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LIST 217 - PHILOSOPHY.
41[LOCKE].SCHUMANN,Wilhelm Paul.DARSTELLUNG UND KRITIK des Unendlichkeitsbegriffs bei Locke. Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der philosophischen Doktorwürde auf der Universität Leipzig ... Leipzig-R. Druck von Oswald Schmidt. 1894.£ 185
DISSERTATION. 8vo, pp. 64; with library stamp on verso of title; clean and fresh throughout; in contemporary cloth-backed boards with original printed wrappers bound in; paper label on spine; extremities worn.
An interesting dissertation, presented to the University of Leipzig, on Locke’s idea of infinity.
Schumann first describes Locke’s treatment of space, time, and number, before entering into a number of criticisms of Locke’s views, largely based on the approach taken by Alois Riehl. An examination of the origins of the infinite in Locke follows, again divided into separate discussions of infinity in space, time, and, at greater length, number, before further criticism based again on Riehl, and also on Leibnitz, highlighting the importance of continuum; the dissertation then examines in more detail Locke’s concept of infinity, and his arguments against positive infinity, before discussing some of the consequences of Locke’s views on questions including the eternity of God.
OCLC records three copies outside Germany, at Yale, Princeton, and the Center for Research Libraries.
Anglophone Idealism in the Eighteenth Century
42LYON, Georges. L’IDEALISME EN ANGLETERRE AU XVIIIE SIECLE ... Paris, Ancienne Librairie Germer Bailliere et Cie, Felix Alcan, Editeur, 1888.£ 125
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. [vi], 481, [1] blank, [1] contents, [1] blank, 32 (advertisements); very light marginal browning, due to paper quality, with name stamp on front free end-paper; in the original printed wrappers, some staining to covers, and upper cover chipped at lower fold.
First edition of this compendious survey of Anglophone idealism in the eighteenth century, by Georges Henri Joseph Lyon (1853-1929). Lyon argues that much of the spirit of idealism in English-speaking philosophy is inspired by Malebranche (“La gloire des idéalistes d’outre-Manche restera intacte quand bien même, en réédifiant leurs systèmes, nous aurions semblé d’aventure dresser sur la terre anglaise une chapelle à Malebranche” (p. 16).
To support this claim, Lyon in turn describes the thought of Descartes, his English followers (Hobbes and Locke), Burthogge, Malebranche and his English proselytisers (Taylor), John Norris, Arthur Collier and Berkeley, before turning to an account of immaterialist idealism in America, in the work of Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Edwards. The final chapter deals with the progress of Berkeleyan idealism in Britain, concentrating especially on Hume.
In addition to the present work, Lyon also wrote a study of Hobbes, and edited Condillac’s Traité des sensations.
OCLC: 2174092.
43MACKINTOSH, James. MÉLANGES PHILOSOPHIQUES ... Traduits de l’Anglais par Léon
Simon. Paris, A. Johanneau, Libraire-Éditeur, Rue du Coq-S.-Honoré, 1829.£ 150
FIRST FRENCH EDITION. 8vo, pp. [vi], xv, [1] blank, 358, [2] contents and errata, some foxing to beginning
and end, else clean; bound in contemporary quarter sheep, black spine label lettered in gilt.
Rare first French translation of James Mackintosh’s three essays written for the Edinburgh Review which helped France to a better understanding of German and European philosophical ideas, which had been previously neglected.
The first two essays are an analysis of Dugald Stewart’s A General View of the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical and Political Philosophy since the Revival of Letters in Europe which was prefixed to the supplement of the fourth and fifth editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The reviews, first published in September 1816 and October 1821, enthuse ‘It will be difficult to name a work in which so much refined philosophy is joined with so fine a fancy, and so much elegant literature with such a delicate perception of the distinguishing excellences of great writers, and with an estimate in general so just of of the services rendered to knowledge by a succession of philosophers.’ Mackintosh, not suprisingly, was seen by Stewart as his successor although he declined the opportunity of taking the chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University.
The last essay is a review of Madame de Stael’s De l’Allemagne which was reviewed originally in October 1813, a few months after publication in England. Mackintosh who had published the famous rejoinder Vindiciae Gallicae to Burke’s Reflections was well chosen to write on the constitution and philosophical inwardness of France.
OCLC: 23390650 records one copy in the US, at Michigan, plus further copies in Europe, at Lille and Catania.
