bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
La notion d'autorité chez Hume
Authors: Cléro Jean-Pierre
Published: June 2016

Hume's notion of authority.

Hume's extension of certain legal notions, and particularly of authority, indicates that he is part of a current of thought with its distant origins in Hobbes, which certainly was to influence Bentham, who tried to elaborate a "theory of fictions". It is not very easy to discover the reason for this inflation of legal terms in unexpected fields, but one of its functions is perhaps to disguise materialism. For Hume, authority in any field usually means the relationship between representation and the physical and psychical forces underlying it. If representation appeared as a fictitious product of this interplay of forces, it would allow us to pinpoint some important elements of materialism in Hume's philosophy.
L'athéisme de d'Holbach à la lumière de Hegel
Authors: Bourdin Jean-Claude
Published: June 2016

D'Holbachs atheism as seen by Hegel.

Despite the central importance of atheism in d'Holbach's materialistic system, it is clear that Hegel's reading of d'Holbach's thought in his Lessons on the Philosophy of History, although original, does not mention it. The reasons for this silence can be easily deduced from what he considered to be the tasks of philosophy in relation to religion, namely to ensure their reconciliation which is conceptually mastered as it realizes the programme of the Christian spiritual world. Atheism could only appear as an irrelevant philosophy, which is why Hegel did not even bother to refute it. Nevertheless we can show that in his criticism of the doctrine of "immediate knowledge" and of religious sentimentalism, Hegel provides a way of justifying philosophically the Baron's atheism by presenting it as the "result" of sentimentalism and the consequence of a religious thought that finitizes its content.
Varennes ou la subversion cérémonielle
Authors: Coquard Olivier
Published: June 2016

Varennes or ceremonial subversion.

The flight to Varennes is here studied in its symbolic meaning. The actions and words of the King and his family, from their departure to their return, show the progressive abdication of all the symbols of their royalty. At the same time other actors, patriots or deputies, discover the extent of the royal fall, and immediately after the king's arrest take the initiative to fill the political vacuum. Already on the long road, home struggles break out for the control of these initiatives, between true royalists like Dampierre, constitutionals like Barnave and Jacobins like Pétion. In these struggles popular intervention plays a complex and contradictory role. The historiography of Varennes in the 19th and 20th Centuries, which has reflected these struggles, has painted the picture of a dignified and solemn return, which is contradicted by the newspapers and images of 1791.
La notion de naturalisme, ou Warburton contre Bolingbroke et Hume
Authors: Carrive Paulette
Published: June 2016

The notion of naturalism, or Warburton against Bolingbroke and Hume.

The first important occurrence of the term naturalism is to be found in a letter from Warburton to Richard Hurd, Bishop of Worcester, in 1738. With this new term, Warburton is condemning the thought of both Bolingbroke and Hume. He is referring to a theological system that recognizes only the physical attributes, not the moral attributes, of God. The accusation of "naturalism" is as serious as that of "Spinozism". In addition, in his Remarks on the Natural History of Religion, Warburton accuses Hume of insinuating that religion originates in the imagination and the passions, in other words in what Hume understands by "origin in human nature".
L'Europe des académies
Authors: McClellan III James E.
Published: June 2016

James E. McLellan : The Europe of academies.

Eighteenth-century academies formed the institutional basis of the famous Republic of Letters, and they provided a sensitive indicator of the reality of Enlightenment Europe. Tapping a developed historiography, this paper surveys factors drawing European institutions together and factors pulling them apart. Common historical roots, organizational forms, correspondence and membership networks, and collective projects did create a real European and world-wide system of academies. On the other hand, economic factors, nationalism, provincial/regional identities, and religious and language divisions served to fragment such unity as existed. The latter factors are seen as more useful in explaining the phenomena of the academies and the Republic of Letters.
Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski, «homme européen»
Authors: Libera Zdzislaw
Published: June 2016

Zdzislaw Libera : Stanislas-Augustus Poniatowski, a "European man".

