1The Anglophilia that culminated in the second half of the 18^th century in German-speaking territories was a decidedly asymmetrical transfer process. British science with its foundations of empirical and rational observation and what was interpreted as a distinctive British political perspective of “public spirit”, national consciousness and freedom were declared role models and examples (Archenholz 204). In the midst of it, the Electorate of Hanover towered as “an outpost of English civilization” (Maurer 44), and the university town of Göttingen as “a piece of England”, a centre of Anglomania (Müllenbrock 144-48).

2Following the Act of Settlement in 1701, the Acts of Union in 1707 and the death of Queen Anne, Prince-Elector George Louis of Brunswick-Lüneburg was crowned George I, King of Great Britain, in 1714, establishing the personal union of Great Britain and Hanover (Harding). His successor George II ordered the founding of a university in his German territory in 1733, and put the Hanoverian minister Gerlach Adolph von Münchhausen, who had lobbied for this project for years, in charge of it. As a result of the dynastic union, the new university aspired to mimic the success of British academies and secure royal influence in the electorate. The little town of Göttingen, agricultural and modestly wealthy owing to its cloth trade but institutionally insignificant, was chosen as a location, and a university was built – literally – from the ground up (Geyken 10-12). Münchhausen recognised this as a unique opportunity. He had studied at the University of Halle, which had Pietist traditions, and which had now become both a role model and a rival institution for him (Saada 23, 31-33).

3While developing his ideas for the university in Göttingen, Münchhausen adopted the recruitment of renowned lecturers that had made Halle so successful. He also learnt from mistakes made in Halle: the constitution, privileges and statutes in Göttingen were drafted clearly and firmly. Unlike Halle, the Faculty of Theology in Göttingen was positioned alongside its philosophical, legal and medical counterparts. Still, the “Protestant character of the university as a whole” was left untouched by formal regulations (Selle 40). This went hand in hand with a certain “Göttingen liberality”: a freedom of thought and speech, still bound within tight institutional frameworks and mutual supervision by the officials. It elevated, in a very concrete, secular sense, the newly founded university beyond the position of a mere teaching institution for young noblemen: it promised advanced, secure and continuing research, linked to and embedded in teaching (Rössler 23-26; Tütken 18). It thus established the University, which was named Georgia Augusta after its royal founder, in the following decades as a centre of the German-speaking Enlightenment, alongside the Berlin of Frederick the Great and Friedrich Nicolai and Immanuel Kant’s Königsberg. Münchhausen’s Göttingen distinguished itself by developing and following a concept of public good, and an undogmatic, popular, eclectic philosophy that specifically left room for doubts and mistakes (Heyne 95). A philosophy “for the world” was the explicitly stated goal: it had to be pragmatic, practical, useful, and further the common good. This concept was embedded into a university culture, institutionally as well as scientifically (Zimmerli 59).

4In the following, I suggest that the reviews of English books that the Göttingen professor of philosophy, Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, published anonymously in the University journal, the Göttingische Anzeigen, are insightful examples of a growing modern, multi-lingual Republic of Letters that was reflected in the development of both the book and the journal markets of the 18^th century. In the little university town, this distinctly international trend was met with a specific, local enthusiasm for British culture, literature and thought – Scottish philosophy, in particular, found admirers in Göttingen, Feder among them. This enthusiasm, I argue, implied the active appropriation and transformation of the source concepts it worked with. I will point eventually to a fundamental correlation of the ever searching, always attempting, concept of truth, formulated by the popular and eclectic philosophers in Göttingen, and a journalistic truth concept that had just taken shape at that time. But before discussing three of Feder’s reviews to explore this further, it is necessary to contextualise the role of English literature in Göttingen and to establish the convergence of the concepts of usefulness and openness that were, at once, abstract philosophic and practical journalistic goals.

