Description

Historic Doubts: Related to Napoleon Buonaparte by Richarrd Whately. AKA (Konx Ompax)

Published 1831: Fourth Edition / Softcover / Very Good Condition

Original card covers bound with twine. 55 clean and bright pages. Covers are stained, rubbed and faded with time and frayed along the edges but remain intact. Scarce! (LP238)

Postage €4.00.
An Post prepaid postage envelopes within the Republic of Ireland, with no weight restrictions from €6.95.

No name of author, butt Richard Whately's name appears on other editions of this work.

Also, in the preface to the 3rd edition, included is the pseudonym Konx Ompax. According to the Dictionary of Pseudonymous Literature, this pseudonym was used by Whately.

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/Historic-Doubts-Relative-Napoleon-Buonaparte -

The atheist philosopher David Hume unleashed an assault on Christianity in the 1700s that reverberates to this day. By undermining arguments based on or included references to miracles- or documents that contained them- many a person embraced his strict empiricism. Famously rising to the challenge, the Rev. Richard Whately showed that employing the same kind of 'empirical' scrutiny to other historical claims would result in absurdities. Namely, we could know little, if anything, about the famous Napoleon Bonaparte (Buonaparte). Indeed, one might even conclude he hadn't existed at all! There was only one problem: Napoleon had carried out his great feats within the lifetime of Whately's readers and his existence, and those feats, were common knowledge! Something had to give, either Hume's strict empiricism or knowledge itself (ie, epistemology). Whately is convinced that his playful analysis of Hume's reasoning would have been seen by Hume himself to show the great joke his reasoning was. Unfortunately, Hume died in 1776, and it is up to modern readers to decide for themselves if Whately was correct.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/