Description
Book SynopsisThis is the first volume of the first ever comprehensive edition of the works of Immanuel Kant in English translation. The eleven essays in this volume constitute Kant's theoretical, pre-critical philosophical writings from 1755 to 1770. Several of these pieces have never been translated into English before; others have long been unavailable in English. We can trace in these works the development of Kant's thought to the eventual emergence in 1770 of the two chief tenets of his mature philosophy: the subjectivity of space and time, and the phenomena-noumena distinction. The volume has been furnished with substantial editorial apparatus, including a general introduction to the main themes of Kant's early thought, introduction to the individual works and rÃsumÃs of their contents, linguistic and factual notes, bibliographies, a glossary of key terms, and biographical-bibliographical sketches of persons mentioned by Kant.
Trade Review'This volume is a sumptuous feast of scholarly riches and aesthetic delights … Walford achieves remarkable fidelity to the sense of the original text as he adroitly brings Kant's complex conjunction of concepts, dry wit, and 'voice' into clear, readable English. Readers familiar with Kant in the original will also enjoy Walford's consistently clever and stylistically polished solutions to the frequently knotty problems of translating Kant's academic German. And scholars who have puzzled over the meaning of particular words or phrases will find Walford's extensive notes richly instructive. Simply in terms of a project of translation, the volume is an impressive achievement.' Canadian Philosophical Review
Table of ContentsIntroductions of the translations; 1. A new elucidation of the first principles of metaphysical cognition (1755); 2. The employment in natural philosophy of metaphysics combined with geometry, of which sample I contains the physical monadology (1756); 3. An attempt at some reflections on optimism (1759); 4. The false subtlety of the four syllogistic figures (1762); 5. The only possible argument in support of a demonstration of the existence of God (1763); 6. Attempt to introduce the concept of negative magnitudes into philosophy (1763); 7. Inquiry concerning the distinctness of the principles of natural theology and morality (1764); 8. M. Immanuel Kant's announcement of the programme of his lectures for the winter semester 1765-1766 (1765); 9. Dreams of a spirit-seer elucidated by dreams of metaphysics (1766); 10. Concerning the ultimate ground of the differentiation of directions in space (1768); 11. On the form and principles of the sensible and the intelligible world [inaugural dissertation] (1770).
