A Milestone for Philosophy and Language Access
For the first time in history, Immanuel Kant’s seminal work, Critique of Pure Reason, is now available in Catalan. The translation, published by UB Editions and crafted by the late professor Miquel Montserrat Capella, has won the 2025 National University Publishing Award for Best Translation—an accolade that highlights both linguistic achievement and philosophical legacy.
Montserrat Capella, who passed away in 2024, spent six years translating and annotating the complex 18th-century text. This project, which marked the 300th anniversary of Kant’s birth, goes far beyond a linguistic exercise. It opens up Kantian philosophy—often regarded as one of the most challenging bodies of thought in Western philosophy—to a broader Catalan-speaking audience.
More Than Words: A Scholarly Contribution
The Catalan edition is part of the Magna Series of the Filosofia UB collection, edited by Salvi Turró and Josep Monserrat. It includes side-by-side notes comparing the original 1781 and revised 1787 versions of the text, providing rich context for scholars and readers. The Magna Series is dedicated to translating foundational philosophical texts into Catalan, with previous titles including Hobbes’ On Man and Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations.
The jury, composed of leading figures from Spain’s cultural and publishing sectors, praised the translation as “a first-of-its-kind contribution to Catalan intellectual life,” and celebrated Montserrat Capella’s expertise and commitment to cross-disciplinary understanding.
Language, Legacy, and Accessibility
Montserrat Capella’s career spanned teaching, research, and translation, with academic stops at Yale, the University of Barcelona, and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. His focus on the intersections of philosophy, science, and language shaped this final work—one that now stands as a cultural milestone.
By making Critique of Pure Reason accessible in Catalan, this edition does more than preserve a philosophical text. It affirms the role of translation in intellectual equity, language diversity, and the future of multilingual philosophy.