“Everybody in Göttingen reads”: The English Book as a News Item

5Right from the foundation of the university, wealthy students with wellborn or aristocratic backgrounds made up a significant proportion of the students in Göttingen – at times, they exceeded one third of the total student body (Hammerstein 178). For the university, they were a significant source of funds, and were thus purposefully recruited and accommodated on the basis of their educational requirements and financial resources. The rest of the students, who were unable to pay as much in matriculation fees, had to make do with non-private lessons and chairs that were not as comfortable as those of their noble peers (Saada 37-39). Still, they benefited from the same curriculum and the same excellent, up-to-date university facilities: the teaching clinics, the botanical garden, the laboratory and the collections, as well as the University’s own research library that was open to all University members – quite an unusual move at the time and in line with the democratisation of teaching (Fabian Göttingen 209). This, in addition to the marked religious freedom, made the Georgia Augusta attractive, not only to German-speaking students, but also to Swedish, Russian, Dutch, and – above all – British students (Oehler).

7From the 1730s onwards, linked closely with the growth of the book market, there was a noticeable surge in German journal production (Pettegree 332). In this decade, the nascent Göttingen production accounted for “as many as nine percent of all German-language entertaining and teaching journals” (Gierl & Pröfener 982). The first weekly journal in Göttingen appeared years before the official inauguration ceremony of the University in 1737: The Citizen (Der Bürger) published its first edition on 1 May 1732, and cited the English Spectator and the French Misanthrope among its role models. Only a few issues were produced, just like the journals that followed, such as the Free-Thinker (Freydencker, 1734/35), the Collector (Sammler, 1736), the Scatterer or Distracter (Zerstreuer, 1737) and the Minerva (1741). The approach of these journals was popular: they aimed to be useful – to promote moral and literary education – while entertaining their readers. Furthermore, their journalistic activities were a determinedly civic engagement, an attempt to mediate between the university and the town’s public sphere (Wellenreuther 14; Gierl &Pröfener 979-97).

8Decidedly more successful and persistent was a journal that, through its initial publisher Abraham Vandenhoeck, was even more closely connected to the Göttingen University and library alike, with links that only strengthened with time: the Göttingische Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen (Göttingen Journals of Scholarly Matters). It was founded in 1739 and renamed Göttingische Anzeigen von Gelehrten Sachen (Göttingen Announcements of Scholarly Matters) in 1747, when it was taken over and published officially by the Königliche Sozietät der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen (Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen). This warranted further financial and institutional security. For a while, in the 1770s, it had a print-run of over 700 copies (Fambach VIII). After 1802, it was renamed yet again: Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen (Göttingen Scholarly Announcements) is still published under this title (Oppermann).

9For the Göttingische Zeitungen as well, foreign periodicals were indispensable as literary role models, as examples as well as source material (Gierl, “Kompilation und die Produktion von Wissen” 75). It initially appeared twice weekly. As its editors confidently described in a “notice” preceding the very first number (“Nachricht von den Neuen Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen”, GZS), it would focus on timely relayed news from the English academic world specifically, as well as review Italian, English, French, Dutch and German publications. This new journal was also supposed to concentrate on the “efforts” of the Göttingen scholars in particular, making it a sort of “scholarly diary”. What Martin Gierl calls the “Göttingen model” was a specific state-oriented, university-bound civil service (“Kompilation und die Produktion von Wissen” 92). In the context of this institutionalized scholarship, the journal was to represent and advertise the University itself, advancing the popularisation of knowledge, and promoting what was described – in a markedly English choice of words – as “good taste” (“guter Geschmack”). The journal was thus solely written in German, and reviewed scientific texts as well as belles lettres in a short, pointed manner. The central purpose was to inform the interested reader if a book was worth the time, effort and expense – valuable information in the context of an ever-expanding book market, making the expense of a journal subscription a worthwhile investment.