44 [MENDELSSOHN]. [SPAZIER, J.G. Karl]. ANTI-PHÄDON, oder Prüfung einiger Hauptbeweise für die Einfachheit und Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele. In Briefen. Leipzig, Crusius, 1785.£ 875
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. xviii, 286; some spotting in places, and small paper repair to head of first two leaves, but generally clean and fresh; in recent mottled boards to style, with paper label lettered in gilt on spine.
First edition of this uncommon response to Moses Mendelssohn’s Phädon (1776), by the little known writer and composer Karl Spazier (1761-1805).
Phädon had quickly become the most-read German philosophical work of its time, and was reprinted several times and translated into many languages. Inspired by Plato’s work of the same title, Mendelssohn had argued that the soul was, due to its simplicity, indestructable, and that, although it could in theory lose consciousness, a benevolent God would not allow this. In the present work, consisting of a series of sixteen letters, Spazier attempts to present a materialist critique of Mendelssohn’s work, unsurprisingly chosing to publish his book anonymously, while referring several times to Kant’s first Critique, as well as to the work of Wolff, Newton, Basedow, Hobbes, La Mettrie and others.
Best known for his autobiography, Spazier studied philosophy at the Wolffian bastion of Halle. OCLC four copies outside continental Europe, at the Burndy, Chicago, UT Austin, and Glasgow.
45[MONESTRIER, Blaise]. LA VRAIE PHILOSOPHIE par M. L’Abbé M***. À Bruxelles, chez J.L. Boubers, Imprimeur-Libraire, 1774.£ 385
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. [iv], xxviii, 480, [1] errata, [1] Approbation, [2] contents; a clean fresh copy throughout; in contemporary calf, spine gilt with red morocco label lettered in gilt ...
First edition of this rare philosophical work by the French priest Blaise Monestrier (1717-1776), attacking the secular philosophy of the enlightenment, and the rejection of the Christian virtues by the philosophes.
Monestrier covers all the principal aspects of philosophy, discussing the nature of Man, the stucture of the human body, the nature of the soul and its relationship with the body, epistemology and sentiment, the bases of moral and intellectual qualities, reason, innate and secondary ideas, the idea of the infinite, science, memory, will, and the Good.
La Vraie Philosophie was published and edited by Monestrier’s friend, the English Catholic biologist John Needham (1713-1781), who provided the preface. A correspondent of Buffon, Needham is best known in philosophical circles for his controversy with Voltaire over spontaneous generation.
OCLC records just two copies, at Illinois and Michigan.
46MONTESQUIEU, Charles de Secondat, Baron de. DE L’ESPRIT DES LOIX Ou du Rapport que les Loix Doivent Avoir avec la Constitution de Chaque Gouvernement, les Moeurs, le Climat, la Religion, le Commerce, &c. a quoi l’Auteur a ajoute Des recherches nouvelles sur les Loix Romaines touchant les Successions, sur les Loix Francoises, & sur les Loix Feodales. Tome Premier [- Seconde]. A Leyde, Chez les Libraires Associés, 1749.£ 1,000
EARLY EDITION. Two volumes bound in one, 4to, pp. viii, [xvi], 369, [1] blank; [iii], [i] errata, 396 [misnumbered 306], [12] index; apart from minor light foxing in places and a little browning to one or two gatherings, a clean and crisp copy throughout; bound in contemporary mottled sheep, spines attractively tooled in gilt with red morocco label lettered in gilt, some minor surface wear and light rubbing to extremities; contemporary small neat ownership stamp of ‘Bourguet’ at foot of title; a very desirable copy.
An attractive copy of an early Leiden edition of ‘one of the most remarkable works of the eighteenth century’ (PMM) - Montesquieu’s classification of political structures and his comparative and historical political sociology.
De l’Esprit des Loix is ostensibly a treatise on law, but it spills over into a consideration of every domain affecting human behaviour and into questions of philosophical judgement about the merit of various kinds of legislation. It is divided into six sections, dealing in turn with law in general and different forms of government, with the means of government, with national character and the effect on it of climate, with economic matters and religion, and - in the last chapter - with law, Roman, feudal and modern French.
‘The most distinctive aspect of this immense syllabus is its moderation: a quality not designed to achieve official approval in 1748. It is an always original survey which is neither doctrinaire, visionary, eccentric, nor over-systematic ... But the scheme that emerges of a liberal benevolent monarchy limited by safeguards on individual liberty was to prove immensely influential. ... Curiously enough the philosophes, whose views were much in sympathy with his, did not speak much of him. This was partly due to the antagonism of Voltaire, and partly to a feeling that on this subject there was nothing much to be added. Yet his theories underlay the thinking which led up to the American and French revolutions, and the United States Constitution in particular is lasting tribute to the principles he advocated’.
