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Second, substantially revised edition of one of the most influential books ever published. Kant provides a new preface and heavily revises his approach to transcendental deduction, idealism, paralogisms, and phenomena. Many scholars, including the editors of the Cambridge Edition, treat this as the definitive text. The Critik addresses a key concern of the Enlightenment: that mechanistic scientific reason threatened to undermine the possibility of human freedom and, by extension, traditional approaches to morality and religion. To resolve that problem, Kant develops the thesis of transcendental idealism - the argument that the structures of human thought shape our comprehension of the world around us. This allows him to demonstrate that scientific knowledge, morality, and religion are all founded on the same basis of human autonomy. "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). Octavo (190 x 114 mm), pp. xliv, 884. Contemporary speckled paper, rebacked with original spine laid down, spine with paper label lettered in manuscript, edges red. Woodcut title vignette, decorative woodcut head- and tailpieces, initials. Nineteenth-century ownership inscription of "Waldemar W. St---" to front pastedown. Neat restoration to extremities and spine ends. Minor rubbing, loss to label, affecting text, inner hinges split but holding firm, slight browning to contents: a very good copy. Adickes 46; Warda 60. For the first edition, see Hook & Norman 1197; Printing and the Mind of Man 226.

Critik der reinen Vernunft, also known as Critique of Pure Reason, is one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy. Written by Immanuel Kant, this work addresses the problem of how we can understand and grasp the nature of human knowledge.