Philosophie de Kant. Ou Principes Fondamentaux de la Philosophie Transcendentale. Par Charles Villiers, de la Société royale des sciences de Gottingue. Première [-Seconde] Partie. Metz, Collignon, 1801.
First Edition. 8vo, (180 x 115 mm), pp. lxviii, 249, [1], [2], 251-441, lacking the final endpapers, small stain to the upper margin of the preliminary leaves, marginal paper repair to title-page, in contemporary tree calf, rather worn, corners bumped, front joint cracking, flat spine gilt in compartments with black morocco label lettered in gilt, paper label largely removed, marbled endpapers, red edges, from the library of Claude Lebédel.
A scarce book of considerable significance, this was the first work to introduce the ideas of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) to the French-speaking world. In the long preface, Villers discusses the impact of Kant’s works and their principal opposition, comparing him in importance with Descartes and Copernicus. ‘C’est en 1781 que parut le livre à jamais mémorable, Critique de la Raison Pur... une doctrine nouvelle [qui] ruinait toutes les métaphysiques qui l’avaient précédé... Ce livre renfermait la plus désolante et la plus irréfragable définition du mot savoir, chose que tant de savans ignorent’ (pp. xix-xx). Villers highlights Kant as one of two game-changing thinkers of the age, the other being Lavoisier: ‘La nouvelle chimie, la nouvelle philosophie, sont les deux tendances majeures de notre âge, les deux degrés scientifiques les plus remarquables qu’a monté notre génération’ (p. x).
Villers expresses his surprise that such a key thinker has remained unknown in France: ‘Depuis près de vingt ans, une nouvelle philosophie qui intéresse tout le savoir humaine... est encore inconnue aux Français, et il ne s’en est pas encore trouvé un seul qui ait entrepris de l’étudier et de la faire connaître à sa patrie... Mais il semble qu’il y ait une distance infranchissable de l’esprit français à l’esprit allemand; ils sont placés sur deux sommets entre lesquels il y a un abîme. C’est sur cet abîme que j’ai entrepris de jeter un pont’ (pp. lx-lxiv).
Villers studied at the Benedictine College in Metz and then went on to the School of Applied Artillery in the same town, where he developed an interest in animal magnetism. After the French revolution, he moved to Göttingen where he had an affair with the German intellectual Dorothea von Schlözer, subsequently moving in with her and her husband, Mattheus Rodde, where the three lived openly as a menage à trois. It was Villers’ French nationality that protected the household during the French occupation in 1806, a narrative that is described in his a letter written to Fanny de Beauharnais and published as Lettre contenant un récit des événements qui se sont passés à Lübeck le 6 novembre 1806, [sans lieu] 1807, a popular work which in later editions carried Fanny de Beauharnais’ name on the title-page.
OCLC lists the National Library of Spain only.
Cioranescu 63496.