Hegel’s Library: The Newton Editions

Abstract

Ever since Hegel defended his dissertation on The Orbits of the Planets in Jena on August 27th 1801, it has been known that he was in the habit of consulting the second edition of Newton’s Principia. Only when the catalogue of the auctioning of his library was discovered some twenty years ago, however, did scholars discover that the second edition in question was not that published at Cambridge in the June of 1713, but the Amsterdam pirate edition of 1714. Since Newton himself had no part in preparing this reprint, the quality and accuracy of it have never been a matter of any great interest. Very little account is taken of it in the critical edition of the 1726 Principia published by Koyré and Cohen in 1972. For Hegel scholars it is, however, a matter of very great importance to know whether or not this reprint is reliable.