Late Ancient Platonism in Eighteenth-Century German Thought

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. The German Enlightenment: Modern Interpretations

   • Leo Catana

   Pages 1-19

3. 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

4. The Origin of the Division Between Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism

   • Leo Catana

   Pages 65-94

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

   • Leo Catana

   Pages 95-132

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

   • Leo Catana

   Pages 133-163

7. Afterword. Schleiermacher and Modern Plato Scholarship

   • Leo Catana

   Pages 165-169

8. Correction to: Late Ancient Platonism in Eighteenth-Century German Thought

   • Leo Catana

   Pages C1-C1

9. Back Matter

   Pages 171-175

   PDF

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.

• Eighteenth Century Philosophy and Theology
• Thomas Taylor’s Dissent
• Middle Platonism
• Dethronement of Porphyry’s Vita Plotini
• Late Ancient Platonism
• Age of Reason
• Heumann’s Dethronement of Porphyry’s Vita Plotini
• Biographical Model in History of Philosophy
• Division between Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism
• Views on Platonic Philosophy

• Division of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

  Leo Catana

Dr Leo Catana is associate professor in Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen, where he works on ancient Greek and Renaissance philosophy. His main interests within these two periods concern ethics and political thought, especially within the tradition of Platonism and the way in which it has been understood and evaluated in the course of history. He is member of the editorial committee of the Classica et Mediaevalia, and he is co-organizing The Copenhagen Intellectual History seminar.

Policies and ethics