Journal of the History of Philosophy

Between Wolff and Kant: Merian's Theory of Apperception UDO THIEL IT IS WELL KNOWN that the nodon of apperception or self-consciousness is central to Kant's theoretical philosophy. Kant introduces the notion in one of the crucial parts of the Critique of Pure Reason, the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, and assigns it an important role in his critique of traditional metaphysics of the soul in the Transcendental Dialectic.' It is also well known that Kant did not invent the term "apperception." Leibniz had introduced the French 'Tapperception" into philosophical terminology early in the eighteenth century. Kant scholars generally stress, rightly, that Kant's notion of apperception differs significandy from that of his predecessors. However, the precise relation between Kant's concept of apperception and earlier accounts has not been considered in any detail. Wolfgang Carl, for example, simply states that the main difference is that, prior to Kant, apperception was understood as relating only to mental acts and their contents, and not to the subject that thinks and has ideas, whereas in Kant apperception relates essentially to the thinking subject. 2This very general thesis is questionable even in regard to some of the philosophers that Carl cites in this context (Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, and Wolff). It is clearly not true of some other pre-Kantian philosophers who deal with self-consciousness. ' References to the CritiqueofPure Reason are to the standard first and second edition pagination ; hereinafter A and B, respectively.I use the translation by Norman Kemp Smith (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1973).Other references to Kant's worksare to the standard Akadem /eedition: Kant, GesamraelteSchriflen, ed. K6niglichPreussischeAkademie der Wissenschaften, and its successors(Berlin: Georg Reimer, later de Gruyter, 19ooff.);hereinafterAA. "Wolfgang Carl, Die TranszendentaleDeduktionder Kategorienin der erstenAuflage der Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Ein Kommentar(Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 199a), 61. 214 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:2 APRIL 1996 Leibniz had coined the French "l'apperception," but it was Christian Wolff who introduced the Latinized version of the term.3 And it was through Wolff's immense influence on eighteenth-century German philosophy that the term became standard philosophical currency not only in the metaphysical debates on the human soul, but also in the developing discipline of empirical psychology and in epistemological discussions. While the literature on Leibniz's account of apperception is considerable both in extent and quality, Wolff's account of apperception (which differs in some respects from that of Leibniz) has only occasionally been discussed by philosophers and historians of ideas, mostly in broader contexts.4 There is even less on the development of the notion of apperception in the period between Wolff and Kant.5 Indeed, even many of Wolff's eighteenth-century critics, in dealing with his psychology, did not focus on the notion of apperception but on issues such as his idea that the soul consists of only one fundamental power (that of representing the universe). Wolff's younger contemporary Johann Bernhard Merian, however, did concentrate on the notion of apperception. His account of that notion has been very much neglected by scholars. Yet it is important both in its own right and as an essential part of the transition from Leibniz-Wolffian "apperceptio" to Kant's understanding of apperception. I argue that Merian's theory differs from both Wolff's and contemporary empiricist accounts (as, for example, in Tetens), and that it is closer to Kant's position than are either of these. sChristian Wolff, Psychologia empirica (Christian Wolff, Gesammelte Werke, pt. II, vol. 5, ed. J. l~cole [Hildesheim: Olms, 1968]), w95. The first edition ofPsychologia empirica appeared in a732. Leibniz uses the Latin "apperceptio" in a letter to Des Bosses of i 1July 17o6 (Die Philosophischen Schriflen von GotOCriedWilhelm Leibniz, ed. C. I. Gerhardt, 7 vols. [Berlin, 1875ff.; rept. Hildesheim: Olms, 1978], 2:31 0. Hubertus Busche drew my attention to this passage. See Hubertus Busche, "Apperzeption und Intellekt," Allgemeine Zeitschriftfiir Philosophie 19.2 0994): 53-63 9 4The most important recent discussions of Leibniz's notion of apperception are those by Robert McRae and Mark Kulstad. See Robert McRae, Leibniz: Perception, Apperception and Thought (Toronto/Buffalo: Toronto University Press, 1976); Mark Kulstad, Leibniz on Apperception...