Printing & the Mind of Man 197; Tchemerzine VIII, 459; En Francais dans le texte 138; this edition not recorded in Kress or Goldsmiths.
47MOORE, George Edward. PRINCIPIA ETHICA ... Cambridge, at the University Press, 1903. £ 350
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. xxvii, [i], 232; light pencil underlining throughout, endpapers a little foxed; original brown publisher’s cloth, spine lettered in gilt with some minor wear to head and foot; a very good copy.
First edition of Moore’s famous, influential work on ethics, about which Keynes wrote in his Two Memoirs: ‘I went up to Cambridge at Michaelmas 1902, and Moore’s Principia Ethica came out at the end of the first year. I have never heard of the present generation having read it. But, of course, its effect on us, and the talk which preceded and followed it, dominated, and perhaps still dominate, everything else ... The influence was not only overwhelming; but it was the extreme opposite of what Strachey used to call funeste; it was exciting, exhilarating, the beginning of a renaissance, the opening of a new heaven on a new earth, we were the forerunners of a new dispensation, we were not afraid of anything...’
‘Now what we got from Moore was by no means entirely what he offered us. He had one foot on the threshold of the new heaven, but the other foot in Sidgwick and the Benthamite calculus and the general rules of correct behavior. There was one chapter in the Principia of which we took not the slightest notice. We accepted Moore’s religion, so to speak, and discarded his morals. Indeed, in our opinion, one of the greatest advantages of his religion, was that it made morals unnecessary - meaning by ‘religion’ one’s attitude towards one-self and the ultimate and by ‘morals’ one’s attitude towards the outside world and the intermediate. To the consequences of having a religion and no morals I return later’ (pp. 81-82).
Master scholasticism in only three years!
48MORANDI, Giovanni. CURSUS PHILOSOPHICI Annus Primus [-Tertius]. Hoc est Tractatus, et Quaestiones, in quibus brevi, & facili methodo disputantus omnia, qua his temporibus in scholis desiderari solent. In Logicam Aristotelis, Ad quam primò sternitur via Isagogica Summularum materia.
Venetiis, Apud Guerilios, MDCXLVII [ 1647]. £ 650
FIRST EDITION. Three parts in one volume, 4to, pp. [xx], 104, [xvi] index; [iv], 108, [xvi] index; [iv], 93, [15] index; with full-page portrait of Johannes Vincentius, each part with its own engraved title, and several diagrams in the text; some marginal dampstaining, occasional browning, and worming to gutter of a couple of gatherings, but otherwise fresh throughout; in later cloth-backed cloth boards, spine lettered in gilt; boards and spine rubbed; with library label on front paste-down.
First edition of this very rare course of scholastic philosophy by the Verona theologian Giovanni Morandi, largely a commentary on Aristotle’s principal philosophical works.
The work is divided into three parts. The first deals with logic: after an examination of the nature of terms, propositions, and different forms of argument, Morandi presents a commentary on Porphyri’s Isagoge, followed by a further commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. The second part discusses physics, again following the structure of Aristotle’s work, explaining the distinction between matter and form, and discussing privation, composition, causation, motion, quantity, infinity, place, and time, before turning to Aristotle’s De Coelo. The final part discusses the De Generatione et corruptione, the De Anima, and the Metaphysics.
Each section benefits from its own attractively engraved title-page, along with a comprehensive index of subjects.
Not in OCLC, which records only microform copies.
Father of Communism
49[MORELLY]. CODE DE LA NATURE, ou le véritable esprit de ses loix, de tout négligé ou méconnu. Par-tout, chez le vrai sage, [Paris or Liège ?], 1755.£ 2,800
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, red and black printed title-page with engraved vignette by Rack, 1 f. Preface, pp. 5-236, 2 ff. Table, [i.e. collates complete]; contemporary sprinkled calf, cover borders ruled with triple gilt fillet, a single gilt ‘frond’ to each corner, spine with raised bands, compartments gilt-ruled enclosing two stars and a frond in each, red goatskin lettering piece lettered in gilt, all edges red, original green silk marker; very slight shelf wear; corner extremities rubbed; but otherwise a good copy.
