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

by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten

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 Meiers 18th-century German translation. Together with a historical and philosophical introduction, extensive glossaries and notes, the text is supported by translations of Kants elucidations and notes, Eberhards 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 Baumgartens "Metaphysics" is an essential, authoritative resource to a significant philosophical text.

Genres: Philosophy, Metaphysics

490 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 26, 2004

Reviews

[Shawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are two halves to this book and the front half is all the history and biographies full of useful information leading up the creation of the textbook proper. It's pretty interesting and enjoyable.
However the textbook itself is so boring. The first section is perhaps the most rewarding because it dumps a lot of terminology and lays out the rules for the game as it were and really did trip me up and force me to think in new ways, which is always enjoyable. But then it turns its ancient outdated head and tries to describe everything in the world and is laughably simplistic and our outdated. At the time it must have been really mind blowing to have one science encompass so much but clearly metaphysics is NOT up to the task to explaining all the topics it attempts to and in retrospect it looks foolish to try. Just cut out the whole cosmology section I don't recall anything useful in it (and Kant didn't even have notes for it). Next up was psychology and that is easily the most fun because Baumgarten goes on to explain sadness and happiness so clinically it's simply just a joy to read. But once again that side gets lumped in with more important stuff like morality and consciousness so even while wading through some babbling about what transforms desire into yearning WHAM here comes some shit you have to pay attention to because it's useful. *side bar* thankfully all the important vocab is in all caps so when you smell a bs paragraph containing no new info just skip over it odds are it's just the same old Baumgarten rattling off his negations */side bar*. Finally we get to what should be the focus of all this which is God himself. I mean this is it, Baumgartens big chance to make a splash and what does he do? Just regurgitates Wolff (who I think I should have been reading all along) and attributes all the best stuff to God and does a find job trying to explain sin being in the system but it's nowhere near as elegant and convincing as Leibniz.

In short, this is a textbook through and through. It's meant to be studied over and worked out separately as a companion to the lectures themselves, which I am sure were more elucidating. Philosophy like this (attempt to turn thought into measurable units to be bickered about mathematically because someone didn't dot their i's) just isn't for me. Lots of credit to the introduction segments I did enjoy those, I liked the inclusion of the earlier version prefaces which sees Baumgarten going from humble to grumpy gentleman which was kind of funny.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

I would not pass up the opportunity to gaze upon the heavily-heavily annotated personal=lecture copy of Kant's but I will not in a million years read this.

[ImpRuin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A clear, concise, and systematic exposition of Leibniz-Wolffian Metaphysics, This contains many ideas which will be transformed by Kant into his Critical turn, and snapshots of it will appear later into German Idealism as well.

[Plato · Rating 5 out of 5]

woah, A. G. Baumy boy in english :)