The History of Philosophy

London: Printed for Humphrey Moseley and Thomas Dring, 1662. First Edition. Near Fine. First editions. Three volumes in two, comprising 13 parts. [8], 120, [2], 19, [3], 119 pp; [2], 46; [2], 34, 37-159; [2], 120; [2], 37; [2], 142, [22] pp. [6], 159, [3], 161-173, [2], 41, [2], 104, [2], 105-275, [65] pp. With 27 copper-engraved portrait plates including frontispieces in Vols. I & III. [bound with] Stanley, Thomas. The History of the Chaldaick Philosophy. [6], 91, [1], 68, [36] pp. Frontispiece portrait. Together, two volumes in attractive modern Cambridge-style binding. Ruling in red with name written in early hand on title page of Vol. I, else Near Fine with a few creases and spots, some toning, some part numbers written ink in upper left margin; Vol. II with note in early hand on verso of front free endpaper, some creasing and light wear.

Rare complete edition of the very first history of philosophy in English. The magnum opus of the English metaphysical poet and translator Thomas Stanley (1625-1678), consisting of the three volumes of The History of Philosophy and The History of Chaldaick Philosophy, which generally (though unofficially) is considered the fourth and final volume. This is a book of some bibliographical complexity, published over a span of seven years. Stanley originally conceived the book as a work consisting of eight parts. The first three parts were published together in 1655, with a general title-page dated 1655, quickly followed by the printing of the five remaining parts in 1656. These latter five parts were issued both separately (with their own title page: "History of Philosophy, Volume II"), and also bundled together with the first three parts, and either 1) given a new general title-page dated 1656 or 2) bound using the general title-page from 1655-- as here. In 1660 Stanley expanded the work (with five additional parts) to what he conceived to be a "Third and Final Volume," but subsequently published Chaldaick Philosophy two years later.

Historian Dmitri Levitin in Ancient Wisdom in the Age of the New Science dubs this "the first vernacular work exclusively devoted to the history of philosophy." He calls it "one of the most puzzling works of early modern scholarship. It was structured precisely on the model of [Diogenes] Laertius [...] At points, it demonstrates a remarkable degree of critical acumen (judged by contemporary standards) [...] that merges uncomfortably with what appears, at first sight, as a peculiarly accumulative attitude." The work's attention to the chronology of the development of philosophy, he suggests, was innovative and unusual for its time.