‎KANT, IMMANUEL (+) STARKE, FRIEDRICH (edt.)‎
‎Menschenkunde oder philosophische Anthropologie Nach handschriftlichen Vorlesungen herausgegeben von Fr. Ch. Starke. ‎

‎Leipzig, 1831. 8vo. In contemporary full empossed cloth with gilt lettering to spine. Spine defective, missing upper part and cloth along the joints. Previous owner's name to front free end-paper. Light occassional brownspotting throughout. A few underlinings in pencil. XVI, 380 pp.‎

Reference : 62896

‎Uncommon first edition of Kant’s “Philosophische Anthropologie”, posthumously published, based on his university lectures on anthropology. Johann Bergk (under the pseudonym of Friedrich Starke) edited the lecture notes in 1831, it is not known where Bergk got the manuscript from and who originally took these notes. “These lectures show that Kant had a coherent and well-developed empirical theory of human nature bearing on many other aspects of his philosophy, including cognition, moral psychology, politics and philosophy of history”. (Wood & Louden, Lectures on Anthropology. Immanuel Kant). The work sets out Kant’s thoughts on the human being, approached in both a practical and a philosophical way. He discusses the powers of the mind, the relationship between body and soul, character and temperament, human behavior and the cultural and moral sides of human life. At the center of the book is Kant’s idea that reason is what defines human beings and forms the basis of freedom and morality. “Menschenkunde” is an important work in Kant’s later philosophy. It connects his critical philosophy with moral thought and early studies of human nature, and it had a strong influence on 19th-century philosophical anthropology and the developing social sciences. Warda 226.‎