An important and well-rationalised step in the secularisation of communist impulses begun in the practicalities of monastic and Anabaptist communes centuries earlier. Babeuf and, later, Marx, were particularly fond of this work, the latter often quoting it on the dire effects of private ownership, the former taking up many of the ideas and incorporating them into his work “The Conspiracy of Equals.”
A very pleasing copy, in excellent condition, with light, twentieth century, scholarly pencil notes throughout, noting the influences apparent in the text (e.g. on Rousseau).
Kress 5457; Goldsmiths’ 9074; Einaudi 4031.
Anatomy of Human Virtues and Passions
50[MORVAN DE BELLEGARDE, Jean Baptiste de]. ARTE Ó MODO DE CONOCER Á LOS HOMBRES Y MUGERES: y máxîmas para la sociedad civil. Traducido del Frances al Castellano por el D.A.N. ... Madrid, en la imprenta de Benito Cano, 1788.£ 485
FIRST SPANISH EDITION. 8vo, pp. [xii], 267, [1] blank; a few leaves lightly browned, but otherwise clean and crisp throughout; in contemporary speckled calf, rebacked with spine ruled in gilt and morocco label lettered in gilt; spine cracked and chipped at head, but otherwise a good copy.
First Spanish translation of this work, first published in French in 1709, by the sometime Jesuit and prolific author Jean Baptiste de Morvan de Bellegarde (1648-1734), presenting an anatomy of human virtues and passions, expanding on the work of the same title by Marin Cureau de la Chambre, first published in 1659.
Bellegarde gives brief accounts of all the principal virtues, discussing, among others, justice, temperance, prudence, humility, piety, friendship, the honesty of women, the love of truth, moderation, modesty (in both women and men), constancy, generosity, the magnanimity of philosophers, and valour, while also examining the virtue of grief at the death of a parent or friend, complacency, and clemency. The work concludes with an extended section presenting a series of maxims for civil society; these are less political than social, emphasising the rôle of courtesy, and attention to one’s own actions. Bellegarde also notes the position of women in society, and the injustices inflicted on them by men, and argues that the reason that the majority of men do not correct their faults is that they live life unreflectively.
As far as we can tell, this is the only edition of the work, in any language, to include “y mugeres” in the title; later Spanish translations, as well as all French editions and the German translation, speak only of “hombres”, “hommes”, and the rather more inclusive “Menschen” respectively.
OCLC: 54140671 records only one copy, at Yale.
Violent attack on modern Scientific and Philosophical Thought
51[NEWTON]. MARSH, Richard. THE VANITY AND DANGER OF MODERN THEORIES A Sermon preach’d at St. Mary’s Church in Cambridge, on Sunday the 13th Day of August. 1699. Cambridge, Printed at the University Press, for Edmund Jeffery, Bookseller in Cambridge, 1699. £ 850
FIRST EDITION. 4to, pp. [iv] including half-title, 24; light marginal browning and soiling; in modern wrappers. Uncommon first edition of this violent attack on modern scientific and philosophical thought, by Richard
Marsh (c.1670-1732).
Taking as his text Job 38, iv (“Where wast thou, when I lay’d the foundations of the Earth? declare, if thou hast understanding”), Marsh aims his attack both on modern science and on modern philosophical and theological thinking. He attacks Newton in particular, arguing that in the Book of Genesis, “we meet ... with no Laws of Gravity by which God acted: we have his power only described by his Will, and his Wisdom by his good pleasure. In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth, and let things be”. He says of modern ideas, “the Principles on which they are founded are so Precarious, that they find but little better Encouragement. There cannot be a plainer Instance of this, than the Clashing of such Authors in their Opinions. For one Hypothesis is no sooner out, but tis suck’d up, like their Notions of the Planets, by a greater Force and Gravitation of another. We have seen a Des-Cartes run down, whose Reputation is aobsorb;d by the more prevailing Power of new Theories: tho’ if we take a view of Them, we shall find they have not had the Happiness of giving any greater Satisfatcion” (p. 5). He goes on to note that Descartes’ “Principles are now out of Repute”, although he was “no mean Mathematician”.
Richard Marsh, fellow of St John’s College Cambridge, argues that the attempts to understand the universe in scientific ways are both bound to failure, and harmful to religion. “Men are turning Levellers in Religion, as they were of old in Government; and nothing now must pass for an Article of their Faith, but what is of the same Height with their Reason” (p. 8). He also attacks Deism and Socinianism, concluding that only in Scripture will one fine “God’s Wisdom, and [one’s] own ignorance, everywhere writ in great Characters”.
