Friedrich Ast

Georg Anton Friedrich Ast (29 December 1778 – 31 October 1841) was a German philosopher and philologist.

He was born at Gotha. Educated there and at the University of Jena, he 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. He lived there until his death in 1841.

In recognition of his work, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences made him a member and aulic councillor. He is known principally for his work during the last twenty-five years of his life on the dialogues of Plato. His Plato's Leben and Schriften (1816)—which originated in the Introductions of Friedrich Schleiermacher and the historical scepticism of Niebuhr and Wolf—was the first of those critical inquiries into the life and works of Plato.

Distrusting tradition, he took a few of the finest dialogues as his standard, and from internal evidence denounced as spurious not only those generally admitted to be so (Epinomis, Minos, Theages, Rivales, Clitophon, Hipparchus, Eryxias, Letters and Definitions), but also the Meno, Euthydemus, Charmides, Lysis, Laches, First and Second Alcibiades, Hippias Major and Minor, Ion, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and even (against Aristotle's explicit assertion) The Laws. The genuine dialogues he divides into three series:

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