‎MABLY, (G. BONNOT DE.)‎
‎Entretiens de Phocion, sur le rapport de la morale avec la politique, Traduits du Grec de Nicolès, avec des remarques. Nouvelle Édition.‎

‎A Amsterdam, 1767. xxxvi, 248 pp. 12mo. Contemporary marbled calf, spine gilt in compartments, label with gilt lettering, red edges, very lightly rubbed, some discolouring. INED 2992; Goldsmiths 10372; Higgs 4248; Einaudi A.514 (1792 edition). First published in 1763, with a second edition in that same year. Probably written in 1761 and published in 1763, this was by far the best known and best received work by Mably. It was awarded the prize for the best work of the year by the Société littéraire suisse and it was translated into Italian, German, Swedish, English, Polish, Spanish and Greek and was twelve times reprinted before the revolution.The dialogue purports to be the translation af a Greek manuscript recently discovered at Monte Cassino, whose author, a certain Nicocles, had been present at a series of didactic conversations between the doomed Athenian commander Phocion and a young fellow-citizen named Aristias. After a long exploration of the "relations between politics and morality," the dialogue ends on a sharply pessimistic note, befitting its somber historical context. Despite its classical costume, Entretiens de Phocion is certainly contemporary in its concerns: a reaction to the political and intellectual upheavals of the decade of the 1750s. For an elaborate analysis of the work see: J.K. Wright, A Classical Republican in Eighteenth-century France. The Political Thought of Mably, pp. 80-93.Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709-1785), French historian, moralist and political philospher. After he retired Mably began to produce a number of works, most of which were oriented about the purpose of ameliorating the contemporary evils of France but which carried him into widely ramified branches of social and political philosophy. His works plainly reveal his intimate acquaintance with the thought of Plato, Cicero, Locke, and his brother Condillac. Although he firmly believed that political and legal equality had no meaning without economic equality, Mably connot, however, be classed as a communist, although he is frequently so regarded and although he actually inspired Babeuf. He believed communism to be the ideal system and posited the possibility that it had existed in the primitive state of man. But a quality of realism and an inclination toward the evolutionary standpoint prevented him from espousing any political system which failed to take full account of human nature and of the peculiar history and customs of the people concerned. - Preliminaries xix-xx with two small spots obscuring a few letters. ‎

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