All Scholars

MERLAN, Philip

  • Philip Merlan
  • Date of Birth: December 21, 1897
  • Born City: Kolomyja, Galacia
  • Born State/Country: Austria
  • Date of Death: December 24, 1968
  • Death City: Pomona
  • Death State/Country: CA
  • Married: Franciszka Gemma, August 2, 1925
  • Education:

    Studied philosophy and law, Vienna; Ph.D. (philosophy), 1924; Doctor iuris utriusque, 1927.
  • Dissertation:

    "Prinzipien der Aristotelischen Psychologie in ihrer Anwendung auf das Reich der Pflanzen und der Tiere" (Vienna, 1924).
  • Professional Experience:

    Special lectr., Redlands , 1941-6; prof. German philosophy and literature, Scripps College (Claremont CA), 1942-68;   Vis. prof. Würzburg, 1958-9; Bonn, 1968; Columbia U,; Munich, 1966, Oxford; Guggenheim, 1955; member, IAS (Princeton), 1965-6; President, Pacific Div., American Philosophical Association.
  • Publications:

    Selected Works: Platons Form der philosophischen Mitteilung.  Lemberg: 1939); “Form and Content in Plato’s Philosophy,” Journal of the History of Ideas 8/4 (1947) 406–30; From Platonism to Neoplatonism. (Nijhoff, The Hague, 1953; 2. überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage (Nijhoff, Den Haag 1960; 3rd ed., 1968; Ital. trans: Dal Platonismo al Neoplatismo (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1990); ; Studies in Epicurus and Aristotle (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1960); Monopsychism, Mysticism, Metaconsciousness (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963); “Greek Philosophy from Plato to Plotinus,” in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. Arthur H. Armstrong (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1967) 14–132; Metaphysik. Name und Gegenstand (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969); A Syllabus in the Humanities. The Cultural History of the Western World from the Age of Enlightenment to the Twentieth Century (North Quincy, MA: Christopher Publishing House, 1973); Kleine philosophische Schriften, ed. Franciszka Merlan mit einem Begleitwort von Hans Wagner (Hildesheim & New York: Olms, 1976). 

    Selected Articles: 

    “Zwei Fragen der epikureischen Theologie,” Hermes 196 (1933) 196-217; “Beiträge zur Geschichte des antiken Platonismus, I,” Philologus 89 (1934) 35-53; “Beiträge zur Geschichte des antiken Platonismus: II : Poseidonios über die Weltseele in Platons Timaios,” Philologus 89 (1934) 197-214; “Ein Simplikios-Zitat bei Pseudo-Alexandros und ein Plotinos-Zitat bei Simplikios,” RhM (1935) 154-60; “Ueberflüssige Texländerungen,” PhW (1936) 910-12; “Ueberflüssige Textänderungen,” PhW (1936) 909; “Enneads II,2,” TAPA (1943) 179-91; “The Successor of Speusippus,” TAPA 77 (1946) 103-11; “Aristotle's Unmoved Movers,” Traditio 4 (1946) 1-30; “Epicureanism and Horace,” TAPA 77 (1946) 325; “Form and Content in Plato's Philosophy,” JHI (1947) 406-30; “The Composition of Lucr. V.925-1459,” TAPA 78 (1947) 437; “Epicureanism and Horace,” JHI (1949) 445-51; “Heraclitus fr. B 93D,” TAPA 80 (1949) 429; “Alexander the Great or Antiphon the Sophist?,” CP 45 (1950) 161-6; “Lucretius, Primitivist or Progressivist?,” JHI(1950) 364-8; “Die Hermetische Pyramide und Sextus,” MH 8 (1951) 100-5; “Unearthing Aristotle,” Claremont Quarterly 1 (1952) 3-8; “Plotinus and Magic,” Isis 44 (1953) 341-8; “Ambiguity in Heraclitus,” Actes du XIᵉ Congrès international de philosophie, Bruxelles 20-26 août 1953, XII: Histoire de la philosophie : Méthodologie, Antiquité et moyen âge (Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers-Maatschappij, 1953) 56-60; “Isocrates, Aristotle and Alexander the Great,” Historia 3 (1954) 60-81; “Metaphysik. Name und Gegenstand,” JHS 77 (1957) 87-92; “Zur Biographie des Speusippos,” Philologus 103 (1959) 198-214; “Ὄν ᾗ ὄν und πρώτη οὐσία. Postskript zu einer Besprechung,” PhRdschau7 (1959) 148-53; “Drei Anmerkungen zu Numenius,” Philologus 106 (1962) 137-45; “Zum Schluss von Vergils vierter Ekloge,” MH 20 (1963) 21; “Das Problem der Erasten,” in Horizons of a Philosopher. Essays in Honor of D. Baumgardt, ed. J.A. Frank, H. Minkowski, E.J. Sternglass (Leiden: Brill, 1963) 297-314; “Religion and Philosophy from Plato's Phaedo to the Chaldaean Oracles,” JHP 1 (1963) 163-76; “Aristotle, Met. A6, 987b20-25 and Plotinus, Enn. V,4,2,8-9,” Phronesis 9 (1964) 45-7; “Monismus und Dualismus bei einigen Platonikern,” in Parusia. Studien zur Philosophie Platons und zur Problemgeschichte des Platonismus. Festgabe für J. Hirschberger ed. Kurt Flasch (Frankfurt: Minerva, 1965) 143-54; “Zur Zahlenlehre im Platonismus (Neuplatonismus) und im Sefer Yezira,” JHP 3 (1965) 167-81; “Neues Licht auf Parmenides,” AGPh 48 (1966) 267-76; 

