Baumgarten And Kant On Metaphysics

Baumgarten and Kant on Metaphysics explores the metaphysics of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (17141762) and its decisive influence on Immanuel Kant. For over a century, scholars have recognized the significance of Baumgarten's Metaphysics, both because of its impact on Kant's intellectual development, and because of the way it fundamentally informed the work of generations of German philosophers, including Moses Mendelssohn, Thomas Abbt, Johann Gottfried Herder, Solomon Maimon, Johann August Eberhard, and arguably even Georg Friedrich Hegel. However, Baumgarten's Metaphysics has only recently become available in reliable German and English translations; as such, many scholars have been excluded from the discussion and the significance of Baumgarten's work has remained largely unexplored. Thus with the appearance of these translations, interest in Baumgarten's work has surged. This collection provides an anchor for this emerging discussion by presenting chapters by some of the scholars most responsible for Baumgarten's current reputation, together with some of the best young scholars in this emerging field.

Alexander Baumgarten (1714-1762), an influential German philosopher preceding Immanuel Kant, is remembered mainly as a founder of modern aesthetics. Yet his manual on metaphysics was one of the chief textbooks of philosophical instruction in latter 18th-Century Germany. Originally published in Latin, Kant used the Metaphysics for nearly four decades as the basis for lectures on metaphysics, anthropology and religion. Kant composed many of the preparatory sketches for the Critique of Pure Reason in the blank interleaved pages of his personal copy. Available for the first time in English, this critical translation draws from the original seven Latin editions and Georg Friedrich Meier's 18th-century German translation. Together with a historical and philosophical introduction, extensive glossaries and notes, the text is supported by translations of Kant's elucidations and 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.

This book presents the first English translation of Alexander Baumgarten's Initia Philosophiae Practicae Primae, the textbook Kant used in his lectures on moral philosophy. Originally published in Latin in 1760, the Initia contains a systematic, but original version of the universal practical philosophy first articulated by Christian Wolff. In his personal copy, Kant penned hundreds of pages of notes and sketches that document his relation to this earlier tradition. Translating these extensive elucidations into English, together with Kant's notes on the text, this translation offers a complete resource to Kant's reading of the Initia. To facilitate further study, first-time translations of elucidatory passages from G. F. Meier and Wolff are also included, alongside a German-English-Latin glossary. The translators' introduction provides a biography of Baumgarten, a discussion of the importance of the Initia, its relation to Wolff's and Meier's universal practical philosophy and its role in Kant's lectures. By shedding new light on the arguments of Kant's mature works and offering insights into his pre-Critical moral thought, Elements of First Practical Philosophy reveals why Baumgarten's work is essential for understanding the background to Kant's philosophy.

This volume contains the first translation into English of notes from Kant's lectures on metaphysics.

Majority of chapters contained in this volume the result of the conference "Alexander Baumgarten's Metaphysics: Sources, Interpretation and influence" held at La Salle University, March 2014.

Over the last two decades, scholarship on Kant and modern German philosophy has become increasingly focused on understanding their historical roots. Central to this development is the work of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-62), whose textbooks profoundly influenced later generations of German philosophers. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), in particular, lectured from Baumgarten's textbooks, including those on moral and legal philosophy, for well over thirty years. Following the recent English translation of Baumgarten's key works, this volume is the first comprehensive reappraisal of the relationship between his and Kant's thoughts on the grounding principles of moral philosophy. The chapters--all written by leading researchers who have shaped or are now reshaping the field--cover the whole range of key concepts in the foundations of practical philosophy: obligation, law, goodness, motivation, imputation, conscience, the relationship between ethics and right, and many more. Later chapters provide a comparative look at Kant's and Baumgarten's place within the wider tradition of natural law. Scholars familiar with the field will discover new perspectives on well-received findings, while newcomers will find a comprehensive introduction to the key topics and debates of current research.

This book reinterprets key parts of the Critique of Pure Reason in view of Kant's sustained engagement with Wolffian metaphysics.

This collection of new essays, the first of its kind in English, considers the ways in which the philosophy of Immanuel Kant engages with the views of lesser-known eighteenth-century German thinkers. Each chapter casts new light on aspects of Kant's complex relationship with these figures, particularly with respect to key aspects of his logic, metaphysics, epistemology, theory of science, and ethics. The portrait of Kant that emerges is of a major thinker thoroughly engaged with his contemporaries - drawing on their ideas and approaches, targeting their arguments for criticism and responding to their concerns, and seeking to secure the legacy of his thought among them. This volume will open the door for further research on Kant and his methods of philosophical inquiry, while introducing readers to the distinctive and influential philosophical contributions of several previously neglected figures.