When qualifying king Stanislas-Augustus Poniatowski as a European, we are thinking of his opinions on literature and art, and his attitude towards religion, political problems and education. The study of his memoirs and of his private correspondence with Mme Geoffrin, Mr Glayre and I. Krasicki, or the opinions of foreigners who knew him, all show that the King represented the ideals of the European Enlightenment. He was known for his humanity and tolerance, he was interested in literature, painting and architecture, he had visited different European countries and spoke several languages. As a politician, he considered that the situation in Poland was a problem of European politics.
Trois lettres inédites de Crébillon fils
Authors: Brisebois Michel
Published: June 2016

Crébillon fils : Three unpublished letters, presented by Michel Brise-bois.

The complete transcription of three letters by Crébillon fils is published here for the first time. The letter dating from February 1751, probably to De Brosses, mainly concerns his move to Sens and a request about his father ; the second letter (February 1755), to La Beaumelle, concerns the refusal of a printer in Sens to take his book and mentions Montesquieu's death. The last one (August 1755), not listed by Funke, to Baron d'Aigaliers in Montauban, deals at length with Crébillon's problems as a Censor and severely criticizes contemporary literature.
L'Aveugle, un proverbe inédit de Jean Potocki
Authors: Triaire Dominique
Published: June 2016

Jean Potocki : L'Aveugle. An unpublished one-act play presented by Dominique Triaire.

Jean Potocki (1761-1815) was always interested in the theatre, and his Parades (1792) and a short play called Les Bohémiens d'Andalousie (1794) are already known. The rich Ukraine archives in Kiev contain a 14-page holograph manuscript of a proverb, L'Aveugle which had never been noticed before. It was probably written in the Ukraine between 1798 and 1803 and staged in a family theatre ; there were many private theatres on the lands of the Potockis and their friends. These few pages reflect Potocki's feeling for dialogue, his vivacious style and his taste for short pieces.
L'histoire dans les projets éducatifs français au siècle des Lumières
Authors: Gerbod Paul
Published: June 2016

Paul Gerbod : History in French educational projects during the enlightenment.

During the second half of the 18th century, there were numerous reforming projects for creating a national education in France (Diderot, La Chalotais, Guyton de Morveau, d'Aguesseau, Roland d'Erceville). The role of history teaching is far from being neglected in these projects which gave rise to a group of coherent and modern proposals. This teaching should be national ; that is, while not rejecting Classical history, it should include French history and even, for some of the authors, world history. It should not be restricted to rulers and their wars, but should also be concerned with the material and moral life of peoples, and it should be useful as, by distinguishing good and evil, it should help to teach public morality to human societies.
La « French connection » : influences françaises sur l'économie politique britannique
Authors: Groenewegen Peter
Published: June 2016

Peter Groenewegen : The "French connection". Some case studies of French

influences on british economics in the 18th century.

This article examines French influences on British economics in the 18th Century by means of three case studies covering the early decades of the Century (Richard Cantillon), the 1730s and 40s (David Hume) and the 1750s and 60s (Sir James Steuart and Adam Smith). They reveal a growing spread of French influence in line with the bibliographical evidence suggesting that France was the major producer of economic literature from 1754 to 1768. Apart from a general discussion of the potential influences on these four authors indicated by their citation practices, the article suggests the hypothesis that criticism of Melon may have been a major source of Hume's inspiration to write his economic essays in the late 1740s.
Fondements et développements de l'économie publique
Authors: Hebert Robert F.
Published: June 2016

Robert F. Hébert : The foundations and development of public economics.

In 18th-century France, two important analytical traditions in economics developed more or less side by side : on the one hand, political economy was developed by Quesnay and his followers ; on the other, public economics (which began as inquiries into transport economics) was pioneered by engineers who had intellectual ties to the École des Ponts et Chaussées. This article traces the development of the second tradition, which was separated from the first by professional and institutional considerations. This tradition of public economics had a progenitor in Vauban, a theoretical catalyst in Saint-Pierre, a pedagogical entrepreneur in Perronet and a vigorous defender in Mirabeau.
La fable du troc
Authors: Servet Jean-Michel
Published: June 2016

Jean-Michel Servet : The barter myth.

