Alexander Baumgarten's Metaphysics: Sources, Interpretation and Influence

Three-hundred years after the birth of Alexander Baumgarten, La Salle University is hosting a conference devoted to his influential Metaphysica. In addition to being the scientific foundation for all of Baumgarten’s other writings, the Metaphysica is arguably the single most important textbook on the topic published in the German tradition prior to Immanuel Kant. It provides by far the richest, clearest, most concise and most systematic presentation of a complete metaphysical system of the kind envisioned by Leibniz and Wolff. It went through seven Latin and two German editions over a span of twenty-seven years during which it provided the model of philosophical instruction for thinkers such as Mendelssohn, Abbt, Kant, Herder, Eberhard and Maimon. In particular, it formed the basis of Kant’s lectures on metaphysics, anthropology and religion over four decades. Now, for the first time, it is available to scholars in both German (holzboog-frommann, 2011) and English (Bloomsbury, 2013). 

Contact: [email protected]

Organization and selection committee: Courtney D. Fugate (AUB), John Hymers (La Salle University) and Chris Johns (AUB).