Late Ancient Platonism in Eighteenth-Century German Thought

Springer Verlag (2019)
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Abstract

This work synthesizes work previously published in leading journals in the field into a coherent narrative that has a distinctive focus on Germany while also being aware of a broader European dimension. It argues that the German Lutheran Christoph August Heumann marginalized the biographical approach to past philosophy and paved the way for the German Lutheran Johann Jacob Brucker’s influential method for the writing of past philosophy, centred on depersonalised and abstract systems of philosophy. The work offers an authoritative and engaging account of how late ancient Platonism, Plotinus in particular, was interpreted in eighteenth-century Germany according to these new precepts. Moreover, it reveals the Lutheran religious assumptions of this new approach to past philosophy, which underpinned the works of Heumann and Brucker, but also influential reviews that rejected the English Plato translator Thomas Taylor and his understanding and evaluation of late ancient Platonism.

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9783030205102   303020510X   3030205134

DOI

10.1007/978-3-030-20511-9
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Correction to: Late Ancient Platonism in Eighteenth-Century German Thought

This book was inadvertently published with an incorrect title and author name on the series page. It should be “Late Ancient Platonism in Eighteenth-Century German Thought” and “Leo Catana”.

Afterword. Schleiermacher and Modern Plato Scholarship

This chapter asks if and how the eighteenth-century German reception of late ancient Platonism had any impact upon German nineteenth-century Plato scholarship, in particular that of the classical philologist and theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher , who is often seen as the first modern Plato interp... see more

Thomas Taylor’s Dissent from Some Eighteenth-Century Views on Platonic Philosophy: The Ethical and Theological Context

Thomas Taylor’s interpretation of Plato’s works in 1804 was condemned as guilty by association immediately after its publication. Taylor’s 1804 and 1809 reviewer thus made a hasty generalisation in which the qualities of Neoplatonism, assumed to be negative, were transferred to Taylor’s own interpre... see more

Changing Interpretations of Plotinus: The Eighteenth-Century Introduction of the Concept of a ‘System of Philosophy’

This chapter critically explores the history and nature of a hermeneutic assumption which frequently guided interpretations of Plotinus from the eighteenth century onwards, namely that Plotinus advanced a system of philosophy. It is argued that this assumption was introduced relatively late, in the ... see more

The Origin of the Division Between Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism

The division of Ancient Platonism into Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism is a fairly new one. The conceptual foundation of this division was cemented in Jacob Brucker’s pioneering Historia critica philosophiae . In the 1770s and 1780s, the term ‘Neoplatonism’ was coined on the basis of Brucker’s ana... see more

From persona to systema: Heumann’s Dethronement of Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus and the Biographical Model for Writing the History of Philosophy

This chapter outlines the historical context of the eighteenth-century German reinterpretation of ancient Platonism. It does so by pointing out the intersection of four disciplines in that century, namely history, philology, theology and history of philosophy. One key figure in that context was Chri... see more

The German Enlightenment: Modern Interpretations

This chapter presents and discusses interpretations of German Enlightenment thought advanced over the last hundred years, notably those current in contemporary scholarship. It discusses whether it is possible to determine the period in an essentialist manner, valid to the European Enlightenment, or ... see more

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Leo Catana
University of Copenhagen

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