Naturphilosophie
Encyclopedia
Naturphilosophie is a term used in English-language philosophy to identify a current in the philosophical
tradition of German idealism
, as applied to the study of Nature
in the earlier 19th century. German speakers use the clearer term Romantische Naturphilosophie, the philosophy of nature developed at the time of the founding of German Romanticism
. It is particularly associated with the philosophical work of Johann Gottlieb Fichte
, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
, though it has some clear precursors also. More particularly it is identified with some of the initial works of Schelling during the period 1797-9, in reaction to the views of Fichte, and subsequent developments from Schelling's position. Always controversial, some of Schelling's ideas in this direction are still considered of philosophical interest, even if the subsequent development of experimental natural science
had a destructive impact on the credibility of the theories of his followers in Naturphilosophie.
Naturphilosophie attempted to comprehend nature in its totality and to outline its general theoretical structure, thus attempting to lay the foundations for the natural sciences. In developing their theories, the German Naturphilosophen found their inspiration in the natural philosophy
of the Ancient Greek Ionian philosophers.
As an approach to philosophy and science, Naturphilosophie had a difficult reception. The Kantian tradition in Germany came to distrust its developments as speculative and overly metaphysical. It was for most of the 19th and early 20th centuries poorly understood in the English-speaking countries as a tradition. Over the years it has been subjected to continuing criticism. Since the 1960s improved translations have existed, and scholars have had a better appreciation of the objectives of Naturphilosophie.
. Schelling took Fichte's position as his starting-point, and in his earliest writings posited that nature must have reality for itself. In this light Fichte's doctrines appeared incomplete. On the one hand, they identified the ultimate ground of the universe of reason too closely with finite, individual Spirit. On the other, they threatened the reality of the world of nature by seeing it too much in the manner of subjective idealism
. Fichte, in this view, had not managed to unite his system with the aesthetic view of nature to which Immanuel Kant
's Critique of Judgment had pointed.
Naturphilosophie is therefore one possible theory of the unity of nature. Nature as the sum of what is objective, and intelligence as the complex of all the activities making up self-consciousness, appear as equally real. The philosophy of nature and transcendental idealism
would be the two complementary portions making up philosophy as a whole.
, particularly taken in opposition to Immanuel Kant
, was a precursor of Schelling:
Later Friedrich Schlegel theorised about a particular German strand in philosophy of nature, citing Jakob Böhme
, Johannes Kepler
and Georg Ernst Stahl
, with Jan Baptist van Helmont
as an edge case. Beiser instead traces Naturphilosophie as developed by Schelling, Hegel, Schlegel and Novalis
to a crux in the theory of matter, and identifies the origins of the line they took with the vis viva
theory of matter in the work of Gottfried Leibniz
.
Subsequently Schelling identified himself with Baruch de Spinoza
, to whose thought he saw himself as approaching. The Darstellung meines Systems, and the expanded treatment in the lectures on a System der gesamten Philosophie und der Naturphilosophie insbesondere given in Würzburg
in 1804, contain elements of Spinoza's philosophy.
In System des transzendentalen Idealismus, 1800 (System of Transcendental Idealism) Schelling included ideas on matter and the organic in Part III. They form just part of a more ambitious work that takes up other themes, in particular aesthetics. From this point onwards Naturphilosophie was less of a research concern for him, as he reformulated his philosophy, though it was an influential aspect of his teaching. He did edit for a short while a journal, the Neue Zeitschrift für speculative Physik (bound volume 1802).
, both intellectually and (as a direct consequence of Goethe's sympathetic attitude) by a relocation; and it broke with basic Kantian tenets. Grant writes:
Schelling held that the divisions imposed on nature, by our ordinary perception and thought, do not have absolute validity. They should be interpreted as the outcome of the single formative energy which is the soul or inner aspect of nature. In other words he was a proponent of a variety of organicism
. The dynamic series of stages in nature, the forms in which the ideal structure of nature is realized, are matter, as the equilibrium of the fundamental expansive and contractive forces; light, with its subordinate processes (magnetism, electricity, and chemical action); organism, with its component phases of reproduction, irritability and sensibility. The continual change presented to us by experience, taken together with the thought of unity in productive force of nature, leads to the conception of the duality
through which nature expresses itself in its varied products.
