Dissertations moral and critical
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- London: W. Strahan, 1783
London: W. Strahan, 1783. FIRST EDITION. Contemporary sheep rebacked with cloth, spine label, boards rubbed, corners worn; interior very good. First edition of this collection of dissertations from Beattie, a distinguished member of the Scottish school of philosophy. Titles include “On Memory and Imagination”; “On Dreaming”; “The Theory of Language”; “On Fable and Romance”; “On the Attachments of Kindred”; and “Illustrations of Sublimity”.
The poet and philosopher Beattie (1735-1803) was a major figure of the Scottish Enlightenment. One of his biographers, Roger J. Robinson, describes the Dissertations as Beattie’s “best prose work” and draws particular attention to the treatise on the theory of language. On reading this book, Cowper declared that “Beattie was the only author he had seen ‘whose critical and philosophical researches are diversified and embellished by a poetical imagination that makes even the driest subject and the leanest a feast for epicures’” (DNB). To delve slightly into his text, for example, his essay on memory distinguishes between memory and imagination and provides methods of improving one’s memory; his theory of language focuses on formation of words, accents, writing and grammar.
Though a poet early on, Beattie’s Essay on Truth (1770) made a name for him as a proponent of the common sense school of the Scottish Enlightenment and successfully irritated both Hume and Kant.
DNB II pp. 22-25; Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1&2 pp. 262-263.
The poet and philosopher Beattie (1735-1803) was a major figure of the Scottish Enlightenment. One of his biographers, Roger J. Robinson, describes the Dissertations as Beattie’s “best prose work” and draws particular attention to the treatise on the theory of language. On reading this book, Cowper declared that “Beattie was the only author he had seen ‘whose critical and philosophical researches are diversified and embellished by a poetical imagination that makes even the driest subject and the leanest a feast for epicures’” (DNB). To delve slightly into his text, for example, his essay on memory distinguishes between memory and imagination and provides methods of improving one’s memory; his theory of language focuses on formation of words, accents, writing and grammar.
Though a poet early on, Beattie’s Essay on Truth (1770) made a name for him as a proponent of the common sense school of the Scottish Enlightenment and successfully irritated both Hume and Kant.
DNB II pp. 22-25; Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1&2 pp. 262-263.
Details
Title
Dissertations moral and critical
Author
BEATTIE, James
Condition
Unknown
Publisher
W. Strahan: London
Date
1783
Edition
FIRST EDITION