Crimen Extrajudiciale: Ethics of Plagiarism and Erudite Sociability in J. Thomasius and J. C. Schwartz

This article deals with the ways of approaching plagiarism in the early modern Europe, mostly in the writings of two German intellectuals, J. Thomasius and J. C. Schwartz. The phenomenon of plagiarism is treated not only as an instrument of “symbolic violence” and “policing force of knowledge” in the Republic of letters, but primarily as a point of intersection of different discourses of the erudite culture: jurisprudence, moral medicine, Ciceronian rhetoric, hermeneutics and simultaneously – as a touchstone revealing the various dimensions of rival models of scientific knowledge (Protestant Aristotelianism, Barock eruditism, enlightened rationalism).