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Introduction.

In the autumn of 1876, the newly founded Görres Society for the Cultivation of Science in Catholic Germany The Görres Society (Görres-Gesellschaft) is a German academic institution founded in 1876 to promote Catholic scholarship; it remains active today. bestowed upon me the honorable task of undertaking an edition of the book On Causes Latin: de causis. This work was to include, in detail: a critical reconstruction of the original Arabic text; a reconstruction of the text of the Latin translation used by the Scholastics Medieval philosophers and theologians who sought to reconcile Christian doctrine with ancient Greek philosophy; the preparation of a German paraphrase A simplified restatement of the text to clarify its meaning; and the drafting of prolegomena Introductory essays or preliminary remarks regarding the origin, transmission, and literary-historical significance of the book. Subsequent agreements necessitated several expansions to this framework. In particular, it did not seem appropriate to entirely exclude the aforementioned Hebrew versions.

Consequently, my work was divided into three parts: the first concerns the Arabic text of the book On Causes, the second concerns the often-mentioned Latin translation, and the third concerns the Hebrew versions.

In the first part, the primary concern was the production of a readable recension A critical revision of a text based on a careful comparison of various manuscripts of the Arabic text. However, due to a lack of sufficient manuscript resources, this task could only be completed in a manner that I found very unsatisfying. Furthermore, the more I felt compelled to depart from the exact wording of the only manuscript of the original available to me, the less I felt I could excuse myself from providing a complete record of its variant readings.

In the second part, the focus of interest fell upon the history that the Latin translation underwent within the Christian philosophy and theology of the Middle Ages.

My lack of a more comprehensive knowledge of Scholasticism often became vividly apparent to me during the search for traces of the book On Causes presented here. Moreover, Scholastic literature opened up an immeasurably vast field, while preliminary studies for my purposes were entirely lacking.

Microcosmus Latin: "Small world"; a philosophical concept viewing the human being as a miniature reflection of the universe, published for the first time from manuscript tradition by C. S. Barach and J. Wrobel. — The second volume (Innsbruck 1878) contains Excerpts from the book of Alfredus Anglicus on the movement of the heart Latin: Excerpta e libro Alfredi Anglici de motu cordis, as well as Costa ben Luca's book on the difference between the soul and the spirit, translated by John of Seville Latin: Costa-Ben-Lucae de differentia animae et spiritus liber translatus a Johanne Hispalensi. Costa ben Luca was a 9th-century Melkite Christian physician and translator; John of Seville was a prominent 12th-century translator of Arabic works into Latin.. — A third volume has not yet appeared.