Search Results: yu le grand et confucius histoire by clerc nicolas gabriel

New.

Paperback / softback. New.

Hardback. New.

Soissons, De l'Imprimerie de Ponce Courtois, Imprimeur du Roi, 1769.. FIRST EDITION IN FOUR PARTS, 1769, text in French, 4to, approximately 250 x 190 mm, 10 x 7½ inches, 8 large folding tables (on the dynasties and aspects of government, means of production and merchandise), a few pictorial headpieces and decorative tailpieces, pages: xviii, [1]-701, [9], including approbation, privilege, and errata, bound in full mottled calf, rebacked with original richly gilt decorated and gilt lettered backstrip laid down, new calf showing at head and tail of spine, all edges red, early marbled endpapers. Hinges beginning to crack, covers still firmly attached, binding pitted, small expert repairs to corners, hairline cracks to original spine, small early name label on front pastedown, tiny corner tip missing on front endpaper, another on upper corner of 3rd folding table, slight binding crease across lower margin corner of title page, another to page 701, 1 small marginal repair, not near text, occasional very… Read More

Soissons: De l'Imprimerie de Ponce Courtois,, 1769. Confucianism in the Age of Enlightenment First edition of this physiocratic work representative of the turn towards Confucianism in 18th-century French intellectual circles. The author saw China's legendary emperor Yu as a paragon of good governance who Europe would do well to emulate. Nicolas-Gabriel Clerc (1726-1798) was a physician, historian, and tutor to the Grand Duke of Russia (later Czar Paul I), to whom the book is dedicated. Invoking Quesnay, Clerc presents Yu as someone who governed virtuously and by extension made his subjects virtuous - a pointed lesson to the future ruler about the nature of kingship and the secret to socio-economic development. During the French Revolution, revolutionaries such as Louis Antoine de Saint-Just were drawn to Clerc's argument that "natural law was the only authentic foundation for all political order and legislation" (Edelstein). Yu le Grande's physiocracy was predicated on a good amount of intellectual… Read More