New Edition of Lamberts »Monatsbuch«
In March 2020, after twelve years of editing work, a supplement volume on the »Philosophische Schriften« was published:
Johann Heinrich Lamberts Monatsbuch
New edition with introduction, commentary and catalogues of Lambert’s writings, letters and posthumous manuscripts by Niels W. Bokhove and Armin Emmel, Hildesheim, Zurich, New York: Georg Olms 2020.1
The manuscript of the so-called “Monatsbuch” (in the Codex UBH L Ia 740 of the Basel University Library) contains 18 sheets, most of them with writing on both sides. Lambert chronicled his scientific studies, occasionally also his reading, travels and other biographical events on a monthly basis from 1752 until his death. It is the only text penned by Lambert which reflects the entire spectrum of his thinking and work and which provides insight into the origins of his most important publications. Its relevance for a proper understanding of Lambert’s life and work was recognized early on, and soon after the missing Lambert estate had been rediscovered Karl Bopp edited the manuscript in 1915 as the first publication from this hoard of manuscripts (disregarding the two short poetic texts printed by Georges Rémy, L1910.01).2
We reread the manuscript and were able to improve Bopp’s text in numerous places. The different types and the weight of these corrections are explained in sections 3 to 6 of Part 2 of the introduction. Since the interest in Lambert’s recordings is hardly for the main part a philological one, we have – for the sake of convenient usability of text and commentary – dispensed with a critical apparatus, which would track in detail the differences between our reading and the first edition. Instead, we offer a full scan of the first edition, (PDF, 13 MB) so that every reader can swiftly compare our text with Bopp’s if required. Moreover, Bopp’s commentary on Lambert’s mathematical work – Karl Bopp was a mathematician – is not completely outdated by our new commentary, as explained in introduction to Part 2, § 8. A reader interested in the history of mathematics will therefore occasionally want to consult Bopp’s original note, to which we always refer in the commentary.
Bopp had already thought it appropriate to attach an outline of the surviving manuscripts (the so-called »Herderinventar«) to Lambert’s records, as he was already able to specify matching manuscripts for many entries. We attach to the text an as complete as possible catalogue of all accessible Lambert manuscripts, including the collection in the archive of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences in Berlin and with an overall description of the Lambert papers in the estate of van Swinden at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek Den Haag. The catalogue of by far the most extensive holdings at the University Library of Basel is based on the catalogue established in 1951 by Max Steck and published by the university library in 1977 in the compressed form of a hectography (see introduction, part 2, §§ 11–13). While Bopp’s numbers of partition and paging apply to the former Gotha manuscript codices, we refer of course to the manuscript numbering introduced by Steck and the volume and page numbers of the current arrangement of the Basel Lambertiana.
Further registers on Lambert's oeuvre are added to the edition, such as for the first time a detailed catalogue of the surviving letters and, as a separate part of the source bibliography, a catalogue of Lambert's reviews, compiled on the basis of Max Steck’s preliminary work, which should finally capture his contributions to the »Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek« exhaustively (see part 2 of the introduction, §§ 30–36, on the determination of Lambert's reviews and the assessment of his authorship).
The Lambert expert Roger Jaquel had missed a subject index in Bopp's first edition – we cannot make the Monatsbuch accessible in this way either (§ 5 in Part 1 of the introduction informs about the reasons). In its place we provide a searchable unformatted text of our reading, which we offer here together with its SHA-256 checksum.3 It is important to note that this text does not replace the edition in any way, precisely because it has been processed exclusively with regard to good electronic searchability: abbreviations have been resolved, but the completions have lost their tags, text deleted by Lambert is missing, highlighting in the text and other markings are not reproduced, the form of date specifictions has been standardized. This text file is not to be used without the supplement volume, but it appears to us that it will be a convenient additional tool for making the best use of the supplement volume.
A detailed overview of everything the supplement volume has to offer is of course provided by its extensive table of contents. (PDF, 158 kB) The individual parts are compendiously presented on the homepage of Armin Emmel. 4
Here on the homepage of the former office we will maintain a list of the Corrigenda of the supplement volume, which will probably quickly gain a certain scope. We ask all readers to inform us of the errors they find when using the volume!
1. We dedicate the volume to the memory of the Alsatian Lambert researcher Roger Jaquel (1907–1995), the historian of philosophy and phenomenologist Karl Schuhmann (1941–2003) and to our former colleague at the office, Axel Spree (1963–2016).
2. In print, the Monatsbuch has been published approximately at the same time as Bopp's edition of the Abhandlung vom »Criterium veritatis« (Kantstudien Ergänzungshefte 36, Berlin 1915, L1915.01 in our source bibliography). However, it is clear from the foreword to the latter edition (p.4) that it was only during the work on the Monatsbuch publication that Bopp began to think of issuing the Criterium veritatis, too. Accordingly, this foreword (p.5) dates “September 1915”, while the Monatsbuch edition (L1915.02) of the Bavarian Academy had already been presented on 5 December 1914 (see the picture of the title page).
3. We ask users not to distribute this file on their own, but to refer to or link to this page if required.
4. There the Lambert researcher also finds a searchable text file with the entries in the auction catalogue of Lambert's estate: »Verzeichniß der Bücher und Instrumente, welche der verstorbene Königl. Ober-Baurath und Professor Herr Heinrich Lambert hinterlassen hat, und die den Meistbiethenden sollen verkauft werden […] Das Verzeichniß wird von dem französischen Gerichtsdiener Maire ausgegeben.« (Catalogue of the books and instruments left by the late Royal Chief Building Officer and Professor Heinrich Lambert, and to be sold to the highest bidders [...] This record is issued by the French court clerk Maire. Berlin 1778. Printed with Winter's writings.) – In the medium term, a tagging of the Monatsbuch entries by discipline, a further correction and amendments of the text version of the auction catalogue and the incorporation of more references to the Monatsbuch commentary and the catalogues of the supplement volume are also planned.