The Philosophical Achievement and Historical Significance of Johann Nicolas Tetens

T h e P h ilo so p h ic a l A c h ie v e m e n tonmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA a n d H isto ric a l S ig n ifica n ce o f J o h a n n N ic o la s T e te n s J E F F R E Y B A R N O U W In tro d u ctio n : T eten s a n d P h ilo so p h ica l T ra d itio n s The principal work of Tetens was first published two hundred years ago.1 It would be quixotic to want to commemorate the original ap* pearance of P h ilo so p h ica l E ssays o n H u m a n N a tu re a n d Its D evelo p m en t with a bicentennial celebration, for it has scarcely been noticed in the interim. Few scholars outside the field of German philosophy have ever even heard of Tetens, though some may be aware of him as a thinker on whom Coleridge drew.2 In lieu of commemoration, then, I would like to take the occasion to recall him from relative obscurity and show why he is worth remembering and knowing. Tetens’ main work is not only intrinsically interesting, but is of fur* ther significance because of the philosophical tendency for which it stands. As a philosophical approach, empiricism is a perennial lost cause within the German tradition. There have been, in fact, a number of fine German thinkers of an empiricist orientation—indeed of a distinctive German empiricist strain—from the eighteenth cen* 301 302 / ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA J E F F R E Y B A R N O U W tury on. But they have rarely gained recognition as empiricists or for empiricism as a respectable philosophical stance. Largely unaware of their own affinities with predecessors and contemporaries, they have had to work out their position far more on their own, and against various forms of the dominant idealist tradition, than if they had been consciously working within a tradition of empiricism. In coming to appreciate the achievement of Tetens, we may also be able to con* tribute to the construction (after the fact) of a German empiricist heritage.3 At the same time, one might take a critical look at the continuity of the idealist tradition, which has too often been taken as comprehend* ing the full development and diversity of German philosophy, and has thus provided the context, until now, for understanding thinkers like Tetens. At a third level of inquiry, therefore, beyond the inter* pretation of particular works or a life work and the construction of historical continuities with other thinkers of like tendency (which are interdependent, mutually illuminating tasks), there remains the chai* lenge of understanding the relative failure of this empiricist impulse in German philosophy, and in the case of Tetens its relation to what “succeeded” (in both senses). There is a touch of Hegel in all of us, perhaps, that inclines us to view whatever succeeds historically as vindicated, at least with re* spect to the succession of philosophical doctrines. It has certainly been the bane of Tetens’ reception that his work has been seen and judged almost exclusively in the light of the philosophical revolution that supervened. Most often he is regarded, advantageously, as it were, as a precursor of Kant, one of the few who anticipated the transcendental turn.4 There are few cases which illustrate so clearly the dangers of teleological construction in the historiography of thought. Confusing what Tetens himself was after with what came after, the Kant*centered perspective reinforces the historical failure of his philosophical impulse by losing all sense of what was lost. This criticism of earlier interpretation of Tetens does not imply that we cannot or should not read past thinkers in terms of what fol* lowed, whether it followed from their work or not. The after*the*fact construction of a “tradition” or heritage is just such a procedure. My Jo h a n n N ico la s T eten s /onmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPO 303 criticism...