‎MONTESQUIEU Charles Louis de Secondat:‎
‎Oeuvres.‎

‎Oeuvres. (Edited by C. Bossut). 5 vols.‎

‎La Haye, Dètune, 1779. 8vo. Five very nice contemporary full mottled calf bindings with gilt title- and tome-labels to richly gilt backs, triple gilt line-borders to boards and single gilt line-ornamentation to edges of boards. Marbled adges. Minor repairs to a few capitals, but overall a very nice copy indeed. Internally very nice, clean, and fresh printed on good paper. One leaf of volume one with neatly closed tear. Old owner's name to title-page of volume 5. Title-pages printed in red and black. With book-plates of Fritz Trieboe/Twilboe (?), A. Gedeon, and C. Rasch. Frontis-piece portrait, 425 pp. XII, 549 pp. (last leaf uncut an folded) VIII, 526 pp. VIII, 456 pp. + 9 engraved plates, of which 8 are folded" VIII, 462 pp. + 5 folded engraved plates, (1) p (directions for the book binder. In all 14 engraved plates, of which 13 are folded.‎

‎Scarce first edition of Pascal's collected works, comprising much significant material printed for the first time as well as the second appearance of the announcement of Pascal's groundbreaking calculating machine, the first edition (privately printed) of which from 1645 is impossibly scarce, making this the earliest obtainable edition of the seminal text. ""Pascal designed his first mechanical adding machine in 1642. He was not the first to design and construct a mechanical calculator..."" but in contrast to Schickard's accomplishments which were destined for a history of obscurity, Pascal, in contrast, ""constructed about fifty examples of his machine, of which several are extant"" and the machine was well known to the cognoscenti, both through Pascal's own efforts (he hoped to make a profit selling them) and through Diderot's later description of it in the ""Encyclopédie"" (1751)... In 1645 Pascal published an eighteen-page pamphlet - now extremely rare - describing his calculating machine... The pamphlet does not identify a place of printing or a printer's name, so we may assume that Pascal himself paid for its printing. When we wrote this bibliography, OCLC cited only two copies of this pamphlet in one French library and no copies and North America."" The pamphlet was reprinted, along with additional material, in volume IV (pp. 7-30) of the present ""Oeuvres"". The additional material consists of Pascal's 1650 letter to Queen Christina of Sweden" the privilege for its construction and sale issued in 1649 and published for the first time here " and Diderot's description of it for the ""Encyclopédie"", along with two plates. Also of interest here is the reprint of Pascal's 1654 paper introducing his triangle of binominal coefficients (Pascal's Triangle), included in Volume V, pages 1-54. Pascal's invention ""predated the concepts of computation of the values of polynomial functions by differences."" (Lee 1995, 538)."" (Origins of Cyberspace No. 13). In the present edition the Pascal-Noël correspondence on the vacuum is also printed for the first time, along with other pieces on the vacuum as well as his correspondence with Fermat and deRibeyre.Origins of Cyberspace: 13.Brunet: IV,395"" Tchemerzine: IX, p78, f): ""Les Oeuvres Scientifiques de Pascal sont recueillies dans l'édition des Oeuvres, La Haye, chez Detune, libraire, 1779. 5 vol. in 8. Titre rouge et noir. Publiée par l'Abbé Bossut. Les oeuvres scientifiques occupent les tomes IV et V.""‎

‎Oeuvres avec des eclaircissemens historiques, donnez par lui-meme. Nouvelle edition revue, corrigee & augmentee de diverses remarques. 2 vols.‎

‎Amsterdam, D. Mortier, 1718. 4to. 2 parts bound in 1 full calf binding with five raised bands and coloured frames to boards. Wear and soiling to extremities. A few worm holes to spine. Title-page to vol. 2 with a few lines in red pencil in margin. Last few leaves brownpostted. Internally generally fine and clean. (2), XXIV, (2), 454" (4), VII, (1), 424, (24) pp. + frontispiece, large folded portrait (Wilhelmina Charlotte Princess of Wales by F. Gunst after Kneller), and 6 plates. ‎

‎The uncommon 4to-edition of Boileau-Despreaux’s Oeuvres. Nicolas Boileau (1636-1711), often simply known as Boileau, achieved acclaim as a distinguished French poet and critic in the 17th century. Initially educated at the College of Beauvais with intentions of pursuing a clerical path, he eventually shifted his focus from theology to law to fulfill his father's wishes. Boileau's literary journey commenced with the publication of his first satirical poem, ""Adieux d'un poète à la ville de Paris,"" at the age of 25. Subsequently, he released six more satires, including notable works like ""Les embarras de Paris,"" ""La satire à Molière,"" and ""Le repas ridicule."" In these satires, Boileau not only parodied and critiqued figures such as Cotin, Chapelain, and Le Voyer but also played a pivotal role in refining the practical aspects of the French language. Notably, these satires marked the introduction of systematic literary criticism in France, focusing on art's merits rather than being driven by envy or anger. Tchemerzine II, 293Brunet 1, 1058‎

‎Oeuvres diverses du Docteur Young. Traduites de L'Anglois par M. Le Tourneur. 4 vols. + Supplvol. (1-2: Les Nuits. 3-4: Oeuvres tome 3-4. Suppl.: Verités Philosophiques tirées de Nuits et mises en vers par M. de Moissy, Les Jours, pour servir de Cor...‎

‎Bound in 5 uniform cont. full mottled calf, richly gilt backs. Top of spines a little worn.‎

