Baumgarten's Elements of First Practical Philosophy: A Critical Translation with Kant's Reflections on Moral Philosophy

by Alexander Baumgarten, Lawrence Pasternack (Editor), Pablo Muchnik (Editor)

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.

Genres: Philosophy

392 pages, Hardcover

Published May 28, 2020

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

One should not preface a slender review with much. Baumgarten is too often overlooked as students of philosophy attempt to dissect Kant and the German Idealists, rarely even read really, and almost never appreciated as more than a historical footnote. Even in this wonderful volume, half the text is comprised of copious but helpful notes related to Kant's extensive remarks. Most attention, strangely, in stories about Baumgarten, is given to his works on metaphysics and aesthetics rather than his ethical writing. However, given the focus being centered on German Idealism in recent philosophy, this text might serve as an adequate propaedeutic (which Baumgarten helpfully defines in section 87 as a foreign principle "employed when demonstrating a first domestic principle"). The text is composed mostly of successive pairs of distinctions punctuated by occasional tertiary principles whose sole role seems to be exhausted in the brief but important respite they intermittently offer. Ultimately, it is a kind of encyclopedia of obligation, from action to commitment to imputation to conscience, from the juridical to the theological to the ethical. Along the way, we encounter apodicticity, freedom, impelling causes, binding and satisfying acts, natural and positive obligation, negative and real action, certainty, probability and implications, subjectivity and objectivity, good and evil, universals and particulars, external and internal constraints, extortion, mingling ("commixtio"), prohibition and permission, spirit of laws, historical cognition of laws, jurisprudence and pettifoggery, ground and respect, observation and duty, obedience and transgression, honor and reason, science, happiness, legislation and promulgation, command and subjection, reward and payment, punishment and fear, application and imputation, habit and fragility, the author and the court, competence and ignorance, trials, sentences, exculpation and even leptology. Good read. Concise and organized. Helpful and fun.