KANT, IMMANUEL.

Prolegomena zu einer jeder künftigen Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können + Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft. Zweyte vermehrte Auflage + Der Streit der Facultäten in drey Abschnitten.

Riga, bey Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, 1783 + Königsberg, Friedrich Nicolovius, 1794 + 1798. 8vo. Bound together in one slightly later full green cloth binding with gilt title to spine: Kant/ Religion/ und/ Metaphysik. A bit of wear to extremities and a bit of brownspotting throughout. But all in all a harmonious and nice "Sammelband" of three of Kant's important works. With stamp (Studentersamfundet") to front free end-paper and to all three title-pages.

1) Woodcut title-vignette, woodcut flower-and putti-headpiece on p. 3 and woodcut end-vignette (ornamentail piece with flowers). 222 pp.
2) With contemporary ownership-signature to title-page. XXVI, (4), 314, (2, -errata) pp.
3) With contemporary ownership-signature to title-page (same as previous work: v. Holmfeld"). XXX, 205 pp.

The three works together constitute an excellent introduction to the full range of Kant works and are all of the utmost importance to the understanding of his philosophy:

1) First edition, third issue, of Kant's masterpiece, the more popular exposition of the ideas presented in his main work "Critik der reinen Vernunft" (1781). Three variants of the first edition are known to exist, distinguishable by head- and tailpieces, and this is the third one listed in Warda, i.e. Warda 77.

This work constitutes a more comprehensible exposition of the main thoughts of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason", and it is probably one of the most frequently read and approachable of his works.
After having received immense negative critique and having been misunderstood with the first edition of the "Critique of Pure Reason", Kant wrote his "Prolegomena" as a defense and explanation, and he later incorporated much of it into the second edition of the "Critique of Pure Reason"; -it is with the ideas expounded in this work that Kant becomes world-famous. "Kant's great achievement was to conclude finally the lines on which philosophical speculation had proceeded in the eighteenth century, and to open up a new and more comprehensive system of dealing with the problems of philosophy... The influence of Kant is paramount in the critical method of modern philosophy. - No other thinker has been able to hold with such firmness the balance between speculative and empirical ideas... " (PMM 226).

Warda: 77.


2) The improved and enlarged second edition of Kant's seminal work, in which he develops his religion of reason and most fully accounts for his philosophy of religion.

The "Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason " originally appeared in 1793 but was enlarged and revised by Kant himself, and it appeared in the definitive second edition on 1794. It is this second edition which became the standard version of the text.

The work is constituted by four essays, in which Kant accounts for relationship between the moral doctrines that he had developed in his works of moral philosophy and his understanding of religion. One of his most frequently cited conclusions is that even though morality in itself does not need religion, morality will still inevitably lead to religion.

"The work in which Kant offers his most extensive and systematic treatment of religion from the perspective of his critical philosophy is "Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason". In addition to its importance in the development of Kant's view of religion as discussed below, this work is notable because of the controversy over censorship that attended its publication, the reprimand then given to Kant in the name of the Prussian emperor, Friedrich Wilhelm II, and Kant's pledge not to publish on matters of religion, which he later considered abrogated upon the death of the emperor in 1797." (SEP).

Warda: 145.


3) First edition of the last book that Kant himself published (together with his simultaneously published lecture "Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht"), in which he defends the Faculty of Philosophy against those of Theology, Law, and Medicine, claiming that Philosophy is superior in that it is the only of them that pursues truth in stead of usefulness. Criticizing the contemporary practice at the universities, he argues that the disciplines of the humanities and sciences, which are those collected in the Faculty of Philosophy, ought to be free from censorship or any form of state control, both in teaching and research.

Warda: 193

Order-nr.: 55503