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, the Thomasschule in Leipzig and at the gymnasium in Gera.[3] Afterwards, he studied at the University of Leipzig, where in 1770 he became an associate professor of medicine. Later at Leipzig, he was appointed a full professor of physiology (1780) and philosophy (1811). In 1783/84 and 1789/90 he served as university rector.[3]
Platner was a follower of the teachings of Leibniz. 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, Friedrich Schiller 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.[4]
Platner is credited with originally coining the term Unbewußtseyn (unconscious).[5] He is also credited for coining the phrase "pragmatic history of the human faculty of cognition" (pragmatische Geschichte des menschlichen Erkentnißvermogens),[6] later appropriated by Johann Gottlieb Fichte as "pragmatic history of the human spirit" (pragmatische Geschichte des menschlichen Geistes).[7]
Anthropologie für Aerzte und Weltweise (Anthropology for physicians and the worldwise), 1772
Neue Anthropologie für Aerzte und Weltweise (New anthropology for physicians and the worldwise), 1790
Über den Atheismus. Ein Gespräch (About atheism, an interview), 1783
Philosophische Aphorismen nebst einigen Anleitungen zur philosophischen Geschichte (Philosophical aphorisms with some principles for a history of philosophy), Vol. 1: 1776, Vol. 2: 1782
Quaestiones physiologicae (Questions of physiology), 1794
Quaestiones medicinae forensis (Questions of forensic medicine), 1797–1817
^Ernst Platner, Philosophische Aphorismen nebst einigen Anleitungen zur philosophischen Geschichte, Vol. 1 (Leipzig: Schwickertscher Verlag, 1793 [1776]), p. 9.
^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 (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.
This article incorporates translated text from an article at the German Wikipedia, whose sources include: Plat(t)ner, ErnstatNDB/ADB Deutsche Biographie.