In the introduction to the Ideen he argues against dogmatism, in the terms that a dogmatist cannot explain the organic; and that recourse to the idea of a cosmic creator is a feature of dogmatic systems imposed by the need to explain nature as purposive and unified. Fichte's system, called the Wissenschaftslehre, had begun with a fundamental distinction between dogmatism (fatalistic) and criticism (free), as his formulation of idealism.
Beiser divides up the mature form of Schelling's Naturphilosophie into the attitudes of transcendental realism
(nature's independence of consciousness) and transcendental naturalism (nature's inclusion of the rational subject). He notes how Naturphilosophie was first a counter-balance to Wissenschaftslehre, and then in Schelling's approach became the senior partner. After that, it was hardly to be avoided that Schelling would become an opponent of Fichte, having been a close follower in the early 1790s.
We are able to apprehend and represent nature to ourselves in the successive forms which its development assumes since it is the same spirit of which we become aware in self-consciousness, though here unconsciously. The variety of its forms is not imposed on it externally, since there is no external teleology
in nature. Nature is a self-forming whole, within which only natural explanations can be sought. The function of Naturphilosophie is to exhibit the ideal as springing from the real, not to deduce the real from the ideal.
, in particular, such as vitalism
, they retreated in the face of experiment, and then were written out of the history of science as Whig history
. But critics were initially not scientists (a term not used until later); rather they came largely from within philosophy and Romantic science
, a community including many physicians. Typically, the retrospective views of scientists of the 19th century on "Romantic science" in general erased distinctions:
One outspoken critic was Justus von Liebig
, who compared Naturphilosophie with the Black Death
.
summed up the reasons why Naturphilosophie had a wide-ranging impact on views of art and artists:
Schelling's Absolute was left with no other function than that of removing all the differences which give form to thought. The criticisms of Fichte, and more particularly of Hegel (in the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit
), pointed to a defect in the conception of the Absolute as mere featureless identity. It was ridiculed by Hegel as "the night in which all cows are black."
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
tradition of German idealism
German idealism
German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment...
, as applied to the study of Nature
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
in the earlier 19th century. German speakers use the clearer term Romantische Naturphilosophie, the philosophy of nature developed at the time of the founding of German Romanticism
German Romanticism
For the general context, see Romanticism.In the philosophy, art, and culture of German-speaking countries, German Romanticism was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. German Romanticism developed relatively late compared to its English counterpart, coinciding in its...
. It is particularly associated with the philosophical work of Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant...
, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
, though it has some clear precursors also. More particularly it is identified with some of the initial works of Schelling during the period 1797-9, in reaction to the views of Fichte, and subsequent developments from Schelling's position. Always controversial, some of Schelling's ideas in this direction are still considered of philosophical interest, even if the subsequent development of experimental natural science
Natural science
The natural sciences are branches of science that seek to elucidate the rules that govern the natural world by using empirical and scientific methods...
had a destructive impact on the credibility of the theories of his followers in Naturphilosophie.
Naturphilosophie attempted to comprehend nature in its totality and to outline its general theoretical structure, thus attempting to lay the foundations for the natural sciences. In developing their theories, the German Naturphilosophen found their inspiration in the natural philosophy
Natural philosophy
Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature , is a term applied to the study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science...
of the Ancient Greek Ionian philosophers.
As an approach to philosophy and science, Naturphilosophie had a difficult reception. The Kantian tradition in Germany came to distrust its developments as speculative and overly metaphysical. It was for most of the 19th and early 20th centuries poorly understood in the English-speaking countries as a tradition. Over the years it has been subjected to continuing criticism. Since the 1960s improved translations have existed, and scholars have had a better appreciation of the objectives of Naturphilosophie.
Outline of development
The German Idealist philosopher Fichte had attempted to show that the whole structure of reality follows necessarily from the fact of self-consciousnessSelf-consciousness
Self-consciousness is an acute sense of self-awareness. It is a preoccupation with oneself, as opposed to the philosophical state of self-awareness, which is the awareness that one exists as an individual being; although some writers use both terms interchangeably or synonymously...
. Schelling took Fichte's position as his starting-point, and in his earliest writings posited that nature must have reality for itself. In this light Fichte's doctrines appeared incomplete. On the one hand, they identified the ultimate ground of the universe of reason too closely with finite, individual Spirit. On the other, they threatened the reality of the world of nature by seeing it too much in the manner of subjective idealism
Subjective idealism
Subjective idealism, or empirical idealism, is the monistic metaphysical doctrine that only minds and mental contents exist. It entails and is generally identified or associated with immaterialism, the doctrine that physical things do not exist...
