Lectures on metaphysics /

This is one of the more important volumes to have appeared so far in the comprehensive Cambridge Edition of Kant. It contains an extensive representative selection of the sets of lecture notes documenting the courses on metaphysics that Kant held during four decades at the University of K"onigsberg. All of Kant's metaphysics lectures were based on a textbook by G.A. Baumgarten, which they presented and discussed, sometimes critically. None of the material contained in this volume has been available in English before. The editors and translators, Ameriks (University of Notre Dame) and Naragon (Manchester College), chose eight lecture transcripts from the early 1760s, the mid-1770s, the early 1780s, and the early as well as mid-1790s. Two sets are rendered in their entirety, two are virtually completely included, and the rest are represented in significant selections. The most interesting set of notes in the volume is perhaps the Metaphysics Mrongovius (1782-83), which was only rediscovered in the late 1970s and first published in German in 1983. The translation of those notes in the present volume remedies several of the textual deficiencies that had been discovered in the first edition. Most highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate; graduate; faculty. G. Zoeller; University of Iowa