Elementa Philosophica de Cive

Amsterdam: Apud Danielem Elzevirium, 1669. Hardcover. Very Good. 12 mo. Pp. [xxxvi], 403, [1] blank. Engraved title, woodcut initials and ornaments. Contemporary half vellum over paper boards. Binding somewhat rubbed and soiled, institutional ink stamp on verso of title page and last leaf, but otherwise a clean, tight, bright copy. The Fourth Elzevir Edition. The first edition was published in 1647, preceded by a small and privately circulated Paris edition of 1642. Written during his exile in Paris, which began just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, "De Cive" represented an expansion of the psychological and political ideas set forth in his first (as yet unpublished) philosophical treatise, "The Elements of Law", which had been circulating in manuscript form since 1640, and which was later published in two parts, "Human Nature" and "De Corpore Politico" in 1650. The additional material in "De Cive" dealt largely with the relation between the church and the civil power, wherein Hobbes elaborated on his favorite theme that peace and order can only be established by the complete subordination of the church to the state. "De Cive" was written in Latin for the learned. As the political situation resulting from the Civil War deteriorated, Hobbes decided it was necessary to present his theory of civil government in a more incisive and more popular form, and so came about his great work, the "Leviathan" (1651). Willems 1406. Macdonald and Hargreaves #29. Graesse III, 311. Lowndes II, 1078.