Ansichten aus Immanuel Kant's Leben.

First edition. Small 8vo. 150 pp. Contemporary quarter brown cloth with marbled paper covered boards, manuscript paper label to front cover (ownership inscription of Rudolf Reicke to title page, faint spotting to preliminaries and terminal leaves; some light wear to extremities, otherwise an excellent copy). Königsberg, Göbbels und Unzer.

A rare biography of Kant, published the year after his death in 1804, written by Kant's friend and former student Friedrich Theodor Rink (1770-1811). Rink's biography is one of the earliest significant biographical sources for Kant's life, although its focus is more towards Kant's later years.

'Rink (1770-1811) studied theology at Königsberg from 1786 to 1789 (during which time he attended some of Kant’s lectures), returning in 1792 to lecture as a Privatdozent. During 1792-1793 and 1795-1801 he was a frequent dinner guest at his former professor's home. In 1794 Rink was appointed associate professor of oriental languages at the university, he was promoted to full professor in 1797, and in 1800 he became a full professor of theology. From 1801 until the end of his life, he served as a pastor in Danzig. Kant also entrusted Rink with the editing of his Lectures on Physical Geography. Other publications of Rink concerning Kant include his biography, an edited anthology of some of Kant’s essays, and a defence of Kant's philosophy against criticisms raised by Johann Georg Hamann and Johann Gottfried Herder' (Louden, Kant’s Human Being: Essays on His Theory of Human Nature, p. 136-7).

With distinguished provenance, from the library of the Kantian scholar Rudolf Reicke (1825-1905), with his ownership inscription dated April 22, 1861 to the title page. 

Rare. OCLC list a handful of European institutional holdings, including the BL and BnF, but only one copy in North America, held by the Institute for Advance Study, NJ. 

Stock Code: 245284