10The Göttingische Zeitungen or Anzeigen gave prominence to Göttingen’s local scholarship, putting it on an equal footing with concisely presented compilations of international material. The journal book review as a medium is in itself comparative, transformative and interpersonal – it engages with its source material in a highly subjective, normative manner. The reviewers of the Göttingische Zeitungen or Anzeigen added another layer of culture and language by positioning themselves emphatically in a local context, while opening up to a multi-lingual, border-crossing Enlightenment movement. Journal reviewers preselected, compiled and prepared the reviewed texts with their readership in mind. They thus adopted and popularised a format, adding their own commentaries on and perspective to the source material. If “compilation” was the “scholarly civic duty” of the eighteenth century (Gierl, “Kompilation und die Produktion von Wissen” 93), then the subsequent ordering and valuing of this compilation by the reviewer was a continuation of this duty, as well as the contribution of a personal standpoint. As a significant number of journal readers were themselves either members of the academic world or authors, or both, journal editors and reviewers were not only formative regulators that authoritatively prescribed standards for their readers but as compilers, writers and opinionated scholars, they entered into a dialogue with their readership. One part of this discourse was dealt with in the repetitive, one-sided framing of journal reviews, the other part can be found in the sprawling Respublica literaria, comprising subsequent reviews, articles, personal letters or talks.

11In the context of Göttingen philosophy, which was aware of being shaped by the world, and in turn opened up and operated for the world, the Göttingische Anzeigen exemplified this “reality of eclectic knowledge administration” in its output (Gierl, “Kompilation und die Produktion von Wissen” 92). Its authors strove to play an active and vital role in Göttingen’s lively popular philosophy, which Walther Zimmerli called a “world philosophy from the lectern” (“Weltphilosophie vom Katheder” 58). Consistently anti-dogmatic, it purported to be usable and applicable to the everyday world. No blatant limitations were accepted in the selection of material to be reviewed, only timeliness and usefulness. Still, as teachers who complied with curricula and conventions and as reviewers who wrote for the learned and interested public, the authors were the ones that sorted and selected material for their audience. The result is a unique variation of eclecticism, while the polarity of freedom and restriction, of autonomy and authority is inherent in Enlightenment thinking as a whole.

12With a scholarly eye that was thus trained and refined, subtler changes in the scientific and philosophical trends and movements of the admired neighbour could be spotted, picked up and discussed. Göttingen’s anglophile scholars appreciated philosophical movements like the Scottish “science of man” (Meyer). As outsiders who were on the receiving end of an adopted philosophy, they were able to reconcile the seemingly opposing schools of the Scottish Enlightenment: the common sense philosophy of Thomas Reid, James Beattie and James Oswald was formulated explicitly in reaction to the sceptic problem that David Hume’s “Treatise of Human Nature” posed (Kuehn 13-14). As we will see, while not denying these contrasting positions, Göttingen scholars like Feder combined them into an encompassing Scottish philosophy. Following their eclectic program, they were free to focus on individual thinkers, and to pick and choose among their theories (Oz-Salzberger 230): the moral sense of Francis Hutcheson; Reid’s, Beattie’s and Oswald’s common sense; the civic, commercial societies proposed by Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith, combined or contrasted with Hume’s psychological and epistemological scepticism.

13For the production of the Göttingische Anzeigen, the union with Britain proved to be an undeniable advantage: institutions such as the Deutsche Kanzlei in London enabled fast and secure communications and deliveries. From 1746 onwards, book consignments compiled in London for the Göttingen University library took the official diplomatic postal route. Within two months, an order could be placed and the desired books delivered, which was unusually fast and thus made prompt reviews possible (Willenberg 98-100). This communication route was complementary to another exchange that took place on a very personal level: “decades of correspondence” between German and English scholars as well as frequent visits undermined political demarcations and disciplinary guidelines (Biskup 366-67). While insisting on a de facto political independence, especially against the backdrop of the Seven Years War (see e.g. Hollmann 412-13), the scientific transfer and its movement from Great Britain to Hanover – and especially to Göttingen as a University – had an intrinsically cultural and transformative dimension (Stockhorst 21).

