Determination, Determinability, and the Structure of Ens

This chapter takes us into the fundamental elements of Baumgarten’s metaphysical system, the concepts of “determination” and “determinability,” and shows how his specific formulation of these concepts was fateful for the development of later German philosophy. Nuzzo notes in particular that Baumgarten’s formulation of these ideas fundamentally structured three key moments in German thought: the public debate on the “Destiny of Mankind” (“Bestimmung des Menschen”—lit. “Determination of Mankind”), Salomon Maimon’s development of the “Principle of Determination,” and finally Georg Wilhelm Hegel’s discussion of being in his Science of Logic.