Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Chair for the History of Science

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Vita

Since 2022, Léna Pican has been a doctoral candidate at the EHESS (Law, Political Science, Philosophy), where she is supervised by Prof. Dr. Catherine König-Pralong.

After a three-year exchange at DePaul University in Chicago, she obtained a double Bachelor's degree in Philosophy at the Université de Paris IV/Sciences Po (2019), then a double Master's degree in Social and Political Philosophy and Public Affairs, Social Policy and Social Innovation (2020), and finally her Agrégation externe in Philosophy (2022).

From July to December 2024, Léna Pican is a visiting scholar at the Chair for the History of Science at the HU as part of a DAAD research fellowship. She is working on her dissertation, a comparative study of the use of visual material by three scholars of the late Enlightenment (Goethe, Basedow, Lavater).

Research Project

My dissertation examines the use of the image in the works of three late Enlightenment scholars: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), particularly in his research on botany and comparative anatomy; the philanthropist and educator Johann Bernhard Basedow (1724-1790), an advocate of sensual education; and the Swiss pastor Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801), the founder of physiognomics, the study of the moral qualities of individuals based on their physical features. Moreover, the image is seen not only as a central element in the work of these three figures but also as a tool for understanding the underlying forms of sociability. The analysis is therefore not limited to the published works but also extends beyond the correspondence to the networks of illustrators who sometimes worked with these personalities at the same time, such as Daniel Chodowiecki (1726-1801) or Johann Rudolf Schellenberg (1740-1806).