15The University of Göttingen employed John Tompson as an associate professor of English from 1734, and as a full professor from 1762, and language and study trips, like the ones taken by Haller or Michaelis, were common (Krake 105, 110). Still, English was a new and foreign language even to highly educated people in the German-speaking regions. For the majority of them, French was their second language, and Latin the language of scholarship, even if works in Latin were translated into German relatively early in the 18^th century (Stockhorst 18). German as a literary language, fit for academic usage and exact translation, was still in development. Reprints in English or translations into French were often preferred over “faulty translations” into German that regularly failed to stay close to the original (Fabian, The English Book 62; Stockhorst 16-17). French translations were still necessary as a “carrier” and an intermediate step for English books to obtain a broad German reception. This makes the development of the German written language itself a multi-lingual process of perpetual translation that shifted between languages and national borders (Fabian, The English Book 56, 72). Paradoxically, it was through the acceptance, appreciation and reception of English books and English culture that the German Enlightenment was able to develop and sharpen its own program and its own language (Fabian, The English Book 78). Later in the century, it was the turn of German translations to become an intermediary between English originals and secondary translations, especially into Eastern European languages (Stockhorst 16).

Beattie, Ferguson and Reid in the Göttingische Anzeigen

16The above outlines a specific historical backdrop that enabled the anonymous book reviews of the Göttingen professor Feder. As a frequent and longtime contributor to the Göttingische Anzeigen, he reviewed hundreds of book publications in German, French, English, Latin, and Italian from 1769 to 1797. We know about Feder’s involvement – as we do with all other contributors – through the remarkable efforts of Jeremias David Reuß, who recorded the authors of each review in his copies of the Göttingische Anzeigen by hand (Oppermann VI; Fambach VIII-IX). His personal copy, bequeathed to the University of Tübingen, repositions the question of the meaning and negligibility of anonymity in the historical-literary reappraisal of journal articles in an interesting way.

19Later in 1769, Feder got the opportunity to present and summarise his own publication Logik und Metaphysik (Logic and Metaphysics). He did so, writing about himself in the third person and with the same anonymity that characterised all contributions in the Göttingische Anzeigen (GAS 1769 (118): 1065-67).

20Feder’s special interests were related to what initially brought him a solid and respected standing in Göttingen. He largely focused on reviewing books about philosophy, psychology and pedagogy in the following years, and for instance discussed different writings by and about the German pedagogues Johann Bernhard Basedow and Joachim Heinrich Campe. When he eventually published his own magazine, the Philosophical Library (Philosophische Bibliothek), together with his colleague and friend Christoph Meiners in 1788, these were also the areas of interest the two concentrated on.

Feder’s Review of Beattie’s Essay

21In January 1771, Feder reviewed a German translation of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (Theorie der moralischen Gefühle, after the third edition of Smith’s work). In his review, he highlights Smith’s concept of sympathy, especially with regard to Francis Hutcheson, another Scottish philosopher, who did “notice and name,” but not “explore and apply” the term nearly enough (GAS 1771 (11): 86). He welcomes the translation by “pastor Rautenberg” as a way to further circulate Smith’s thoughts, although he considers Smith’s work to be already known to many of his readers through various English editions or French translations (85). He criticizes how one crucial term has been translated (“selfish” as the stilted “selbstisch” instead of the common though slightly ambiguous “eigennützig”), but is satisfied with the sparse yet valuable commentary provided by the translator.

23According to Feder, Beattie stands out because of his radically worded and fundamental criticism of Hume’s scepticism. Beattie regards Hume’s doctrines as dangerous and positions his own concept of common sense against them: this concept means a general, human, instinctive ability to recognise certain fundamental truths which are inaccessible to the argumentative, deducing human reason (Beattie 32-38). It is noteworthy here that Feder hesitates to translate Beattie’s term “common sense” into German, settling for the Latin “sensus communis” and thus borrowing an Aristotelian expression. He dismisses the already known and accepted German terms “gemeiner Verstand” and “gesunde Vernunft,” making the “common sense” of the “Essay” something original, linked to Beattie’s work. The reasons for this become clearer when Feder expresses misgivings relating to Beattie’s separation of common sense and reasoning ability that, for Feder, seems all too strict and rash (93).

