Jakob Thomasius

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Jakob Thomasius
Gottfried Leibniz
Notes
He was the father of Christian Thomasius and the brother of Johann Thomasius.
Dissertation about plagiarism at Leipzig University (1679) with Thomasius as praeses

Jakob Thomasius (

Latin: Jacobus Thomasius; 27 August 1622 – 9 September 1684) was a German academic philosopher and jurist. He is now regarded as an important founding figure in the scholarly study of the history of philosophy. His views were eclectic, and were taken up by his son Christian Thomasius
.

Work

Thomasius was influential in the contemporary realignment of philosophy as a discipline. Martin Mulsow writes:[1]

According to Thomasius’ “Schediasma historicum” of 1665, from a theological point of view, philosophy needed to guarantee a clear separation of Creator from Creation, of God from Nature. It should thus only spring from Christian Aristotelianism, not from Stoicism or Neoplatonism.

He wrote on a wide range of topics, including

education of women
.

He was the teacher of

University of Leipzig
, where Thomasius was professor of Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, remaining a friend and correspondent up until the early 1670s, and has been described as Leibniz's mentor.

He is perhaps best remembered now as the author of the first published attack on

Theological-Political Treatise.[2][3] In Academic study of Western esotericism Thomasius is sometimes accredited as an intellectual watershed leading to the demise of the previously hegemonic Prisca theologia.[4]

Bibliography

  • Philosophia practica (1661)
  • Schediasma historicum (1665)
  • De foeminarum eruditione (1671) with Johannes Sauerbrei and Jacobus Smalcius
  • Praefationes sub auspicia disputationum suarum (1681)
  • Dissertationes ad stoicae philosophiae (1682)
  • Orationes (1683)

Notes

  1. ^ M. Mulsow, "Practices of Unmasking" Archived 2007-06-26 at the Wayback Machine, p. 5.
  2. S2CID 158911919
    .
  3. .
  4. ^ Hanegraaff, Wouter (2012). Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521196215.

Further reading

  • Richard Sachse, Das Tagebuch des Rectors Jakob Thomasius, Leipzig 1894.

External links