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Emmanuel KANT

Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique de la Raison pure]

Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, Riga 1787, in-8 (12,5x20,5cm), XLIV ; 884 pp., relié.

Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason]
 

Second original and final edition, reworked and extended with a fundamental new preface.
 
Slightly posterior binding in half blond sheep, spine in four false compartments decorated with title pieces and the author in red and green paper, metallic marbled paper boards, all edges speckled with red. Bound at the top of the copy is a leaf with bibliographic notes from the early 19th century. Binding skilfully restored.
Some worming without loss of letters in the lower margin of some of the early leaves.
 
First major work of Kantian philosophy, the Critique of Pure Reason was initially published in 1781. However, if Kant's desire is precisely to liberate philosophy from all forms of subjectivity and to make it as precise and objective as mathematics, the first version proves overly complex and abstruse for the majority of his contemporaries, as he will be reproached by Madame de Staël in particular: “One cannot deny that Kant's style, in his Critique of Pure Reason, deserves almost all the criticism that his opponents have directed at him. He certainly used terminology that is very difficult to understand, and the most tiring neologism.”
Yet Kant's project is precisely to propose a tool for reflection for all and not an elitist theory. Therefore, he extensively reworked his work, but not being able to reduce the complexity of his concepts, he composed a new preface, a real key to the interpretation of this thinking, which became essential for the understanding of the text. In this new preface, Kant introduces in particular the notion of “Copernican Revolution” that defines his philosophical project: “This would  be just like the first thoughts of Copernicus, who, when he did not make good progress in the explanation of the celestial motions if he assumed that the entire celestial host revolves around the observer, tried to see if he might not have greater success if he made the observer revolve and left the stars at rest. Now in metaphysics we can try in a similar way regarding the intuition of objects. If intuition has to conform to the constitution of the objects, then I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori; but if the object (as an object of the senses) conforms to the constitution of our faculty of intuition, then I can very well represent this possibility to myself.”
 
This Kantian analogy has since been considered as a fundamental philosophical concept, in the same way as the majority of the ideas developed in this historical preface, studied as a work in its own right. It is again in this second preface that Kant introduces for the first time the two most famous terminological couples of his philosophy: “analytical and synthetic judgment” on the one hand, “a priori and a posteriori judgment” on the other.
 
The modifications are not limited to this new preface. Kant transforms his text in depth to make it intelligible and remove the misunderstandings caused by the first version: “It is a very controversial question whether the changes presented in this second edition relate to the content or only to the form. Rosenkranz, Schopenhauer, Kuno Fischer consider a profound change, tending to re-establish the thing in itself which, according to them, the first edition had abolished. According to Kant's testimony, the second edition simply emphasizes the realistic side of the doctrine, misunderstood by some readers.” (in La Grande Encyclopédie, 1885)
It is, incidentally, from this second version that all subsequent editions and translations will be established. It is also thanks to this that Kant's philosophy meets its first successes with his contemporaries, although the work will not be translated into English until 1838 and into French in 1845.
 
With this Critique of Pure Reason, the Kantian revolution made it possible to free philosophy of all political, religious or natural allegiance. Following the example of Copernicus, Kant shifts the center of gravity of reason and, at the dawn of the French Revolution, offers each individual their moral and intellectual independence. When, in the summer of 1789, he learned of a popular uprising in Paris, Kant, full of enthusiasm, will break with his sacrosanct promenade in order to obtain the newspaper recounting the events.
 
At the end of the 15th century, Leonardo da Vinci inaugurated the humanist adventure with his famous Vitruvian Man defining human proportions. Three hundred years later, Kant concludes this formidable epic of knowledge with an analysis of the proportions of Reason which will become one of the most complex and important works of modern philosophy.
 
First edition of extraordinary rarity of “one of the masterpieces of the human spirit”.

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