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The Scottish historian William Robertson's works on European encounter with non-European civilizations (History of America, 1777; Historical Disquisition […] of India, 1791) received a great deal of attention in contemporary Germany. Through correspondence with Robertson, as well as by reviewing and translating his texts, Johann Reinhold Forster and his son Georg took an active part in this process. The younger Forster also became simultaneously involved in a debate which was unfolding on the German intellectual scene concerning the different or equal “value” (Wert) of the various “races of mankind” (Menschenrassen), engaging especially the relevant views advanced by the Göttingen historian Christoph Meiners and Immanuel Kant. The debate was firmly embedded in the context of an emerging ‘science of man’ in the German Enlightenment, to which Forster contributed an almost incomparable richness of empirical knowledge as well as theoretical sophistication. Forster's direct engagement with Robertson's work during the same period (mid-1780s to the early 1790s) creates a context through which the Wissenschaft vom Menschenin the Aufklärungand the Scottish version of the science of man – built on the neighbour disciplines to which Robertson's historiography was crucially indebted – is set in an interesting comparative light. This paper, part of a comprehensive project tracing the German reception of Robertson as an instance of inter-cultural exchange in the Enlightenment, will exploit the opportunities presented by one particular and documented case for a general comparison of enlightened ‘sciences of man’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay sets out a curious anecdote about Leibniz's life, which, according to his secretary and first biographer Johann Georg Eckhardt, the German thinker often told. The anecdote in question is analogous to an episode in Descartes's youth, related by Adrien Baillet in his Vie de M. Descartes (1691). The resemblance of the two stories has never been considered by Cartesian scholars, by Leibniz's biographers, or by scholars who, like Hans Blumenberg, have focused particularly on the use of anecdote in the history of philosophy, including Leibniz's story. If the analogies between the stories told by the two philosophers are not coincidental, then Leibniz's must be a fabrication. It is thus worth investigating the circumstances in which Leibniz told it and analyze its elements, in order to throw light on the philosopher's intellectual imagination and his way of approaching the work of other great thinkers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers how the ideals of university education embraced by German educator and philosopher Martin Heidegger were influenced by the writings of Prussian philosopher and founder of the University of Berlin Wilhelm von Humboldt. In 1933, Heidegger was appointed to the rectorate of Freiburg University, a position he gained by joining the National Socialist party.

The article discusses the methodological and philosophical developments in the field of sociology that resulted from the discipline's study of suicide or self-destruction. The article describes the rise of Rationalism, empiricism, and positivism in relation to the sociological study of the rise of suicide in the modern world, exploring how the irrationality of suicide affected sociologists who believed in the progressive and positivist power of the social sciences. Subjects under discussion include the sociologist Emile Durkheim, the physician Henry Morselli and his book "Suicide: An Essay on Comparative Moral Statistics," and the concept of anomie.

The article discusses the influence of 19th century German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies on Western European positivism. The articles describes how Tönnies reinterpreted the sociological tradition of philosophers such as August Comte, Herbert Spencer, and John Stuart Mill, consequentially producing an original creative synthesis in the field of positivism and sociology. Subjects under discussion include the concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, the economic aspects of Tönnies' philosophy, and the disciplines of rationalism and historicism.

The article focuses on the visual and exhibitionary culture of monarchy during the leadership of Emperor Wilhelm in Prussia, Germany. According to the author, in the Hohenzollern Museum, the monarchy and the history was to be experienced by people as an entertainment site. In addition, the monarchy was to be experienced through personal involvement which invites critical distance but attachment and emotional participation.

The article discusses the depiction of orientalism in the German literature. According to the author, German orientalism was distributed by a set of hegemonic producers and consumed by the population as a whole. The author adds that the younger generation of Germany is emancipating from the intellectual ascendancy of science and from the universities.