The Medicina mentis of E. W. von Tschirnhaus or the transition in Germany from Theosophy to Pre-Enlightenment after the Peace of Westphalia

Abstract

Before the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the German philosophical space had been largely dominated by theosophy, especially in the Protestant sphere and in regions such as Saxony, Silesia and Württemberg. With the Medicina mentis (1686 and 1695) by E. W. von Tschirnhaus, a Saxon nobleman with university studies in Leiden, where he came into contact with Spinoza and his circle, we enter a new conceptual world. Under the appearance of a methodological proposal, of Cartesian style, to lead reason to the discovery of what is possible to know by ‘natural light’, Tschirnhaus proposes a moral reform of the human subject capable of procuring perfection, happiness and union with God, where the imprint of Spinoza (and perhaps also of Giordano Bruno) is strong, although these two philosophers are never named. After studying the accusation of Spinozism by Christian Thomasius (1688) and the rejection of the imputation by Tschirnhaus, the article pronounces on the meaning and function of this rejection.