“(The present work) is essentially an investigation of the origin and structure of human knowledge and was the most important philosophical work written in Germany during the period immediately prior to the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) by Kant, who valued Tetens’ work highly. Kant reiterated Tetens’ emphasis on the importance of empirical foundations for philosophical studies. He was also influenced in the construction of his own theory of human knowledge by Tetens’ threefold division of consciousness into the faculties of feeling, will, and understanding. By the last category he referred to the faculty of forming and combining ideas.” (Encyclopedia Britannica).

“Like the British empiricists, Tetens begin with an account of sensations and ideas. Ideas are described as due to the operation of the traces caused by sensations. He compares the relation of memories to sensations with the relation of visual after-image to the initial sensation, memories being due to continued activity in the eye. (…) He accepts two laws of association, namely, similarity and contiguity in time and space, but he rejects Hume’s third type of association, causality. He clears up Berkeley’s and Hume’s difficulties with general ideas, by distinguishing clearly between the idea (in the sense of image) and its meaning.” (Wolf, A History of Science Technology and Philosophy in the 18th Century, P. 690)

Provenance: From the library of Danish philosopher and author Carl Henrik Koch.