Synopsis
First Truths: And The Origin Of Our Opinions, Explained: With An Enquiry Into The Sentiments Of Modern Philosophers, Relative To Our Primary Ideas Of Things by Claude Buffier. This English translation presents Buffier’s treatise on the origins of human opinions and the primacy of “first truths,” propositions so clear and obvious that they cannot be proved or refuted by more fundamental statements. Buffier argues that common sense, built from our internal sensations, memory, and experience, provides the foundation for knowledge and guides reasoning, probability, and judgment in everyday life. The work surveys how truth is secured: through internal sentiment, the testimony of the senses, memory, probability, and human authority, while also critiquing later writers—Reid, Ofwald, and Beattie—for plagiarizing Buffier’s ideas and for obscuring the sources of common sense. Structured in Plan and Division, it explores sensation, the mind, God, and the role of religion, with appendices applying these principles to natural philosophy, physics, jurisprudence, and divinity. The Preface defends Buffier’s approach and critiques modern philosophical pretensions, aiming to ground philosophy in universal human sense and the simple, initial truths the mind can grasp unaided by complex systems.
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