The Enlightenment produced many great thinkers, but Immanuel Kant stands out as one of the most influential philosophers in history. As celebrations take place around the world to mark the 300th anniversary of his birth, it’s an ideal time to reflect on his legacy in the world of rare book collecting. While Kant may be most renowned for his work in philosophy, his books reveal contributions in areas as diverse as physics, geopolitics, and theology. The remarkable scope of his achievements should secure him a place in collections of science, politics, and religion, as well as philosophy. So, what does the Kantian oeuvre look like, which works offer an accessible foothold into the market, and what do you need to know as a new (or established) collector?
Kant: The Man and the Books
Despite the international spread of his books, Kant spent his entire life in the small city of Königsberg (modern-day Kaliningrad), in the Kingdom of Prussia. An academic at the University of Königsberg, he was by turns an undergraduate, a freelance lecturer, a sub librarian, and finally, the university professor of logic and metaphysics.
As a full-time academic, Kant left an extensive body of work – one bibliography lists 159 separate items. His earliest work in the 1740s and 1750s developed from his undergraduate studies, and focusses on scientific investigations. Physics gradually gave way to metaphysics, and his work in the late 1750s and 1760s increasingly criticises the rationalist philosophies of Leibniz and Wolff. The period from 1770 to 1781 is known as the silent decade: he published no major works and concentrated on writing the Critik der reinen Vernunft (1781). The 1780s, in turn, are dominated by the Critiks of reinen Vernunft, of practischen Vernunft (1788), and of Urtheilskraft (1790) – his key texts on epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. From the 1790s onwards, he wrote his principal books on politics, anthropology, and religion, and arranged several editions gathering his early articles and lecture notes.
With a couple of exceptions, the three Critiks remain the major treasures for collectors. The Critik der reinen Vernunft, arguably his single most important work, has always been the most highly sought-after, with good copies often selling for around £35,000.
Presentation copies, as always, add an extra level of interest. Kant’s letters suggest that he sometimes commissioned four or five such copies of his major works, printed on paper around three times thicker than that of standard copies, and with generous margins. Reflecting his modest personal ambitions, these were often sent to fellow philosophers and theologians, although at least one appears to have made it to an aristocratic patron. Presentation copies have been identified for the Critik der Urtheilskraft and for Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (1793).
Science, Newton, and nebular hypotheses
Other than the three Critiks, the major jewels for Kantian collectors are undoubtedly his scientific works, which date from the earliest period of his career and are extremely scarce on the market. Kant’s early studies at the University of Königsberg included mathematics and physics, so it’s not entirely surprising that his first published works deal with scientific questions. His professors introduced him to the work of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, and the Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte (1749), his very first book, mediates between the Newtonian and Leibnizian approaches to measuring kinetic force.
Kant continued to write on scientific matters for many years, and with considerable success. Alongside the Gedanken, his most significant text for the collector of science is the Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels (1755), in which he develops the theory that planetary systems coalesce from the condensation of large gaseous clouds. The Kant-Laplace nebular hypothesis, although heavily revised in the 20th century, remains widely accepted to this day. The Allgemeine Naturgeschichte, which was privately financed by Kant’s uncle Richter, is the most valuable of all his works, with one copy recently listed for just over £100,000.
Politics, Globalisation, and Democratic Peace Theory
Although Kant isn’t often thought of as a political theorist, the collector of political theory will find in him a prescient and perceptive writer – particularly in his Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf (1795). Against the backdrop of the French Revolutionary Wars, Kant envisages a global federation of states, reorganised as democratic republics – an idea which, as many have noted, contains something approaching a world league of nations. Kant’s belief that democratic republics are inherently less willing to engage in armed conflict anticipated the modern doctrine of democratic peace theory, and so the foreign policy of many 20th-century liberal states.
Religion, Rationality, and the King of Prussia
Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of Kant’s most immediately controversial books was his major treatise on religion. Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, his final major work, argues that religious knowledge can be entirely grounded within human rationality – and not divine revelation. That argument led to censorship by the Prussian royal authorities, and then, when Kant ignored them, by King Friedrich Wilhelm II himself. In 1794, Kant was forced to promise the King not to publish anything further on religious matters: a promise he instantly dropped when Friedrich died in 1797. Although Kant led a famously uneventful life in Königsberg, the Religion episode indicates that this was due more to circumstance than to any inherent docility on his part.
Collecting Kant
Many of the aforementioned works provide accessible entry points to the Kantian market. The political and religious works of the 1790s come up regularly and can usually be found for under £5,000, while the philosophical treatises of the 1760s, many of which anticipate the later Critiks, often sell for under £2,500. A good example here is the Versuch den Begriff der negativen Grössen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen (1763), a critique of Leibnizian rationalism. The collected editions of the 1790s, among the less appreciated of Kant’s books and a key source for his early lecture notes, can be picked up for under £1,000.
The major bibliographies on Kant are those by Arthur Warda (1919) and Eric Adickes (1970), both of which are accessible on Archive.org. The Kantian collector should ideally consult both, for while Adickes writes in English, Warda provides a more comprehensive breakdown of each text’s contents, including blank leaves (Blatt weiß), errata (Blatt Druckfehler), and more. Neither bibliography, however, documents the numerous translations of Kant’s works.
When Kant died in February 1804, the final words of a lifetime of contemplation were, “it is good”. Challenged and championed in equal measure, the diminutive academic from Königsberg had forever changed the course of Western philosophy. The depth of his thought, and the breadth of his contributions, make him an essential figure for collectors across the board.
Written by Bookseller and Cataloguer Simon Cumming
