Books

First edition of this critique of Leibnizian rationalism, a significant precursor to the Critik der reinen Vernunft (1781). Written while lecturing at the University of Königsberg, Kant's philosophical work in the 1760s extensively criticised traditional metaphysics. Here, he questions a foundational principles of that rationalism - that reason could explain the fundamental qualities of our experience. This distinction between reason and experience "laid the foundation for his later distinction between reason and sensibility in the first Critique" (Beiser, p. 42). Small octavo (156 x 98 mm). Recently bound to style using contemporary marbled paper, edges red. Engraved headpieces, tailpieces, and vignette to title page. Light rubbing and marking to boards, strip of lighter marbled paper pasted at head of spine in place of label, browning and foxing to endpapers and edges: a very good copy. Adickes 34; Warda 27. Frederic C. Beiser, "Kant's intellectual development: 1746-1781", in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, edited by Paul Guyer, 1992.

An early treatise by Immanuel Kant that attempts to introduce the concept of negative magnitudes into philosophy.