Plumbing the Depths of the Mind. Leibniz and the Invention of the Unconscious

Department of Comenius Studies and Early Modern Intellectual History presents

Further information

Dr. Alessandro Nannini (University of Bucharest, ICUB Humanities):

Plumbing the Depths of the Mind. Leibniz and the Invention of the Unconscious

While it is known that the originally mystical concept of “fundus animae” became a crucial notion in the German Enlightenment as the place of the unconscious, the route to its psychologization has hitherto been rather neglected by scholars. In my talk I will reconstruct this process, taking into account the tensions between its mystical background and the Leibnizian metaphysical context, and investigating the ways in which the “fundus animae” began to serve as an explanatory basis for both the unaccountable paradoxes of the mind and the inspiration of the artist.

Invitation pdf