Background
Georg Anton Friedrich Ast was born at Gotha on the 29th of December in 1778.
Georg Anton Friedrich Ast was born at Gotha on the 29th of December in 1778.
Georg Anton Friedrich Ast was educated at Gotha and at the University of Jena.
At the University of Jena Georg Anton Friedrich Ast became a privatdozent at Jena in 1802. In 1805 he became professor of classical literature in the University of Landshut, where he remained until 1826, when it was transferred to Munich.
Georg Anton Friedrich Ast work was followed by a complete edition of Plato's works (2 vols. , 1819–1832) with a Latin translation and commentary. His last work was the Lexicon Platonicum (3 vols. , 1834–1839), which is both valuable and comprehensive. In his works on aesthetics he combined the views of Schelling with those of Winckelmann, Lessing, Kant, Herder, Schiller and others. His histories of philosophy are marked more by critical scholarship than by originality of thought, though they are interesting as asserting the now familiar principle that the history of philosophy is not the history of opinions, but of reason as a whole; he was among the first to attempt to formulate a principle of the development of thought.
Beside his works on Plato, he wrote, on aesthetics, System der Kunstlehre (1805) and Grundriß der Aesthetik (1807); on the history of philosophy, Grundlinien der Philosophie (1807, republished 1809, but soon forgotten), Grundriß einer Geschichte der Philosophie (1807 and 1825), and Hauptmomente der Geschichte der Philosophie (1829); in philology, Grundlinien der Philologie (1808), and Grundlinien der Grammatik, Hermeneutik und Kritik (1808).
In recognition of his work, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences made Georg Anton Friedrich Ast's a member and aulic councillor.