Description

This remarkable volume is principally a publication of quotations, paraphrases and notes that Swedenborg made in 1741-1744, as he studied widely in philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to contemporaries such as Leibnitz, Wolff, Bilfinger. Most excerpts are in the areas of psychology (e.g., soul, organic mind, intellect, reason, will, sensation, dreams, imagination, memory, ideas, etc.); philosophy (logic, syllogism, categories, fallacies, appearances, error, end, mean, the simple, conjecture, probability, etc.); and theology (faith, good works, predestination and foreknowledge of God, fortune, free decision, Gentile religion and Islam, Adam, the Messiah, prayer, death, punishment, etc.). Also material on optics, musical harmony, mathematics, and outlines of his projected works on anatomy. This volume not only demonstrates Swedenborg’s remarkably broad interests and erudition, but also serves to summarize the understanding of the mid-18th century intellectual world on a variety of important philosophical questions—a fascinating portrait of the intellectual milieu of the 1740s. Indexes of Scripture passages; authors and books; subjects.