Wing M738; OCLC: 34724750 records copies at Princeton, Yale, Emory, Cambridge, and the Newberry Library.
52NIETZSCHE, Friedrich. UTRENNIAIA ZARIA. Razmyshleniia o nravstvennykh poniatniiakh. Perevod s Nemetskago E. G. Moscow, D. P. Efimov, [1907].£ 385
FIRST EDITION IN RUSSIAN [?]. 8vo, pp. 383; evenly a little browned due to paper stock; a few leaves with minor spotting; overall well-preserved in contemporary Russian cloth-backed patterned boards; light wear to extremities; contemporary library stamp of the library of Farforov Zavod, the seat of the Lomonosov porcelain manufacturer in Saint Petersburg inside front cover, Russian ownership inscription, dated 1933 on title.
Very rare second issue of the first edition in Russian of Nietzsche’s Morgenröthe (Dawn; first, 1886), translated by E. Gertsyk, who worked for the Saint Petersburg publisher Efimov, who published several works by Nietzsche. The first edition, according to the bibliographical checklist in Nietzsche in Russia, edited by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, who admits that bibliographical evidence is rather sketchy, was published as volume III of collected works by M. V. Kliukin in Moscow in 1901 (translated by E. Gertsyk; 2400 copies printed), and in the same year as volume VIII of another collected works edition, published by V. V. Chicherin in Moscow (translated by L. I. Sokolova[?]). Our copy is possibly a re-issue of the first edition, with a new cancel title, not mentioning this work as part of the collected works; however, the first leaves of each gathering are marked in the lower margins as T. VIII, which would speak for the Chicherin edition. However that may be, this re-issue is not mentioned in the checklist.
The publication of Nietzsche in Russian began slowly in 1894 with minor and shorter works. In the second half of the 1890s Nietzsche was eagerly read in Imperial Russia and left a deep and lasting influence on Lunacharsky, the later Bolshevik Commissar for People’s Enlightenment, who sometimes is described as a Nietzschean Marxist, Maxim Gorky, whose Übermensch was the idealized Russian hero from the sub- proletariat, or the poets Bal’mont and Alexandr Blok, Skriabin, the Russian constructivists and other avantgarde movements. In this study of Kulturkritik Nietzsche detects that the concepts of objectivity and free will are actually illusions, and juxtaposes the contemporary weakness of contemporary German culture with strong figures, such as Goethe, Dostoievsky, or the Greek Sophists.
OCLC lists one copy of the first issue, in Boston public library, which ends with gathering 22 and page 352, and one complete copy of the present issue, at Stamford; three volumes of Kliukin’s collected works are located at Ohio State University.
On the possibility of knowledge
53 NOTARI, Costantino de’. IL DUELLO DELL ’IGNORANZA E DELLA SCIENZA, Fatto principalmente nel camp filosofico, Diviso in due Parti: sceptica, e dogmatica ... In Milano, Appresso Girolamo Bordone, Pietromartire Locarni, e Bernardino Lantoni, MDCVII [ 1607-8].
FIRST EDITION. 4to, pp. [xxiv], [ii] title, 202, [2] blank, 203-564, [1] errata, [1] blank; title printed in red and black, each part with separate title dated 1608; some sporadic foxing and spotting, initial gathering worn, with paper repair to verso of title; nonetheless, otherwise generally clean and crisp; in contemporary vellum, title in ink on spine; some wear to extremities and spine, covers soiled, but still a reasonable copy.
First edition of this unusual and substantial work on the desirability and attainability of knowledge, by the Benedictine monk Costantino de Notari, notable for its breadth of reference and wide scope.
The work is divided into two parts, sceptical and dogmatic. The first part, subtitled “Dell’ Impossibilità della Scienza”, marshals many of the principal arguments in favour of a denial of the possibility of true knowledge: these include arguments from the diversity of opinions on fundamental matters such as the soul, and from the fallibility of the
senses; a second section examines specific difficulties surrounding the notion of certainty, and discusses the existence of God, and questions of prime matter, the elements, mathematics, moral and political questions, medical matters, poetry and dialectic. A further chapter discusses moral arguments against scienza, noting some of the damage caused by the search for knowledge, and arguing that the desire to know is one of the main causes of human misery, while the final part of the first book records the arguments in praise of ignorance of various wise men, including Zoroaster, Horace, Homer, Plutarch, Pythagoras, and many others.
