Jacob Schegk, Simplicius and “Anaxagoras the Atomist”: Aristotelian Commentaries and Renaissance Corpuscularism

In Renaissance Europe there existed a belief that Anaxagoras the Presocratic philosopher was an atomist. This article explores its sources in the commentary on Aristotle’s Physics by Jacob Schegk (1511–1587). His treatise was one of the first commentaries which fully used Simplicius’s newly recovered commentary on the same text of Aristotle. An accomplished humanist and a moderate Lutheran, Schegk first taught philosophy and later medicine at the Protestant University of Tübingen for several decades. His lectures were highly popular and attracted many students, often coming from reformed lands. Among his students, there was the French Paracelsian Joseph Du Chesne (1546–1609), who admired him as “another Aristotle.” This article aims to identify the nature and significance of “Anaxagoras the atomist” through the analysis of Schegk’s work against its historical and intellectual context.