A major actor in the American Revolution, the English intellectual Thomas Paine (1737–1809) is best remembered for his pamphlet Common Sense (1776), which advocated American independence from Britain. Although accorded honorary French citizenship in 1792 for his republican Rights of Man, Paine was later imprisoned and narrowly escaped the guillotine. It was around this time that he started to write The Age of Reason, originally published in two parts between 1794 and 1795. In Part 1, Paine outlines his personal religious views and attacks institutional faith as a human invention, while Part 2 analyses the Bible and highlights its contradictions. The work was met with great hostility in Britain and denounced as espousing atheism, while in America it led to a short-lived revival of deism but was also much reviled. This reissue includes both parts and affords valuable insight into radical freethinking during the age of revolutions.
Francis Bacon (1561–1626), the English philosopher, statesman and jurist, is best known for developing the empiricist method which forms the basis of modern science. Bacon's writings concentrated on philosophy and judicial reform. His most significant work is the Instauratio Magna comprising two parts - The Advancement of Learning and the Novum Organum. The first part is noteworthy as the first major philosophical work published in English (1605). James Spedding (1808–81) and his co-editors arranged this fourteen-volume edition, published in London between 1857 and 1874, not in chronological order but by subject matter, so that different volumes would appeal to different audiences. The material is divided into three parts: philosophy and general literature; legal works; and letters, speeches and tracts relating to politics. Volume 1, published 1857, contains the biography by Bacon's secretary, William Rawley (c.1588–1667), and part 1 of the philosophical works included in the
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72), the German philosopher and a founding member of the Young Hegelians, a group of radical thinkers influenced by G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), was an outspoken critic of religion, and the 1841 publication of this work established his reputation. In the first part of the book he examines what he calls the 'anthropological essence' of religion, and in the second he looks at its 'false or theological essence', arguing that the idea of God is a manifestation of human consciousness. These ideas provoked strong reactions in Germany, and soon other European intellectuals wanted to read Feuerbach's book. The 1843 second edition was translated by Marian Evans (1819–80) - who would become better known by her pen name of George Eliot - and published in Britain in 1854. Evans was influenced by Feuerbach's work, and many of his humanist ideas about religion are reflected in her novels.
Originally published by Goethe's friend and personal secretary, Johann Peter Eckermann (1792–1854) in German in 1836, this work comprises Eckermann's recollections of his conversations with the German writer and philosopher during the last nine years of his life. Eckermann published a further volume in 1848 using both his own memories and material from the journals of Swiss scientist Frédéric Soret, who was also a close acquaintance of Goethe. The work initially sold poorly in Germany, but quickly became popular internationally, and contributed to the rehabilitation of Goethe's scholarly reputation both within Germany and throughout the world. This edition, translated by British playwright and translator John Oxenford (1812–77) was published in two volumes in London in 1850. Oxenford combined the original three volumes, putting the conversations in chronological order. The topics discussed include religion, politics, literature, poetry and natural sciences. Volume 2 runs from September
British philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill (1806–73) is the author of several essays, including Utilitarianism (1863) - a defence of Jeremy Bentham's principle applied to the field of ethics - and The Subjection of Women (1869), which advocates legal equality between the sexes. This work, arguably his most famous contribution to political philosophy and theory, was first published in 1859, and remains a major influence upon contemporary liberal political thought. In it, Mill argues for a limitation of the power of government and society (democracy's 'tyranny of the majority') over the individual, and defines liberty as an absolute individual right. According to the still much debated 'harm principle', power against the individual can only be exercised to prevent harm to others. Full of contemporary relevance, this essay also defends freedom of speech as a necessary condition of social and intellectual progress.