. Fichte, in this view, had not managed to unite his system with the aesthetic view of nature to which Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
's Critique of Judgment had pointed.
Naturphilosophie is therefore one possible theory of the unity of nature. Nature as the sum of what is objective, and intelligence as the complex of all the activities making up self-consciousness, appear as equally real. The philosophy of nature and transcendental idealism
Transcendental idealism
Transcendental idealism is a doctrine founded by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century. Kant's doctrine maintains that human experience of things is similar to the way they appear to us — implying a fundamentally subject-based component, rather than being an activity that...
would be the two complementary portions making up philosophy as a whole.
A German tradition
Naturphilosophie translated into English would mean just "philosophy of nature", and its scope began to be taken in a broad way. Johann Gottfried HerderJohann Gottfried Herder
Johann Gottfried von Herder was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the periods of Enlightenment, Sturm und Drang, and Weimar Classicism.-Biography:...
, particularly taken in opposition to Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
, was a precursor of Schelling:
Herder's dynamic view of nature was developed by Goethe and Schelling and led to the tradition of Naturphilosophie[...]
Later Friedrich Schlegel theorised about a particular German strand in philosophy of nature, citing Jakob Böhme
Jakob Böhme
Jakob Böhme was a German Christian mystic and theologian. He is considered an original thinker within the Lutheran tradition...
, Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, codified by later astronomers, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican...
and Georg Ernst Stahl
Georg Ernst Stahl
Georg Ernst Stahl was a German chemist and physician.He was born at Ansbach. Having graduated in medicine at the University of Jena in 1683, he became court physician to Duke Johann Ernst of Sachsen Weimar in 1687...
, with Jan Baptist van Helmont
Jan Baptist van Helmont
Jan Baptist van Helmont was an early modern period Flemish chemist, physiologist, and physician. He worked during the years just after Paracelsus and iatrochemistry, and is sometimes considered to be "the founder of pneumatic chemistry"...
as an edge case. Beiser instead traces Naturphilosophie as developed by Schelling, Hegel, Schlegel and Novalis
Novalis
Novalis was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg , an author and philosopher of early German Romanticism.-Biography:...
to a crux in the theory of matter, and identifies the origins of the line they took with the vis viva
Vis viva
In the history of science, vis viva is an obsolete scientific theory that served as an elementary and limited early formulation of the principle of conservation of energy...
theory of matter in the work of Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician. He wrote in different languages, primarily in Latin , French and German ....
.
Subsequently Schelling identified himself with Baruch de Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
, to whose thought he saw himself as approaching. The Darstellung meines Systems, and the expanded treatment in the lectures on a System der gesamten Philosophie und der Naturphilosophie insbesondere given in Würzburg
Würzburg
Würzburg is a city in the region of Franconia which lies in the northern tip of Bavaria, Germany. Located at the Main River, it is the capital of the Regierungsbezirk Lower Franconia. The regional dialect is Franconian....
in 1804, contain elements of Spinoza's philosophy.
Schelling's works in the area
Schelling produced in a short space of time three works: Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur als Einleitung in das Studium dieser Wissenschaft, 1797 (Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature); Von der Weltseele, 1798 (On the World Soul); and Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie, 1799 (First Plan of a System of the Philosophy of Nature). As criticism of scientific procedure, these writings retain a relevance. Historically, according to Richards:Despite the tentativeness of their titles, these monographs introduced radical interpretations of nature that would reverberate through the sciences, and particularly the biology, of the next century. They developed the fundamental doctrines of Naturphilosophie.
In System des transzendentalen Idealismus, 1800 (System of Transcendental Idealism) Schelling included ideas on matter and the organic in Part III. They form just part of a more ambitious work that takes up other themes, in particular aesthetics. From this point onwards Naturphilosophie was less of a research concern for him, as he reformulated his philosophy, though it was an influential aspect of his teaching. He did edit for a short while a journal, the Neue Zeitschrift für speculative Physik (bound volume 1802).