24Feder commends Beattie’s style, his “warm heart” (94). The authors’ style is something that Feder comments frequently on in his reviews: in his review of Joseph Priestley’s Examination of Dr. Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind, Dr. Beattie’s Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, and Dr. Oswald’s Appeal to Common Sense” (1774), published in the Göttingische Anzeigen in 1775, Feder highlights Reid’s “fine and witty way,” Beattie’s “strong eloquence” and “shining noble heart,” and Oswald’s “insulting impetuosity” (GAS 1775 (92): 777). Stylistically well equipped, the three thinkers attacked early modern philosophy right at its Lockean, rational, positivistic foundations and sought to restore them to the bodily embedded foundation of human common sense.

Ferguson’s Institutes and Garve’s Grundsätze

27Among the “Supplements” (“Zugabe”) to the Göttingische Anzeigen of the year 1771, three months later, we find a review of yet another Scottish author, Adam Ferguson, and his Institutes of Moral Philosophy, which was published in 1769 and received in Göttingen in February 1771 (Catalogue II 312). Ferguson is a “man of known excellent insights,” writes Feder, with “a truly stoic soul,” and his name alone warrants a notification of the publication, even if it is a “foreign” one (GAS(Z) 1771 (14): CXIII). It is evident that Feder was familiar with Ferguson’s work, and trusted that many of his readers would recognize the name too. Most likely, this was in connection with Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society, which had brought him fame throughout Europe and had been in Göttingen’s collections since December 1767 (Catalogue II 312).

28Feder highlights Ferguson’s empirical-psychological approach as well as his tracing of the “natural history of man” (GAS(Z) 1771 (14): CXIII-CXIV). It is Ferguson’s psychology that is the philosopher-pedagogue Feder finds particularly interesting. Still, he criticizes Ferguson’s discussions of law and liberty. Feder indicates some “unacceptable sentences,” such as the still binding nature even of an enforced contract, the legal status of slavery, and the status of a despot as something other than just usurper – all of which Ferguson explicitly denies, but which exists for Feder (CXIV).

33For Feder, this addendum by the translator is a very valuable contribution to Ferguson’s original text. He emphasizes Garve’s discussion of the concept of freedom and its restrictions, of animalistic instincts and the human capability for introspection. Crucial as well is the human sophistication through evolution and the human capacity to love: rather than using or exploiting fellow humans as mere means to an end, humans are capable of feeling true benevolence and sympathy (GAS 1772 (101): 861-62). The German “Empfindung,” that Garve struggles so much to translate (from “perception,” “sensation,” “sentiment;” Ferguson, Grundsätze 326), implies for Feder a certain “warmth” that he misses at times in Garve’s text, but which is essential, especially when discussing Ferguson in moralistic, Stoic and Epicurean contexts, as Garve does. Garve’s fixation on the “immateriality of thinking substances” as the groundwork for a “natural theology” leads Feder to advise caution and prudence: although it is a good defence against “atheistic reasoning,” there does seem to be a danger of relativism and misguidance (GAS 1772 (101): 862-863). He meets Garve again when he argues that the human “soul” cannot be “uplifted” alone to “perform his duties” by the studies of ancient, Epicurean philosophic systems (862) – teaching morality and acting morally are two very different things.

Feder’s Review of Reid’s Essays

35In his Essays, Reid repeats his attacks against Hume and Berkeley – and, more indirectly, against Locke, Malebranche and Descartes – by, above all, tackling and rejecting their concept of “ideas” as an intermediary between perceptions of the world and mental cognitions (“[…] daß bey allen Erkenntnissen der Seele der nächste Gegenstand ihrer Wahrnehmung Ideen seyn”; GAS 1787 (63): 627). But Feder argues that this misrepresents the makeshift term of “idea.” On the one hand, Reid is right to criticise the term where it is overused and employed as factual instead of hypothetical but, on the other hand, he goes astray by deposing the term altogether. What Feder regards as a very plausible, usable philosophy that is effective against the extremes of dogmatism and scepticism alike is spoiled by declaring fundamental truths where Feder only sees reasonable conclusions by analogy (628). This way, Reid falls into the same dogmatic trap he set out to combat, and is helpless when confronted with problems he only has futile arguments against. For Feder, Reid’s moral objections against an idealism that has detached itself from everyday life are insufficient and his arguments for fundamental truths illusive. Feder points out that Reid on the one hand depicts the laws of physics and science as mere truths owed to chance and the human capability of “induction”, but that he also, on the other hand, defends “geometrical demonstrations” against a zealous scepticism attributed to Hume (629).

