24th ILAB International Antiquarian Book Fair - Vereinigung der ...

The work contains incidental references to the U.S.
(pp. 67–68, 178, et passim). – Rare in complete state
with the supplement.
Hobbes, Th. Leviathan: of van de Stoffe, Gedaente,
ende Magt van de Kerckelijcke ende
Wereltlycke Regeeringe. Beschreven door
Thomas Hobbes van Malmesbury. Tot Amsterdam,
By Jacobus Wagenaar, Boeck-verkooper,
op de hoeck van de Mol-steegh, in Des-Cartes,
Anno 1667. With portrait of the author, the
fine engraved title page and the folding table.
(16), 744, (64) pp. 8vo. Contemporary vellum,
manuscript title on spine, a very good
copy. CHF 3600.–
Macdonald & Hargreaves 47a; Knuttel, Verboden
Boeken, 185; PMM 138 (for the first edition). –
The very rare reprint of the 1667 edition: this copy
carries the title-page with the date 1667, but the
engraved title is dated 1672 and the first line under
the portrait of Hobbes is different from the first line
under the portrait in the 1667 edition. Collation
and content are identical, either edition is very rare.
– The political events in England in the latter part of
the first half of the century provided a fitting prelude
to the publication of Leviathan. Charles I was
executed in 1649 and, until 1653, when Cromwell
was made Protector, there was constant discussion
and experimentation to find an appropriate form
of government. Leviathan, published in 1651, was
therefore very topical. It came out strongly in favor
of absolute and undivided sovereignty, without the
usual arguments from divine right. Indeed, Hobbes
conceded popular representation but, by an ingenious
twisting of the social contract theory, showed
that it logically implied the acceptance of undivided
sovereignty. ‹Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury is a
unique figure in the history of English political
thought. His defense of absolutism, unpopular
from the day it was published to the present, is
based on expediency. The individual (except to
save his life) should always submit to the State, because
any gouvernment is better than the anarchy
of the natural state. Though his ideas have never
appealed to proponents of the individual rights
of man or to the modern totalitarians with their
mystical vision of Volk, the fundamental nature of
Hobbes’s speculation has stimulated philosophers
from Spinoza to John Stuart Mill’ (PMM exhibition
catalogue, 272). The book was forbidden in the
Netherlands and condamned on 19 July 1674. The
translation of the most horrible book of those days
in the Netherlands is most likely due to Lambert
van Velthuysen. – Binding slightly loosening, leaf
Z2 with a small hole causing loss of a few letters.
(Linguet, S.N.H.) Théorie des loix civiles, ou
principes fondamentaux de la société. Tome
Premier [- Tome Second.] A Londres, 1767. 2
volumes. (4), 496 pp.; (4), 528 pp. 8vo. Contemporary
marbled calf, spine richly gilt with
raised bands, labels with gilt lettering, sprinkled
edges, marbled endpapers, some minor defects
to joints but a very nice copy. CHF 2200.–
Conlon 67:1044; Einaudi 3420; Goldsmiths 10377;
Higgs 4251; INED 2930; Kress 6459. – Scarce first
edition of this very important work by this predecessor
of Marx. The Théorie des Loix civiles is
Linguet’s Magnum Opus in which he refocused
earlier reflections on history, retrospective cultural
anthropology, law, political economy, and public
administration, and integrated them into a theory
of the origins of society, the organization of its
institutions and cultural superstructures, and the
dynamics and directions of its development. It is
a refutation of Montesquieu and the Physiocrats,
and one of the major achievements of early socialist
thinking. Linguet’s book was highly praised by
Marx, particularly because of the thesis Linguet
developed in the second book, ‹On the Origin of
Laws.› Linguet wrecked Montesquieu’s illusory
‹Esprit des Lois› with a single word: the ‹esprit des
lois is property.› ‹Moreover, occupying himself almost
entirely with the fate of living people, workers
and peasants, and analyzing the mechanism of
their condition, Linguet stands much nearer to the
modern industrial socialists than to the first French
socialist school, and he is one of the few writers before
1789 of whom could be said with good reason
that he is more a predecessor of Karl Marx than
an ancestor of Fourier or Cabet!› (Lichtenberger,
Le Socialisme au XVIIIe siècle, pp. 288–305). In
Linguet’s perception that economic facts are more
important in the life of the individual than political
background. Linguet was far in advance of any
other thinker of his age. When in his Théorie des
Loix civiles, perhaps his most important work, he
declared that men could not be really free if «they
must go upon their knees to a rich man to gain
from him permission to increase his wealth,» he
was crudely foreshadowing the doctrine of surplus
value. His fame died before him, but his ideas had
an important influence on Karl Marx (see Encyclopedia
of the Social Sciences, vol 9, pp. 488–489).
A. Gerits & Son b.v. 45