Anima Mundi

Introduction. The concept of the soul of the world of Plato ; The concept of the soul of the world of Plotinus ; The major difference between the Classical and early modern conceptions of the world soul ; The chief objective and the structural outline of the enquiry ; Thematic limitations and terminology -- Opposition to the identification of the world soul with God in the Philosophia Leibnitio-Wolffiana : the theory of God as the "ens extramundanum". Presentation of the texts relevant for the concept of an anima mundi : the immediate natural theological setting of the problem ; The distinctive philosophical content of the concept of an "anima mundi" in Leibniz and his followers : arguments of this school against the general theory of anima mundi : a broader natural philosophical and metaphysical discussion of their answer positions -- "Les Naturalistes" : eighteenth-century physico-theology : the scientific demonstration of the existence and attributes of God from the teleology of nature : the world soul theory in physico-theology : physico-theology as a source of inspiration for the early German romantics. Preliminary historical and conceptual presentation of "L'Histoire naturelle" in selected major works of some leading naturalists : the relation of natural science to theology or spirituality in their works ; General philosophical analysis of physico-theology -- Gradual rise of the concept of a world soul in the "Lessingzeit" : philosophical Cabbala, Spinozism and mysticism : B??hme and ??tinger : Spinoza, Lessing and the Pantheismus-Streit : Giordano Bruno's Influence in the epoch. B??hme's speculative theology (De signatura rerum, 1622) : ??tinger's Cabbalistic theory of the world as a glorious divine epiphany of Shekhin?? : an his problematic rejection of the concept of Weltseele (Offentliches Denckmahl der Lehrtafel einer- Prinzessin Antonia, 1763) ; The philosophical incompatibility of Spinoza's system with the world soul theory : Bayle's identification of Spinozism with the world soul theory, and Wachter's denial of the same : Lessing's statement concerning the world soul, and his alleged Spinozism in Jacobi's Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza (1785), Mendelssohn's Morgenstunden (1785), and Herder's Gott : Einige Gespr??che (1787), Herder's rejection of the identification of God with the Weltseele ; The world soul in Giordano Bruno's De la causa, principio et uno (1584) and De l'infinito, universo e mondi (1584) : the revival of Bruno's philosophy in late eighteenth to early nineteenth-century German thought -- The philosophical postulation of the world soul in early German Romanticism. The world soul in Baader's and Schelling's conceptions.