Destutt de Tracy - Works

Works

His chief works are the five-volume Eléments d'idéologie (1817–1818), the first volume of which was presented as "Ideology Strictly Defined," and which completed the arguments made in earlier completed monographs; Commentaire sur l'esprit des lois de Montesquieu (1806), and Essai sur le génie, et les ouvrages de Montesquieu (1808). The fourth volume of the Eléments d'idéologie the author regarded as the introduction to a second section of the planned nine-part work, which he titled Traité de la volonté (Treatise on the Will and Its Effects). When translated into English, editor Thomas Jefferson retitled the volume A Treatise on Political Economy, which obscured the aspects of Tracy's concern not with politics, but with far more basic questions of will, and the possibility of understanding the conditions of its determinations.

Read more about this topic:  Destutt De Tracy

Famous quotes containing the word works:

    “The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stood there from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.”
    —William James (1842–1910)

    “They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep.”
    —Bible: Hebrew Psalms 107:23-24.

    “It [Egypt] has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any other place.”
    —Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)