Before Smith, Beccaria and Turgot developed the myth of barter in the mid-18th Century, money was considered as a vital element of the social and royal order, like blood in the human body. The myth of barter demonstrates, firstly, that the original counting units of the value of goods were not introduced by the prince, but were natural units in terms of utility of labour. In addition, without the existence of money as a means of payment decreed by the prince, certain forms of the division of labour can develop. Thus, as economics was emerging as an autonomous social science, the myth of barter was an important innovation.
La liberté du commerce : le marché des grains
Authors: Steiner Philippe
Published: June 2016

Philippe Steiner : Free trade and the grain market

This article studies the way in which during the 18th Century French economics developed the theoretical arguments necessary to defend free trade ; the two important arguments concern the self-regulatory working of the market and the interdependence between different markets. But these arguments were resisted, in particular when it came to freeing the grain market. The questions which arose particularly in the debate between Turgot and Necker concern the arguments used in the second half of the century about this particular market and how competition could work in this special case. These questions allow us to emphasize the importance of institutional conditions, defined widely. This last point is studied in detail through an analysis of the problem posed by the reputation of merchants.
Libéralisme, corporatisme et dérogeance : à propos des édits sur le commerce de 1701 et 1765
Authors: Cheminade Christian
Published: June 2016

Christian Cheminade : Liberalism, corporatism and derogation. On the commercial edicts of 1701 and 1765.

In 1700-1 the Counsel on Trade was favourable to a liberal demand from the trading gentry, but dared not attack openly the limits on trade imposed by corporations' charters. This contradiction can be seen in the 1701 Edict, intended to liberalise wholesale trade, but which finally only abolished the "law of deroga¬ tion". To remove this ambiguity, the trading deputies launched another liberal campaign in 1754, which led to a text establishing a link between the ending of the derogation and complete freedom for wholesale trade. But opposition from the Six Paris Guilds prevented the Edict from being promulgated for ten years. It was finally published in 1765, with no reference to derogation whose abolition had in the mean time become the battle cry of the defenders of corporatism. But the Six Guilds ensured that the Edict would not be applied in the capital.
Louis XVI morigéné par ses ancêtres en 1790 : Les Entretiens des Bourbons
Authors: Duprat Annie
Published: June 2016

Annie Duprat : Louis XVI criticised by his ancestors in 1790. Les entretiens

des Bourbons

Between August and October 1790, royalists tried to slow down the course of the Revolution by attacking the Duke of Orleans, accused of having organised the events of 5-6 October 1789. Eleven anonymous pamphlets featured dialogues between Louis XVI and his ancestors Louis XIV, Henry IV and Louis IX, with two engravings to illustrate the text. The general tone is violent ; his ancestors advise the King to repress the Assembly and the patriots, and reveal Orleans's duplicity. Thanks to the police, who seized many of these works, and re-use of one of the engravings (only the letter is modified) in April 1792, we can evaluate the Royalists' activism in 1790. This article indicates methods for the combined analysis of political writings and illustrations.
«Qui peut définir les femmes ?». L'idée de la «nature féminine» au siècle des Lumières
Authors: Steinbrügge Lieselotte
Published: June 2016

Lieselotte Steinbrugge : Who can define woman ? The idea of feminine nature

in the Enlightenment.

For 18th-century thinkers, the nature of woman was the subject of medical, historiographical, anthropological, philosophical and literary discourse, some com mon aspects of which are outlined here. The Encyclopédie (faithful to the 17th-century tradition of Poulain de la Barre) reflects the transition from en egalitarian position to a discourse that treats the relationship between the sexes in terms of difference. Around the mid-century the shift from rationalism to sensualism had profound effects on female anthropology. This is shown in Dr Pierre Roussel' s Système physique et moral de la femme (1775) which claims that woman, because of her physical constitution, is intellectually inferior to man. Through an analysis of the 5th chapter of Emile in the context of the two Discours, the author aims at showing that for Rousseau the image of woman is linked to the idea of rationality and to his anthropological system.
Billardon de Sauvigny et l'innonce perdue du premier âge
Authors: Fougère Éric
Published: June 2016

Éric Fougère : Billardon de Sauvigny and the lost innocence of the first

ages.

