Item #0084103 A Treatise on Man, his Intellectual Faculties and his Education. A Posthumous Work of M. Helvetius, complete in 2 volumes. M. Helvetius, W. Hooper, Claude Adrien, trans.
A Treatise on Man, his Intellectual Faculties and his Education. A Posthumous Work of M. Helvetius, complete in 2 volumes
A Treatise on Man, his Intellectual Faculties and his Education. A Posthumous Work of M. Helvetius, complete in 2 volumes
A Treatise on Man, his Intellectual Faculties and his Education. A Posthumous Work of M. Helvetius, complete in 2 volumes
A Treatise on Man, his Intellectual Faculties and his Education. A Posthumous Work of M. Helvetius, complete in 2 volumes
A Treatise on Man, his Intellectual Faculties and his Education. A Posthumous Work of M. Helvetius, complete in 2 volumes

A Treatise on Man, his Intellectual Faculties and his Education. A Posthumous Work of M. Helvetius, complete in 2 volumes

London: B. Law and G. Robinson, 1777. First English language edition. Hardcover. 2 volume set, the first edition in English. 8vo, in modern quarter calf with marbled boards. (xl), 384, 488 pp. Near Fine. Helvetius (d. 1771) was an important French philosopher. In 1758 Helvétius published his philosophical magnum opus, De l'esprit (On Mind), which claimed that all human faculties are attributes of mere physical sensation, and that the only real motive is self-interest, therefore there is no good and evil, only competitive pleasures. Its atheistic, utilitarian and egalitarian doctrines raised a public outcry, and the Sorbonne publicly burned it in 1759, forcing Helvétius to issue several retractions. Helvetius's philosophy, that self interest governs all actions, that there is no such thing as an absolute right, and his emphasis on psychological egoism, was influential on Karl Marx who saw in Helvetius's works the philosophical foundations of communism. Helvetius is also one of Isaiah Berlin's "enemies of liberty" and in Berlin's reading provides an ideological basis for authoritarianism. (Some of this taken from wikipedia). Near Fine. Item #0084103

Price: $300.00