Last Updated: February 2022 by Kyle Tanaka
The following list contains resources helpful to studying Modern authors in general, not any authors specifically.
Editions
The above volume, specified by the Graduate Student Handbook, contains the following selections:
Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia
Correspondence with Descartes
Margaret Cavendish
Philosophical Letters
Anne Viscountess Conway
The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy
Damaris Cudworth (née Masham)
Correspondence with Leibniz
Mary Astell
A Serious Proposal to the Ladies
Catharine Trotter Cockburn
A Defense of Mr. Locke's Essay of Human Understanding
Lady Mary Shepard
Essays on the Perception of an External Universe
Some of these texts are available online through Jonathan Bennett's "Early Modern Texts" site:
Anne Viscountess Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy
Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, Correspondence with Descartes
Online Resources:
Bibliographies:
Secondary Literature:
The following selections concern women in the Modern Philosophy period broadly, without necessarily focusing on any particular figure in the above volume.
Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.
Editions
The above edition, from Norton Critical Editions, includes both the text and helpful contextual material, such as information about Wollstonecraft, the historical period, and responses.
The critical edition of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman is found in Wollstonecraft's Complete Works:
Online Resources:
Bibliographies:
Secondary Literature:
Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.
Editions
The Spedding edition of Bacon's works, above, has long reigned as the standard edition of Bacon's works. The Novum Organum can be found in the first volume; click here to go to it. However, the still-in-progress Oxford series of Bacon's works will likely replace the Spedding editions once complete. The volume containing the Novum Organon is already released as volume XI of that series:
Online Resources:
Bibliographies:
Secondary Literature:
Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.
Editions
The still-in-progress series of Hobbes's complete works, edited by Noel Malcolm and published by Oxford University Press, is becoming the new standard; the edition of the Leviathan is already available and includes extensive editorial notes (comprising volume 1) and the original Latin. Prior to that, the standard English and Latin editions (still used occasionally) were edited by William Molesworth and published 1839-1845. Long since out of copyright, these editions are easily found online (see here, for example).
Online Resources:
Bibliographies:
Secondary Literature:
Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.
Editions
Descartes's Selected Writings is the collection specified by the Graduate Student Handbook. It includes:
Rules for the direction of our native intelligence
Discourse on the method
Optics
Meditations on First philosophy
Objections and replies
Principles of philosophy
Comments on a certain broadsheet
The passions of the soul
These selections are pulled from the longer set of standard English translations of Descartes's work:
Descartes, René. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. 3 vols. Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny. Cambridge University Press, 1984–1991.
The critical editions for Descartes's works in French and Latin, are found in the following series:
Descartes, René. Oeuvres de Descartes. 11 vols. Edited by Paul Tannery and Charles Adam. Paris: Vrin, 1964–1976.
This is usually cited as "AT" (Adam and Tannery), followed by volume number and page number.
Example: AT 6:14
Online Resources:
Bibliographies:
Secondary Literature:
Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.
Editions
The standard English translation of the Ethics is by Curley, found in volume 1 of the Collected Works. Though not standard, Parkinson's translation is also worth consulting.
For the Latin, the standard edition is the Spinoza Opera, edited by Carl Gebhardt. More recently, there is also the edition of the Ethics discovered in the Vatican archives.
Online Resources:
Bibliographies:
Secondary Literature:
Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.
Editions
The Discourse on Metaphysics is the work of Leibniz specified by the Graduate Student Handbook. The closest thing to a standard edition of Leibniz's works in English is the 2-volume Philosophical Papers and Letters: A Selection, translated and edited by Loemker; the Discourse on Metaphysics is in Volume 2. Other editions (see below) also contain the Discourse:
The critical edition of Leibniz's works is the still-ongoing Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, edited by the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin; it is not scheduled to be completed until 2050. Fortunately, most of the major works are already available. For some of the later Leibniz works, however, one must consult the Gerhardt volumes
Online Resources:
Bibliographies:
Secondary Literature:
Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.