This article only deals with the aspects of Louis-Edme Billardon de Sauvigny' s uneventful career that are linked to the emergence of republican ideology. Whether from opportunism or conviction, his work combines an outdated faithfulness to the pastoral mode with an interest in political Utopia that became stronger as history accelerated. From the narrative L'innocence du premier âge en France (1768) to plays like Hirza ou les Illinois (1767) and Washington ou la liberté du nouveau monde (1791), he remained faithful to an exemplary, if ambiguous scenario : a young stranger possessing all the virtues brings to a dying or emerging society the promise of a new or revived Alliance under the aegis of virtue. Billardon's work, starting from political preoccupations, repressed, and hid behind mytha history that was being overtaken by the Revolution.
Loaisel de Tréogate, romancier féministe ?
Authors: Jalliet Aline
Published: June 2016

Aline Jalliet : Was Loaisel de Treogate a feminist ?

Women occupy a central position in the novels of Loaisel de Tréogate (1752-1812) and in his heroes' adventures. Although the author often expresses traditional male chauvinist prejudices, he also goes beyond this conventional view by presenting couples in which true exchange between the partners is essential to the man's happiness. In addition, the woman is given a subversive discourse that, by uncovering man's age-old usurpation, is the first shot in a necessary war of the sexes. He is, thanks to his belief in equality, a novelist of the mythical, fraternal married couple, but his attempts to define the essence and the role of women link him to 18th-century debates on women's identity and place in society.
État des recherches et tendances actuelles. La source est un miroir
Authors: Flamarion Édith , Volpilhac-Auger Catherine
Published: June 2016

Edith Flamarion and Catherine Volpilhac-Auger : Present state of

research and current trends : the source as a mirror.

Where and how is research currently being conducted on the presence of classical Antiquity in the 18th Century ? This article looks at current research trends, the policy of different centres and research teams and the methods adopted, and the authors discern two main approaches : one of them studies the remnants of Antiquity in a particular period, while the other concentrates on how the reference to Antiquity worked ; it was remodelled by the Enlightenment in its own image and in return helped to shape the Enlightenment as we know it.
L'interprétation alchimique de la mythologie
Authors: Matton Sylvain
Published: June 2016

Sylvain Matton : Alchemical interpretation of mythology.

In the 18th Century, scientists' acceptance of a "reasonable chemistry" which no longer drew its legitimacy from its antiquity but from its rationality alone made the debate on its origins obsolete ; Suidas' s affirmation that the Golden Fleece was not what fables said but a parchment book teaching how to make gold by alchemy had played an important role in this debate, as it justified a "chemical" reading of Greco-Egyptian myths which filled the gap left by the Ancients' silence concerning this art. However, although mocked by specialists in mythology such as Banier, the alchemical interpretation of ancient mythology, mentioned by G.-F. Venel in the Encyclopédie article CHYMIE, did not disappear in the 18th Century. It subsisted even with university professors such as G. W. We-del and J. Frick and was developed by amateurs such as J. Vauquelin des Yveteaux, Philothaume or E. Libois, but especially Dom Pernety who revived its popularity with Les Fables égyptiennes et grecques dévoilées (1758).
L'Antiquité pour la modernité dans l'inspiration d'André Chénier
Authors: Guitton Edouard
Published: June 2016

Édouard Guitton : Antiquity for modernity in André Chénier's inspira¬ tion.

The latent finalism in this formula refers to a paradox and a dialectic in André Chénier's inspiration. He goes beyond the simplistic concepts of imitation and invention and aims to link Antiquity to post-Enlightenment syncretism. Despising the old distinctions (Faguet's "manners" and "programmes"), he places the poet's fragmentary and unfinished work under the banner of unity and totality. The appeal to Antiquity, which is rooted in a fundamental sensuality and which Chénier, who was "Greek" by his mother, pushed to its paroxysm, seems an impulse which acts retroactively on present inspiration in order to regenerate it, for the two impulses constitute a couple of complementary forces. Chénier's materialistic "panaesthesis" is most fully seen and displays all its energy in relation to Laplace's mathematical physics and at the turning-point of a dual conception of (iterative and irreversible) time.
Raynal au printemps 1793 d'après deux documents inédits
Authors: Brot Muriel
Published: June 2016

Muriel Brot : Raynal in the Spring of 1793 according to two unpublished documents.

