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Philosophy Graduate Student Portfolio Papers Guide

Guide for portfolio papers

Introduction

Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.

Last Updated: February 2022 by Kyle Tanaka

General Resources - Modern

The following list contains resources helpful to studying Modern authors in general, not any authors specifically.

  • The Latin Library
    • Contains Latin editions of numerous Modern authors, including Bacon, Descartes, Galileo, Spinoza, and more.
  • Early Modern Texts
    • Headed by Jonathan Bennett, Early Modern Texts contains free editions and translations of numerous texts from the Modern period. Note that Bennett's translations "are faithful to the content of the originals, but are plainer and more straightforward in manner."

Women Philosophers

Princess ElisabethMargaret CavendishMary Astell

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:

 

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.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft

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.

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon

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.

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes

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.

René Descartes

René Descartes

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.

Baruch Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza

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.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

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.

John Locke

John Locke

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.

David Hume

David Hume

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.

Adam Smith

Adam Smith

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.

Giambattista Vico

Giambattista Vico

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.

There are other editions of Vico's works in Italian that may also be worth consulting, including the following:

Online Resources:

Bibliographies:

Secondary Literature:

Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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.

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant

Editions

The three Kant texts specified by the Graduate Student Handbook are the Critique of Pure ReasonGroundwork 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:

  • Kant, Immanuel. Werke in Sechs Bänden. Edited by Wilhelm Weischedel, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1956.

    • 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]

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

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.]