Ernst Platner (; ; 11 June 1744 – 27 December 1818) was a German

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms an ...

, physician and Rationalist

Frederick Beiser Frederick Charles Beiser (; born November 27, 1949) is an American philosopher who is professor of philosophy at Syracuse University. He is one of the leading English-language scholars of German idealism. In addition to his writings on German id ...

, ''The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte'', Harvard University Press, 2009, p. 214.

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

, born in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

. He was the father of painter Ernst Zacharias Platner (1773–1855).

Life

Following the death of his father in 1747, the philologist Johann August Ernesti became his foster father. He received his early education at the gymnasium in

Altenburg Altenburg () is a city in Thuringia, Germany, located south of Leipzig, west of Dresden and east of Erfurt. It is the capital of the Altenburger Land district and part of a polycentric old-industrial textile and metal production region ...

, the Thomasschule in Leipzig and at the gymnasium in

Gera Gera is a city in the German state of Thuringia. With around 93,000 inhabitants, it is the third-largest city in Thuringia after Erfurt and Jena as well as the easternmost city of the ''Thüringer Städtekette'', an almost straight string of cit ...

.Prof. Dr. med. Ernst Platner
Professorenkatalog der Universität Leipzig Afterwards, he studied at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decem ...

, where in 1770 he became an associate professor of medicine. Later at Leipzig, he was appointed a full professor of

physiology Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemica ...

(1780) and philosophy (1811). In 1783/84 and 1789/90 he served as university rector.

Work

Platner was a follower of the teachings of

Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mat ...

. He was the author of ''Anthropologie für Aerzte und Weltweise'', one of the more important anthropological works of the ''Spätaufklärung'' (an epoch of German literature). This work was influential to scholars that included

Johann Gottfried Herder Johann Gottfried von Herder ( , ; 25 August 174418 December 1803) was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the Enlightenment, '' Sturm und Drang'', and Weimar Classicism. Biography Born in Mohru ...

Friedrich Schiller Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friendsh ...

and Karl Philipp Moritz. He believed in treating modern anthropology as a medical-philosophical science of the whole individual — a viewpoint that can be considered as a precursor of psychosomatic medicine. Platner is credited with originally coining the term ''Unbewußtseyn'' ( unconscious). He is also credited for coining the phrase "pragmatic history of the human faculty of cognition" (''pragmatische Geschichte des menschlichen Erkentnißvermogens''), later appropriated by

Johann Gottlieb Fichte Johann Gottlieb Fichte (; ; 19 May 1762 – 29 January 1814) was a German philosopher who became a founding figure of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, which developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Ka ...

as "pragmatic history of the human spirit" (''pragmatische Geschichte des menschlichen Geistes'').''Gesamtausgabe'' I/2: 364–65; Daniel Breazeale, "Fichte's Conception of Philosophy as a "Pragmatic History of the Human Mind" and the Contributions of Kant, Platner, and Maimon," ''Journal of the History of Ideas'', 62(4), Oct. 2001, pp. 685–703; Günter Zöller, ''Fichte's Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 130 n. 30; Sally Sedgwick, ''The Reception of Kant's Critical Philosophy: Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 144 n. 33; Daniel Breazeale and

Tom Rockmore Tom Rockmore (born 1942) is an American philosopher. Although he denies the usual distinction between philosophy and the history of philosophy, he has strong interests throughout the history of philosophy and defends a constructivist view of epi ...

(eds.), ''Fichte, German Idealism, and Early Romanticism'', Rodopi, 2010, p. 50 n. 27: "Α »history of the human mind« is a ''genetic'' account of the self-constitution of the I in the form of an ordered ''description'' of the various acts of thinking that are presupposed by the act of thinking the I"; Ezequiel L. Posesorski, ''Between Reinhold and Fichte: August Ludwig Hülsen's Contribution to the Emergence of German Idealism''. Karlsruhe: Karlsruher Institut Für Technologie, 2012, p. 81: "''Pragmatische Geschichte des menschlichen Geistes'' designates reason's timeless course of production of the different levels of the ''a priori'' system of all knowledge, which are exclusively uncovered and portrayed genetically by personal self-conscious reflection"; Daniel Breazeale, ''Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre: Themes from Fichte's Early Philosophy'', Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013, p. 72.

Selected publications

* ''Anthropologie für Aerzte und Weltweise'' (Anthropology for physicians and the worldwise), 1772 * ''Neue Anthropologie für Aerzte