La Topographie Legendaire Des Evangiles En Terre Sainte (inscribed by Halbwachs) // The Legendary Topography of the Holy Land // On Collective Memory

Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1941. First edition. Paperback. Very Good. True first edition, inscribed by Halbwachs to a Sorbonne colleague, philosopher Rene Le Senne. Halbwachs was later taken by the Nazis and died at Buchenwald in 1945. Halbwachs' death is described in Jorge Semprun's harrowing account of the concentration camp. Halbwachs first studied philosophy with Henri Bergson, but later became Emile Durkheim's most important student. The Legendary Topography is his masterpiece, one of the truly great works of European sociology. The book is by far the most sophisticated discussion of how the monuments we see in the Holy Land were created by humans looking for the sacred. Halbwachs reaches an intellectually elegant and humane conclusion about the shrines of the Holy Land: "These are not traces of a human or supernatural individual but rather of groups animated by a collective faith that remains moving even if one does not really know its true nature." The first edition is rare and inscribed copies are nearly impossble. Book is clean throughout, paper loss at the base of the spine (just clipping off "de France" at the bottom of the publisher's information), still very good.