April 7, 2005
New Bennett Translations
For those following Jonathan Bennett's translations of early modern texts, he's added more works. Here's his description of the newest material:
In March I added Mill's On Liberty and Leibniz�s Making the Case for God, a 20-page Latin work originally published as an appendix to the French Theodicy with a long title starting Causa Dei Asserta. This was meant as a more rigorous version of the over-all argument of the longer but more informal work, and is not included in any of the Leibniz English-language anthologies currently in print.I have now (late March 2005) barely begun work on Kant's Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals.
I've never even heard of this Leibniz work. I'm intrigued. I know Bennett thinks the Theodicy is pretty shoddy, so if he thinks this is more rigorous then that's probably a good sign. It's also shorter and possibly of more use in a course that isn't just about Leibniz than the longer book, which Nicholas Jolley says is just too rambling to be of much use in a course setting. This would seem to solve both problems.
Of course, the Mill and Kant pieces are nice additions as well, but I'm a real Leibniz fan, so I had to take particular delight in that.
Posted by Jeremy at 2:05 PM