Christoph August Heumann

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Christoph August Heumann, around 1730

Christoph August Heumann (born August 3, 1681 in Allstedt ; † May 1, 1764 in Göttingen ) was an Evangelical Lutheran theologian and polyhistor during the Enlightenment. He made a name for himself as a pioneer of an evangelical union and contributed significantly to a new way of looking at the history of philosophy .

Church historical circumstances

It is the age of the Enlightenment and a Descartes-based scientific discipline in the history of philosophy developed in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Life

Christoph August Heumann came from a family of pastors in Thuringia. He studied theology and philosophy in Jena from 1699 to 1702, some of which was self-taught. After obtaining his master's degree (dissertation “De duellis principum”) he held philosophical lectures there from 1702 and preached in the university church. An educational trip, of which he reports in a travel diary, took him through Germany and the Netherlands in 1705 and brought him together with well-known personalities from science (including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz ).

Title page Collegium Juris Naturae

In 1709 he went to Eisenach as inspector of the theological seminary and collaborator of the grammar school. There he held lectures on philosophy, exegesis and rhetoric. He also held lectures in Jena. An example of this is a handwritten but not yet scientifically assessed lecture on natural law (Collegium juris naturae) . In 1717, Heumann took over the position of inspector at the Göttingen grammar school offered him by the magistrate rather reluctantly, where he proved to be a very hard-working scientist, original teacher and organizer. At the flourishing school he introduced modern school rules that were appropriate to the time requirements (1728) and placed particular emphasis on classical education, the study of history and the cultivation of the German language. He received his doctorate in Helmstedt in 1728 with the dissertation on the superstition of the cult of relics "Disputatio de superstitione verae fidei innocue admixta" for Dr. theol.

Academic appointments to Helmstedt, Jena and Ansbach followed, which Heumann turned down in favor of Göttingen.

In Göttingen , Heumann initially taught as a full professor of literary history at the Faculty of Philosophy and, contrary to his expectations, initially only as an associate professor - but from 1745 also as a full professor - at the theological faculty.

Heumann distinguished himself in particular through his turn to the reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper, which was very controversial at the time. The result was his early retirement in 1758 as full professor. However, he was allowed to teach in other faculties, such as the Philosophical Faculty.

Christoph August Heumann is considered one of the most important and versatile German scholars of the first half of the 18th century. Regardless of his tactics and polemics, his behavior in the Last Supper controversy shows him as a representative of consistent theological freedom of teaching and as a pioneer of an evangelical union that critically examines and overcomes the disputes of the 16th century.

Heumann is also seen as a co-founder of a new view of the history of philosophy during the Enlightenment and is considered to be an example of the depotentiation of the Christian worldview and its historical assumptions regarding the origin of learned knowledge. He postulated that philosophy has to be based on indubitable facts. The history of philosophy takes on the new function of a cultural-historical investigation into the social conditions of learned existence.

About the work

From Christoph August Heumann's widely diversified and well-founded theological, philosophical, historical and philological skills, a total of around 400 writings emerged: compilations from almost all areas of humanities, theological, ethical and philosophical writings, exegetical works, literary-historical treatises, contributions and biographies of scholars , philological and historical studies, works on Roman authors and church fathers including text editions and translations.

Christoph August Heumann's estate is kept in the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library .

Works (excerpt)

  • Acta philosophorum , That is, Thorough news from the Historia Philosophica, together with appended judgments from the old and new books belonging to it . Renger, Halle, 1715–1727 (18 issues), reprint Bristol 1997 ( Google Books )
  • Housekeeping. Frankfurt & Leipzig, 3rd ed. 1724. Again in Andrea van Dülmen, ed .: Women's life in the 18th century. Anthology. Book guild Gutenberg , Frankfurt 1992 ISBN 3763241248 p. 36f.

Others

In 1739, the prorector Heumann awarded the poet Anna Margareta Pfeffer the diploma .

literature

Web links

Commons : Christoph August Heumann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Collegium Juris Naturae a Domino M. Christophoro Augusto Heumanno . Jena 1713.
  2. ^ Franz M. Wimmer: Intercultural Philosophy - History and Theory (PDF; 844 kB). 2nd revised edition, INTERNET EDITION, Vienna 2001
  3. ↑ from: The political philosophy. That is, Reasonable Instruction to Wisdom (sic) In Common Life.
  4. ^ Wilhelm Ebel : Eleven studies on the social history of the university , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1969, p. 32f .; online through google books
personal data
SURNAME Heumann, Christoph August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Evangelical Lutheran theologian and polyhistor
DATE OF BIRTH August 3, 1681
PLACE OF BIRTH Allstedt
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 1764
Place of death Goettingen