The second part, somewhat longer, puts the philosophical case for the possibility of knowledge, and the moral case for its pursuit. Notari’s opening claim is that “La Bellezza naturale dell’Anima essere la Scienza”, and he attempts to refute the authorities quoted in the first part, responding in detail and in turn to each of the arguments cited.
OCLC records copies at Oxford, Göttingen, Munich, and the Herzog August Bibliothek.
54PARA DU PHANJAS, François. THÉORIE DES ÊTRES INSENSIBLES, ou, Cours complet de métaphysique, sacrée et profane, mise a la portée de tout le monde. Avec une table alphabétique des matieres, qui fait de tout cet ouvrage, un vrai dictionnaire de métaphysique ou de philosophie ... Tome Premier [-Troisieme]. A Paris, chez L. Cellot & A. Jombert, Fils Jeune ... 1779.£ 450
FIRST EDITION. Three volumes, 8vo, pp. [iv], lix, [v], 672; [iv], 656, [1] errata, [1] blank; [iv], 658; with one folding engraved plate in vol. II; a clean fresh copy throughout; in contemporary mottled calf, spines tooled in gilt with red morocco labels lettered in gilt, minor unobtrusive worming to spines, head of vol. I with minor chipping, corners lightly rubbed, nevertheless, a handsome and appealing copy.
First edition under this title of this rare and comprehensive guide to metaphysics by the French Jesuit François Para du Phanjas (1724-1797), a development of his Eléments de métaphysique sacrée et profane which first appeared in 1767.
In his preface, the author states that “Il est certain que la Philosophie, telle qu’on l’enseigne ou qu’on doit l’enseigner aujourd’hui, a besoin d’un Cours simple et lumineux de Métaphysique; et qu’un tel Cours ... manque encore à la Philosophie”. To that end, he presents an exhaustive survey of the basic questions of philosophy and metaphyics, discussing epistemology, the categories, the nature of substance, relations, time and space, the nature of ideas, the soul, human freedom, morality, matter, logic and dialectic, and God; throughout he cites authorities including Locke, Spinoza, and Malebranche.
OCLC records three copies in North America, at Michigan, Columbia and the New York Public Library.
Cartesian medicine and philosophy
55PASCOLI, Alessandro. OSSERVAZIONI TEORICHE, E PRATICHE di Medicina. Inviate per Lettera agli eruditissimi signori di sua Privata Accademia ... Si disaminanon i Sintomi di un mal di Petto, che il Volgo chiama Pleuritide cieca ed occulta... In Venezia, per Andrea Poletti, 1702.
[bound with]: NUOVO METODO per Introdursi ad imitazion de’ Geometri con ordine, chiarezza, e brevità nelle piu sottili questioni di filosofia Metafisiche, Logiche, Morali, e Fisiche ... Libro Primo [- Parte seconda] Si da un Saggio di Metafisica su lo stil Cartesiano. In Venezia, Per Andrea Poletti, 1702. £ 850
FIRST EDITIONS. Two works in one volume, 8vo, pp. 62, [2] index; [xx], 96, [1] dedication, [1] blank; tear to corner of penultimate leaf with loss to corner of one letter, minimally spotted in places; uncut in contemporary paste- paper boards; ownership inscription, dated 1747 at foot of the first title.
Two rare works by the Perugia philosopher and physician Alessandro Pascoli (1669-1757), whose medical textbook Il corpo-umano was in print from 1700 to 1750.
I. First edition of this collection of medical observations, notably on pleurisy, its forms, related symptoms, and how an analysis of blood can assist in detecting it. Pascoli is in praise of Francesco Redi’s observations and conclusions, and in dealing with medication Pascoli recommends opiates condemns cold drinks, and refers again to Redi, and Marcello Malpighi.
II. The Nuovo metodo is an attempt, based on Cartesian principles, to develop and explain philosophy more geometrico. In the preface Pascoli defines the individual as being composed of spirit and body, the consideration of the spirit-body relation being the cornerstone of philosophy, which inevitably is metaphysics. The spirit itself is composed of intellect and will, and examining the intellect creates logic, whereas the examination of the will results in moral philosophy. The first part is on human certainties, mainly the statement ‘I do exist’ or ‘I am.’ The negation of this fundamental statement reaffirms it: ‘I doubt to exist - therefore I am’ (pp. 1-2). Pascoli ensues metaphysical conclusions from these certainties, axioms of the physical world, and determines what can be known and understood by man and what not. The final discourse ‘proves’ the immortality of the soul by stating that something immaterial can not perish in a material sense.
