Jakob Thomasius

Jakob Thomasius was a German philosopher and jurist of Leipzig, born in 1622, who served as rector of the Old St Nicholas School from 1670 to 1676 and as professor of rhetoric and moral philosophy at the university. He is now regarded as an important founding figure in the scholarly study of the history of philosophy, and his own views were eclectic. In his Schediasma historicum of 1665 he held that philosophy, seen from a theological point of view, should spring from Christian Aristotelianism and not from Stoicism or Neoplatonism. He wrote on Gnosticism, plagiarism and the education of women, taught Gottfried Leibniz, who counted him a mentor, wrote the first published attack on Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise, and was the father of the philosopher Christian Thomasius.