EARLY MODERN SUBJECTS AND THE SELF-CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY 1556-1599
EARLY MODERN SUBJECTS AND THE SELF-CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY 1556-1599

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses the concept of a subject as anactor’s category in early modern philosophy and asks whethercontemporary notions of subjectivity can be meaningfully related tothis early modern understanding of the concept. When thinkingabout the early modern subject as an actor's category, we mustdistinguish three different meanings: the subject as a bearer ofproperties, as a reference point for predication, and as the foundationof a discipline. The paper defends the thesis that crucial elements ofsubjectivity in the modern sense, namely reflexivity and selfawareness,are at the same time characteristic features of a certainunderstanding of the subject of philosophy as a discipline in the earlymodern sense: namely for conceptions of philosophy as atransformation of the soul, most notably as a ‘medicine of the soul’.Such conceptions are, however, controversial: other early modernthinkers contend that such proposals do not conform to what weshould expect from a definition of philosophy and that they are opento the objection of intellectualism: we need more than knowledge tobetter our souls, because knowledge in itself is not action-guiding.The paper traces conceptions of the subject of philosophy not onlyin various Ramist tracts, but also in writings of Melanchthon’s son-inlawHeinrich Paxmann, the Helmstedt professor Duncan Liddell, andReformed thinkers like Fortunatus Crell and BartholomaeusKeckermann.

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