Book Reviews as Combinations of Philosophical Eclecticism and Eclectic-Journalistic Work

39Because of the ever-expanding book market of their time, 18^th-century German readers who had the means to do so faced difficult choices: who and what to read? As a multi-lingual, multi-disciplinary writer and reviewer in one of the book and journal centres of the German Enlightenment, Feder took on his intermediary role between languages, cultures and perspectives with overt enthusiasm. He never left the German-speaking territories in his lifetime, which makes him and his work both exemplary results of a communication process and a cultural shift that occurred to a great extent via a printed medium. As Feder himself states rather candidly in his autobiography, his own philosophical stance was not at all established when he arrived in Göttingen, and had to be developed and refined there. The study of English books, the discovery and integration of Scottish philosophy in his thinking was a significant part of that. At the beginning of his career, Feder admits that he “wavered” between the dogmatism of the Wolffian school and a scepticism grounded in disposition and reading matter alike (Leben 71-72). These are the two opposites Feder continued to position himself between, searching for a way to incorporate the useful and leave out mistakes. Disputing and opposing views are needed in order to approach truth by an irenic reconciliation and a prudent counterbalance.

40As Michael Albrecht points out, Feder never explicitly referred to himself or his work as eclectic (592-94). Instead, in his Outline, he lists eclectic contemporary philosophers, and calls Samuel Christian Hollmann, his colleague in Göttingen, the “model of a reasonable doubter” (Grundriß 44). Refusing a philosophical label for himself as well as rejecting a sceptical doubt that destroys everything but itself, he still holds onto both – reason and doubt, the schools and the critical discussion alike, always in moderation.

42Usefulness is what unites and keeps both doubt and dogmatism in check: this is why, eventually, Reid and Beattie need the “speculative systems” they are fighting – the common sense thinkers ground the overly systematic approaches while philosophical speculation examines and verifies their thoughts (GAS 1789 (46): 457). The eclectic method that Feder adopted in Göttingen allowed him to approach the philosophical work of thinkers like Beattie and Reid, and to isolate and separate the “good and truthful” things, so they might be combined with and integrated into other systems – as long as these systems are open enough to do so (PB 1789 115). A systematic openness is thus what propels this deliberate, eclectic knowledge conglomeration. In this way, it corresponds with and complements the technique of eclectic knowledge compilation of early modern journal production that Martin Gierl describes. While the sheer amount of early modern book production led to overload and confusion for interested readers, the compilation that journals offered was a starting point, providing a first classification and orientation. In doing so, it also created a new problem: after all, the bias that guides the compiling and selecting hand is the same one that is reflected in translation, review and commentary. It is a fundamental insight of early modern eclectic readers that the writing subject is dependent on their own subjective point of view – and that this concurrently means that readers have their own biases as well. The hesitant approach to impartiality and the critique of prejudice go hand in hand with the realisation of its inevitability. Thus, the newly introduced concept of truth has to be accepted as a journalistic one: both prosaic and contextually embedded (Warner 27). Journal readers are at once confined and liberated by their reading matter. In the three steps of Feder’s review of Garve’s translation of Ferguson’s work, there is a glimpse of an opportunity: if no one is impartial and everything a matter of perspective, then transparent explanation, inclusive discussion and mindful compilation might allow an approach to an intersubjective, “common” truth nonetheless. Translation efforts always include ideas and concepts and thus bring an element of cultural transformation that affects all involved languages. This philosophical discussion in a journalistic framework does not need the author’s name as an authoritative signum, it just needs a reference, a reliable source. It is up to the journal’s reader to further select, analyse and scrutinise. Eclectic thinking is, just like journalistic writing and reading, an emancipative effort that is, deliberately, never completed nor exhausted.