I. Not in Wellcome; OCLC records three copies, at the National Library of Medicine, Harvard, and Göttingen. - II. OCLC locates only one copy, at Harvard Medical School.
56PETÖCZ, Mihály. DIE WELT AUS SEELEN. Ofen, [Anna Landerer for Hartleben in Pesth], 1833. £ 950
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. 271 (recte 309); numerous errors in pagination), [2], [2, blank]; a little brown-spotted in places; entirely uncut in the original printed wrappers; a little worn and spotted; contemporary ownership inscription by one Pater Melchior, Hungarian stamp and release stamp on title, shelfmark label on front cover.
First edition of this rare anti-idealist work by the Hungarian philosopher Mihály Petöcz. The arguments are given in a language foreshadowing German existentialism as formulated by Jaspers at the beginning of the 20th century; Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard are obviously not too distant. Petöcz was familiar with Sanskrit and Indian philosophy, which must have been one of his points of departure away from the tradition of Western philosophy. The world consists of souls, a concept discussed since Leibniz’s monadology. The souls can be divided into two classes, dead and living; the latter ones in a certain aggregate form physical bodies and objects. Therefore life and death, clearly distinguished from existing and not existing - living and dead souls - are the prerequisites of the material and intellectual world.
Petöcz was a medical doctor with wide-ranging interests, who wrote on the medical effects of coffee and quinine, as well as on Sanskrit and Indo-European languages and the immorality of capital punishment.
OCLC locates two copies, in Munich and in Jena.
57[PLEKHANOV, Georgii Valentinovich]. BELTOV, N (pseudonym). K VOPROSU O RAZVITII MONISTICHESKAGO VZGLIADA NA ISTORIIU Otvet gg. Mikhailovskomu, Kareevu i komp. St. Petersburg, I. N. Skorokhodov, 1895.£ 350
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. [iv], 287; evenly lightly browned due to paper stock; well preserved and clean in contemporary half-calf over marbled boards; extremities worn, front hinge weakened; contemporary ownership stamp Z ksiegozbioru Tadeusza Rechniewskiego (In the book collection of Tadeusz Rechniewski), as well as two later Polish Socialist and Communist Library stamps on title (a few repeats in the margins of the text).
First edition of Plekhanov’s main philosophical work, published illegally without censorship note.
On the Question of the Development of the Monistic Concept of History was published under the pseudonym Beltov and pointed ultimately to victory for the revolutionaries and helped to spur the formation of Marxist groups within Russia and to secure Plekhanov (1855-1918) an international reputation among European Social Democrats. Initially Plekhanov supported Lenin and the Bolshevik faction, but he soon stated that Lenin had confused a dictatorship of the proletariat with a dictatorship over the proletariat. He attempted to mediate between Meshevik and Bolshevik positions and introduced a sociological dimension to Marxism in Russia. Schumpeter, in his magisterial History of Economic Analysis, praises Plekhanov as a ‘scholar and thinker. Thought not much of an economist, he stands very high as a Marxist sociologist and, in particular, as an analyst of the socio-psychical “superstructure”‘ (p. 878). In this work Plekhanov elevated the ‘objectivism’ of Marx in contrast to the subjective values of the Narodniki. He wrote, ‘the criterion of truth lies not in me, but in the relations which exist outside of me’. Thus, objectivity was possible in social theory. Plekhanov drew from Marx, and from the traditions of the English economists and German historicists, the fundamental principle that economic forces determine social development’ (The New Palgrave). Although several historians speak of this book as having been written or published in 1894, we were not able to trace an edition with that date.
‘We read and re-read Beltov’s (Plekhanov) book, The Monistic View of History, collectively and individually’ (Cecilia Bobrovskaya, Twenty Years in Underground Russia: Memoirs of a Rank-and-File Bolshevik, online).
Not in Stammhammer of Zaleski; OCLC records American copies at Stanford, NYU, Kansas, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and the Hoover Institute.
58[PRANDI, Girolamo]. LETTERA CRITICA INTORNO AL SENSO MORALE Scritta ad un Amico da Girolamo Prandi, P. Professore nella R. Universita di Bologna e membro del Collegio Elettorale dei Dotti ... [Colophon:] In Bologna per Giuseppe Lucchesini. [1808].£ 350
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. 28; a clean crisp copy in recent mottled wraps.
