HISTORY, SCIENCE & PHILOSOPHY 60 First edition of Kant’s major exploration of the possibilities and pitfalls of human cognition. Only this first edition contains the original text, as all subsequent editions are based on the second edition of 1787, which was substantially revised by Kant. The copy of 19th-century German philosopher, mathematician, logician and author Moritz Wilhelm Drobisch, with his ownership signature dated 1820. The first of his three groundbreaking Critiques, Kant’s Critick der reinen Vernunft represents the “full maturity” of his philosophical thought. It treats the problem of “how it is possible for the individual thinking subject to connect together the parts of his experience in the form we call cognition… 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. His penetrating analysis of the elements involved in synthesis, and the subjective process by which these elements are realized in the individual consciousness, demonstrated the operation of ‘pure reason’; and the simplicity and cogency of his arguments achieved immediate fame” (PMM 226). “Kant was a type of realist not unlike Descartes or Locke in his claim that appearances are not all that there is but are all that one has an actual and detailed knowledge of. There is a reality behind the appearance, but one has only a problematic concept of this reality. He often characterized this position of the Critique as transcendental idealism” (DSB). Text in German, in black letter. Ink ownership signature, dated 1820, of German mathematician, logician, and philosopher Moritz Wilhelm Drobisch (1802-96). Drobisch studied and taught mathematics and philosophy at the University of Leipzig. He published a book on Kant in 1885. Infrequent marginalia, quite likely in Drobisch’s hand. Ink quotation in Latin facing title page. Text quite clean, front joint lightly rubbed, binding sound and handsome. A desirable copy of this rare philosophical landmark, with excellent provenance. “All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.” Rare First Edition Of Kant’s Critik Der Reinen Vernunft (Critique Of Pure Reason) 67KANT, Immanuel. Critik der reinen Vernunft. Riga, 1781. Thick octavo, 19th-century threequarter brown calf. $48,000
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