[SydPhil] CHOP Research Seminar August 27 - Jennifer Mensch (WSU) “Benjamin Franklin and Immanuel Kant in Berlin: Printing House, Press, and the Creation of the Public Sphere"

[Catherine Wesselinoff]

The Notre Dame Centre for the History of Philosophy warmly invites you to this Research Seminar.

TIME: Thursday, August 27, 1:00 - 2:30 pm

IN PERSON: University of Notre Dame Australia, Broadway/Sydney Campus, NDS23/102 (46 Mountain Street Ultimo, NSW, 2007)

Location note: NDS23 is a new UNDA building located at 46 Mountain Street - see these links for assistance:
* UNDA campus map (https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/eSU5CWLVXkUPJ1o3MT6fkEhoQ2i8?domain=notredame.edu.au<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/eSU5CWLVXkUPJ1o3MT6fkEhoQ2i8?domain=notredame.edu.au>)
* Google Maps location (https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/qXeACXLW2mUqwlrA8FVhL4hW3gh3?domain=maps.app.goo.gl<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/qXeACXLW2mUqwlrA8FVhL4hW3gh3?domain=maps.app.goo.gl>)
* Google Street view building entrance (https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/gLXWCYW8NocNrKBYnU9iJnhxMmMq?domain=maps.app.goo.gl<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/gLXWCYW8NocNrKBYnU9iJnhxMmMq?domain=maps.app.goo.gl>).

ONLINE: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_ODQ3NGU3YTItN2FkOS00ZGRhLTk0ZmUtMDBhMjk2YTQ4MzFh%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22c93ebcc3-e84c-45c4-9c7e-8607adc072ec%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22d57c9f6e-4977-4ef4-ab54-cde3631e83ed%22%7d

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SPEAKER: Jennifer Mensch (WSU)

TITLE: "Benjamin Franklin and Immanuel Kant in Berlin: Printing House, Press, and the Creation of the Public Sphere"

ABSTRACT: Historically oriented Kant commentators like John Zammito have long maintained that serious Kant scholarship must include attention to the socio-cultural influences on Kant and his contemporaries. While significant historiographical work has been done on Kant and the French Revolution, the impact of the American Revolution on German thinkers—and Benjamin Franklin’s role therein—has been comparatively understudied, with leading scholars suggesting that it had little to no impact on Kant. The following investigation will be therefore oriented by Zammito’s admonition, in this case by way of its focus on key actors in the print and press world of the Berlin Enlightenment. My hope is that by reconstructing the material history of Kant’s access to news regarding the American Revolution, we can use this evidentiary scaffolding as the basis for a more confident reassessment of Kant’s views and his own role in the structural transformation of the late eighteenth-century public sphere.
BIO: Jennifer Mensch is a Kant specialist and intellectual historian whose research lies at the intersection of philosophy, science, and politics during the long eighteenth century. In addition to numerous essays on Kant and his contemporaries, she has published a monograph, Kant’s Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 2013, 2015 pbk, 2019 reprint), an edited collection, Kant and the Feeling of Life: Beauty and Nature in the Critique of Judgment (SUNY Press, 2024, 2025 pbk), and a Special Issue of the Lessing Yearbook, co-edited with Michael Olson, "Reading Forster, Reading Race: Philosophy, Politics, and Natural History in the German Enlightenment" (Wallstein, 2025).
Currently she is finalising work on an anthology of primary sources, co-edited with Michael Olson, Key Texts in the History and Philosophy of the German Life Sciences, 1745-1845: Generation, Heredity, Race (Bloomsbury, 2027), and finishing a book on Kant and Forster that is under contract for the Cambridge Elements series (Cambridge, 2028). Her 2026 sabbatical project aims to produce a series of articles investigating the German philosophical reception history of the American Revolution in order to reconstruct the role played by Kant and others in the structural transformation of the late eighteenth century public sphere.
Before moving to Western Sydney University in 2015, Jennifer Mensch spent ten years at the Pennsylvania State University where she taught philosophy and the history of science and medicine.
Dr Catherine Wesselinoff
Lecturer | School of Philosophy and Theology
Lead, Strategic Programs and Partnerships | Institute for Ethics and Society (IES)
The University of Notre Dame Australia.
Book a meeting with me<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/TJNfCZY1NqiDJ1BvkHysVXhBI8wx?domain=outlook.office.com> <https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/TJNfCZY1NqiDJ1BvkHysVXhBI8wx?domain=outlook.office.com>

Recent Publications:
"Beauty's Comeback", Debates in Aesthetics, Vol 19. No. 2, 2025, pp 35-45.
"Apophatic Beauty in the Hippias Major and the Symposium", The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 82, Issue 1, 2024, pp 36-44.
The Revival of Beauty: Aesthetics, Experience, and Philosophy, Routledge, 2023.

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