KANT (Immanuel).

Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten.

First edition. 8vo. [16], 128 pp. Contemporary half calf with sprinkled paper covered boards, spine with five single raised bands decorated with gilt roll-tools and gilt fleuron stamps, red sprinkled edges (modern book label to front pastedown, contemporary pen trials to title page, heavy dampstaining to upper right corners of opening two leaves and rear endpaper, faint dampstain to fore edge of pp. [12]-10, a few further occasional instances of faint browning; spine rather worn, headcaps chipped, joints just starting at head but holding firmly, upper corners bumped, covers slightly scuffed). Riga, Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, 1785.

£2,500.00

Kant’s masterpiece of moral philosophy, a work arguably as important as Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, containing the first appearance of Kant’s famous term the ‘categorical imperative’. It is one of the rarest of Kant’s main works and is seldom encountered in the trade.

‘If he had published nothing else but the Groundworks of the Metaphysics of Morals Kant would be assured a place in the history of philosophy. Difficult as it is to interpret in some of its details, this work is written with an eloquence, depth of insight, and strength of feeling that make an immediate impact on the reader and put it among the classics of the subject. Kant says that his ‘sole aim’ in the book is ‘to seek out and establish the supreme principle of morality.’ He wishes to delineate the basic features of the situation in which moral decisions are made, and so to clarify the special character of such decisions’ (EP, IV, p. 317).

Warda, 90.

Stock No.
253844