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Rare, 1721, Origin of Evil, Enlightenment | Sisteme nouveau

[Bequignolle, Noël de?]

Rare, 1721, Origin of Evil | Sisteme nouveau de l’origine du mal. Fondé sur la consideration du mistere de la tres fainte & adorable trinité. Keulen, Pierre Marteau [: gedrukt in Nederland?] 1721.

Name: Rare, 1721, Origin of Evil | Sisteme nouveau de l'origine du mal. Fondé sur la consideration du mistere de la tres fainte &amp; adorable trinité. Keulen, Pierre Marteau [: gedrukt in Nederland?] 1721.
SKU: BB110133
Availability: InStock

8vo, full leather binding, gold tooling on the spine (4) 108 pp. With woodcut vignettes. Binding slightly scuffed. Small crack in lower front joint; slight cracking in lower back joint. Light browning throughout. A couple of manuscript (ink) corrections to the text, but otherwise clean. A good copy.

An extremely rare treatise on the origin of evil. The work is a mystery in many respects. Only three other copies are recorded to survive. One copy, from the same print run and therefore also unsigned, is held in the Manchester University Library’s Shackleton Collection. The two other surviving copies (Aurich, Göttingen) are from a different run that, while un-dated, attributes authorship to “Noël de Bequignolle”–a name unrecorded elsewhere and presumably invented. All copies bear the well-known fictitious imprint of “Pierre Marteau” in “Cologne”.

The motive for this secrecy is intriguing. The treatise engages with the Enlightenment debate anchored by William King’s De origine mali (1702). Famous scholars like Bayle, Leibniz, Malebranche, and Voltaire carried forward philosophical and literary discourse investigating evil, God, and free will. The author at hand may have also been a person of some influence. The Shackleton Collection copy contains a manuscript note on the title page that reads: Il n’y a que tregraves peu d’exemplaires repandus de cet ouvrage dans le public, l’auteur n’en ayant done qu’a ses amis [There are only a few copies of this work in the public domain, the author having only given it to his friends]. Yet the Sisteme nonetheless secured inclusion in the 1721 Acta Eruditorum, the first scientific (peer-reviewed) journal of Germanic Europe that published contributions by major thinkers including Leibniz, Boyle, Pascal, and Descartes. But not only–the inclusion of the Sisteme nouveau in the journal was reviewed and approved by none other than eminent German philosopher Christian Wolff.

A remarkable, rare work that presents promising opportunities for further investigation.

BB110133 – filosofie – existentie – vrije wil – godsbewijs – metafysica – oorsprong van kwaad – Acta Aruditorum

SKU: BB110133

Pierre Marteau (French for Peter Hammer) was the imprint of a supposed publishing house. Allegedly located in Cologne from the 17th century onward, contemporaries were well-aware that such a publishing house never actually existed. Instead, the imprint was a fiction under which publishers and printers — in the Netherlands, France and Germany — evaded the open identification with books they published.

Literature: (on the Acta Eruditorum) see Laeven, A.H and L.J.M Laeven-Aretz, The authors and reviewers of the Acta Eruditorum 1682-1735 (2014).

€ 1.744,00 (€ 1.600,00 ex. btw)

In stock