About this Item
FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE OF "THE BIBLE OF MATERIALISM" (PMM, 215). 2 vols. 8vo. (20 x 12.5 cm). Half-title, Table des chapitres [2], title, Avis de l'editeur [2], Préface de l'auteur [4]+pp.370; title, Table des chapitres [2]+pp.412. Contemporary full mottled calf, spines decorated in gilt, two brown morocco labels (vol. 1 missing one label), decorative navy blue chequered endpapers, pink silk ribbon page markers, red speckled edges. Joints slightly cracked (but strong) and with some minor losses, spines rubbed, contents clean save for some occasional light toning, generally a very good unsophisticated set of this major philosophical work. The rare first edition, first issue (with the correct pagination, the comma after 'Londres' in the imprint', and without the 4-page errata which was added later during the printing process as mistakes were discovered), of d'Holbach's main work, the main work of materialism, and one of the most important works of natural philosophy. Paul Heinrich Dietrich, Baron d'Holbach, was born at Heidelsheim in Germany and educated in Holland at Leiden University, before settling in Paris and becoming a naturalized Frenchman. He first became known as a scientist and contributed some four hundred articles to the Encyclopédie of his lifelong friend and colleague Denis Diderot. Diderot, d'Alembert, Helvetius, Voltaire and others of the philosophes met frequently for dinner and philosophical discussions at the Baron's house, which became known as 'the café of Europe' (among foreign visitors to these dinners were Wilkes, Hume and Sterne). Later Holbach turned from science to more dangerous topics: he wrote, and had published abroad, a stream of books attacking religion in all its aspects, which flooded illegally into France. He could not publish safely under his own name, but had had the ingenious idea of using the names of recently dead French authors. Thus, in 1770, his most famous book, 'The System of Nature', appeared under the name of Jean-Baptiste Mirabaud. When it reached France it provoked one of the greatest scandals of the century, being immediately condemned on the 18th of August, 1770, and put on the Index the 9th of November. "In the Système Holbach rejected the Cartesian mind-body dualism and attempted to explain all phenomena, physical and mental, in terms of matter in motion. He derived the moral and intellectual faculties from man's sensibility to impressions made by the external world, and saw human actions as entirely determined by pleasure and pain. He continued to direct his attack on religion by attempting to show that it derived entirely from habit and custom. But the Système was not a negative or destructive book: Holbach rejected religion because he saw it as a wholly harmful influence, and he tried to supply a more desirable alternative. In fact he outlined a whole ethical and political philosophy, which he expanded in his later works (especially La Morale Universelle, 1776). It was his aim to derive a morality and an ethic from a completely materialistic and atheistic bias.the confident dogmatism and the comprehensiveness of the Systême de la Nature , which even provoked Voltaire to reply in defence of religion, have ensured its survival as the bible of materialism" (PMM 215). PMM, 215. Seller Inventory # 60039
Contact seller
Report this item
