RARE FIRST EDITION OF KANT'S FIRST PUBLISHED BOOK, 1749

KANT, Immanuel. Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte. BOUND WITH: Der einzig mögliche Beweissgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseyns Gottes. Königsberg: Martin Eberhard Dorn, 1747 [1749], 1763. Octavo, contemporary parchment-covered boards. $28,500.

Rare first edition of Kant's first book, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces, with two folding plates, bound together with a first edition of his later treatise Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God.

"Even though Kant is widely considered to be one of the two or three greatest philosophers that Western civilization has produced, he was also much interested in science and especially in the philosophy of science. He was not an experimental scientist and did not contribute to the body of scientific knowledge, but he was much concerned with the foundations of science and made significant contributions to that field. He has sometimes been accused… of being an armchair scientist. He might more accurately be called an armchair philosopher speculating on the fundamental bases of science. He was not interested in gleaning facts and data; rather, he speculated concerning the grand scheme in which the facts gleaned by others are arrayed… In his early years Kant pondered the nature of space and time first from the view of Leibniz and then of Newton, but eventually he found both positions to be lacking. In his Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (1747) he took Leibniz's view and tried to explain the nature of space by means of the forces of unextended substances (monads) that cause such substances to interact. He attempted to account for the threefold dimensionality of space by appealing to the laws that govern such interactions" (DSB).

The second work here, a first edition of the later Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God, begins by "declaring that even if the proposition that existence is no predicate or determination of anything seems 'strange and contradictory,' it is nevertheless indubitable and certain. 'It is not a fully correct expression to say: "A sea unicorn is an existent animal": we should put it the other way round and say: "to a certain existing sea animal there belong the predicates that I think of as collectively constituting a sea unicorn."' On these ground Kant rejected the Cartesian version of the Ontological Argument. But he held, even so, that an alternative conceptual proof of God's existence could be found: Nothing could be conceived as possible unless… 'whatever of reality there is in every possible notion do exist, and indeed, absolutely necessarily… Further, this complete reality must be united in a single being.' There must, in other words, be a perfect being if there are to be any possibilities" (Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Text in German, printed in black letter. Warda, 1, 23. Owner signatures.

Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces is in fine condition. Only Possible Argument only with dampstaining to lower outer corner, just touching text in on a few leaves; interior otherwise quite clean. Attractive binding with light wear.