Books

First edition of the author's major contribution to the protean discipline of anthropology, drawing on almost a quarter of a century's lectures. The Anthropologie is also noted for his classification of mental illnesses and his discussion of the importance of adolescence in mental development, "an observation which would later prove invaluable" (Norman). "In the winter semester of 1772-3 Kant first offered a lecture course on anthropology, a course he repeated every winter semester for the next twenty-three years. While Kant was not the first German academic to lecture under this title, he made clear from the first lectures that his course would consider the topic in quite a unique way. Although Kant chose as a last resort the 'empirical psychology' section of Baumgarten's Metaphysica as his textbook, he consciously broke with it and a tradition of German anthropology stretching back to the 16th century, a tradition that tended to conceive of anthropology as a unified science of theology and physiology" (Jacobs & Kain, pp. 2-3). Octavo (191 x 114 mm). Contemporary brown paste paper boards, manuscript paper spine label, edges red, green book marker. Bound without the final blank. Extremities worn and corners bumped, paste paper chipped along lower half of spine, front free endpaper removed, corresponding split to top of title leaf at gutter, endpapers and prelims foxed, contents browned but generally clean, with just a few small ink annotations and pencilled marginal markers, neat paper repairs to lower corners of leaves G5-6. Overall a very good copy. Adickes 98; Norman 1201; Warda 195. Brian Jacobs & Patrick Kain, eds., Essays on Kant's Anthropology, 2003.

Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View) is a book by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, published in 1798. It is a comprehensive work addressing pragmatic anthropology, a systematic study of the way human beings are as a species, how they behave, and how their actions relate to their rational capacities and moral qualities.