, Scientist, Philosopher and Divine”.
24 The translation was published in Reims in 1755, and not in 1775 or 1785 as erroneously stated in Lange’s Geschichte des Materialismus and in its English translation, in which even the title of the translation is wrong.
25 Lange, The History of Materialism, 4th section, 6.
26 This information can be found in Pistorius’ Preface to Hartley, Betrachtungen über den Menschen, 1*-2*, 7*. Pistorius’ annotations were considered extremely important for a better insight in Hartley’s work and were therefore also translated into English; cf. the very interesting paper by Fairchild, “Hartley, Pistorius, and Coleridge”.
27 Ivi, 7*-8*: “I found, that of the two volumes of Dr. Hartley's work in English, […] the second only was properly fit for my purpose […]. I therefore contented myself with giving a short though sufficient abstract of the first volume, which contains the association of ideas; but the second volume I have thought necessary to divide into two, and amplify it with my own observations”.
28 Pistorius, Preface to Hartley, Betrachtungen über den Menschen, 6*, 5*.
29 Pistorius, Preface to Hartley, Betrachtungen über den Menschen, 5*, 8*.
30 Schmidt, “Review of David Hartleys Betrachtungen über den Menschen”, 92.
31 Hartley’s Theory of the Human mind; with essays relating to the subject of it by J. Priestley, 1775: reviewed in the Göttingische Anzeigen, 29–30 (7–9 March 1776): 249–53; in the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeige 1776/5: 390–1. An anonymous review of Priestley’s Examination announced that magister Hißmann in Göttingen was translating Priestley: Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeige (1776): 611–13.
32 Reimarus, “Betrachtung der Unmöglichkeit körperlicher Gedächtniss-Eindrücke”. Cf. Tetens, Philosophische Versuche, preface and the first essay.
33 Göttingische Anzeigen 29–30 (7–9 March 1776): 250; Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeige (1776/5): 391.
34 On the topic, cf. Casini, “Newton in Prussia”; Casini, “Newton e la philosophia naturalis nel Settecento”; Stan, “Newton and Wolff”.
35 Göttingische Anzeigen 29–30 (7–9 March 1776): 249–53: 252.
36 This was the opinion of Schmid in the review in the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek mentioned above (1774/2: 104).
37 Meiners, review of Hartley's Theory of the Human mind in the Göttingische Anzeigen 29–30 (7–9 March 1776): 249–53: 252–253.
38 Magazin für Philosophie und ihre Geschichte 1 (1778): 5 (Vorbericht). Priestley’s essays were published with the following titles: Erster Versuch. Allgemeiner Abriß der Lehre von den Schwingungen; Zweyter Versuch. Allgemeine Schilderung der Lehre von der Assoziation der Ideen; Dritter Versuch. Von zusammengesetzten und abgezogegen Begriffen.
39 Cf. Hißmann, Psychologische Versuche (in particular the first one: “Über die äußere Empfindung”); Hißmann. Briefe über Gegenstände der Philosophie, an Leserinnen und Leser.
40 Hißmann, Psychologische Versuche, I, 60.
41 Hißmann, Psychologische Versuche, Vorbericht, 47. The Auszüge aus Dr. Priestley’s Schriften über die Nothwendigkeit des Willens und über die Vibrationen der Gehirnnerven als die materiellen Ursachen des Empfindens und Denkens, nebst Betrachtungen über diese Gegenstände und einer Vergleichung der Vibrationshypothese mit Dr. Gall’s Schädellehre were only published in German in 1806.
42 Hißmann, Psychologische Versuche, V, 133. On Hißmann’s and Meiners’ polemical campaign against German metaphysicians, cf. Rumore, “Im Kampf gegen die Metaphysik”.
43 Hißmann, Psychologische Versuche, V, 129. Hißmann’s source for this claim is Bonnet, Essai analytique sur les facultés de l'âme (1760), cf. ibid., 128.
44 Thiel, “Varieties of Inner Sense”.
45 Lange, The History of Materialism, 4th section, 3.
46 On the role of Göttingen as “eine Art englischem Keil innerhalb der politischen und kulturellen Welt Deutschlands”, cf. Marino, Praeceptores Germaniae, 14–17. On the circulation of the ideas of British philosophers in Hannover, beside Zart, Einfluss der englischen Philosophen, cf. F. Wunderlich, “Empirismus und Materialismus an der Göttinger Georgia Augusta”. Manfred Kuehn comments on the importance of Johann Christian Lossius in the elaboration of a materialistic program in Göttingen, as he considers him “the German philosopher who went farthest in the acceptance of physiological explanations of the workings of the human mind […]. He is considered as the most radical materialist philosopher of the German enlightenment, and his most significant work, Die physischen Ursachen des Wahren of 1774, is often taken as the example of a materialistic philosophy in eighteenth-century Germany” (Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 86–7).
