Jonathan Bennett has added two new items to his Early Modern Texts series, in which works are edited for clarity, but not 'dumbed down.'
Robert Paul -----------The website at www.earlymoderntexts.com has completed its fifth year. Since the last report, in March 2009, it has acquired:
1. Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. 2. Anne Conway's Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy.Only two additions because much of my time has gone into getting many of the texts into the improved format made possible by Latex.
The Kant was difficult, and my version contains two confessions of outright failure. Still, the version should help to make the work more accessible.
If you (like myself until recently) know little or nothing about Viscountess Conway or her surprising little book, you'll be doing yourself a favour if you go to the translation of it by Allison P. Coudert and Taylor Corse (Cambridge U.P., 1996). Their Introduction provides a rich setting for the work and the woman. Very briefly . . . .
The work: It was mentioned with respect by Leibniz, several times, and he may have been influenced by it; if you read it you'll why this is plausible. It first appeared eleven years after Lady Conway's death, in a Latin translation; the English manuscript was lost; so our only access to it is through that translation. The book contains many references to a body of mediaeval Jewish mysticism known as `the Kabbalah'; this theme is mainly omitted from the website version.
The woman: A gentlewoman by birth and an aristocrat by marriage, she had no formal education; but she learned Greek, Latin and Hebrew; read deeply in the main philosophical and theological works of the day; had a good circle of friends; maintained a lively correspondence with some of them; and suffered from acute migraine headaches throughout nearly every day of her adult life.
The website's next acquisition will probably be the correspondence between Descartes and the Princess Elizabeth. But it won't come quickly.
Jonathan Bennett ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
