Table of Contents

1. Christian Wolff: rational thoughts on God, the world and the soul of human beings; also all things in general (1720); 2. Martin Knutzen: system of causes (1735); philosophical treatise on the immaterial nature of the soul (1744); 3. Alexander Baumgarten: metaphysics (1739); 4. Christian August Crusius: sketch of the necessary truths of reason (1745); 5. Leonhard Euler: letters to a German princess (1760–1762); 6. Johann Heinrich Lambert: treatise on the criterion of truth (1761); new organon (1764); 7. Marcus Herz: first letter (1770); second letter (1771); third letter (1771); observations from speculative philosophy (1771); fourth letter (1772); fifth letter (1776); 8. Johann August Eberhard: universal theory of thinking and sensing (1776); 9. Johann Nicolaus Tetens: philosophical essays on human nature and its development (1777).

Promotional Information

Provides English translations of texts that form the essential background to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

About the Author

Eric Watkins is professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. The recipient of grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he is the author of Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality, which won the Book Prize in 2005 from the Journal of the History of Philosophy.

Reviews

"...The work as a whole reads and flows smoothly--an accomplishment... Footnotes provide direction as to how the works relate to particular sections of the Critique of Pure Reason. This unique and important collection will help anyone struggling to understand one of modern philosophy's most important and notoriously difficult texts... it will be most useful for graduate students and faculty... Highly recommended..."
M Meola, The College of New Jersey, Choice