First edition of this rare essay on the moral sense by the Bolognese philosopher and historian Girolamo Prandi, in which he examines and criticises the idea, paying particular attention to its use by Frances Hutcheson and by Michele Araldi, whose Pensieri sulla credulità appeared the previous year.
Not in OCLC.
59PRICE, Richard. OBSERVATIONS SUR LA NATURE DE LA LIBERTÉ CIVILE, sur les principes du Gouvernement, sur la Justice et la Politique de la Guerre avec l’Amérique. Auxquelles on a ajouté un Appendix & un Postscriptum, Contenant un état de la dette Nationnale, une estimation de l’argent tiré du Public, par les taxes, & un exposé du Révenu & des dépenses de la Nation, depuis la dernière Guerre. ... Traduit de l’Anglais, Sur la onzième Édition, augmentée & corigée par l’Auteur. A Rotterdom, Chez Hofhout & Wolfsbergen, Libraires sur le Visschersdyk. MDCCLXXVI [ 1776]..£ 700
FIRST FRENCH TRANSLATION. 8vo, pp. [vi], 148; clean and fresh throughout, with library stamp on title; uncut in contemporary drab wrappers; wraps frayed and dampstained, and spine missing, but nonetheless holding firm.
First French translation, taken from the eleventh English edition, of Price’s Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, published the same year as the first English edition.
Price’s work was extraordinarily popular, selling several thousand in the days after its first publication. The work “starts with a reiteration of the emphasis on the need for liberty, here classified as physical, moral, religious and civil liberty, the last including all the other forms of liberty. Price’s main point is that it is the function of the state to guarantee liberty as a necessary condition for the individual to be able to act in a moral fashion. If it fails in this, which is Price’s argument with regard to the American colonies and certain aspects of British Government policy, it needs to be changed as a matter of moral necessity” (Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century British Philosophers, II, p. 714).
The present translation includes Price’s appendix, dealing with the national debt and tax revenues. We have been unable to identify the translator.
OCLC: 3904351 records four copies, at Yale, Harvard Law School, Cornell and the National Library of Wales.
On truth
60 REINHOLD, Carl Leonhard. UEBER DEN BEGRIF UND DIE ERKENNTNIß DER WAHRHEIT. Lehrern der Logik und Metaphysik mit der Bitte um belehende Prüfung, und Zuhören als Grundlage für mündliche Erörterungen mitgetheilt von Carl Leonhard Reinhold. Kiel, gedruckt bey D. F. Mohr. 1817.£ 950
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. 64; some browning throughout, with perforated library stamp of Columbia University on first two leaves; in recent marbled boards to style.
First edition of this rare epistemological study by the Catholic post-Kantian philosopher Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1758-1823).
Although one of the principal popularizers of Kant’s critical philosophy, by the early 1790s Reinhold had identified many failings in the Kantian approach, which he attempted to rectify in several works, including Über das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens in 1791. ‘Reinhold’s radical revision and implicit critique of orthodox Kantianism exercised an immediate and immense influence upon his contemporaries, and particularly upon the philosopher who followed him at Jena in 1794, namely Johann Gottlieb Fichte. But though Fichte was thoroughly convinced by Reinhold’s arguments for the incompleteness of Kant’s own presentation of the Critical philosophy and by his demand for an immediately certain “first principle” of the same, he was not satisfied with Reinhold’s own efforts to satisfy these demands and, in the Aenesidemus review and elsewhere, made public his own criticisms of the Elementary Philosophy and of Reinhold’s “Principle of Consciousness.” For a few years following Fichte’s arrival in Jena and Reinhold’s transfer to Kiel, the two men engaged in a wide-ranging and stimulating philosophical correspondence, though they never met.
The final upshot of Reinhold’s Auseinandersetzung with Fichte was the former’s recantation of his own Elementary Philosophy and transference of his allegiance to the standpoint of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre. This conversion was made public in early 1798, in a lengthy review essay in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung of Fichte’s recent writings, and it was elaborated the following year in Reinhold’s Ueber die Paradoxien der neuesten Philosophie [Concerning the Paradoxes of the most recent Philosophy], in which he explicitly acknowledged the inadequacy of his own Principle of Consciousness as the foundation of philosophy as a whole and endorsed Fichte’s proposal for a more “active” first principle (the Tathandlung, or “fact-act” of the I’s self-positing), which would be capable of fully integrating theoretical with practical reason, as well as uniting theoretical and practical philosophy’ (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
OCLC does not record any copies outside Germany.