Von den göttlichen Dingen und Ihrer Offenbarung.

8vo (118 x 184 mm). VIII, 222, (2) pp. Contemporary decorated paper spine with recent marbled paper covered boards. First edition: the final major work by the hugely influential German philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819), titled "On the Divine Things and Their Revelation". "This work marked for Jacobi the emancipation of rational thinking from the bounds set to it by the Enlightenment in matters of religion. Jacobi’s goal was to develop a new definition of rationality" (Paolo Livieri). - "Jacobi was a leading representative, with Hamann, of the philosophy of feeling and a major critic of Kant. He was critical of speculations leading to the concept of the prevalence of necessary laws above freedom, hence Jacobi’s rejection of Spinoza’s pantheism and of the philosophy of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel in which there are manifest pantheistic tendencies. Because of Jacobi’s concept of the primacy of freedom, he found that the actions of man are not to be deduced from his thinking, for thinking is not the primary force in man. The history of man is not the result of his mode of thought; rather, the former determines the latter". A "master of criticism", Jacobi was responsible for sparking most of the main philosophical controversies of his age. "His strength lay in grasping a system of thought as a whole and detecting those elements in it which are incompatible. This capacity of critical analysis is manifest in his appraisal of dogmatic rationalism and the critical philosophy" (Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vols. 3/4, p. 235). - Light browning throughout, otherwise generally internally clean. A lovely copy. - Neat contemporary ownership of the German National Liberal politician and writer Wilhelm Wehrenpfennig (1829-1900), a former democrat of 1848, to title-page. - Kayser III, 226.