Ways of Self-Healing. Philosophical Therapies in Early Modern Germany
Ways of Self-Healing. Philosophical Therapies in Early Modern Germany

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, I aim to outline the impact of the medical imagery on both logics and ethics in Germany between the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century. After introducing the problem of logic as a therapy of the soul (Keckermann; Clauberg) and of moral medicine (Placcius), I will focus on the cases of Tschirnhaus and Thomasius as the main models of philosophical care for the soul in this period. The consideration of their divergent conceptions will pave the way for an examination of the controversy about whether the emendation of the soul must begin from the intellect or from the will, a controversy which took place in the first decades of the eighteenth century. This controversy, I will conclude, constitutes a highly relevant, if overlooked, background for the emergence of aesthetics as an independent branch of philosophy, which will respond to that challenge in a novel manner.

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