This article presents unknown documents sent by Raynal to a certain Serres on April 12th 1793. The first is a request for a permit to leave French territory to go to Switzerland to meet his debtors and the second is a letter addressed personally to Serres in which Raynal asks him to present the request to the appropriate tribunal. The difference in tone between the letter and the request indicates that the financial problems referred to by Raynal were mainly a pretext to flee the revolutionary turmoil. Even though the letter's recipient and the tribunal concerned cannot be identified with certainty, these documents show us Raynal' s state of mind concerning revolutionary events in the spring of 1793.
Le christianisme au miroir de l'islam dans le Nazarenus de John Toland
Authors: Lurbe Pierre
Published: June 2016

Pierre Lurbe : John Toland's Nazarenus.

Toland's Nazarenus (1718) needs to be understood in the context of the dispute concerning the status of Islam in relation to Christianity. Taking as his starting-point the supposed discovery of the apocryphal gospel of Barnabus in Amsterdam in 1709, Toland tries to demonstrate that the work, which originated in Judeo-Christian or Nazarean circles, was also the source of the religion of the Moslems. And since the Nazareans were Christ's contemporaries and first disciples, then their teaching on both Christ and the Church must correspond to the truth. To the extent that these doctrines were adopted by Islam, it is therefore not absurd to recognise the Moslems as the direct heirs of authentic original Christianity.
Joseph Morgan et le monde islamique
Authors: Thomson Ann
Published: June 2016

Ann Thomson : Joseph Morgan and the Islamic World.

Little is known about Morgan — who wrote several works about the Islamic world, in particular North Africa, in the 1720s and 30s — beyond the fact that he had spent twenty years in Algiers, was probably a Freemason and was arrested in London with Radicati for having translated the Italian's irreligious Philosophi¬ cal Dissertation on Death. Due to his numerous translations, he has generally been accused of being little more than a plagiarist. This article shows that the accusation is unfounded and studies his most interesting works, in particular his Complete History of Algiers (1731) and his Mahometism Fully Explained (1723-25). These works show a sympathetic knowledge of Moslem civilisation and a desire to combat European prejudices about it. They also perhaps provide further evidence of the link between heterodox religious ideas and a more sympathetic attitude towards Islam.
Moscovie ou Russie ? Regard de Joseph-Nicolas Delisle et des savants français sur les États de Pierre le Grand
Authors: Chabin Marie-Anne
Published: June 2016

Marie-Anne Chabin : Muscovy or Russia ? The activity of the Delisle family.

17th-century geographical works showed Muscovy, about which very little was known, next to Tartary, Persia or China ; by the end of the 18th Century, Catherine II' s Russia had become a European power. Thus in a century the perception of the country of the Tsars had totally changed, in both the political and the intellectual sphere. This article studies this evolution through the Delisle family of Parisian scholars, who contributed to the development of knowledge about Russia in France. The father, Claude, a historian, interviewed the Tsar's ambassador ; William, the eldest son, discussed with Peter the Great the geography of his states ; Joseph-Nicolas set up the Saint Petersburg observatory and worked for 25 years in Russia on the great Russian atlas ; Louis died in Kamchatka on Bering's second expedition. J. -N. Delisle' s rich archives show both how Russia replaced Muscovy and what this change symbolized.
Jean-Baptiste Gentil, collectionneur de manuscrits persans
Authors: Richard Francis
Published: June 2016

Francis Richard : J.-B. Gentil, a collector of Persian manuscripts.

After living in Faizabad in northern India for twelve years, Jean-Baptiste Gentil (1726-99) had by 1775 assembled for Anquetil-Duperron and the King a great collection of objects, paintings and coins. Their aim was to study Indian history with a view to restoring French power in India. An analysis of the list of manuscripts that he collected shows that he wished above all to be a historian.
Les fantasmes orientaux d'un fermier général : la Zaïrette de La Poupelinière
Authors: Duprilot Jacques
Published: June 2016

Jacques Duprilot : A Farmer-general's oriental obsessions : de La Poupelinière's Zaïrette.

