Metaphysics A Critical Translation with Kant's Elucidations, Selected Notes, and Related Materials

by Baumgarten, Alexander; Fugate, Courtney D.; Hymers, John

• ISBN13: 9781441132949
• ISBN10: 1441132945
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-07-18
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

Alexander Baumgarten (1714-1762), the influential German philosopher preceding Immanuel Kant, is remembered for advances in aesthetics. Yet it was his manual on Metaphysics that served as a chief German textbook of philosophical instruction in the second half of the 18th Century. Originally published in Latin, Metaphysics was used for nearly four decades by Kant as the basis for lectures on metaphysics and anthropology. Many of the preparatory sketches for the Critique of Pure Reason were composed in the blank interleaved pages of Kant's personal copy. Available for the first time in English, this critical translation draws on the two most important editions: the original Latin and Johann August Eberhard's 18th-century German translation. Together with a Bibliography and guide for further reading, the text is supported by translations of Kant's marginalia and selected notes, Eberhard's insertions in the 1783 German edition and texts from the writings of Meier and Wolff. For scholars of Kant, the German Enlightenment and the history of metaphysics, Alexander Baumgarten's Metaphysics is an essential, authoritative resource to a significant philosophical text.

Author Biography

John Hymers is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at La Salle University, USA, where he is the titularis for modern philosophy.Courtney D. Fugate is Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon.

Table of Contents

Detailed Table of contents \ List of illustrations \ Acknowledgements \ Part I: Introduction to the Translation \ Introduction \ 1. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-1762) and Georg Friedrich Meier (1718-1777): A historical sketch \ 2. The philosophical context of the Metaphysics \ 3. Kant’s Handwritten Notes to the Metaphysics \ 4. Notes on this translation \ Part II: The Translation \ Alexander Baumgarten’s Metaphysics \ Johann August Eberhard’s Preface to the Second German Edition (1783) \ Georg Friedrich Meier’s Preface to the First German Translation (1766) \ Preface of the third edition (1750) \ Preface of the second edition (1743) \ To the listener of good will [preface to the first edition](1739) \ Synopsis \ Prolegomena to Metaphysics \ Part I: Ontology \ Prologomena \ Chapter I. The universal internal predicates of a being \ Chapter II. The internal disjunctive predicates of a being \ Chapter III. The relative predicates of a being \ Part II: Cosmology \ Prologomena \ Chapter I. The concept of the world \ Chapter II. The parts of the universe \ Chapter III. The perfection of the universe \ Part III: Psychology \ Prolegomena \ Chapter I. Empirical psychology \ Chapter II. Rational psychology \ Part IIII: Natural theology \ Prolegomena \ Chapter I. The concept of God \ Chapter II. The operations of God \ Part III: Ancillary Materials \ Glossary \ Latin-English \ English-Latin \ Notes and Textual variants \ Selected Bibliography \ Index to the paragraphs of the Metaphysics \ General Index