The Lever as Instrument of Reason: Technological Constructions of Knowledge around 1800

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Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: An Object and Its Positions: The Lever, the Fulcrum, and the Archimedean Point
	The Lever in Antiquity: Practical Use and Theoretical Reflection
	Aspects of the Lever in Renaissance Mechanics
	What a Lever Can Be
	Where to Put Your Lever: The Archimedean Point
	The Lever, the Archimedean Point, and the Construction of Knowledge
	The Lever and Its Point: Constructing a Conceptual Apparatus
	Overview of the Chapters
Chapter One:The Balance of Life / Quantifying Kant
	Introduction
	Balancing Acts
	Quantified Pleasure
	Moral Mechanics
	About Thinking
	Beyond the Material World
	Conclusion
Chapter Two: The Levers of German Romanticism
	Part One: The Tool of Tools
	Philosophical Problems and Mechanical Thinking
	The Levers of Novalis and Schlegel
	Part Two: The Point of Points
	The Romantic Point
	From Point to Lever: The Romantic Fulcrum
	Constructing the Hypomochlion
	Part Three: Pointing toward the Human
	From the Individual to the Social
	Conclusion
Chapter Three: The Contested God of Naturphilosophie
	Introduction
	Eschenmayer and the Lever of Naturphilosophie
	Schelling and the Construction of the Ego
	The Lever as God of Naturphilosophie
Chapter Four: From Naturphilosophie to a Mechanically Minded Psychology
	Introduction
	Eighteenth-Century Psychology: An Overview
	Part One: Eschenmayer’s Psychological Lever
	The Lever in Empirical and Pure Psychology
	The Lever of Applied Psychology
	Excursus: A Surprising Application
	Part Two: Johann Herbart’s Statics and Mechanics of the Mind
	Questioning Equilibrium
	Unavoidable Comparisons
Concluding Thoughts
Bibliography
Index