STAËL-HOLSTEIN, Germaine de.

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De l'influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations. First edition of the work that secured the author's literary reputation, in which she is amongst the first to argue that politics can and ought to be a science. Madame de Staël proposes that government stability can be achieved by permitting increased freedom of expression and that contemporary developments in statistics made it possible to calculate the appropriate level.Madame de Staël-Holstein (1766-1817) was a prominent novelist and philosopher in French and Genevan enlightenment circles. She was present for many significant moments in the French Revolution, including the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789. She was subsequently exiled due to her outspoken criticism of the regime and, later, of Napoleon. "Like Rousseau, Madame de Staël had achieved a synthesis of passion and reason, but whereas Rousseau's synthesis was what social scientists would call a theoretic model, realizable only in a completely transformed society, hers was conceived as a historic process taking place in real life" (Herold, p. 203).This copy is in the second state, which was issued only a few months after the first. It contains six additions to the text by the author.

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