Johann Thomas Freilius

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Johann Thomas Freilius , also Frey or Frigius, (* 1543 in Freiburg i. Br. , † January 16, 1583 in Basel ) was a German philosopher of late scholasticism who increasingly oriented itself towards Petrus Ramus and came into conflict with the authority of the church . Liberius taught and wrote across multiple disciplines. He coined the term psychology .

Life

Liberius studied in Freiburg in the artist faculty , d. H. in undergraduate studies before the higher faculties, and received his master's degree in 1559 . He was said to have a violent temperament and a lack of adjustment. After his employment in the fields of dialectics , Latin grammar and jurisprudence he did not seem to have adhered to the prescribed curriculum and refused to take the oath on the Tridentinum , the decrees of the Council in Trent , which was required at the time. So in 1567 he moved to Basel , where he taught rhetoric and obtained a doctorate in law. Here he met Petrus Ramus and became his follower. Since 1570 back in Freiburg as an associate professor of dialectics and politics, he received the professorship of ethics in 1571 and that of Organon in 1573 , d. H. for the logical writings of Aristotle. Because of his veneration of Ramus, who had died on St. Bartholomew's Night in 1572 , Liberius was seen as a possible Huguenot or Calvinist , which, among other reasons, brought him into conflict with the university administration and church authority. In 1575, the university's senate passed a teaching ban. Liberius moved back to Basel. From 1576 to 1582 he was rector of the high school in Altdorf . He then moved back to Basel, worked as a proofreader in Sebastian Henricpetri 's printing works and died of the plague in 1583.

plant

Aristotelianism and Ramism

A central project of Ramism was to subdivide the various branches of science according to the dialectical method. H. to work out a comprehensive classification and order of knowledge based on opposites. Most of the publications by Freiius serve this goal. Under the influence of Ramus, the areas of interest expanded: from dialectics, rhetoric, and philology to mathematics, natural sciences and jurisprudence. The formalism of the scholastic-deductive way of thinking can be recognized by the schematic structure of the material; it is the didactics of the textbooks of the time. Liberius edited writings by Peter Ramus and wrote a Vita Rami .

psychology

In his Quaestiones εωθιναι και δειλιναι seu logicae et ethicae (Basel 1574) the word psychologia appears for the first time in a printed book. Liberius is very likely to have known the book by another Freiburg scholar, Gregor Reisch (1470–1525), well. Its Margarita philosophica , the pearl of philosophy, is considered to be the oldest printed encyclopedia in Germany (Freiburg, 1503). Compared to Liberius, it contains a more differentiated classification (philosophy partitio) and on more than 130 printed pages (Liber IX to XI) topics that are now part of psychology. The soul faculties are divided according to the triad: De potentiis animae vegetativae (sensitivae, intellectivae) ; related psychological topics appear in the chapter De origine rerum naturalium as well as in moral philosophy . A comparative study of the contents and the classification by Liberius and Reisch is pending.

Fonts (selection)

Partitiones iuris utriusque , 1571
  • Trium artium logicarum schematismi. 1568.
  • Partitiones iuris utriusque ( la ). Sixtus Henricpetri, Basel 1571.
  • Quaestiones εωθιναι και δειλιναι seu logicae et ethicae. Basel 1574.
  • Ciceronianus. 1575.
  • Quaestiones physicae. 1576.
  • Quaestiones oeconomicae et politicae. 1578.
  • Rhetorica, poetica, logica in usum rudiorum. 1580.
  • Grammatica Graeca and Latina. 1580.
  • Quaestiones geometricae. 1583.

literature

  • R. Luccio: Psychologia - the birth of a new scientific context. In: Review of Psychology. Vol. 20, 2013, pp. 5-14.
  • W. Schönpflug: History and systematics of psychology. 3. Edition. Beltz-Verlag, Weinheim 2013.
  • Roderich von Stintzing:  Freiius, Johann Thomas . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, pp. 341-343.
  • GA Ungerer, WG Bringmann: Psichiologia, ψυχολογία, Psychology. In: WG Bringmann, HE Lück, R. Miller, Ch. E. Early (eds.): A pictorial history of psychology. Quintessence Press, Chicago 1997, pp. 13-18.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Roderich von Stintzing:  Freiius, Johann Thomas . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, pp. 341-343.
  2. ↑ In the history of science, psychologia is occasionally attributed to Marcus Marulus , a poet and humanist who lived in Split (present-day Croatia) around 1450-1524, but only one book title has survived and a primary source has not been preserved, see Luccio, 2013 .
personal data
SURNAME Liberius, Johann Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher of late scholasticism
DATE OF BIRTH 1543
PLACE OF BIRTH Freiburg in Breisgau
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 1583
Place of death Basel