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CONDILLAC'S CRITIQUE OF DESCARTES, MALEBRANCHE AND LEIBNITZ
CONDILLAC, Étienne de. Traité des systèmes, où l'on en démêle les inconvéniens & les avantages.
The Hague, Neaulme, 1749. 2 parts in 1 volume. 12mo (16 x 95 cm). Contemporary marbled calf with richly gilt spine.
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First edition of one of the first works by Condillac, French philosopher (1715-1780). In his earlier days in Paris, he came much into contact with J.-J. Rousseau, Diderot, Duclos, and some other philosophers. Condillac was an important psychologist and systematically established in France the principles of Locke, whom Voltaire had lately made fashionable. His Traité des systèmes is a vigorous criticism of those modern systems that are based upon abstract principles or upon unsound hypotheses. His polemic, which is inspired throughout with the spirit of Locke, is directed against the innate ideas of the Cartesians, Malebranche's faculty-psychology, Leibnitz's monadism, and pre-established harmony, and, above all, against the conception of substance set forth in the first part of the Ethics of Spinoza (Enc.Brit. ). "Les principaux systèmes que l'auteur y discute et entreprend de réfuter sont celui des idées inées, de Descartes; celui des idées en Dieu, de Malebranche; ceux des monades et de l'harmonie préétablie, de Leibnitz; enfin, la doctrine de Spinoza, qu'il analyse et examine dans les principes, contenus au premier livre de l'Ethique" (NBG ).
Apart from some very light staining on the first twenty leaves, a very good and large copy with wide margins.
