THE SCIENTIST AS WELTBÜRGER: ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT AND THE BEGINNING OF COSMOPOLITICS

Abstract

Abstract Starting from Alexander von Humboldt's always ambivalent attitude towards Potsdam, the city which made him an honorary citizen and where he conceived large parts of his Cosmos, this contribution tries to show, through a broad analysis of Humboldt's early letters and later writings, the complex relation between world image and world travel, between science and cosmopolitanism. Humboldt's innovative concept of science, at the same time transdisciplinary and intercultural, connects in its ethical dimension with ideas of Immanuel Kant, as Kant had presented them in his “Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltburgerlicher Absicht.” In this respect it becomes evident that the evolution of Humboldtian science is not possible without considering his understanding of cosmopolitanism, just as it is not possible to understand the specific kind of cosmopolitics which makes the Prussian scientist, author and intellectual an important connecting link for the actual definition of cosmopolitanism and cosmop...