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Karl CarusGerman doctor, philosopher, psychologist and artist.
Date of Birth: 03.01.1789
Country:  Germany |
Content:
Biography of Karl Gustav Carus
Karl Gustav Carus (January 3, 1789, Leipzig - July 28, 1869, Dresden) was a German physician, philosopher, psychologist, and artist. He inherited his father's common sense and his mother's inclination towards poetry. Until the age of 15, Carus attended Thomas's School, then Leipzig University, where he studied medicine and earned his medical degree in 1811. He defended his dissertation to become an associate professor. In 1811, he began giving lectures on comparative anatomy at Leipzig University. In 1813, he became the director of the French Hospital in Pfaffendorf near Leipzig. However, due to financial difficulties after a few years of medical practice, Carus was forced to take up a government position. Since 1814, he has been a professor of women's diseases at the Saxon Medical Surgical Academy and the director of the maternity hospital in Dresden. During this time, he wrote his textbook on gynecology ("Lehrbuch der Gynakologie," 1820). From 1827 onwards, he served as the court physician and medical advisor to the royal family, and he traveled extensively. His circle of acquaintances included A. Humboldt, A. Thiek, and C.D. Friedrich. He began corresponding with J.W. Goethe in 1818, and in 1821, he visited him in Weimar and became his friend and like-minded individual. In 1862, Carus was elected president of the Leopoldina, the German Academy of Naturalists, and became a foreign corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1833.
Contributions and Philosophical Views
Carus was the first to engage in comparative anatomy in Germany, and later, comparative psychology, where he focused on describing the behavior of different animal species in his work "Comparative Psychology or the History of the Development of the Soul in Different Stages of the Animal World" (1867). He discovered the circulation of blood in insects in his work "Uber den Blutkreislauf der Insekten" (1827). Carus was influenced by Fichte's system, particularly in its anthropological part, and he shared Goethe's idea of the animation of nature, believing that everything in nature is reflected in everything else. He aimed to create a comprehensive picture of existence as the development of internal meaning, where the cosmos is not simply a mechanism but an organism. Based on Aristotle's teachings, Carus interpreted the soul as a purely ideal and immortal life center, which serves as a condition for all existence and development. According to him, there is no separation between "living" and "dead" matter, and if the idea lies in each nerve cell as a preliminary condition, the accumulation of cells also leads to the accumulation of the ideal aspect of the organism. In his work "Psyche, zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Seele, Darmstadt" (1846), he was one of the first to establish the existence of the unconscious based on this unity of body and soul.
Carus believed that the body is the soul but on an unconscious level, and illness is a disruption of the unity of body and soul. He believed that the soul is connected to both the animal and the plant world. His ideas on the "physiognomy of nature" were further developed in L. Klages' concept of direct "physiognomic observation" of life itself and the destruction of the "unconscious cosmic rhythm of nature by the human spirit." Carus was particularly interested in the specific material characteristics that can be used to judge mental powers ("Symbolik der menschlichen Gestalt," 1853). He attempted to modify Gall's phrenological doctrine based on data on the evolutionary development of the nervous system ("Foundations of Cranioscopy," 1844).
As an artist, Carus expressed his artistic nature not only in his symbolic psychology but also in his artwork. He created a series of landscape paintings influenced by the school of C.D. Friedrich. He also engraved his own anatomical works. Carus was also known as an aesthete and art critic ("Neue Briefe uber Landschaftsmalerei," 1831).