    “το τί ἦν εἶναι,” CP 61 (1966) 188; “Two Theological Problems in Aristotle's Met. Lambda 6-9 and De caelo A9,” Apeiron 1 (1966) 3-13; “Zum Problem der drei Lebensarten,” PhJ 74 (1966) 217-19; “Aristoteles' und Epikurs müssige Götter,” ZPhF 21 (1967) 485-98; “Το ἀπορῆσαι ἀρχαϊκῶς (Arist. Met. N2,1089a1),” Philologus 111 (1967) 119-21; “Ammonius Hermiae, Zacharias Scholasticus and Boethius,” GRBS 9 (1968) 193-203; “Der Ursprung der Geistmetaphysik,” PhRdschau 15 (1968) 97-110; “Proclos. Grundzüge seiner Metaphysik,” PhRdschau 15 (1968) 94-7; “Zwei Bemerkungen zum aristotelischen Plato,” RhM 111 (1968) 1-15; “War Platons Vorlesung Das Gute einmalig?,” Hermes 96 (1968-9) 705-9; “Bemerkungen zum neuen Platobild,” AGPh 51 (1969) 111-26; “Zwei Untersuchungen zu Alexander von Aphrodisias,” Philologus 113 (1969) 85-91; “Hintikka and a Strange Aristotelian Doctrine,” Phronesis 15 (1970) 93-100; “Nochmals: War Aristoteles je Anhänger der Ideenlehre? Jaegers letztes Wort,” AGPh 52 (1970) 35-9; “Minor Socratics,” JHPh 10 (1972) 143-52. 

    Kleine Schriften:  Kleine philosophische Schriften, ed. Franciszka Merlan mit einem Begleitwort von Hans Wagner (Hildesheim & New York: Olms, 1976). 

    Full Bibliogeraphy: ZPH 27 (1968) 139-45

    Festschrift: Philomathes, ed. Robert B. Palmer & Robert Hammerton-Kelley (Leiden: Brill, 1971).
  • Notes:

    Philip Merlan enlisted in the Austrian Army in the First World War and nearly lost an arm in combat. When he returned to Vienna, he began to study Greek philosophy under Heinrich Gomperz (1873-1942) but was also interested in the law. He took his first degree with a dissertation dealing with Aristotle and the law. In the following year he married his wife, who also received a doctorate in philosophy from Vienna, who would ultimately edit her husband’s Kleine Schriften. He continued his studies and earned a double degree in both philosophy and law. Merlan’s focus of his research was on ancient philosophy, with a particular focus on the Platonic, Aristotelian and Epicurean roots of Neoplatonism, but showing such breadth that he carried his research into the Medieval period, through the ages of Hamann and Kant up to modern phenomenology. 

    Two years following Hitler’s Anschluss in 1938, Merlan and his wife emigrated from Vienna to the USA where he first worked as a special lecturer at Redlands and a year later was named professor of German philosophy and literature at Scripps College. He taught at both for several years. The generosity of his character and the quality of his teaching were enhanced by the breadth of his knowledge. Although he was officially a professor of German, he maintained an active interest in Greek philosophy. He was a gifted teacher, the rare combination of learned and Humorous. As his view of philosophy always spanned the centuries from antiquity to his own time, so he delighted in teaching a popular Western Civilization course. He was a guest lecturer in Würzburg, Bonn, New York (Columbia University), Munich and Oxford. Friedrich Solmsen wrote of him, “Whether Merlan wrote on Gnosticism or on Virgil, on Bergson or on Brentano and Freud, whether he clarified the problems of Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover or traced the idea of the brotherhood of man to its origins, he always discovered aspects of the subject that had escaped earlier investigators, and his work, often definitive, is always inspiring.”
  • Sources:

    Friedrich Solmsen, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 42 (1968-9) 173-5.
  • Author: Ward Briggs