Der Neue Emil oder von der Erziehung nach bewährten Grundsätzen.
Erlangen: verlegts Wolfgang Walther, 1768. First edition. Minor rubbing to extremities, a little browning to title-page, but a fine, clean copy. Contemporary sprinkled boards, edges stained red. Octavo. [viii], 300, [1, errata], [2, blank] pp. Item #15589
This is not a Rousseauean sequel to Emile, as the title might suggest, but a novel and a handbook for modern pedagogues, which ran into several editions. Feder added another book with the same title in 1774, but this work is complete in itself, as intended. In the preface he expresses the view that “Rousseau’s Emil does not deserve to be burnt, but to be cauterized and moulded into a new work.” Johann Georg Heinrich Feder (1740-1821) was a professor at the University of Göttingen. Along with Christoph Meiners, he was a leading light in the anti-Kantian school known as the Popularphilosophen, which emerged in Göttingen in the late 1780s and was responsible for the Philosophische Bibliothek, which ran from 1788 to 1791 and was the most prominent source in Germany for foreign and especially British philosophy. Feder was also critical of Hume, preferring the Common Sense school of Reid and Beattie.
OCLC lists six copies in Germany, and one each in France, the Netherlands, and Sweden, but no copy in the English-speaking world.
Price: $2,000.00