Abstract

Beyond the usual conception of Johann Nikolaus Tetens as the “German Locke”, this paper wants to reassess the distinctive German context of the empiricist reference in the Essay on the Reform of the Speculative Philosophy (1775) and in the Philosophical Essays on Human Nature and Its Development (1777). This move shows that Tetens delivers a critical view of the empiricist philosophy and refuses to conflate the activity of the understanding and the passivity of the sensibility; he produces for that purpose a highly original philosophy of human cognition which gives a pivotal place to the autonomous productions of the imagination and the understanding.