#25 Immanuel Kant Letter

While we’re all more used to email and text now, there’s still something special about receiving a hand-written letter, and they remain one of our best sources for history. They tell us not only what happened, but what people were thinking about or concerned about at the time.

This item, which rounded out our week of unique treasures, comes from one of the most famous names in the history of philosophy.

1. This is a letter from the philosopher Immanuel Kant (picture 1) to Karl Leonhard Reinhold (picture 2).

2. It was written on March 7, 1788.

3. It measures 250 by 190 mm.

4. Kant is one of the most important thinkers in modern philosophy, with his most famous work being The Critique of Pure Reason. He established the framework for most of 19th and 20th century philosophy.

5. Reinhold was an Austrian philosopher and the first occupant of the chair of Critical Philosophy established at the University of Jena. He was an early and effective populariser of the Kantian philosophy.

6. Kant begins his letter by commenting on Introduction to the Critique, a work he said Reinhold was working on at the time. Curiously, Reinhold never published anything under that name. He may have meant his Letters on Kantian Philosophy which Reinhold published in 1790.

7. Kant then hopes that others would join him and Reinhold in starting a journal dedicated to examining ‘thoroughly and systematically the most controversial points of the whole of speculative and practical philosophy.’

8. Kant finally mentions that he was overburdened with “unfamiliar” duties, by which he meant his duties as rector and dean of the faculty of philosophy at the University of Königsberg, in East Prussia.

9. This seems to be the only correspondence between Kant and Reinhold in 1788.

10. This letter was found inside one of the books that once belonged to Henry William Chandler, a Fellow in Classics and bibliophile whose collection makes up a large proportion of the library’s Special Collections.