Old Books

In my spare time, I like to hunt down old editions of philosophical works.  

These are copies of Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics, published by Jacob Stoer in Geneva, in 1608.  They were originally bound in velum (as can be seen on the volume in the rear), but the Metaphysics was re-bound in leather sometime later.   Originally these volumes were published as part of a series of Aristotle's collected works.  They have interesting provenance.  As can be seen on the title page of the Metaphysics, they once belonged to Julien-Joseph Virey.  Virey was a scientist and an early (first half of 19th c.) proponent of evolution.  Since they are a matched pair and I bought them together, I assume that he once owned both volumes.

This is a 1734 edition of Leibniz' Theodicy.  Its provenance traces back to the library of a now-defunct monastery.  

Here we have a 1614 edition of both Seneca the Elder (writing about rhetoric) and Seneca the Younger (the philosopher).

This is a 1596 edition of Cicero's works in its original vellum binding.  An even earlier document that was used as binder's waste is visible where the vellum is peeling back at the foot of one of the volumes.  It was published by the heirs of Eustache Vignon (who had died eight years earlier), probably in Geneva.  It contains many previous owner's names, unfortunately most of them are crossed out or illegible.  One is dated 1629.  More recently it belonged to a seminary.

This is a 1721 abridgment of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding.  No provenance on this one.  The covers obviously have some wear, but they are made of nicely tooled leather.  

Both volumes of Hume's essays, from 1788.  This was the original format in which the Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding was published.  This edition includes the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in the second volume.  The bindings are from the 20th century.  I prefer original bindings, but, still, these look great.  Someone must have spent a fortune getting them rebound.

This is a 1791 copy of the Critique of Pure Reason.  It claims to be a third edition, but I think it's actually an unauthorized printing.  The tell is the city of publication.  Kant's publisher worked out of Riga.  Copyright protections were minimal in Kant's day, and pirated books were a big problem.  (Kant even wrote an essay about it!)  You wouldn't think that it would make financial sense to pirate an academic book, especially since it meant type-setting the whole thing by hand, but apparently it did.  Pirated copies of Kant's works are, if anything, more common than authorized editions.

A copy of his Essay, from a collection of Condillac's works published in 1792.

And now for something that is, if not completely different, at least somewhat different.  These are autographed offprints of journal articles, one signed by Roderick Chisholm and the other by Carl Hempel.