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Christian Thomasius' Psychology of Prejudices “Christian Thomasius’ Psychology of Prejudices” Seminar on “Anthropology” Sixth International Congress on Enlightenment Brussels, Belgium July 25-27, 1983 Karl J. Fink Few critics of the eighteenth century would disagree with the position given to Thomasius as “father of the German Enlightenment,” a position gained through social and academic reform, and yet few would recognize the close parallel between this intellectual awakening in Germany of the eighteenth century and the one in England of the seventeenth century.1 Although it is commonly known that Thomasius relied heavily on Locke and Hobbes for his thoughts on social reform, there is even stronger kinship to the efforts of Francis Bacon (1561-1626).2 It was in the late sixteenth century that Bacon outlined the biases inherent in the studies in the natural sciences much in the same way that Thomasius analyzed the prejudices basic to study in the emerging behavioral sciences of the eighteenth century. Indeed, the critical thoughts of these two individuals, one in the natural sciences and the other in the social sciences, are strikingly similar and, while it is not the goal of this paper to do a comparative analysis of Bacon and Thomasius, it is important at the outset to establish this parallel, for Thomasius’ critical examination of human behavior sets the stage for German studies into the anthropological 1 White, Andrew D., Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (New York: The Century Co., 1915), pp. 113-161, lists Thomasius as the “second of the three great reformers in Germany,” following Luther and preceding Lessing, p. 161, while German critics have traditionally viewed Thomasius as representative of German Enlightenment, “das Licht der neuen Geistes freiheit,” Hermann Hettner, Geschichte der deutchen Literatur (Leipzig: Paul List, 1928), p. 56. More recently critics have urged a closer look at the writings of Thomasius for their seminal value for the generation of German thinkers following in the late eighteenth century, one that would explain why he was thought of as “the prophet of a new dawn, as the spiritual father of what was best in the intellectual tradition of the German Enlightenment,” F.M. Barnard, “Thomasius’ Practical Philosophy,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 32 (1971), p.222. 2 Barnard, “Thomasius’ Practical Philosophy,” (1971), dismisses earlier scholarly opinion that Thomasius was an eclectic, arguing that “in most if not all thinkers, originality is largely a matter of degree,” p.222. nature of man.3 It is in this context that the index of British empiricism in Thomasius’ writings have significance for the development of eighteenth century theories of anthropological study. Thomasius’ views of man, language, and culture have intellectual affinity to Locke but are expressed in the spirit of Baconian reform and it is at this level of the history of the behavioral sciences that Thomasius plays a role. There is another striking parallel from the turn of the century worth noting by way of an introduction to a study of epistemological questions asked by Thomasius. Although one can find in ancient writings thoughts on the nature of man and culture, such study is generally considered an innovation beginning with Giambattista Vico’s (1668- 1744) Scienza nuova (1725), a book which in many ways touches on most fields of the social sciences, including anthropology and psychology as well as history and culture.4 Yet it is a book which followed by two or three decades Thomasius’ essays on prejudice and on a psychology of man. In fact Thomasius perceived his work in social psychology to be pioneering for by the end of the seventeenth century he had already written several lessays on the science of man and on specifically the means by which we can objectively 3 The protestant basis and the religious appeal in Bacon’s effort to objectify scientific investigation into nature, in his belief that “knowledge of God included the knowledge of self – of one’s ignorance, vanity, and corruption,” Gary Deason, The Philosophy of a Lord Chancellor: Religion, Science, and Politics in the Work of Francis Bacon (to be published), p. 242), is also central to Thomasius’ own effort to objectify knowledge about man. See also Hans M. Wolff, “Die Wiederentdeckung des servum arbitrium: Thomasius,” in: Die Weltanschauung der Deutschen Aufklärung (Bern: Francke, 1949), pp. 27-48, for close examination of the Protestant origins of Thomasius’ deep pessimism concerning the human condition and the progression to the view that the human will free of social influence can only be achieved through inner purity and individual perfection, p. 44. 