The Lever as Instrument of Reason is an inquiry into the theoretical use of the trope of the lever in major thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries. It explores not what work a real lever can do but what epistemological work references to the lever can do in this crucial period of intellectual history. As she discusses the deployment of the figure of the lever, Holland takes us on a tour de force from Kant through Romanticism and Naturphilosophie to nineteenth-century psychology, providing along the way thoroughly original insights into shifting conceptions of the nature of knowledge and humanity. Holland's is a mature book that prompts us to consider anew our understanding of critical junctures of 18th- and 19th-century German and European intellectual history. * John Smith, Professor of German, University of California, Irvine, USA *
In The Lever as Instrument of Reason, Jocelyn Holland provides an exceptionally innovative and much-needed alternative to traditional scholarship, which has stressed Romanticism's focus on organic thinking. Through fascinating readings of texts by authors such as Kant, Novalis, and Schelling, Holland reveals how the figure of the lever became a key instrument for the conceptualization of cognition, feeling, and selfhood around 1800. This is an exciting and timely book! * Christine Lehleiter, Associate Professor, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Toronto, Canada *
Holland's The Lever is original on several levels at once, offering a piercing interpretation of Romantic philosophy's deep mechanical commitments, tracing the Idealist legacy forward to the foundations of scientific psychology and positivism, and offering a new standard for the study of the philosophy of nature or Naturphilosophie. The book overturns cliches of intellectual history and history of science at every turn. It is that rare work that cuts to the core of the conceptual and metaphorical invention that drives the humanities. * Leif Weatherby, Associate Professor of German, New York University, USA *
