Rethinking Jung’s Reception of Kant and the Naturphilosophen

Abstract

Abstract In this essay I reassess the scholarship on Jung’s reception of Kant and the influence of German biology and the Naturphilopshen on his thinking. In the extant literature on Jung and Kant it has been argued that Jung misread Kant. I argue that this position is based on a limited understanding of Kant’s work, one which fails to consider Kant’s theories on the affect-based nature of aesthetic experience as outlined in Critique of Judgment (1790). I also explore connections between the Naturphilopshen, Jung and contemporary developmental evolutionary biology. This approach will enable me to reconsider German biology from Kant to Jung in the context of contemporary evolutionary and cognitive science. More specifically, I look at how forms of minimal phenomenal experience, in which the spatiotemporal structures of consciousness are annulled, can help us develop a new approach to analytical psychology and altered states of consciousness grounded in contemporary evolutionary science.