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The politics of a publishing event: the Marchand milieu and The life and spirit of Spinoza of 1719

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Book cover Heterodoxy, Spinozism, and Free Thought in Early-Eighteenth-Century Europe

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Abstract

The 1719 edition of La Vie et l’Esprit de Mr Benoît de Spinosa was a significant event in the history of the press. It brought out in print a heretical and subversive text that had hitherto circulated only in clandestine manuscript. It was one of the most accessible of such texts, since it was short, clear, and direct, and did not hide its message behind massive erudition nor disguise it in scholarly polemics. It contained the first French translation of significant sections of Hobbes’s Leviathan and of Spinoza’s Ethics, and provided a materialist interpretation thereof.1 Its publication was a test of the limits of the free press in the Netherlands.

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References

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  52. For an introduction, see Jacob, The radical Enlightenment, passim.

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  53. Journal littéraire, io (1718): 177.

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  54. Seminar presentation, 11 July 199o, University of Leiden.

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  56. March. 29:1.

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  63. March. 2, d’Harnouville to Marchand, 9 July, n.y.

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  64. Marchand, Dictionnaire historique, 1: 325.

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  65. Berkvens-Stevelinck, Prosper Marchand, 82, 17o. This chapter was written in 199o, before the appearance of Elisabeth Eisenstein, Grub Street abroad (Oxford, 1992). Ch. 3 of that work provides an interestingly similar analysis of the Marchand materials and should be consulted by any reader who is interested in the subject.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Riverside, USA

    John Christian Laursen

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  1. John Christian Laursen
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Rome, Italy

    Silvia Berti

  2. Centre Nationale de Recherches Scientifiques, France

    Françoise Charles-Daubert

  3. Washington University, St. Louis, USA

    Richard H. Popkin

  4. University of California, Los Angeles, USA

    Richard H. Popkin

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Laursen, J.C. (1996). The politics of a publishing event: the Marchand milieu and The life and spirit of Spinoza of 1719. In: Berti, S., Charles-Daubert, F., Popkin, R.H. (eds) Heterodoxy, Spinozism, and Free Thought in Early-Eighteenth-Century Europe. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées, vol 148. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8735-8_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8735-8_8

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