Schelling's views
Schelling's Naturphilosophie was a way in which he worked himself out of the tutelage of Fichte, with whom he quarrelled decisively towards the end of the 1790s. More than that, however, it brought him within the orbit of Johann Wolfgang von GoetheJohann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
, both intellectually and (as a direct consequence of Goethe's sympathetic attitude) by a relocation; and it broke with basic Kantian tenets. Grant writes:
[...] Schelling's postkantian confrontation with nature itself begins with the overthrow of the Copernican revolutionCopernican Revolution (metaphor)The Copernican Revolution, which in terms of astronomy amounted to the acceptance of heliocentrism as suggested by Nicolaus Copernicus, has also been used widely as a metaphor supporting descriptions of modernity...
...
Schelling held that the divisions imposed on nature, by our ordinary perception and thought, do not have absolute validity. They should be interpreted as the outcome of the single formative energy which is the soul or inner aspect of nature. In other words he was a proponent of a variety of organicism
Organicism
Organicism is a philosophical orientation that asserts that reality is best understood as an organic whole. By definition it is close to holism. Plato, Hobbes or Constantin Brunner are examples of such philosophical thought....
. The dynamic series of stages in nature, the forms in which the ideal structure of nature is realized, are matter, as the equilibrium of the fundamental expansive and contractive forces; light, with its subordinate processes (magnetism, electricity, and chemical action); organism, with its component phases of reproduction, irritability and sensibility. The continual change presented to us by experience, taken together with the thought of unity in productive force of nature, leads to the conception of the duality
Dualism
Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...
through which nature expresses itself in its varied products.
In the introduction to the Ideen he argues against dogmatism, in the terms that a dogmatist cannot explain the organic; and that recourse to the idea of a cosmic creator is a feature of dogmatic systems imposed by the need to explain nature as purposive and unified. Fichte's system, called the Wissenschaftslehre, had begun with a fundamental distinction between dogmatism (fatalistic) and criticism (free), as his formulation of idealism.
Beiser divides up the mature form of Schelling's Naturphilosophie into the attitudes of transcendental realism
Transcendental Realism
Transcendental realism is a concept stemming from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant that implies individuals have a perfect understanding of the limitations of their own minds.-Kantian roots:...
(nature's independence of consciousness) and transcendental naturalism (nature's inclusion of the rational subject). He notes how Naturphilosophie was first a counter-balance to Wissenschaftslehre, and then in Schelling's approach became the senior partner. After that, it was hardly to be avoided that Schelling would become an opponent of Fichte, having been a close follower in the early 1790s.
We are able to apprehend and represent nature to ourselves in the successive forms which its development assumes since it is the same spirit of which we become aware in self-consciousness, though here unconsciously. The variety of its forms is not imposed on it externally, since there is no external teleology
Teleology
A teleology is any philosophical account which holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature. The word comes from the Greek τέλος, telos; root: τελε-, "end, purpose...
in nature. Nature is a self-forming whole, within which only natural explanations can be sought. The function of Naturphilosophie is to exhibit the ideal as springing from the real, not to deduce the real from the ideal.
Influence and critics of Naturphilosophie
Criticism of Naturphilosophie has been widespread, over two centuries. Schelling's theories, however influential in terms of the general culture of the time, have not survived in scientific terms. Like other strands of speculation in the life sciencesLife sciences
The life sciences comprise the fields of science that involve the scientific study of living organisms, like plants, animals, and human beings. While biology remains the centerpiece of the life sciences, technological advances in molecular biology and biotechnology have led to a burgeoning of...
, in particular, such as vitalism
Vitalism
Vitalism, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is#a doctrine that the functions of a living organism are due to a vital principle distinct from biochemical reactions...
, they retreated in the face of experiment, and then were written out of the history of science as Whig history
Whig history
Whig history is the approach to historiography which presents the past as an inevitable progression towards ever greater liberty and enlightenment, culminating in modern forms of liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy. In general, Whig historians stress the rise of constitutional government,...
. But critics were initially not scientists (a term not used until later); rather they came largely from within philosophy and Romantic science
Romanticism in science
Romanticism, also known as the “Age of Reflection,” describes the intellectual movement from 1800-1840 that originated in Western Europe as a counter-movement to the Enlightenment of the late 18th century...
, a community including many physicians. Typically, the retrospective views of scientists of the 19th century on "Romantic science" in general erased distinctions:
Scientific criticism in the nineteenth century took hardly any notice of the distinctions between Romantic, speculative and transcendental, scientific and aesthetic directions.
