HÉLVETIUS (Claude-Adrien) - Poésies de M. Helvetius. London, - Lot 398

HÉLVETIUS (Claude-Adrien) - Poésies de M. Helvetius. London, s.e., 1781; in-12, frontispiece portrait of the author, LX-176 pp. bound in contemporary full marbled calf, smooth spine decorated, fillets on boards, gilt edges. The 2 volumes. Claude-Adrien Helvétius attracted Voltaire's affection from their first meeting in Cirey in the summer of 1738. Rejecting the spiritualism of classical metaphysics, Helvétius set out to build a science of man by transforming Locke's empiricism into sensualist materialism. His book De l'Esprit develops the idea that the entire psyche is the result of successive metamorphoses of simple sensory impression. The ability to feel thus becomes the source of thinking activity and of all psychic states, even the most complex. The radical character of Helvétius's work results from the fact that he reduces everything, not only to sensibility, but to physical sensibility. Expert: Mr. Philippe HENRY