Condorcet

1962 · rif. 505862 — Harvard University Press 1962. First Edition. Hardcover with Dust Jacket. FINE/Very Good. xiv 349pp. B/W frontispiece portraits of all five prophets. 8vo sewn binding in green cloth black stamped lettering. Exceedingly clean and sharp with fresh pages and tight binding; DJ price clippeda bit toned and rubbed around the edges. 'A study of five French thinkers and a school - friends disciples enemies — whose works evoke the image of a new age of prophecy. Tur-got Condorcet Saint-Simon and the Saint-Simonians Fourier and Comte form an unbroken chain of intellectual transmission from the Enlightenment through the first half of the nineteenth century. These men were crisis phil-osophers system-makers moralists magnificent obsessives intoxicated with the future. Mr. Manuel has combined psychological portraiture with philosophical and historical analysis. His fresh reading of underestimated thinkers is based on manuscripts as well as more familiar sources suggesting new insights. Historians of Marxism will be particularly interested in his interpretation of the social doctrines and philosophies of history; Freudians in his exploration of new attitudes toward love among the Saint-Simonians Fourier and Comte; scientists in his description of the imaginative projects of Turgot and Condorcet; students of the varieties of religious experience in his treatment of the Saint-Simonian cult and the Positivist religion. From the DJ flap. 'Each of these figures is ac corded a highly sophisticated and compact biographical treat- ment and subsequently personal details are appropriately in jected into the unfolding tale of the intellectual contribution of the thinker. As Professor Manuel proceeds he compares and contrasts the thinker of the chapter with the men already intro- duced and foreshadows the approaching 'prophet.' The historical context in which the prophets lived is expertly insinuated; so too the historical impact of the five men on the thought and practice of our own age. If Professor Manuel's plan appears highly ambitious it must be immediately stated that its execu tion has been eminently successful.' Donald J. Harvey review in Political Science Quarterly. Harvard University Press hardcover