E-Texts and Other Course-Related Links
Electronic Versions of Seminal Texts in the History of Metaphysics
- Parmenides’ On Nature—a version by Allan F. Randall, based on translations by David Gallop, Richard D. McKirahan, Jr., Jonathan Barnes, John Mansley Robinson and others. A highly readable version.
- The fragments of Parmenides’ On Nature—The Arthur Fairbanks translation. An older translation.
- Plato’s Sophist—the Harold North Fowler translation at the Perseus Project.
- Aristotle’s Metaphysics—the Hugh Tredennick translation (1933) at the Perseus Project. All the advantages of the Perseus Project’s interface.
- Aristotle’s Metaphysics—the Hugh Tredennick translation (1933) at Non-Contradiction.com. One big file, easy to search.
- Aristotle’s Metaphysics—the W.D. Ross translation (1924) at Non-Contradiction.com. One big file, easy to search; the more widely used, “classical” translation.
- Plotinus’ Enneads—the translation by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page at the University of Adelaide Library’s eBooks@Adelaide.
- Thomas Aquinas’s masterful On Being and Essence—a very recent translation (1997) by Robert T. Miller. At the Internet Medieval Source Book.
- Descartes’s Meditations of First Philosophy—the Elizabeth Haldane translation (1911) in an HTML version that was once available at the Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy, and that’s still accessible at Infomotions.com.
- Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy—a trilingual (Latin, French, English) edition featuring the John Veitch translation into English (1901). Good site if you want to be able quickly to consult the Latin or the French.
- Spinoza’s Ethics—an HTML edition by Ron Bombardi of the Elwes translation (1883) of one of the most beautiful of all the works of classical modern metaphysics, from Middle Tennessee State University.
- Leibniz’s Monadology—the Robert Latta translation of Leibniz's late formulation of his metaphysics.
-
Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Treatise of Human Nature at the University of Adelaide Library’s eBooks@Adelaide. These are works—some might say the definitive works—in the modern anti-metaphysical tradition. It’s in the Enquiry that we find, just five paragraphs from the end, the following famous passage:
If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
- Baumgarten’s Metaphysica—the text Kant always used in his lectures on metaphysics. In Latin.
- Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason—a searchable on-line edition of the Norman Kemp-Smith translation.
- Kants Kritik der Reinen Vernunft—text of the first edition (1781). In German.
- Kants Kritik der Reinen Vernunft—text of the second edition (1787). In German.
- The Bonn Kant-Corpus—an electronic edition of Kant’s works, correspondence, and Nachlass. Includes the Academy edition of Kant’s works. In German.
Heidegger Sites
Heidegger |
- “Martin Heidegger”—the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Heidegger.
- “Martin Heidegger”—the Wikipedia article on Heidegger.
- “Martin Heidegger”—the Answers.com page on Heidegger; includes the Wikipedia article and a good deal more.
- The Martin Heidegger page at The Cry: A Cry Towards the Absurd. Includes pictures, texts, and a good deal more. The whole site is worth looking at for its materials on Existentialism and Phenomenology.
- Ereignis—a great deal of material on Heidegger and many links including links to articles on Heidegger on the Web. Maintained by Pete.
- Martin-Heidegger-Internetseiten. A site maintained by Burghard Heidegger, Martin Heidegger’s grandson, containing much useful information, including a superb bibliography. The site is in German.
Kant Sites
Kant |
- “Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics”—the main Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Kant (there’s also an article on Kant’s Aesthetics.
- “Immanuel Kant”—the Wikipedia article on Kant.
- “Critique of Pure Reason”—the Wikipedia article on the first Critique.
- Kant on the Web—Stephen Palmquist’s big list of Kant links. This probably deserves recognition as “The Kant Home Page” on the web.
- Kant Links—a list of useful links maintained by Richard Lee to e-texts of Kant’s works and to pages on Kant.
- A site for a course on Kant—maintained by G.J. Mattey at UC Davis. Includes material on Kant’s predecessors and his critics as well as a modest Kant-Lexicon.
- Immanuel Kant: Information Online—a good jumping-off point for Kant resources in Europe. The site is in German.
Miscellaneous Other Sites
- Chronology of the History of Science—an ambitious time line, from 9000 BCE to 1990 CE, being generated by students at the University of Dayton.
- The Galileo Project—a site on Galileo and a good bit more.
- Descartes’s Rules for the Direction of the Mind—the complete text translated by Elizabeth Anscombe and Peter Thomas Geach.
- Descartes’s Regulae ad directionem ingenii—the complete text...in Latin.
- Metaphysics: Multiple Meanings—a nod in the direction of “Academic Metaphysics,” followed by a batch of links to sites having to do with “Popular Metaphysics” (which this course is not about).
- Ontology: A Resource Guide for Philosophers—an excellent site maintained by Raul Corazzon on a topic it isn’t at all easy to find good information about. Good for follow-up studies if you get intrigued by the material covered in this course.
- Isaac Newton—The Wikipedia article.
- Extracts from Newton’s Principia—the opening pages of the Principia up to the three laws of motion; opening pages of Book III, The System of the World, with rules for Philosophy, plus the closing comments with his view of God, etc. At Marxists.org Internet Archive.
- Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy—the complete text of the Andrew Motte translation (1846); a bit unwieldy, but there it is.
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