La philosophie du bon sens, ou Réflexions philosophique sur l’incertitude des connaissances humaines, a l’usage des cavaliers et du beau sexe.

London: Aux depens de la compagnie, 1737. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good . M. DCC. XXXVII [1737]. 12mo (158 x 86mm). [xii], 444, [66] pages. Signatures: *(6), A-S(12), T-Z(6), Aa(6), Bb(4). Title printed in red and black. 2 (of 4) full-page engraved plates after author’s drawings by Chapon, including the sea-monster in moonlit landscape facing p. 193 and allegorical and astronomical figures facing p. 425. Engraved diagram of angles facing p. 293 and engraved French heraldic device of Monsieur de Boyer, the author’s father, on dedication leaf. Woodcut allegorical chapter head and tail-pieces throughout. Period calf with morocco lettering label, marbled endpapers and red edges; Early owner’s ex-libris in manuscript on title and verso front endpaper (possibly “Jeller” or “J. Eller”?) (calf rubbed with some minor gouges, lacking engravings at p. 30 and 312, lightly browned at beginning, rest internally clean and fresh).




First edition of the Marquis d’Argens famous and most popular work on common sense and philosophical reasoning printed in London in 1737; far more common is the corrected edition by Olivet printed in The Hague in 1740. Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d’Argens (1703-1771) is remembered for his famous libertine novel Thèrese philosophe of 1748. But with his Lettres Juives (Jewish Letters) (1735-1737), d’Argens in 1737 anonymously published La philosophie du bon sens (The Philosophy of Common Sense) that was immediately welcomed by Voltaire, who also considered him and ally. By the mid-1730s, d’Argens was producing voluminous pages of philosophical writing, so much so that it became necessary for him to flee his bourgeois, Catholic background for the freedom of press enjoyed in Holland. Somewhat ironically, d’Argens dedicated this work, in plenty affection, to his father who purportedly disowned him. The “Philosophy of Good Sense” was produced most likely in Maastricht and published in The Hague in the same years as his fictional correspondence. Understanding the Enlightenment if his age, the underlying premise of the “Philosophy of Good Sense” is that philosophical thought could, and should, be for everyone – d’Argens says philosophy is for “the most ordinary of minds” - for men of the world, “cavaliers et du beau sexe,” and polite women. All that was needed was a demystification of language, which he believed confused the public and designed this book as a check to vanity and pride and pretenders of those things. So with plenty citations, paradoxical references, his five thought-out reflections, and other forms of wit, d’Argens sets out to educate his readers on keeping a healthy dose of skepticism and an independent mind. For his part, Kant identified the “Philosophy of Good Sense” as a dangerous work, and he wrote the “Critique of Pure Reason” in 1781, to partly uproot the disbelieving “freethinkers.”