Pensées philosophiques

12mo, (2) leaves, 136 pp., (6) leaves of table.

Marbled calf, blind tooling, smooth spine with gilt decoration, red title label, armorial devices at head and tail, red edges. Contemporary binding.

156 x 90 mm.

Diderot, Denis. Philosophical Thoughts.

The Hague, At the Expense of the Company, 1746.

Rare first edition of Diderot’s first great philosophical treatise, condemned to be burned by the Parliament of Paris on July 7, 1746.

D. Adams, II, PD2; Tchemerzine, II, 919; Cioranescu, 24143; Niklaus, p.50; Catalogue de Backer, 1205.

Copy on large paper. Rare first printing of the Pensées according to R. Niklaus, second printing according to Adams.

Diderot denounces the absurdity of various dogmas of the Christian religion, which he considers contrary to morality, while emphasizing the weakness of the evidence it invokes, notably the historical proofs often based on suspect testimonies. He also attacks the ideal of asceticism in Christian morality. Moreover, Diderot undertakes to refute atheism, to which he opposes the spectacle of the order of nature, especially that reigning in the living world, which, according to him, reveals the existence of a Creative Intelligence.

“Few of Diderot’s works have been as systematically criticized as the Philosophical Thoughts, except perhaps the Encyclopedia itself. From their publication, friends and foes clearly saw that Philosophical Thoughts gave a new tone to Enlightenment philosophy: more direct, more independent, even more insolent, less concerned than that of Voltaire with winning over the approval of refined society.

Traditionalists and enemies of the philosophers were not the only ones to see the originality of Diderot’s thinking. Voltaire, visibly impressed by these signs of a genius quite different from his own, examined the Philosophical Thoughts attentively several times. His carefully written annotations show a definite anxiety at the introduction of enthusiasm into Enlightenment philosophy and at certain aspects of Diderot’s materialist argumentation. Diderot’s little work was considered an important event by his contemporaries, and more than a quarter of a century after its publication, it still aroused the sagacity or the spite of its adversaries” (R. Morin).

As soon as it appeared, the work was condemned to be burned by the Parliament of Paris as: “offering to restless and audacious minds the venom of the most criminal and absurd opinions of which the corruption of human reason is capable, and by means of affected uncertainty placing all religions on the same footing only to end by acknowledging none of them” (Belin, The Philosophical Movement, p.25).

Precious copy printed on large paper, bound in elegant contemporary calf with the armorial spine of François-Guillaume Castanier d’Auriac, born in 1702, who in 1733 married Marie-Louise de Lamoignon de Blancmesnil, daughter of the first president of the Parliament of Paris; appointed councillor at the Parliament of Toulouse the same year, he became master of requests in 1729, secretary to the Queen’s commands, first president of the Grand Council in 1746, and state councillor in 1751; he died at Fontainebleau on December 3, 1765.