Editions
The Clarendon edition of the Essay is standard. It is part of a longer 37 volume set still being published by Oxford/Clarendon of the entirety of Locke's works, correspondence, and manuscripts. As of this writing, the Two Treatises of Government (only the second of which is specified by the portfolio guide) is not yet available from that series. However, the Cambridge edition, above, is commonly used.
Online Resources:
Bibliographies:
Secondary Literature:
Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.
Editions
There are a few editions of the Treatise considered standard. The first, edited by Selby-Bigge and revised by Nidditch, is the classic 1739-40 edition and is typically the one used by scholars. The second, edited by Norton and Norton, is also used, but aims more at a student audience.
Hume also wrote an abstract to the Treatise in 1740.
Online Resources:
Bibliographies:
Secondary Literature:
Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.
Editions
The "Glasgow Edition" of TMS, edited by Raphael and Macfie, is part of the longer Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, and is the standard edition. More recently, the edition edited by Haakonssen is worth consulting as it is more beginner-friendly, offerring more extensive notes on context, references, etc.
Online Resources:
Secondary Literature:
Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.
Editions
The Bergin and Fisch translation is the standard edition of Vico's New Science. An online scanned version is available from the Internet Archive.
The critical edition of the Italian is found in Vico's Opera. Note that Vico wrote the original La Scienca Nuova in 1725 and published a revised version in 1730. A third version was release posthumously in 1744, edited by Fausto Nicolini. The Bergin and Fisch New Science is a translation of the 1744 work.
Vico, Giambattista. Opere. Edited by Fausto Nicolini, 8 vols.Laterza, 1911-1941.
The Vico Portal hosts links to various facsimiles of the New Science.
There are other editions of Vico's works in Italian that may also be worth consulting, including the following:
Vico, Giambattista. La Scienza nuova 1744. Edited by Paolo Cristofolini. 2015.
Part of a newer critical edition of Vico's Opere.
Online Resources:
Bibliographies:
Secondary Literature:
Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.
Editions
The standard English translations of Rousseau's works are found in the Collected Works, edited by Kelly and Masters.
The critical edition of Rousseau's works in French is the Oeuvres complètes, above, edited by Gagnebin, Osmont, and Raymond. Both the Social Contract and the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (aka the Second Discourse) are in volume 3.
Online Resources:
Bibliographies:
Secondary Literature:
Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.
Editions
The three Kant texts specified by the Graduate Student Handbook are the Critique of Pure Reason, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, and Critique of [the Power of] Judgment. In English, the standard translations are all part of the Cambridge Editions of the Works of Immanuel Kant series. The Groundwork is included in the Practical Philosophy volume, and is also available in a standalone volume (above).
Kant's Gesammelte Schriften, often referred to as the "Akademie" edition, contains most of Kant's works including the portfolio texts. It is generally considered the standard edition of Kant's works. It should be noted, however, that there are some more modern editions of select texts. These include the following:
A slightly more modern series than the Akademie editions, but only contains Kant's published works. Also includes the original German translations of Kant's Latin works.
Kant, Immanuel. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Edited by Ingeborg Heidemann, Stuttgart: Reclam, 2013.
Arguably the best modern version of the Critique of Pure Reason.
Kant, Immanuel. Kritik der Urteilskraft. Edited by Heiner F. Klemme and Pietro Giordanetti, Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2001.
Includes the first introduction of the Critique of Judgment, Akademie edition pagination, and a bibliography.
Online Resources:
Bibliographies:
Secondary Literature:
Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.
[Note: as one might expect, the amount of secondary literature on Kant is immense. The following selection focuses mainly on major scholars/works that have attempted to give a general picture of Kant's work]
Editions
The standard English translation of The Answer is by Arenal and Powell. Their volume contains the translation along with a selection of Sor Juana's poems.
The standard editions of Sor Juana's works are published in her complete works, Obras Completas.
Online Resources:
Bibliographies:
Secondary Literature:
Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.
[Note: perhaps unsurprisingly, much of the literature on Sor Juana is written in Spanish; comparatively little exists in English.]