Learnedness, Learned Cognition, and the Science of Logic: From Thomasius and Meier to Kant

Abstract It is well-known that Immanuel Kant used Meier’s Excerpt from the Doctrine of Reason as a textbook in his logic lectures for almost forty years. Kant himself, and most later scholars, regard Meier as a follower of Wolff and Baumgarten; however, when we compare Meier’s Excerpt with Thomasius’ Introduction to the Doctrine of Reason, we find that Meier’s conception of “learned cognition” is derived from Thomasius’ conception of “learnedness.” Kant seems to have developed the pre-critical distinction between “the logic of the common and healthy reason” and “the logic of the learned reason” from Meier’s distinction between “common” and “learned” cognition, which means that Meier’s appropriation of Thomasius also influenced Kant’s conception of logic. Connecting Kant’s views on logic to Thomasius through Meier in this way reveals that Kant’s pre-critical conception of logic was more eclectic than scholars have previously recognized.