Thomas Hobbes / Robert Fludd - OPERA - 1668

Thomas Hobbes Works

HOBBES, Thomas (1588-1679).
Elementorum Philosophiae Sectio Prima De Corpore; Sectio Secunda De Homine; Sectio Tertia De Cive.
Amsterdam, Joan Blaeu, 1668.

In-4° (21 × 16 cm bound).
Pp. (6), 261, (1) + 13 folded plates;
pp. 86 + 8 folded plates;
pp. (16), 174, (2).

Contemporary binding in full parchment, smooth spine with title in gold within a frame and ornament: «HOBBES OPERA VARIA TOM. II».

Content
This is the first Latin collective edition of Thomas Hobbes’s philosophical works (Macdonald & Hargreaves 104), published by Joan Blaeu in Amsterdam in 1668. The copy gathers, as often advised by the publisher and as indicated on the spine, the three sections of Elementa Philosophiae, the great Hobbesian philosophical system conceived as a trilogy:
1 Sectio Prima – De Corpore (Logic, Prima Philosophia, geometry of motion and physics): with the famous 13 folded plates of mathematical and physical diagrams.
2 Sectio Secunda – De Homine (optics, psychology, passions, natural religion): with 8 folded plates.
3 Sectio Tertia – De Cive (political philosophy and natural law): the work that constitutes the theoretical core of the subsequent Leviathan.

Present is the etched portrait of Thomas Hobbes (age 76) by William Faithorne, surrounded by the motto «Philosophia en quam modice habitat» – a portrait not common and particularly prized.

Finally, on a guard page, a seventeenth-century handwritten medical recipe in Latin, titled «Unguentum Armeni» (or similar), with ingredients such as musk (“musk of the skull”), Armenian bole, dragon’s blood, tarantula, etc., attributed to Robert Fludd (1574-1637). A note of considerable historical-scientific interest.

Conditions
The frontispiece and the running title page are missing (as is frequently the case in these copies sold in parts). A heavily browned copy (especially the last work), with damp stains and foxing, but with folded plates mounted inside. Sturdy binding, with the usual signs of wear of seventeenth-century parchment.

Importance and rarity
This is the first Latin collective edition of Hobbes’s philosophical works and remains, to this day, the reference edition for studies. It contains, in definitive form, the three pillars of the Hobbesian system: the mechanical materialism of De Corpore, the anthropology of De Homine, and the political theory of De Cive (which anticipates and underpins Leviathan).

Complete copies of all eight parts of Blaeu 1668 are extraordinarily rare; even partial volumes that bring together the three sections of Elementa are highly sought after and rarely appear on the market. The presence of Faithorne’s portrait and the manuscript recipe attributed to Fludd confer significant added value to the copy.

A fundamental work of modern philosophy, of great rarity and notable collectible and scientific interest.