De la Recherche de la Verité. Ou l'on Traitte de la Nature de l'esprit de l'homme, & de l'usage qu'il en doit faire pour éviter l'erreur dans les sciences. Cinquiéme Edition revué, & augmentée de plusieurs Eclaircissements. [3 Vols.]
Paris: Chez Michel David, 1700. Fifth Edition, Revised. Full Leather. 12 mo. Very Good. Item #34038
Three volumes. Pp. [xxxvi], 470, [10] table; [ii], 502, [2] blank, [8] table; [xxii], 570, [4] table. Woodcut printer's device to each title, woodcut ornaments and initials, and several textual figures. Contemporary French mottled calf, densely gilt spine in compartments between raised bands. Minor wear to extremities, but generally a very nice, well-preserved set. First published in two volumes, 12mo, in 1674 and 1675, the present 5th revised edition contains the author's clarifications , Eclaircissements (1678), and a response to M. Regis in a third volume. "Recherche de la Verité" is Malebranche's first and most important work. In it he enunciates his famous Cartesian-inspired philosophy of "Occasionalism", which denies causality to the physical world and any interaction between mind and matter. Instead he posits God as the sole cause of both the material world and our notions of it. To account for the apparent interaction of mind and matter in the act of perception, he argues that God arranges an exact correspondence between our ideas of material objects and the objects themselves, and so it is literally true, as St. Augustine teaches, that "we see all things in God". This ingenious blend of Cartesian dualism and Christian mysticism involved Malebranche in many acrimonious exchanges with Bossuet and the Jansenists, especially Antoine Artaud, who detected pantheistic overtones in his views; but it also won him many supporters, including Leibnitz, and earned him the title of the 'French Plato'. Malebranche later reworked his philosophy in light of his critics and presented it in a more concise and polished form in his "Méditations chrétiennes et métaphysiques" (1683), and his "Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion" (1688).
Price (CAD): $650.00