Jakob Thomasius



Jakob Thomasius (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:

"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 Gnosticism, plagiarism and the education of women.

He was the teacher of Gottfried Leibniz at the 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 Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise. In Academic study of Western esotericism Thomasius is sometimes accredited as an intellectual watershed leading to the demise of the previously hegemonic Prisca theologia.