Abstract

Franz Anton Staudenmaier (1800-1856) belonged to a group of influential Catholic theologians who were active at the University of Tübingen during the first half of the 19th century. He is often remembered as the most important Catholic critic of Hegel’s philosophy. This essay highlights an internal aspect of his work that has not yet been investigated: that of the historical links between modern mysticism and ancient gnosis. Unusually for a thinker of his time, Staudenmaier addressed some of the fundamental problems and philosophical questions of his age with a solid knowledge of the entire history of Christian thought from patristics to scholasticism. Drawing from such extensive knowledge, he was able to analyze and compare in detail two of the main protagonists of the debate on mysticism within German Romanticism such as Franz von Baader and Joseph von Görres