Abstract

Johann Gottlob Krüger’s Experimental psychology is commonly considered as one of the first empirical anthropologies in the German-speaking space. On closer examination, however, the foundations of his psychology appear to be both Wolffian rationalism and an epistemological empiricism of Lockean origins. His methodical conception of experimentalism, thus, expands Wolffian empirical psychology. On this basis, Krüger also supplies a quite precarious defence of materialism, and a view of experiments on humans that conflicts radically with present standards.