‎(Oeuvres). Numa Pompilius, Second Roi de Rome. 2 Tomes. Paris, Didot l'Ainé, 1786. + Théâtre. Seconde Edition. 3 Tomes. Geneve, 1787. + Mélanges de Poesie et de Littérature. Geneve, 1787. + Les six Nouvelles. Troisieme Édition. Geneve, 1787. + Gon...‎

‎Paris & Geneve, 1786 - 1795. 16mo. 13 cont. nice uniform sprinkled full calf w. leather tome- and title-labels on backs. Backs gilt. W. 8 engr. frontispieces and half-titles stating ""Oeuvres de M. de Florian"" in all but one volume (Numa Pompilius). Internally clean.‎

‎Oeuvres philosophiques latines & francoises de feu. Tirées de ses manuscrits qui se conservent dans la bibliotheque royale a Hanovre et publiées par Mr. Rud. Eric Raspe. Avec une Préface de Mr. Kaestner. [Nouveau essais sur l'entendement humain, -New ... - [FIRST PRINTING OF ""NEW ESSAYS ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING""]‎

‎Amsterdam et Leipzig, Chez Jean Schreuder, 1765. 4to. Uncut in the original marbled boards. Professionally rebacked preserving almost all of the original back. The fragile orginal binding is here preserved in its entirety, and it has quite a bit of overall wear. Apart from a small hole to two leaves in the index, affecting ab. one work on each of the four pages, it is internally nice and clean. Title-page printed in red and black. Beautiful eng. title-vignette and a few other woodcut vignettes and initials. (4), XVI, (2), 540, (18) pp.‎

‎First edition thus, being the first collected edition of Leibnitz' philosophical works in French and Latin, and containing the FIRST PRINTING of one of Leibnitz' most important philosophical works, his ""Nouveaux essays sur l'entendement humain"" (New Essays on Human Understanding), in which he attacks and refutes Locke and his ""Essay on Human Understanding"" and gives important testimony to his own philosophical ideas. With its 496 pages, this extensive work takes up most of this collection of philosophical works, and it also constitutes one of his largest and most important of his philosophical works. As explained by Raspe, the editor, in his preface to this publication, ""LES NOUVEAUX ESSAIS SUR L'ENTENDEMENT HUMAIN, qui sont la partie principale de recueil, sont connûs trés imparfaitement par l'histoire de la Philosophie de Leibnitz, que Mr. Ludovici a publiée"" (p. X), and the reason why the work was known, even though it had not been published, is because of a letter that Leibnitz had written in 1714, in which he explains why he did not wish to publish the work. Raspe quotes the letter (p. X), from which it becomes clear that Leibnitz had not wished to publish an attack on Locke and his work, because Locke had died in 1704 (the same year that Leibnitz had actually written the work), and because Leibnitz was against publishing refutations of dead authors: ""Mais je me suis degouté de publier des refutations des Auteurs morts, quoiqu'elles dissent paroitre Durant leur vie & étre communiqués à eux memes"". Raspe points to the nobleness of this decision, but he also points to what could be other reasons for Leibnitz not wishing to publish his seminal work, one of them being that towards the end of his life (he died in 1716), he did not wish to enter into any more controversies with the British, since he was already engaged in two very important ones that occuopied much of his time and energy: The first concerned the invention of the differential calculus, the second was against Mr. Clarke on liberty and important metaphysical and theological questions. Another reason could also be that he did not want to begin controversies with the friends of Locke, who at that time were many and important.Locke's ""An Essay Concerning Human Understanding"", which is the work here being refuted by Leibnitz, became the crucial groundwork for the future empiricists with David Hume in the foreground, and thus Leibnitz' work, though published posthumously, probably came to play a bigger role in the history of philosophy than it would have done had it been published just after he wrote it. Few philosophers of his time were susceptible to Leibnitz' ideas and his application of logic to the problems of metaphysics, as most of them were far more receptive to Locke's empiricism. However, when Leibnitz' ""Nouveaux essays..."" was finally published here in his ""Oeuvres philosophiques"" in 1765, it became hugely influential and was also an important factor in the development of Kant's transcendental philosophy.The hugely famous work by Locke, in which he stated his famous theory that the mind of the newborn is like a blank slate (tabula rasa) and concluded that all ideas come from experience and that there are no such things as innate principles, was generally sharply criticized by the rationalists, the most important of them being Leibnitz. Leibnitz' response, his ""Les nouveaux essays sur l'entendement humain"" constitutes the most important of the rationalist responses and it is written in the form of a chapter-by-chapter refutation. He refutes the major premise of Locke's work, that the senses are the source of all understanding, primarily by adding to this ""except the understanding itself"", thus going on to distinguish between his three levels of understanding, which are part of the centre of his philosophy.For Leibnitz as well as for Locke the great inspiration was Descartes, but they chose two fundamentally different directions, Locke the materialistic one and Leibnitz the idealistic one. The present work represents the greatest clash between the two giants of late 17th century philosophy. The effect of Leibnitz' work was enormous, and among the Germans he invoked a great passion for philosophical studies. Leibnitz represents a striking contrast to both Locke with his empiricism and Spinoza. One earlier collection of some of Leibnitz' works had been printed before this one, but it did not contain his ""New Essays on Human Understanding"", and only consisted of his ""Smaller Philosophical Works"". This is the German 1740-edition ""Kleinere philosohische Schriften"". The other writings contained in this publication are ""Examen du sentiment du P. Malebranche que nous voyons tout en Dieu"", """"Dialogus de connexione inter res & verba"", ""Difficultates quaedam Logicae"", ""Discours touchant la methode de la certitude & de l'art d'inventer"", ""Historia et commendatio charactericae universalis quae simul sit ars inveniendi"".Graesse IV:152. ‎