Introduction

This introduction presents the philosophical review as a defining genre of intellectual life in the German territories from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. Far from functioning as a secondary summary of books, the review emerges as an active site of philosophical production, where systems were interpreted, terminology tested, doctrines contested, and canons constructed. Through cases ranging from Leibniz, Thomasius, Wolff, and Heumann to Kant and Fichte, the introduction shows how reviews shaped epistemological debate, political conflict, the reception of major works, and the emergence of the history of philosophy as an autonomous discipline. It also highlights their role in the circulation, translation, commercialization, and democratization of knowledge. Reviews thus mediated between private scholarship and public opinion, abstract theory and ideological struggle, becoming a privileged instrument through which Enlightenment culture defined both the content and the boundaries of philosophy.