ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the importance and influence of Georg Ernst Stahl and his radical Pietist medicine. Stahl’s anti-mechanistic theory—that the soul and the body are a unity; that life is organic and life is the active soul working within the structures and substances of the body—was at odds with proponents of the ‘new’ philosophy of Descartes and of Newtonian physics.
Stahl, professor at the University of Halle and first court physician to Frederick William I, proposed a theory of a holistic, self-determined organism. In his definition of organism, he equates ‘life’ with the ability of the whole organism to organise change. The ‘organ’ of perception is the sum of all perceptual processes (including sensory impressions, mental images, and emotions), which he calls the ‘soul’. Within radical Protestant movements Stahl’s theory was ‘enthusiastically’ embraced, answering its calls to legitimise the inspirational freedom of the spirit and to refute that ‘pure’ reason could lead to spiritual growth. Legitimate inspiration (which critics of pietism labelled ‘enthusiasm’) facilitated the experience of conversion, and ‘rebirth’. According to Barbara Miller, C. G. Jung was familiar with pietism, and had a similar positive notion for the conversion experience.
