University of Hamburg - to research, to teach, to educate and form, to homepage
DFG-Centre for Advanced Studies Imaginaria of Force

Photo: pixabay

Prof. em. Dr. Thomas Leinkauf

Photo: Thomas Kundy

Curriclum

Thomas Leinkauf, Philosophy, 1991-1996 Heisenberg Professorship FU Berlin, 1996-2021 Professorship Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Director of Leibniz-Forschungsstelle, Fellow and Senior Fellow at MPI Florenz 2007-2009, University of California LA 2011, Charles University Prague 1992-93, Scuola Normale Pisa 1999, 2017, Roma Sapienza 2021. Opus Magnum grant 2011-2013. Various DFG and Thyssen Stiftung projects, most notably the Research Group 'Lichtgefüge' (Carolin Bohlmann, Thomas Fink, Philipp Weiss).

Publications (selection)

  • Dialettiche del Rinascimento (with Gianlucca Cuozzo), Milano (Mimesis) 2021.
  • Philosophie des Humanismus und der Renaissance 1350-1600, Hamburg (Meiner) 2017, 2 vols.
  • Intensität und Realität. Systematische Analysen zur Problemgeschichte von Gradualität, Intensität und quantitativer Differenz (with Thomas Kisser), Berlin (DeGruyter) 2016.
  • Licht, Intensitätsraum und Lichtentfaltung. Zur Raum-und Lichtauffassung im 16 und 17. Jahrhundert, in: Ad fontes! Niederländische Kunst des 17. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Claudia Fritzsche, Karin Leonhard, Gregor J. M. Weber, Petersberg 2013, pp. 17-35.
  • Einheit, Natur, Geist. Beiträge zu metaphysischen Grundproblemen im Denken von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Berlin (Trafo) 2012.

Research topic: Researches on the Problem of Gradations or Intensities in 'Fields' of Energy (Power), in Relations of Light and Relations of Colors (in Paintings)

Project description will follow soon.

Research results: Researches on the Problem of Gradations or Intensities in 'Fields' of Energy (Power), in Relations of Light and Relations of Colors (in Paintings)

My researches as a Senior Fellow in Hamburg started by earlier works I did on the concept and problem of ‚intensity‘ (or: intensities) in the context of light and colour in Italian paintings in the 15th century since Leonardo ( T. L., Möglichkeit, Potential und Kraft, in: Kraft, Intensität, Energie. Zur Dynamik der Kunst, ed. Frank Fehrenbach, Robert Felfe, Karin Leonhard, Berlin (De Gruyter) 2018, S. 31-51; Id., Licht, Intensitätsraum und Lichtentfaltung, in: Ad Fontes! Niederländische Kunst des 17. Jahrhunderts, ed. Claudia Frizsche, Karin Leonhard, Gregor Weber, Petersberg 2013 S. 17-34 with further literature). From here, I intend to go ‚back to the roots‘ of the debate in Mediaval Time, starting with the Sentences of Peter Lombard and, following the footprints of Pierre Duhem, Anneliese Meier, Alister Mc Crombie and others, reconstructing in particular the interpretation of the originally theological problem of the communication of grace (caritas) from God to his creatures: the reception of the infinite ‚intensity‘ of grace in different grades of intensity regarding the specific status of an entity – for example the different capacity of angels in comparison to human beings – exemplified by grades of light or temperature builds the historical, semantical and philosophical background of the debates in the follwoing centuries up to the times of Leonardo. In Hamburg, I was able to study intensively the commentary on Aristotle’s Physics by Albertus Magnus which played a key role in the whole temperature following debate (Physcia, Pars I, libri 1-4, ed. P. Hossfeld, Monasterii Westfalorum 1987).