47 Göttingische Anzeigen 92 (August 1775): 777–83.
48 Feder, review of Priestley's Examination of Dr. Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind, Dr. Beattie's Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, and Dr. Oswald's Appeal to Common Sense (1775). Göttingische Anzeigen 92 (August 1775): 777–83: 778.
49 Respectively, in the Zugabe zu den Göttingischen Anzeigen 7 (Feb. 1779): 97–108, and 19 (May 1779): 289–97.
50 Zugabe zu den Göttingischen Anzeigen 27 (July 1780): 425–8.
51 Priestley, Auszug aus des Doktor Priestleys Abhandlung von der philosophischen Nothwendigkeit, und aus seinen mit dem Doktor Price über diese Lehre gewechselten Schriften. The translator praises Priestley’s clarity and is presented as an “exemple of how one can think profoundly using the ordinary language, and without introducing an artificial terminology” (St. 6, 1087). The polemical target is claearly the notorious jargon of Kantian philosophy.
52 Zugabe zu den Göttingischen Anzeigen 19 (May 1779): 289.
53 Ibid.
54 Review of A Free Discussion of the doctrine of Materialism, and Philosophical Necessity, in a correspondence between Dr. Price and Dr. Priestley. Zugabe zu den Göttingischen Anzeigen 27 (July 1780): 425–8: 428.
55 Zugabe zu den Göttingischen Anzeigen 19 (May 1779): 297.
56 Review of Letter to Palmer in defence of the Illustrations of Philosophical Necessity by J. Priestley, a second letter. Göttingische Anzeigen 5 (Jan. 1781): 36–7; Observations in Defence of the Liberty of Man as a Moral Agent, in answer to Dr. Priestley’s Illustrations of Philosophical Necessity, by J. Palmer. Göttingische Anzeigen 99 (Aug. 1780): 805–8; An Address to Dr. Priestley upon his doctrine of Philosophical Necessity illustrated by J. Bryant. Zugabe zu den Göttingische Anzeigen 26 (June 1781): 414–15. On the context of those debates, cf. Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley. A Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804, 86 f.
57 Review of Letters to a philosophical Unbeliever. Zugabe zu den Göttingischen Anzeigen 26 (June 1781): 406–14.
58 Joseph Priestley's Briefe an einen philosophischen Zweifler in Beziehung auf Hume's Gespräche, das System der Natur, und ähnliche Schriften. Leipzig 1782, Vorbericht, 3.
59 Ibid., 5.
60 Meiners, review of Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever. Göttingische Anzeigen 26 (June 1781), 406–14: 407.
61 Joseph Priestley's Briefe an einen philosophischen Zweifler in Beziehung auf Hume's Gespräche, das System der Natur, und ähnliche Schriften. Leipzig 1782, Vorbericht, 10.
62 Ibid., 11.
63 Priestley, The Doctrine of Phlogiston Established, 2–3.
64 Ibid., 13.
65 Cf. Tennemann, Geschichte der Philosophie, vol XI, 486–516: 489.
66 Baumann, Review of Joseph Priestley’s Briefe an einen philosophischen Zweifler in Beziehung auf Hume’s Gespräche das system der Natur, und ähnliche Schriften, aus dem Englischen, Leipzig, Weygand, 1782, and Joseph Priestley’s Anleitung zur Religion nach Vernunft und Schrift – aus dem Englischen mit Anmerkungen. Erster und zweiter Band, Frankfurt-Leipzig, Garbe, 1782. Kurze Nachrichten der Allgemeinen Deutschen Bibliothek 58 (1784): 38–41.
67 Ibid., 40.
68 Ibid., 41.
69 Ibid.
70 “Möchten auch doch unsre angehenden Theologen ihm etwas von seiner herrlichen Gabe, die Religionslehren leich und lichtvoll darzustellen, und von dem edeln warmen Ton seines Vortrags ablernen!” (ibid., 39).
71 Ibid.
72 By using the expression “pluralism”, I refer to one of the leading ideas of the Aufklärung, clearly formulated in Kant’s Anthropology: “the opposite of egoism can only be pluralism, that is, the way of thinking in which one is not concerned with oneself as the whole world, but rather regards and conducts oneself as a mere citizen of the world” (Ak, VII, 130). Cf. Hinske, “Die tragenden Grundideen der deutschen Aufklärung”, 436 ff.
