Abstract
The Traité des systèmes falls naturally into three major divisions. Of the eighteen chapters, the first five are concerned with the description of three different types of system, based on three different types of first principle, and with the abuses which are the inevitable concomitant of two of these. The second major division contains criticism of the great seventeenth-century metaphysical systems, which are cited as examples of the danger and futility of systems built on abstract principles, on philosophical axioms or definitions, and disparagement of hypotheses not demonstrated by experiment. The third and last section of the treatise is devoted to a eulogy of the method employed in the third and only valid type of system, in Condillac’s opinion, and to its practical application to politics, physics and the arts. A brief summary of the ideas in the first five chapters will serve to show the main lines of Condillac’s thought.
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References
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© 1979 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers bv, The Hague
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McNiven Hine, E. (1979). The Meaning of System. In: A Critical Study of Condillac’s Traité des Systèmes. Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idees/International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 93. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9291-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9291-7_2
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