Pressing Matters: Karl Philipp Moritz's Models of the Self in the Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde

ELLIOTT SCHREIBER Pressing Matters: Karl Philipp Moritz's Models of the Self in the Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde Although it seems counterintuitive, social historians have argued that in the eighteenth century the bourgeois public sphere arises out of the private domain. According to Habermas's genealogy in Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, the public sphere in its first, apolitical form is born in the world of letters in a "Prozeß der Selbstaufklärung der Privatleute über die genuinen Erfahrungen ihrer neuen Privatheit."1 Through this public process of self-enlightenment, selfhood or subjectivity2 assumes institutional form, while the bourgeois public sphere establishes itself alongside the two hitherto dominant public arenas: that of representative publicness, manifested in the strict code of noble conduct that surrounds the aristocracy with an aura of authority (60-63); and that of the absolutist state (66). Grounded in the self-confidence gained through the discussion of private experiences, and equipped with the media in which this discussion transpired, a second, more politically geared bourgeois public sphere subsequently asserts itself in the eighteenth century (116). By Habermas's account, the birth of the bourgeois public sphere coincides with that of psychology as "eine spezifisch bürgerliche Wissenschaft " dedicated to the enlightenment of the self (88). This paper examines writings central to the first journal of psychology in Germany5 in the light of Habermas's history of the private origins of "bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit." With his journal of empirical psychology, the Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde (1783-1793),4 Karl Philipp Moritz set out to collect observations, or "Beobachtungen und Erfahrungen,"1 of a diverse array of individuals. His stated aim was to eventually induce a complete human psychology, "ein allgemeiner Spiegel..., worin das menschliche Geschlecht sich beschauen könnte" ("Aussichten," 90). It has been persuasively shown in recent scholarship that Moritz indefinitely defers this goal of a universal psychology, and instead pursues a psychology centered around individuality.6 While I agree with this assessment, I argue in the Goethe Yearbook XI (2002) 134 Elliott Schreiber present study that already Moritz's earliest essays in the framework of the Magazin betray his doubt as to whether the individual self can be empirically known, a concern which only intensifies during his tenure as editor.7 In contrast to Habermas's portrayal of the rise of the bourgeois public sphere, and with it the discipline of psychology, Moritz problematizes the notion that the privacy of the self can be genuinely experienced. The self, according to Moritz, is private even to oneself. He initiates Erfahrungsseelenkunde , then, not with reference to "die genuinen Erfahrungen" of privacy, but rather in puzzlement over their very absence. Though he problematizes the idea of a private self that can be empirically known, Moritz does not forgo the attempt to conceive of such a self. Specifically, he articulates two paradigms of an ego that, while not directly perceptible, can be inferred through its representations: a paradigm of the self as primarily expressive, and one of the self as primarily impressionable . These paradigms are informed, respectively, by innatist psychological models that view the self as pre-given, and by neo-Lockean theories that see the self as a product of impressions from its environment.8 As my terms "expressive" and "impressionable" imply, Moritz's models are structured in opposite ways around pressure: the first likens the self to a press, the second associates it with an imprinted text. As opposite as they are, both models thus construe a self that is legible, and hence particularly suitable for discussion in the public sphere of what Moritz calls the "lesende Welt" ("Aussichten," 89). At the same time, neither presents the self as immediately perceptible. Rather, they envisage it being accessible through a medium of representation: in the one case, it can be perceived through its expressions; in the other, through the memories of its formative impressions. If the hope for an empirical psychology lies in these representational media, therein also lies its aporia, for Moritz sees these representations as continually subject to a displacement (Verstellung) whereby the self becomes concealed (verstellt) to the observer. I argue that due to this impasse , Moritz does not commit himself to either model of the self, but instead oscillates...