The extravagant, music-loving Farmer-General Le Riche de La Poupelinière, who was famous for his eclectic friendships as protector or patron of Rameau, Vaucanson, Thiriot or J.-J. Rousseau, was also fascinated by the Orient. This appears in Daira and above all Zaïrette, two anonymous stories which were published in mysterious circumstances. The erotic content of the Histoire de Zaïrette, a young Frenchwoman abducted by a Sultan given to flagellation, obviously explains this secrecy, but should not disguise the fact that La Poupeli¬ nière was fascinated all his life by the way of life of wealthy Orientals, so much so that at times he thought he was in a seraglio, as his curious Journal de voyage en Hollande shows. But while his obsessions found an outlet in his oriental stories and an as yet unpublished comedy, they still retain their darker side.
Opinion et public dans les Considérations sur les mœurs de Duclos
Authors: Dornier Carole
Published: June 2016

Carole Dornier : Opinion and public in Duclos's Considérations sur les

mœurs de ce siècle.

In his Considérations sur les mœurs de ce siècle (1751), Duclos accords to public opinion a function of justice alongside positive laws and individual conscience. The fear of public judgement, which is the outcome of a process of civilisation characterising polite nations, is a form of self-censorship of behaviour which furthers sociability and serves the general interest. Opposed to this optimis¬ tic conception of public judgement, the author condemns the spirit of coteries and cabals, the tyranny of fashion and the fear of ridicule, which are remnants of a court-centred society encouraging an aristocratic minority's pursuit of distinction and social prestige. Public opinion can undermine the voluntary servitude of misplaced respect and become a social force tending towards the happiness of the greatest number.
Philidor, une éthique de l'écoute
Authors: Jacob François
Published: June 2016

François Jacob : Philidor, a European artist.

If François André Danican Philidor, whose bicentenary we have just celebrated, allowed the Comic Opera to expand as it did, it was perhaps thanks to behaviour, or more generally an ethics, which consisted primarily of openness to others. He was open to the influences of his own dynasty which had provided illustrious royal musicians for nearly 150 years, but he was also open to the concert of nations ; his frequent journeys meant that, perhaps despite himself, he made a vast synthesis of it. But Philidor, whose natural tendency was to introspection, as his passion for chess shows, did not manage to impose his genius. Unlucky in friendship and in circumstances, he could only express his musical originality on the stage of the Comic Opera, and left to posterity only one important instrumental work and the finally tragic picture of a lonely, little-known and misunderstood man.
«Odor di vino ». A travers les lettres italiennes aux 17e et 18e siècles
Authors: Luciani Gérard
Published: June 2016

Gérard Luciani : "Odor di vino" in hth and isth-century Italian literature.

Wine and the vine have always been present in Italian life and culture, but the most important and probably the only poetic work dealing exclusively with wine dates from the 17th Century, when the Florentine doctor Francesco Redi wrote the dithyramb Bacco in Toscana (Bacchus in Tuscany). This poem is an eulogy of Tuscany wines, which Redi rates (rightly, so it seems, at the time) well above the other Italian wines and even the most famed foreign vintages. In the 18th Century however appeared another perception of Italian wines, as foreign rivals from Hungary, Spain, Greece and especially France arrived on the market at a time when the consumption of chocolate and, even more, coffee became ever more widespread. On the use of wine, traditionally regarded as considerable while remaining within reasonable limits, we have many accounts by writers, particularly from the region of Venice, such as the Gozzi brothers and C. Goldoni. These texts give a more varied picture of the presence of wine in Italy at the time.
Six lettres de madame Necker à Ivan Ivanovitch Chouvalov
Authors: Rosset François , Triaire Dominique
Published: June 2016

François Rosset and Dominique Triaire : Six letters from Madame Necker to Ivan Ivanovitch Shuvalov.

