Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–1762) is regarded justifiably as the most independent of all Wolffians. Up to now however there have been very few systematic studies examining his intellectual originality, apart from his founding of aesthetics. In this volume, the author who was most important for Kant during his school years finally steps out of Wolff's shadow and is revealed to be an epistemologist, a psychologist and moral philosopher. After the recent translation of the ›Metaphysica‹ into German (FMDA 1,2), a pioneering achievement, what follows here is an interpretively groundbreaking detailed study of the key philosophical subjects of the philosopher of the High Enlightenment, just in time for the current anniversaries (250th day of his death in 2012, 300th birthday in 2014).