Essai sur l’origine des connoissances humaines. Ouvrage où l’on réduit à un seul principe tout ce qui concerne l’entendement humain

Amsterdam: Pierre Mortier, 1746. FIRST EDITION. Woodcut initials, head- and t ailpieces. An excellent copy bound in contemporary tree calf, spine labels, edges sprinkled red. First edition of Condillac’s first work in which he details his “sensualist doctrine,” the basis of the origins of human knowledge and the formation of concepts. Taking Locke’s anti-Cartesian philosophy to the next level, Condillac argues that knowledge arises from sensory experience, the mind itself being initially passive until external stimuli is received and interpreted. Apparently even concepts of morality and theology are derived from their origin in external sensation.

Condillac (1714-1780) was a French philosopher known for his work in the fields of philosophy of mind and epistemology. He was largely responsible for the systematic establishment in France of Lockian sensationalism and he became the “father of French philosophy in the eighteenth century.” His work influenced many later philosophers, and also anticipated Wittgenstein's view of language and its relation to mind and thought. He prepared a philosophical framework for future Enlightenment writers in which the most radically opposed solutions to traditional spiritualism could be included and provided scientists with a method, ideologues and doctrine which remained the basis of French philosophy until the counter-revolution and triumph of Kant.

See Mallet’s article in Nouvelle Biographie Générale 11-12, pp. 429-459; Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1-2, pp. 180-182.