Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik.

KANT (Immanuel).

Publication Date: 1783

About this Item

First edition, first printing. 8vo. 222, [2, blank] pp., woodcut vignette title page, woodcut head and tailpieces. Contemporary half calf with sprinkled paper covered boards, flat spine panelled with simple gilt rolls, second panel lettered in gilt on red paper label, the rest with attractive sunburst devices, red speckled edges, green silk bookmark (neat contemporary ink ownership inscription to front free endpaper, small contemporary ink notation to title page, heavy foxing to outer leaves, with occasional intermittent foxing throughout, contents otherwise generally unmarked; some trivial rubbing to tips of spine and corners with just a hint of minor surface wear to covers, notwithstanding a really excellent copy). Riga, Johann Friedrich Hartknoch. An attractive copy of the rare correct first printing of the Prolegomena Towards a Future Metaphysics, written by Kant as a clarification of the Critique of Pure Reason, which he believed had been widely misunderstood on publication two years previously. It became one of Kant's most influential works and he incorporated much of it into the second edition of the Critique, itself now accepted as 'Kant's great achievement which concluded finally the lines on which philosophical speculation had proceeded in the eighteenth century' (PMM). Schopenhauer described the book as the 'finest and most comprehensible of Kant's principal works'. Three printings of the Prolegomena appeared in the same year, identifiable by the varying woodcut head and tailpieces. The present example is the correct first printing is with the floriated bar headpiece on page 3 (rather than the second and third printings that have the two cherubs headpiece - Warda 76 & 77) and the floriated bar on page 222 (rather than the bar with climbing leaves - Warda 76 - or a small ornamental piece with climbing flora - Warda 77). Finally, on page 78, line 8 the word ?subjektiv? appears rather than ?objektiv? ? which was corrected in the two later printings. The second and third printings are relatively common, no doubt with larger print runs on account of the commercial success of the book, but examples of the correct first printing are notably scarce. Warda, 75.

Seller Inventory # 258198

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik.
• Publication Date: 1783
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition