QUESNAY, François.

£1,750 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Essai physique sur l'oeconomie animale. Second, greatly enlarged edition (first 1736) of the earliest of Quesnay's major works. The Essai, and specifically the passages new to this edition, lays the physiological and philosophical foundations for the economic doctrine as formalized in the Tableau economique. A key Physiocratic analysis of the nature and behaviour of economic agents, the Essai was throughout the 19th century relatively overlooked by economic historians, often considered a part of Quesnay's medical body of works, but has more recently been acknowledged as integral to his economic corpus.The substantial new passages, which occupy pp. 364-73 of the third volume, occur at a point where human nature is taken to a level above the simple determinism of animals, in the discussion of personal freedom as the pre-condition for the notions of right and wrong and for moral action. Here Quesnay for the first time sets out his theory of "droit naturel", the keystone of his economic doctrine, as Dupont de Nemours pointed out in the Avertissement of his Physiocratie. Natural order and its natural rights, namely liberty, property, and security, precede positive law, the task of which is merely to restore and guarantee the respect of the laws of nature. Society itself is the result of the work of nature rather than a contract.

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