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Tetens, Johann Nicolaus (1736–1807)

DOI
10.4324/9780415249126-DB064-1
DOI: 10.4324/9780415249126-DB064-1
Version: v1,  Published online: 1998
Retrieved March 29, 2024, from https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/tetens-johann-nicolaus-1736-1807/v-1

Article Summary

Tetens was a German philosopher, mathematician and physicist, with a second career as a Danish government official, who was active in Northern Germany and Denmark during the second half of the eighteenth century. Together with Johann Heinrich Lambert and Moses Mendelssohn, Tetens forms the transition from the German school philosophy of Leibniz, Wolff and Crusius to the new, critical philosophy of Kant. Tetens’ philosophical work reflects the combined influence of contemporary German, British and French philosophical currents. His main contribution to philosophy is a detailed descriptive account of the principal operations of the human mind that combines psychological, epistemological and metaphysical considerations. While showing a strong empiricist leaning, Tetens rejected the associationist and materialist accounts of the mind, favoured in Britain and France, and insisted on the active, spontaneous role of the mind in the formation and processing of mental contents.

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Citing this article:
Zoller, Gunter. Tetens, Johann Nicolaus (1736–1807), 1998, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-DB064-1. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/tetens-johann-nicolaus-1736-1807/v-1.
Copyright © 1998-2024 Routledge.

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