This bilingual edition of Carl Wilhelm Frölich's text On Man and His Circumstances is a welcome contribution to the literature on German Enlightenment currently available in English translation. It will interest researchers in the humanities and social sciences, as well as language students and the general reader.

Published anonymously in 1792, some time after Frölich completed his law degree, On Man and His Circumstances was aimed specifically at the general educated public of his time. The book is composed of a series of ten dialogues between two imaginary characters, named Philemon and Erast, who debate a number of topics—such as the role of education in the achievement of human happiness, the relation between nature and morality, religion and the state, and economical life and the abolition of private property. As Larkin points out in his introduction, the style of these dialogues suggests a Platonic influence. However, despite Philemon's abundant use of Socratic maieutics to convince Erast of his ideas, the dialogues lack the metaphysical dimension we associate with Plato. Unlike Plato's work, the dialogues in On Man and His Circumstances do not aim at a systematic theory of reality, and one gets the impression that Frölich uses the dialogical style as a rhetorical or literary device rather than with specifically philosophical intent. This, however, does not diminish the intellectual significance of the discussions, which were intended to have immediate applicability to contemporary social circumstances.

Born in 1759, Frölich was a man committed to social work and change. Beginning in 1778, he studied Law at Halle, during which period, as Larkin explains, Frölich probably studied philosophy under Johan August Eberhard. Eberhard was a popular philosopher (Volksphilosoph) and theologian and a strong adherent of Leibnizian-Wolffian doctrines. He opposed abstract philosophical speculation, favoring an approach to knowledge based on the senses. Larkin also suggests another prestigious figure at Halle who may have inspired Frölich's interest in the notion of natural education, or natürliche Erziehung (a notion whose origins can be traced to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Émile), namely the pedagogical reformer Ernst Christian Trapp.

We need not venture far into the book to detect the influences of popular philosophy on Frölich, with its emphasis on experience and natural education.