d’Arconville - De l'Amitié - 1761

Marie‑Geneviève‑Charlotte Thiroux d’Arconville - On Friendship
At Desaint & Saillant, Amsterdam & Paris, 1761. Large 12mo. 194 pages. Illustrated with a frontispiece. Full original calf, spine with 5 raised bands ornamented with gold lines and a titled label. Very good condition. Some light rubbing to the boards, and the upper joint partially cracked but still solid. The body of the work in excellent condition.

On Friendship is a moral and philosophical treatise devoted to the analysis of the different forms of friendship in society. Unlike Montaigne’s intimate and exemplary approach, Thiroux d’Arconville adopts a systematic and social method, examining friendship according to ages, circumstances, ranks, and human situations. The work fully embodies the spirit of the Enlightenment, seeking to reconcile morality, reason, and observation of manners.

Marie‑Geneviève‑Charlotte Thiroux d’Arconville was a major figure of the French Enlightenment, a philosopher, moralist, and translator, also recognized for her scientific work. On Friendship is one of her best-known works, revealing her ethical thinking and her unique place among the women philosophers of the eighteenth century.

The work is structured in thematic chapters, including:

- On the friendship of children for their parents
- On the friendship among brothers and sisters
- On the friendship of the great and of society’s people
- On the friendship of wives for their husbands and of husbands for their wives
- On the friendship of women with each other and of men with each other
- On the friendship of the bourgeois
- ...