Romantic Psychology: Schubert, Carus, Schopenhauer

Doctoral Program in Philosophy, Epistemology, and Human Sciences

University of Cagliari, Department of Education, Psychology, and Philosophy

Course title: Romantic Psychology: Schubert, Carus, and Schopenhauer.

Hours: 6 hours.

Teacher(s) (e-mail and relevant subject area(s) of study): Dr. Laura Follesa, laura.follesa@unica.it (SSD: M-Fil/06 History of Philosophy – 11/PHIL-05 /A); Prof, Sean J. McGrath, sjoseph.mcgrath@gmail.com.

Short bio/bibliography:

Laura Follesa is a RTD-A at the University of Cagliari with a project on F.W.J. Schelling. Her research focuses on the role of analogies in philosophical and scientific reasoning and the intersection between philosophies of nature and scientific thought in the modern age.
Sean J. McGrath researches and teaches in the areas of metaphysics, classical German philosophy (Kant to Heidegger), phenomenology and hermeneutics, and psychoanalysis.

Delivery format: In-person, seminars.

Schedule and meeting locations:

May 5, 2026, Shubert, 15:30 – 17:30, room 9A
May 6, 2026, Carus, 10:30 – 12:30, room 4A
May 9, 2026, Schopenhauer, 10:30 – 12:30, room 9A
Language: English, German.

Preliminary knowledge required: None.

Brief course description: The meetings will examine key authors and texts that have contributed to the definition of the unconscious, to research on sleep and dreams, and to the development of modern psychology.

Seminar structure: Three meetings are planned, each dedicated to the reading and discussion of short excerpts from texts by G.H. Schubert, C.G. Carus, and A. Schopenhauer, respectively, on topics related to the notion of the unconscious, research on sleep and dreams, and the origins of modern psychology.

Bibliographical references:

Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert, Die Symbolik des Traumes, Bamberg: Kunz, 1814
Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert, Über die Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft, Dresden: Arnold, 1808.
Carl Gustav Carus, Psyche: Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Seele, Pforzheim: Flammer & Hoffmann, 1846.
Arthur Schopenhauer, Versuch über das Geistersehen und was damit zusammenhängt, in Parerga und Paralipomena: kleinere phil. Schriften, Berlin: Hayn, 1851, En. transl. Essay on Spirit-seeing and Related Issues, Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. I, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. 198-272; trans. it. ggio on the visions of spirits and on what is connected to them, in Parerga e paralipomena, Milan: Adelphi, 1981, rest. 2007, pp. 309-420.
Secondary bibliography:

Matthew Bell, Carl Gustav Carus and the Science of the Unconscious, in Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth Century German Thought, ed. by Angus Nicholls and Martin Liebscher, Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 156-172.
Carlos Cornejo, Forgotten Streams in the History of 19th-Century German Psychology. Volume 1: Empirical, Romantic, and Idealist Psychologies, Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2025.
Dietrich Engelhardt, Medizin in Romantik und Idealismus. Band 3: Gesundheit und Krankheit in Leib und Seele, Natur und Kultur, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog Verlag, 2023.
Laura Follesa, Sensitivity, visions, dreams: Swedenborg and Schopenhauer, in Schopenhauer Pensiero e Fortuna, Lecce: Pensa Multimedia, 2015, pp. 97-112.
Sebastian Gardner, Schopenhauer, Will, and the Unconscious, in The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer, ed by Christopher Janaway, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 375-421.
Christopher Janaway, The Real Essence of Human Beings: Schopenhauer and the Unconscious Will, , in Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth Century German Thought, ed. by Angus Nicholls and Martin Liebscher, Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 140-155
Werner Leibbrand, Die spekulative Medizin der Romantik, Hamburg: Claasen, 1956.
Odo Marquard, Transzendentaler Idealismus, Romantische Naturphilosophie, Psychoanalyse, Köln: Dinter, 1987.
Sean McGrath, The Dark Ground of the Spirit: Schelling and the Unconscious, New York: Routledge, 2012.
Luis Montiel, The Symbolism of Dream (1814) by Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, «History of Psychiatry» VI (1995), pp. 521-532.
Stefano Poggi, The nerves, the soul, the unconscious, in Id., The genius and the unity of nature, Bologna 2000, pp.545-606.
Stefano Poggi, Neurology and Biology in the Romantic Age in Germany: Carus, Burdach, Gall, von Baer, in S. Poggi-M. Bossi (eds), Romanticism in Science: Science in Europe, 1790-1840, Dordrecht 1994, pp. 143-160.
Rössler (ed.), Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert. Gedenkschrift zum 200. Geburtstag des romantischen Naturforschers, «Erlanger Forschungen Reihe A» xxv (1980), pp. 11-36.
Final rating: no.

Other useful information: draft event poster