From Atheists to Empiricists: Reinterpreting the Stoics in the German Enlightenment

From the 1670s Stoic philosophy had been closely associated with atheism and of Baruch Spinoza. However, in 1771 historian Christoph Meiners published a short essay on concept apatheia that revived interest within German lands. Over following years, he his colleague Dieterich Tiedemann developed novel interpretation claiming Stoicism prefigured John Locke represented source valuable philosophical ideas. Immanuel Kant, allies, later Idealists such as Hegel adopted this empiricist interpretation, despite their otherwise deep disagreements Tiedemann. Tracing eighteenth-century debates around reveals how it came to be considered form empiricism. As well contributing recent scholarship reception Stoicism, article suggests major point intersection between currents Enlightenment usually only treated separately.