Ivan Ivanovitch Shuvalov (1727-97), a former favourite of the Empress Elisabeth of Russia, was asked to travel aboard on Catherine's accession. He visited London, Italy, and above all Paris, where he mixed with writers and artists. This taste for the arts won him back the good graces of the Empress, who authorised him to return to Russia in September 1777. He continued to correspond with his former Western acquaintances until his death ; among them was Suzanne Necker, née Curchod (1739-94), the wife of the minister, six of whose letters to Shuvalov, from 1777 to 1789, have been found in Ukraine and Russia. For her Russian correspondent Mme Necker describes mainly literary and political news and thus provides a trace of the passage of this great Russian aristocrat in her salon, proving that her family's relations with Russia began long before has been hitherto believed.
Diderot et le concept de civilisation
Authors: Goggi Gianluigi
Published: June 2016

Gianluigi Goggi : Diderot and the concept of civilisation.

In 1772, Diderot wrote a short piece on the civilisation of Russia, whose starting-point was his opposition to Voltaire's ideas concerning the transplantation of arts and sciences to Peter I's Russia. Diderot discusses the civilisation of Russia in the light of two other issues emphasized at the time : the civilisation or sédentarisation of savages ; and the development of civilisation in Europe during the Middle Ages. We can see that Diderot's piece combines two conceptions : on the one hand, the idea of a political project leading Russia from barbarism to civilisation through clearly defined stages (beginning with the installation of colonies of foreigners and aiming at transforming Russian society from below) ; and on the other, a conception of civilisation as a slow social evolution, based on a very different idea of the pace of civilisation from that implied by the political project. As he moves from one to the other, Diderot finally takes up certain of Voltaire's suggestions, which he had rejected at the beginning (for example, concerning the role of circumstances in the civilising process).
Sieyès, lecteur du Traité des sensations
Authors: Guilhaumou Jacques
Published: June 2016

Pierre Serna : Antonelle's critical reading of Condillac.

During the 1770s and then the 1780s, Sieyès and Antonelle read Condillac, made notes on his works and criticized them at length. These two articles, based on their unpublished manuscripts, constitute commentaries on the two authors' reactions, illustrated by long extracts. Their two readings of Condillac converge at some points but remain distinct. These critical notes insist on the important role of reflection concerning the social construction of the individual, or in other words the elaboration of the self in reciprocal interaction. During the revolutionary decade, Condillac's influence was still important when the two writers from Provence, now députés, continued their reflection on the nature of political representation and tried to elaborate a "well-constructed" revolutionary language.
Cabanis et Destutt de Tracy, ou la balance de la société réajustée
Authors: Ben Saïd Cherni Zeineb
Published: June 2016

Zeineb Ben Said Cherni : Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy or readjusting the balance of society.

According to Cabanis, the organisation of society prolongs the multiple forms in which matter is organised, for it is set up smoothly and spontaneously. It is the result of sympathy and is the focus for all expressions of sensibility ; thus it is a social prolongation of the "physical". This "admirable transaction" follows a cyclical rhythm for, like a machine as conceived by Huyghens, it contains its own balancing system which reestablishes its equilibrium. This engine regulating social life is related to the medical and physiological notions of pathology, conservation and compensation, in which the influence of the Hippo-cratic and vitalistic Montpellier schools are evident. However, the naturalism of the Ideologues Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy is sometimes disturbed when the idea of regulation is replaced by régularisation or that of a brake on natural tendencies. For de Tracy, a crisis cannot be resolved spontaneously ; an artificial critical reason stops the natural impulses of domination and the unbridled indulgence of the individual will, and it readjusts the social balance. The resulting critical reason and civic spirit generate progress which is enclosed in a regulation dominated by order.
Le prince Boris Vladimirovitch Golitsyne (1769-1813). Un des premiers admirateurs de Schiller en Russie
Authors: Tsoffka Victor
Published: June 2016

Victor Tsoffka : Prince B. V. Golitsyn and F. Schiller.

