Thinking the Unconscious

Angus Nicholls is Claussen-Simon Foundation Research Lecturer in German and Comparative Literature in the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations at Queen Mary, University of London. Martin Liebscher is Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies in the School of Advanced Study at the University of London.

Examines nineteenth-century German theories and representations of the unconscious, and the extent to which they may have influenced Freud.

Introduction: thinking the unconscious Angus Nicholls and Martin Liebscher; 1. The unconscious from the Storm and Stress to Weimar classicism: the dialectic of time and pleasure Paul Bishop; 2. The philosophical significance of Schelling's conception of the unconscious Andrew Bowie; 3. The scientific unconscious: Goethe's post-Kantian epistemology Angus Nicholls; 4. The hidden agent of the self: towards an aesthetic theory of the non-conscious in German romanticism Rüdiger Görner; 5. The real essence of human beings: Schopenhauer and the unconscious will Christopher Janaway; 6. Carl Gustav Carus and the science of the unconscious Matthew Bell; 7. Eduard von Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious Sebastian Gardner; 8. Gustav Theodor Fechner and the unconscious Michael Heidelberger; 9. Friedrich Nietzsche's perspectives on the unconscious Martin Liebscher; 10. Freud and nineteenth-century philosophical sources on the unconscious Günter Gödde; Epilogue: the 'optional' unconscious Sonu Shamdasani.