4 See particularly Book I, “Establishment of Principles,” in Giambattista Vico, The New Science, T. Bergin and M. Fisch, transl., 3rd ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968), p. 27-106, which outlines the criterion of reason by which human institutions and cultures evolved and in which resides the “agreement between the vulgar wisdom of all lawgivers and the esoteric wisdom of the philosophers of greatest repute,” p. 106. For an historical survey of anthropological theories prior to Vico see Margaret T. Hodgen, Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), pp. 17-78). 2 study human attitudes, biases, beliefs, emotions and feelings.5 The questions which this study addresses are then focused on Thomasius’ development of critical tools for the analysis of human nature, tools which he developed as a method for the study of particularly socialization processes, processes which are conditioned by authorities in cultural and cross-cultural relationships. His views, it should be pointed out, had a double impact, first on the understanding of psychological problems in the relationship of dominant and recessive cultures and, secondly, in bringing German culture a step forward in its maturation as a society independent of foreign dominance and independent in its scientific and literary achievements.6 This study deals only with the first of these two contributions, with his examination of psychological barriers to cultural development. The second, namely his contribution to the maturation of German culture, has previously been stated in broad terms of Enlightenment philosophy. Thomasius’ essay on “De Praejudiciis oder von den Vorurteilen” first appeared as a lecture in 1689 at the University of Leipzig.7 It was offered to students as an alternative to lectures in which he planned to defend himself against the accusations made by an orientalist, August Pfeiffer, accusations that he was an atheist. But the University of Leipzig did not allow him to give these lectures, and so he decided upon a series of 5 Wolf, Erik, Grosse Rechtsdenker der deutschen Geistesgeschichte, 4th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1963), devotes chapter ten to Thomasius, recognizing that “Die Anthropologie des Thomsius, beschränkte sich demnoch auf eine psychologische Analyse des Menschen als Einselwesen in seinen Beziehungen zur Umwelt,” p. 399. Yet it seems Thomasius’ science of man is hardly known outside of the German scholarly tradition for recent anglo-american histories of the field do not mention early German theories of anthropology as for example in the chapter on the Enlightenment in Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory (New York: Crowell, 1968), pp. 8-52. 6 Wolf, Grosse Rechtsdenker (1963), felt that Thomasius’ anthropology as well as his epistemology and ethics combined to form a psychology: “Die Grundlage der Anthropologie, Erkenntnislehre und Ethik des Thomasius bildete demfolge die Psychologie,” p. 398. Max Dessoir, Geschichte der Neueren Deutschen Psychologie, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Duncker, 1902), Vol. 1, p. 59, also recognized in Thomasius’ study of man a unification of ethics and psychology. 7 Thomasius, Christian, “De praejudiciis oder von den Vorurteilen,” Die Einleitung zur Vernunftlehre, in: Aus der Frühzeit der Deutschen Aufklärung, ed. Fritz Brüggemann (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 1972), pp. 30-42. All translations into English are by the present author. 3 lectures illuminating his particular dilemma, lectures which dealt with the interference of prejudices in social and intellectual behavior. The University’s censorship of his defense against accusations of atheism was fortunate, for the lecture on prejudices became the cornerstone of his study of human behavior in cross-cultural settings. The lecture therefore forms the basis of his role as “father of the German Enlightenment.”8 Thomasius distinguished between two kinds of prejudices, the prejudice of authority (autoritatis) and that of precipitancy (praecipitantiae), or the prejudices of appearance (Ansehen) and hastiness (Übereilung).9 Thomasisus’ primary concern was analysis of man’s deference to authority and it was this investigation into the psychology of human behavior that became a challenge to all established corners of social and political life in the early phase of Grman Enlightenment thought. Following the lectures in 1689 he twice published his thoughts on the prejudices of the human mind, once in 1691 in a short and concise version found in the last chapter of his Einleitung zu der Vernunftlehre and again in 1696 in the first chapter of Ausübung der Sittenlehre where he argued that the sources of these two prejudices are found in the corruption of the human will, which he asserted is subject to further prejudices, the prejudices of imitation (Nachahmung) and impatience (Ungeduld).10 And so Thomasius felt
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