Francis Bacon (1561–1626), the English philosopher, statesman and jurist, is best known for developing the empiricist method which forms the basis of modern science. Bacon's writings concentrated on philosophy and judicial reform. His most significant work is the Instauratio Magna comprising two parts - The Advancement of Learning and the Novum Organum. The first part is noteworthy as the first major philosophical work published in English (1605). James Spedding (1808–81) and his co-editors arranged this fourteen-volume edition, published in London between 1857 and 1874, not in chronological order but by subject matter, so that different volumes would appeal to different audiences. The material is divided into three parts: philosophy and general literature; legal works; and letters, speeches and tracts relating to politics. Volume 7, published in 1859, continues Bacon's literary works including his writings on religion, and contains his professional works on the law.
This enormously influential work by Swiss diplomat and jurist Emmerich de Vattel (1714–76) was first published in 1758, and is credited with shaping modern international law by applying natural law to international relations. Its argument for liberty and equality proved influential upon the American Declaration of Independence, with Benjamin Franklin commenting on its usefulness to the drafters. The book was translated into English in 1760, 1787, and 1797: the latter version was revised by Joseph Chitty the elder (1775–1841), a barrister and one of the most prolific legal writers of his day, who published more than twenty books on law in his lifetime, and also served as tutor or mentor to some of the most influential lawyers of nineteenth-century England. First published in 1834, Chitty's version amends the errors of the anonymous 1797 translation, as well as revising and expanding the explanatory notes.
Henry Sidgwick, (1838–1900), philosopher, classicist, lecturer and fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and supporter of women's university education, is well known for his Method of Ethics (1874), a significant and influential book on moral theory. First published in 1883, this work considers the role the state plays (and ought to play) in economic life, and whether economics should be considered an Art or a Science. Sidgwick applies his utilitarian views to economics, defending John Stuart Mill's 1848 treatise of the same name. The book calls for a return to traditional political economy by eliminating 'needless polemics'. Sidgwick also outlines the need to bridge the gap between his analytical or deductive method and the inductive method employed by Mill's critics, the new generation of economic philosophers including John Elliot Cairnes and William Stanley Jevons. The second edition, reissued here, was published in 1887.
First published in 1782, this response to Raynal's The Revolution of America (also reissued in this series) by Thomas Paine (1737–1809) has been eclipsed by Paine's other work and largely overlooked. Written a year after Raynal's account of the American Revolution appeared in English, Paine's 'corrections' run to nearly eighty pages. His main critique of Raynal is that his argument stresses political theory rather than actions in the real world, an approach that lacks practicality. Paine argues against Raynal's assertion that the American War of Independence erupted over a tax dispute, and downplays France's involvement in the movement for independence. However, while attacking Raynal's influential work, he does so diplomatically, believing that the Abbé was writing from too great a distance to assess accurately the causes and principles of the conflict. This book has been hailed by scholars as the first of Paine's publications to demonstrate his internationalist views.
F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) was the foremost philosopher of the British Idealist school, which came to prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century and remained influential into the first half of the twentieth. Bradley, who was influenced by Hegel and also reacted against utilitarianism, was recognised during his lifetime as one of the greatest intellectuals of his generation, and was the first philosopher to receive the Order of Merit, in 1924. In this major work, originally published in 1883, Bradley discusses the basic principles of logic: judgment and inference. He rejects the idea of a separation between mind and body, arguing that human thought cannot be separated from its worldly context. In the second edition, published in 1922 and reissued here, Bradley added a commentary and essays, but left the text largely unaltered. Volume 1 contains Book 1 on judgment and Book 2 on inference.
Thomas Reid (1710–1796) was a philosopher who founded the Scottish school of 'common sense'. Much of Reid's work is a critique of his contemporary, David Hume (1711–1776), whose empiricism he rejects. In this work, written after Reid's appointment to a professorship at the university of Glasgow, and published in 1785, he turns his attention to ideas about perception, memory, conception, abstraction, judgement, reasoning and taste. He examines the work of his predecessors and contemporaries, arguing that 'when we find philosophers maintaining that there is no heat in the fire, nor colour in the rainbow … we may be apt to think the whole to be only a dream of fanciful men, who have entangled themselves in cobwebs spun out of their own brain'. Written by one of the Scottish Enlightenment's most important thinkers, this work brings to life the intellectual debates of the time.
