Physiognomania and anti-physiognomy

Lichtenberg and the “Fragments debate”

Abstract

The paper offers a survey of the “Fragments Debate” or “Physiology Debate” that took place in the middle of the eighteenth century. The central subject is Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s Über Physiognomik, wider die Physiognomen, but some of his other critical texts are also discussed, along with the responses and reflections Lavater, Mendelssohn, Lenz and Zimmermann wrote to these. The paper tries to point out the intellectual and conceptual differences emerging during this debate between Lavater and his followers on one, and Lichtenberg on the other side, and it also aims to unveil the debate culture of the era, thus providing a detailed intellectual background to Lichtenberg’s probably most famous “anti-physiognomy”, the Fragment von Schwänzen.