Late Ancient Platonism in Eighteenth-Century German Thought

Description

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 (1681-1764) marginalized the biographical approach to past philosophy and paved the way for the German Lutheran Johann Jacob Brucker’s (1696-1770) 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 (1758-1835) and his understanding and evaluation of late ancient Platonism. Front Matter ....Pages i-ix The German Enlightenment: Modern Interpretations (Leo Catana)....Pages 1-19 From persona to systema: Heumann’s Dethronement of Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus and the Biographical Model for Writing the History of Philosophy (Leo Catana)....Pages 21-64 The Origin of the Division Between Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism (Leo Catana)....Pages 65-94 Changing Interpretations of Plotinus: The Eighteenth-Century Introduction of the Concept of a ‘System of Philosophy’ (Leo Catana)....Pages 95-132 Thomas Taylor’s Dissent from Some Eighteenth-Century Views on Platonic Philosophy: The Ethical and Theological Context (Leo Catana)....Pages 133-163 Afterword. Schleiermacher and Modern Plato Scholarship (Leo Catana)....Pages 165-169 Correction to: Late Ancient Platonism in Eighteenth-Century German Thought (Leo Catana)....Pages C1-C1 Back Matter ....Pages 171-175