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:
“Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated; when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas; the interest of science lies in the art of making science.”
—Paul Valéry (18711945)
“You are always looking for already-felt emotions, just as you like to get an old pair of trousers back from the cleaners, which seem new when you dont look too closely. Artists are cleaners, dont let yourself be taken in by them. True modern works of art are made not by artists but quite simply by men.”
—Francis Picabia (18781953)
“Nature is so perfect that the Trinity couldnt have fashioned her any more perfect. She is an organ on which our Lord plays and the devil works the bellows.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (17491832)