A Philosophy of the Patriarchs?: The Agenda behind Christoph August Heumann’s Acta Philosophorum

The article explores the relation in the German Early Enlightenment between philosophy and theosophical knowledge—more precisely, between rationalistic philosophy, “perennial philosophy,” and pristine knowledge—through the prism of Christoph August Heumann’s renowned “Acta Philosophorum.” The work, dedicated to a philosophical history of philosophy, harbors two hitherto unexplored agendas—the rejection of perennial knowledge as philosophy, and the depiction of the Hebrews as non-philosophers. Heumann’s use of unphilosophical arguments in his refutation of perennial knowledge renders his project problematic from a philosophical perspective and calls for a re-evaluation of the mechanism behind the paradigm-change his work promotes.