73 Baumann, Review of Joseph Priestley's Briefe an einen philosophischen Zweifler in Beziehung auf Hume's Gespräche das system der Natur, und ähnliche Schriften, aus dem Englischen, Leipzig, Weygand, 1782, and Joseph Priestley's Anleitung zur Religion nach Vernunft und Schrift - aus dem Englischen mit Anmerkungen. Erster und zweiter Band, Frankfurt-Leipzig, Garbe, 1782. Kurze Nachrichten der Allgemeinen Deutschen Bibliothek 58 (1784): 38-41: 39-40.
74 Cf., besides the classic monograph by Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley. A Study of His Life and Work from 1733 to 1773, Wykes, “Joseph Priestley, Minister and Teacher”.
75 In his review of Priestley’s Disquisitions, Meiners criticizes the idea that the doctrine of the separate soul has a pagan origin, and that, before Descartes, spirit and matter were not considered heterogeneous beings (Meiners, review of Priestley's Diquisitions, Zugabe zu den Göttingischen Anzeigen 7 (Feb. 1779): 97–108: 106). This is only one of the many criticisms Meiners adresses to Priestley’s attempt to sketch historical reconstructions on the basis of very vague acquaintance with the history of philosophy.
76 On Priestley’s idea of rational Christianity, cf. McEvoy and McGuire, “God and Nature”.
77 Dybikowski, “Joseph Priestley, Metaphysician and Philosopher of Religion”.
78 The Theological Repository (1769–1771) was discussed by the Lutheran theologian Gottfried Less, a representative of the Aufklärungstheologie, in the Göttingische Anzeigen between 1771 and 1774 (May 1771): 460.462; 71 (June 1772): 602–6; 44 (April 1744): 372–6). Less is also the author of the reviews of Priestley’s A free Address to Protestant Dissenters on the Subject of the Lord’s Supper (1768), Göttingische Anzeigen 133 (1769): 1203–5, and of the second edition of A view of the principles and conduct of the Protestant-Dissenters with respect to the civil and ecclesistic Constitution of England (1769), Göttingische Anzeigen 142 (1770): 1244–7. A very enthusiastic discussion of Priestley’s An Appeal to the Serious and Candid Professors of Christianity was published by Johann D. Michaelis in 1772 in the Göttingische Anzeigen 69 (June 1772): 587–91).
79 Priestley, Geschichte der Verfälschungen des Christenthums was published in the same year in Hamburg-Kiel (Bohn) and in Berlin (Siegismund Friedrich Hesse).
80 Ibid., V–VI. Eckermann’s reference to the Apologie der Vernunft might be to Carl Friedrich Bahrdt, who had published a book with that title in 1781, but also to Reimarus’ Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes, published by Lessing with the title Fragmente eines Ungenannten (1774–1778), and to Jerusalem’s Vornehmsten Wahrheiten der Christlichen Religion (17763, 1768). Cf. Pockrandt, Biblische Aufklärung, 222. On Bahrdt, 447–59.
81 Ibid., XXVI.
82 Ibid., VI.
83 Cf. Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung 194 (August 1785): 189–92, and 210 (Sept. 1785): 271.
84 Pistorius, preface to Priestley's Liturgie und Gebetsformeln zum öffentlichen Gottesdienst für Christen von allen Confessionen, the German translation of the Forms of Prayer and Other Offices, XLIII.
85 Ibid., XXVII.
86 Ibid., XXXI.
87 Ibid., XXXI–XXXII.
88 This expression is used by David L. Wykes in a useful description of the reactions to Priestley’s History of Corruptions: “In 1782 Priestley published his History of the Corruptions of Christianity. It was perhaps his most controversial and influential book. Priestley attacked the principal elements of the Christian doctrine: the Trinity, predestination, and atonement, which in his opinion were at odds with the views of the early Christians. According to Priestley the greatest corruption was the doctrine of the Trinity. Understandably such a bold and direct attack on one of the principal doctrines of the Church and orthodox Christianity as a whole did not go unanswered. In Holland in 1785 the book was banned. […] His attack on the Trinity and his rejection of original sin and atonement provoked anger, but it was the way in which he applied Hartley’s materialist psychology that particularly disturbed the orthodox. His argument in Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit (1777) that the mind did not exist separate from the body and that Christ was human like us led to charges that he encouraged the growth of scepticism and atheism. For most orthodox Christians belief in the immateriality of the soul was essential to belief in the afterlife. By 1790 Priestley had become such an irritant to the orthodox that they almost came to see him as the devil incarnate” (Wykes, Joseph Priestley, Minister and Teacher, 41–2).