Christian Thomasius was a philosopher and jurist and the first important thinker of the German Enlightenment. He was born in Leipzig, the son of the Aristotelian philosopher Jakob Thomasius, who had been a teacher of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Christian, after studying philosophy and law at the universities of Leipzig and Frankfurt an der Oder, began lecturing at Leipzig in 1682. His theological enemies forced him to move in 1690 to the Ritterakademie in Halle. He helped to found the University of Halle, became professor of law there in 1694, and later was Geheimrat (privy counselor) and rector of the university.

Law and Theology

Thomasius followed his father, as well as Hugo Grotius and Samuel von Pufendorf, in the study of natural law. He sought a foundation for law, independent of theology, in man's natural reason. Like Pufendorf he opposed the orthodox Lutheran view that revelation is the...