One outspoken critic was Justus von Liebig
Justus von Liebig
Justus von Liebig was a German chemist who made major contributions to agricultural and biological chemistry, and worked on the organization of organic chemistry. As a professor, he devised the modern laboratory-oriented teaching method, and for such innovations, he is regarded as one of the...
, who compared Naturphilosophie with the Black Death
Black Death
The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Of several competing theories, the dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Thought to have...
.
Role in aesthetics
Isaiah BerlinIsaiah Berlin
Sir Isaiah Berlin OM, FBA was a British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas of Russian-Jewish origin, regarded as one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century and a dominant liberal scholar of his generation...
summed up the reasons why Naturphilosophie had a wide-ranging impact on views of art and artists:
[...] if everything in nature is living, and if we ourselves are simply its most self-conscious representatives, the function of the artist is to delve within himself, and above all to delve within the dark and unconscious forces which move within him, and to bring these to consciousness by the most agonising and violent internal struggle.
Philosophical criticism
Fichte was very critical of the opposition set up in Schelling's Naturphilosophie to his own conception of Wissenschaftslehre. In that debate, Hegel then intervened, largely supporting his student friend Schelling, with the work usually called his Differenzschrift, the Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der Philosophie (The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy); a key publication in his own philosophical development, his first book, it was published in September 1801.Schelling's Absolute was left with no other function than that of removing all the differences which give form to thought. The criticisms of Fichte, and more particularly of Hegel (in the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit
Phenomenology of Spirit
Phänomenologie des Geistes is one of G.W.F. Hegel's most important philosophical works. It is translated as The Phenomenology of Spirit or The Phenomenology of Mind due to the dual meaning in the German word Geist. The book's working title, which also appeared in the first edition, was Science of...
), pointed to a defect in the conception of the Absolute as mere featureless identity. It was ridiculed by Hegel as "the night in which all cows are black."
Other views in Romantic science
Ignaz Paul Vitalis Troxler, a follower of Schelling, later broke with him. He came to the view that the Absolute in nature and mind is beyond the intellect and reason.Naturphilosophen
- Adam Karl August von EschenmayerAdam Karl August von EschenmayerAdam Karl August von Eschenmayer was a German philosopher and physician.-Life:...
, engaged in controversy with Schelling from 1801, published Grundriss der Natur-Philosophie in 1832. - Carl Friedrich KielmeyerCarl Friedrich KielmeyerCarl Friedrich Kielmeyer was a German biologist and naturalist born in Bebenhausen, today part of the city of Tübingen....
, an influence on Schelling's thinking, he was a founder rather than a follower, and a proponent of recapitulation theoryRecapitulation theoryThe theory of recapitulation, also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelism—and often expressed as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"—is a disproven hypothesis that in developing from embryo to adult, animals go through stages resembling or representing successive stages...
. - Johann Friedrich MeckelJohann Friedrich MeckelJohann Friedrich Meckel , often referred to as Johann Friedrich Meckel, the Younger, was a German anatomist born in Halle...
- Lorenz OkenLorenz OkenLorenz Oken was a German naturalist.Oken was born Lorenz Okenfuss in Bohlsbach in Baden and studied natural history and medicine at the universities of Freiburg and Würzburg. He went on to the University of Göttingen, where he became a Privatdozent , and shortened his name to Oken...
- Hans Christian ØrstedHans Christian ØrstedHans Christian Ørsted was a Danish physicist and chemist who discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields, an important aspect of electromagnetism...
- Johann Wilhelm RitterJohann Wilhelm RitterJohann Wilhelm Ritter was a German chemist, physicist and philosopher. He was born in Samitz near Haynau in Silesia , and died in Munich.-Life and work:...
- Henrik SteffensHenrik SteffensHenrik Steffens , was a Norwegian-born Danish philosopher, scientist, and poet.He was born at Stavanger, Norway. At the age of fourteen he went with his parents to Copenhagen, where he studied theology and natural science...
- Gottfried Reinhold TreviranusGottfried Reinhold TreviranusGottfried Reinhold Treviranus was a German naturalist. He was a proponent of the theory of the transmutation of species, a theory of evolution held by some biologists prior to the work of Charles Darwin...
- Karl Joseph Hieronymus WindischmannKarl Joseph Hieronymus WindischmannKarl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann was a German philosopher and anthropologist.He attended the Gymnasium in Mainz, and in 1772 took the course in philosophy at the university there. He continued this course at Würzburg, where he also studied the natural sciences and medicine until 1796...