Ernst Platner
Ernst Platner (* June 11, 1744 in Leipzig, † December 27, 1818 in Leipzig) was a German physician and philosopher and co-founder of anthropology as a medical- philosophical science, the forerunner of psychosomatic medicine.
Ernst Platner studied at the St. Thomas School in Leipzig. After the death of his father was Johann August Ernesti his foster father. He studied from 1762 to 1766 medicine at the University of Leipzig. He received his doctorate in 1770 for Dr. med and in 1770 associate professor of medicine. In 1780 he became a full professor of physiology, 1801 and 1811 associate professor of philosophy. Ernst Platner was a philosopher followers of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and opponents of Immanuel Kant, with whom he like Moses Mendelssohn was in close contact.
His main work anthropology for doctors and world fashion had an impact on Johann Gottfried von Herder, Friedrich Schiller and Karl Philipp Moritz and is considered one of the most important anthropological works of the late Enlightenment.
In 1781 he was in public dispute with Johann Karl Wezel.
He was several times rector of the University of Leipzig and since 1808 a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences
Works
- Anthropology for doctors and world fashion. Leipzig 1772
- New Anthropology for doctors and world fashion. Leipzig 1790
- About atheism. A conversation. Leipzig 1783
- Philosophical Aphorisms. First Part of Leipzig in 1776; Second Part Leipzig 1782
- Quaestiones physio logicae. Leipzig 1794
- Quaestiones medicinae forensis. Leipzig 1797-1817