Maggs Bros.

A handsome copy, uncut with wide margins, of the publisher Friedrich Nicolai’s keenest philosophical satire, directed mainly against Immanuel Kant. Partly in response to it, Kant wrote two open letters to Nicolai (published as Ueber die Buchmacherey, 1798) deploring the present state of the ‘book-making’ trade in general and accusing Nicolai in particular of unscrupulously cashing in on the public interest in Kant’s works.

‘[In the present work] the lack of linguistic and conceptual clarity on the part of Fichte, Kant, Schelling, Schiller and the brothers Friedrich and Wilhelm Schlegel is satirized, with original quotations in footnotes as evidence. Nicolai tries to demonstrate that empirical practice thoroughly refutes pure transcendental theory, that abstract philosophical ideas cannot be applied to reality. The title character completes his university education with a dissertation entitled De scientia scientiae, alluding to Fichte’s circular Wissenschaftslehre. Unable to attract any students and subsequently without any success as a private tutor, his philosophical ‘Schnickschnack’ leads him nowhere. It takes him a long time to realize that sometimes empirical principles tend to make more sense than Fichte’s idealistic law ‘Ich = Ich’ (I = I). At that point Gundibert is cured. The conclusion is presented by a sensible character in the novel, quoting Samuel Butler’s satire Hudibras: ‘He knew what’s what, and that’s as high as Metaphysic wit can fly.’’ (Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers).

Adickes 1690.