Philosophisches Lexicon was the first dictionary of philosophy in a modern language. First published in 1726 by Johann Georg Walch (1693-1775), this reference work appeared in four editions. This reprint is of the second improved edition, published in 1733, which contains biographical sketches from Abelard to Zenos. The work is known for its comprehensive entries and depth of scholarship, reflecting in part the ideas of Leibniz and Wolff.

Broad in its geographic scope and yet grounded in original archival research, this book situates the inception of modern aesthetic theory – the philosophical analysis of art and beauty - in theological contexts that are crucial to explaining why it arose. Simon Grote presents seminal aesthetic theories of the German and Scottish Enlightenments as outgrowths of a quintessentially Enlightenment project: the search for a natural 'foundation of morality' and a means of helping naturally self-interested human beings transcend their own self-interest. (...) This conclusion represents an important alternative to the standard history of aesthetics as a series of preludes to the achievements of Immanuel Kant, as well as a reinterpretation of several canonical figures in the German and Scottish Enlightenments. It also offers a foundation for a transnational history of the Enlightenment without the French philosophes at its centre, while solidly endorsing historians' growing reluctance to call the Enlightenment a secularising movement. (shrink)