Johann Heinrich Samuel Formey

Johann Heinrich Samuel Formey (31 May 1711 – 7 March 1797) was a German author who wrote in the French language.

Life

Formey was born in Berlin, Brandenburg, as the son of immigrant Huguenots. He was educated for the ministry, and at the age of twenty became pastor of the French church at Brandenburg. Having in 1736 accepted the invitation of a congregation in Berlin, he was in the following year chosen professor of rhetoric in the French college of that city and in 1739 professor of philosophy. On the reorganization of the academy of Berlin in 1744 he was named a member, and in 1748 became its perpetual secretary. He died at Berlin.

Works

Formey's principal works are "La Belle Wolfienne" (1741-1750), a kind of novel written with the view of enforcing the precepts of the Wolfian philosophy; "Bibliothque critique, ou memoires pour servir a l'histoire littraire ancienne et moderne" (1746); "Le Philosophic chrétien" (1740); "L'Emile chrétien" (1764), intended as an answer to the "Emile" of Rousseau; and "Souvenirs d'un citoyen" (Berlin, 1789). He also published an immense number of contemporary memoirs in the transactions of the Berlin Academy.

Besides his activities as a journalist or editor, he contributed to the French "Encyclopédie".

Publications

*"Essai sur les songes" (1746)
*"De l’obligation de se procurer toutes les commodités de la vie" (1750)
*"De la conscience" (1751)
*"De l’étendue de l’imagination" (1754)
*"Sur les allégories philosophiques" (1755)
*"Sur l’origine du langage, des idées et des connaissances humaines" (1759)
*"Sur le goût" (1760)
*"Sur les spectacles" (1761)
*"Sur l’influence de l’âme sur le corps" (1764)
*"Considérations sur ce qu’on peut regarder aujourd’hui comme le but principal des académies et comme leur but le plus avantageux" (1767-1768)
*"Sur la culture de l’entendement" (1769)
*"Considérations sur l’Encyclopédie française" (1770)
*"Éloge de J.-B. Boyer, marquis d’Argens" (1771)
*"Discours sur la question : Pourquoi tant de personnes ont si peu de goût ou même un si grand éloignement pour tout ce qui demande l’exercice des facultés intellectuelles" (1772)
*"Sur la physiognomie (1775)
*"Examen de la question : Si toutes les vérités sont bonnes à dire" (1777)
*"Sur quelques anciennes procédures contre les magiciens" (1778)
*"Éloge de Sulzer" (1779)
*"Éloge de Cochius" (1780)
*"Éloge de Beguelin" (1788 et 89)
*"Sur les rapports entre le savoir, l’esprit, le génie et le goût" (1788-89)
*"Sur le fanatisme" (1792-93)

References

*1911