Philosophical Aspects of Philipp Melanchthon’s Œuvre
Der Philosoph Melanchthon, ed. G. Frank and F. Mundt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), ISBN
978-3-11-026098-4, e-ISBN 978-3-11-026099-1, pp. 241
Sandra DRAGOMIR
The purpose of the collective volume “Der Philosoph Melanchthon” edited by Günter Frank and Felix Mundt is to move the famous Reformer Philipp Melanchthon in the focus of research qua philosopher. The philosophical aspects of Melanchthon’s work and thought have been almost entirely passed over by scholars of philosophy and intellectual history in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is commonly accepted among Reformation scholars that the theologian Melanchthon can only be properly understood in his influential role as Lutheran Reformer when set against his philological and philosophical educational background. Nevertheless, the unprecedented approach that regards Melanchthon primarily as an important and independent character of the history of philosophy leads, as this volume endorses, to partially new and surprising insights into the philosophical premises of his humanistic and theological achievements. Therefore, the authors that contributed to this groundbreaking volume try to illustrate the numerous fields of interest that make up Melanchthon’s extensive work, by tackling the relevance of ethics and philosophy for the Wittenberg Reformer and addressing topics such as anthropology, philosophy of law and free-will debates, all taken up and dealt with in various parts of his oeuvre.