All Scholars

GOMPERZ, Theodor

  • Theodor Gomperz
  • Date of Birth: March 29, 1832
  • Born City: Brno, Bohemia
  • Born State/Country: Germany (now Czech Republic)
  • Parents: Josua Feibelmann, called Philipp, a banker, & Henriette Auspitz G.
  • Date of Death: August 29, 1912
  • Death City: Baden bei Wien
  • Death State/Country: Austria
  • Married: Elise Sichrovsky, 1869
  • Education:

    Brno Gymnasium, 1841-7; Philosophische Lehranstalt, Brno, 1847-9; Vienna (law), 1849-50; (classical philology), 1850-3; habilitation, 1867; Ph.D. (hon.), Königsberg, 1868; D.Litt., Dublin, 1901; Cambridge 
  • Professional Experience:

    Journalist, Grenzboten, Leipzig, 1854-5; private docent, Vienna, 1855-67; extraord., 1869-73; ordinarius, 1873-1900; decoration of Honor for Arts and Science, 1896; memb. Herrenhaus, 1901; memb. Academy of Sciences, Vienna, 1882; Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in Paris; corrr. Memb, Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg).
  • Publications:

    Selected Works

    Demosthenes der Staatsmann (Vienna: Gerold’s Sohn, 1864); Philodemi de ira liber (Leipzig: Teubner, 1864; repr. 1914); Philodem Über induktionsschlüsse (Leipzig: Teubner, 1865); Herkulanische Studien (Leipzig: Teubner, 1865-6); Über Frömmigkeit Philodem: Bearbeitet und erläutert fon Theodor Gomperz. 1. Abth., Der Text und photo-lithographische Beilaen (Leipzig: Teubner, 1866); Traumdeutung und Zauberei (Vienna: Gerold’s Sohn, 1866 1866); John Stuart Mill, Gesamelte Werke (ed.)  12 vols. (Leipzig: Reisland, 1869-80); Herculanische Studien, 2 vols. (1865–1866); John Stuart Mill, System der deduktiven und induktiven Logik (trans.) 2 vols. (Leipzig: Fues’s: 1872-3); Beiträge zur Kritik und Erklärung griechischer Schriftsteller, 7 vols. (Vienna: Gerold’s Sohn, 1875–1900); Neue Bruchstücke Epikurs (Vienna: Gerold’s Sohn, 1876); Die Bruchstücke der griechischer Tragiker und Cobets neueste kritische Manier (Vienna: Hölder, 1878); Herodoteische Studien (Vienna: Gerold’s Sohn, 1883); Über ein bisher unbekanntes griechisches Schriftsystem aus der Mitte des vierten (Vienna: Carl Gerold, 1884); Zu Philodems Büchern von der Musik (Vienna: A Hölder, 1885); Über den Abschluß des herodoteischen Geschichtswerkes (Vienna: Gerold’s Sohn, 1886); Platonische Aufsätze, 3 vols, (Vienna: Gerold’s Sohn, 1887–1905); Zu Heraklits Lehre und den Überresten seines Werkes (Vienna: Gerold’s Sohn, 1887); Zu Aristoteles' Poëtik (2 parts, Vienna: Gerold’s Sohn, 1888–1896); Über die Charaktere Theophrasts (Vienna: Tempsky, 1889); Nachlese zu den Bruchstücken der griechischen Tragiker (Vienna: Tempsky, 1888); John Stuart Mill: ein Nachruf (Vienna: Carl Konegen, 1889); Hermann Bonitz: ein Nachruf  (Berlin: S. Calvary, 1889); Die Apologie der Heilkunst (Vienna: Tempsky, 1890); Philodem und die ästhetischen Schriften der herculanischen Bibliothek (Vienna: Tempsky,1891); Die Schrift vom Staatswesen der Athener (Viernna: Hölder, 1891); Die jüngst entdeckten Überreste einer den platonischen Phädon enthaltenden Papyrusrolle (1892); Aus der Hekale des Kallimachos (Vienna K.K. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1893); Zur Chronologie des Stoikers Zenon (Vienna: Gerold, 1903); Griechische Denker. Eine Geschichte der antiken Philosophie (Three volumes, vols 1 & 2 Leipzig 1893 & 1902, trans. L. Magnus vol. 1 19011896, 1902, 1909; trans. as Greek Thinkers: A History of Ancient Philosp Lomndon: John Murray & New York Charles Scribner’s, 1901-1922; often reprinted through 2021; French trans. Les penseurs de la Grèce: histoire de la philosophie antique (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1908) Ital. trans. Pensatori greci: storia della filosofia antica (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1944); Spanish trans. Pensadores griegos: una historia de la filosofia de la antigüedad, (Asunciòn, Paraguay: Guarania, 1951-2); Essays und Erinnerungen (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1905); Die Apologie der Heilkunst. Eine griechische Sophistenrede des fünften vorchristlichen Jahrhunderts (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1910).

