KANT (Immanuel).

Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseyns Gottes.

An early pre-Critical work on the Existence of God

First edition. Small 8vo. 14, 205, [1, errata] pp., woodcut vignette to title page, woodcut head- and tail-pieces throughout. Contemporary speckled paper covered boards (remnants of old stamp clumsily erased from front pastedown, title page with early ink ownership inscription and tiny paper-loss to upper right corner not affecting text, uniform browning to paperstock, faint dampstain to opening leaves with smaller patch of staining extending to the upper-margins throughout; spine rubbed with loss at head, heavy scuffing to boards). Königsberg, Johann Jakob Kanter, 1763.

£2,000.00
KANT (Immanuel).
Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseyns Gottes.

‘Kant’s early writings such as The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God engage the concept of God in terms of principles and arguments that had been framed by the metaphysical systems of Leibniz and Wolff as well as by the theoretical structure of Newtonian physics. Kant had not yet articulated a definitive break with the approach of the rationalist metaphysics of his predecessors, so his discussions presuppose the validity of the enterprise of constructing an adequate theoretical argument for the existence of God. Even so, he makes a number of points in these works that prefigure key arguments that his mature critical philosophy will later raise against the way rationalist metaphysics had traditionally treated the status and function of the concept of God. In particular … he has already formulated a central feature of the main objection that he will raise against the ontological argument in the Critique of Pure Reason, namely, that existence is not a predicate’ (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Rare. OCLC list one copy only in North America at University Toronto, and two copies in the UK at BL and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Adickes, 33; Warda, 23.

Stock No.
262046