BOLINGBROKE (HENRY JOHN).

The Philosophical Works. 5 vols.

London, David Mallet, 1754.

8vo. Uniformly bound in five contemporary half calf bindings. Wear to extremities, corner bumped and boards scratched. Spine-ends chipped. Stamp to each title-page (crossed out in vol. 1). Ex-libris (Carl Henrik Koch, Danish professor in philosophy) pasted on to all pasted down front end-paper. With occassional marginal browning, but internally generally nice. 

First edition of Bolingbroke's posthumously published collected philosophical works. 

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678 – 1751) was an English politician, government official and political philosopher. He was a leader of the Tories and supported the Church of England politically despite his antireligious views and opposition to theology.

"Bolingbroke was also much attracted to the study of philosophy, which increasingly absorbed his attention from about 1720. He gave priority to experimental philosophy rather than to metaphysical speculation, and he rejected both Plato's philosophy and the Cartesian approach to deductive reasoning. He became a disciple of the intellectual approach of Locke and Newton, but he paid particular attention to the study of religion and morality. He was very interested in natural law and natural religion, and gradually developed into a deist. Professing a harmless rationalism, he came to believe in a supreme being, but one that was distinct, even remote, from the world. He rejected the notion of particular providence and of a God actively involved in the affairs of men... Although they did not appear until 1754, three years after his death, most of Bolingbroke's philosophical essays were the result of his studies started in France and continued after his return to England in 1725... He strove in particular to erect an ethical and religious system based on reason and natural law" (ODNB). 

Order-nr.: 61798