    Kleine Schriften Hellenika. Eine Auswahl philologischer und philosophiegeschichtlicher kleiner Schriften (Leipzig: Veit, 1912); Eine Auswahl herkulanischer Kleiner Schriften (1864-1909) ed. Tiziano Dorandi (Leiden: Brill, 1993).

    Letters: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, ed. Heinrich Gomperz (Vienna Gerold & Co., 1936) (vols. 2 & 3 unpublished, at Harvard University Library.

    Festschrift Festschrift Theodor Gomperz: dargebracht zum siebzigsten Geburtstage a, 29. März 1902, ed. Moritz von Schwind (Vienna: Alfred Hölder, 1902).
  • Notes:

    Theodor Gomperz descended from a Dutch merchant family. While a student in Brno, he was influenced by the Hegelian Augustinian monk Thomas Franz Bratranek (1815-84), who led Gomperz to abandon his Jewish family’s religious principles at the age of 13. The second major influence was James Mill’s (1773-1836) Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829; rev. ed. 1869) which deepened his Positivism. Gomperz would eventually translate John Stuart Mill’s (1806-73) work on deductive and inductive logic, A System of Logic (1843), supervise a 12-volume translation of his work, and write his biography. His classical studies were greatly influenced by the scholar of Greek philosophy Hermann Bonitz (1814-88) who turned his interest from Ionian prose to philosophy. Thanks to his family’s and in-law’s resources Gräv was able to travel extensively and felt no need for a doctoral degree. Indeed, he did not take his final examinations in the Gymnasium and did not graduate from Vienna. When he visited Leipzig in 1854, he met the novelist and playwright Gustav Freytag (1816-95), editor of the liberal journal Die Grenzenboten, for which Gomperz worked for a year. He also met the versatile classicist Otto Jahn (1813-69). He returned to Vienna and began work on the recently (1861) made public charred papyri from Herculaneum even as he did traditional positivist philological work on Euripides and Demosthenes. His treatment of the fragments of Philodemus found in the papyri was criticized for using apographa, or copies of the fragments and texts rather than examining the originals. Among the Hippocratic corpus of writings (particularly those at Oxford) he identified a treatise of the School of Protagoras. This gained him his habilitation, enabling him to teach at universities. He declined an offer from Graz to remain in Vienna, where he had been tutoring and lecturing. The year after his habilitation he received an honorary doctorate the next year from Königsberg. 

          Griechische Denker (1893) was very much his life’s work, so important that he resigned his professorship to concentrate on its composition. It is an attempt to cover all Greek thinkers from Homer to the first century A.D. in the positivist tradition of Mill, which focused often on the philosophers’ scientific worldview. It is a history of Greek philosophy through individuals and Gomperz felt that to truly understand the thought of these men it was necessary to place them in their cultural, political, rhetorical, and historical context. The same notion may have informed Werner Jaeger’s (1888-1961) Paideia (1934-47). Griechische Denker has been translated into English, French, Russian, Hebrew, and Italian.
  • Sources:

    Autobiography in Essays und Erinnerungen (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1905) 1-48; L. Radermacher, BJ17, pp. 151–58 (W) (and 18, pt. 1912, L); H. von Arnim, AAWW 63 (1913) 463-7; L. Rademacher, ADB 59, (1915) 151-8; Albin Lesky, ÖBL 1815–1950, Vol. 2 (Lfg. 6, 1957) 31-2; Adelaide Weinberg, Theodor Gomperz and John Stuart Mill (Geneva: Droz, 1963); Hans-Ulrich-Berner & Manfred Landfester, Brill, 240-1.
  • Author: Ward Briggs