To Cicero, “Socrates was the first to call philosophy down from the heavens” (Tusculan Disputations V:4, 10). “The most original, influential and controversial figure in the history of Greek thought… Socrates was the ‘hinge’ or the orientation point, for most subsequent thinkers” ( Encyclopedia of Philosophy VIII: 480). From the celebrated library of the Earls of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle. Small octavo (5 by 8 inches), contemporary full paneled speckled brown calf rebacked in elaborately-gilt decorated calf, red morocco spine label, raised bands, xiii, 273,, 140,, 143-196.įirst edition in English of Xenophon’s “extensive and valuable” Memorabilia of Socrates-the first and only accessible route to Socrates prior to later 18th-century translations of Plato-a work of seminal impact on philosophy and America’s Founding Fathers, with Jefferson praising it as absolutely “genuine” in its view of Socrates, and Franklin emphasizing its influence in his Autobiography where he writes, at about age 16, of discovering the Socratic Method when he “procur’d Xenophon’s Memorable Things of Socrates.” To Franklin’s biographer Walter Isaacson, the subtlety of Xenophon’s Socrates “was a style he would urge on the Constitutional Convention.” This scarce edition with a translation of Charpentier’s Life of Socrates (1650) and Life of Xenophon, with two copper-engraved plates. To which are prefix’d the Life of Socrates, From the French of Monsieur Charpentier… And the Life of Xenophon.

The Memorable Things of Socrates, written by Xenophon, in Five Books. “SOCRATES WAS THE FIRST TO CALL PHILOSOPHY DOWN FROM THE HEAVENS” (CICERO): FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH OF XENOPHON’S MEMORABLE THINGS OF SOCRATES, 1712, OF KEY INFLUENCE ON THE FOUNDING FATHERS, WITH FRANKLIN CITING, IN HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY, ITS POWERFUL IMPACT IN INTRODUCING THE SOCRATIC METHOD: ”I WAS CHARM’D WITH IT… PRACTIS’D IT CONTINUALLY”

Conversations of Socrates by Xenophon