Alexander Baumgarten (1714-1762), an influential German philosopher preceding Immanuel Kant, is remembered mainly as a founder of modern aesthetics. Yet his manual on metaphysics was one of the chief textbooks of philosophical instruction in latter 18th-Century Germany. Providing a rich, concise and systematic presentation of a complete metaphysical system, the kind envisioned by Leibniz and Wolff, Metaphysics was used by Kant for over four decades as the basis for his lectures on metaphysics, anthropology and religion; Kant composed preparatory sketches for the Critique of Pure Reason in the blank pages of his personal copy. Now available for the first time in English, this critical translation of Metaphysics draws from the original seven Latin editions and Georg Friedrich Meier's 18th-century German translation. To assist and support the reading of this crucial text, the translation features: * historical and philosophical introductions and sketches * extensive glossaries and notes* clear reproductions of Kant's elucidations and handwritten notes* Eberhard's insertions in the 1783 German edition* texts from the writings of Meier and Wolff. Used as a philosophical instruction for thinkers such as Kant, Mendelssohn, Abbt, Herder, and Maimon, Metaphysics is arguably one of philosophy's most influential texts. Equipped with supportive and illuminating introductory material, this clear and lucid translation presents scholars of Kant, German philosophy and the history of philosophy with an indispensable resource.