November 30, 1969
Christian von Ehrenfels (20 June 1859 – 8 September 1932)[1] was an Austrian philosopher, and is known as one of the founders and precursors of Gestalt psychology.
He studied philosophy University of Vienna, where he was a pupil of Franz Brentano and Alexius Meinong. From 1896 to 1929 he was a professor of philosophy at the German University of Prague, where his lectures were attended by Max Brod, Franz Kafka, and Felix Weltsch, among others. .
The concept of Gestalt itself was first introduced in contemporary philosophy and psychology by Ehrenfels in his 1890 work Über Gestaltqualitäten (On the Qualities of Form). Both he and Edmund Husserl seem to have been inspired by Mach’s 1886 work Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen (Contributions to the Analysis of the Sensations) to formulate their similar concepts of Gestalt and Figural Moment.. Ehrenfels’ Gestaltqualitaten also influenced Stephan Witasek’s investigations on complexion theory.[2]
In the seminar of 30 November 1969, Deleuze briefly refers to Ehrenfel’s concept of “Gestalt qualities.” Ehrenfels had argued that while a melody consists of individual sounds, it is considerably more than the sum of these notes. The individual notes would be able to join themselves for completely different melodies, while the melody would remain the same, if transposed into another key and containing single tones. Ehrenfels termed such “perceptions of the whole,” as being more than a sum of its parts, Gestaltqualitäten (Gestalt qualities).