Prince B. V. Golitsyn (1769-1813), a dillettante writer who lived in France on the eve of the Revolution, was also one of F. Schiller's first admirers in Russia. During his stay in Paris he sent the German poet a letter and one of his works in German, hoping that it would be published in Schiller's review Rheinische Thalia. It was probably a German translation of an essay by O. Goldsmith. In line with the fashion of the age, Golitsyn was strongly influenced by German culture, and he published in the Mercure de France an article on J. K. Riesbeck, in which he tried to bring German literature to the attention of the French public. He also published in the same periodical several French works, in verse and prose, in the style of Gessner and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Prince Golitsyn, who was later the neighbour of the young Pushkin in the countryside near Moscow, was possibly the model for Lenski, one of the main heroes of Pushkin's poem Eugene Onegin, like Golitsyn an admirer of Schiller and German literature.
Le récit d'enfance du 17e siècle à Rousseau
Authors: Perrin Jean-Francois
Published: June 2016

Jean-François Perrin : Childhood Accounts, from the 17th Century to Rousseau.

The present article demonstrates, through a corpus of religious literature (spiritual and hagiographical autobiographies), Memoirs, Lives and novels, that Rousseau's Confessions inherited five characteristics of childhood accounts as they had been written since the 17th Century, namely the puer senex, the child prodigy, the passion for novels, the child who kills his mother at birth and the child who is born dying.
L'Esclavage des noirs, ou la mauvaise conscience d'Olympe de Gouges
Authors: Tarin René
Published: June 2016

René Tarin : L'Esclavage des noirs and Olympe de Gouges' Guilty Conscience.

In December 1789 the Théâtre de la Nation staged L'Esclavage des noirs ou l'heureux naufrage, by Olympe de Gouges. This production was not a success, but like all her works the play was noteworthy for the unrest and scuffles it occasioned. The colonial lobby saw it as a threat. Some denounced the author's subversive aims ; did men declared free by the Declaration of Rights stop being free in the colonies ? Olympe de Gouges' play is part of the debate on the colonial issue, a major political question in the period 1789-1794, and it illustrates what was at stake and the contradictions of the debate.
Pierres écrites et dessinées
Authors: Pinault-Sørensen Madeleine
Published: June 2016

Madeleine Pinault Sorensen : Stones in writing and art.

This article attempts to show the diverse forms of representation used by artists to introduce into their works different subjects linked to mineralogy, which almost became a leitmotiv in the second half of the 18th Century, with volcanoes, glaciers, grottos, waterfalls and streams. Artists tackled these subjects after having studied mineralogy, when accompanying a travelling scientist, when travelling alone, or when working on the illustrations for a book or catalogue. Thus we can see the diversity of artists' views of mineralogy, from a panorama of nature to a detailed study of a sample, for example. A whole aspect of landscape painting was thereby transformed, and even more so at the end of the century when sensibility moved towards a clear taste for the unchained elements, in the form of avalanches, storms, eruptions of Vesuvius and earthquakes. These nightmare visions emphasize humain frailty and precarity in the face of nature.
Les paradoxes d'un anti-philosophe. L'Éloge historique de Monseigneur le Duc de Bourgogne, par J.-J. Lefranc de Pompignan
Authors: Ferret Olivier
Published: June 2016

Olivier Ferret : The paradoxes of an enemy of the philosophes. J.-J. Lefranc de Pompignan's Éloge historique de Monseigneur le duc de Bourgogne.

In his Éloge historique de Monseigneur le duc de Bourgogne (1761), Jean-Jacques Lefranc de Pompignan develops the paradigm of the traditional celebration of a great man's virtues. But it is a delicate exercise, as the dead man was only nine ; this creates a series of contradictions which make the work veer between the desired pathetic tone and involuntary ridicule. The paradoxe thus created can only be understood by taking into account Pompignan's polemical purpose ; for behind the portrait of the ideal sovereign that the Duke of Bourgogne could (and should) have been, the author of this work is constructing the exact antithesis of the 'so-called philosophes'. Thus the pamphlet-like style, by invading the conventional funereal oration, subverts its primary aim and becomes part of the attack launched in the second half of the 18th Century against the philosophes, presented as irreligious and seditious.
Les voyages portugais dans l'Histoire générale des voyages de l'abbé Prévost
Authors: Albertan-Coppola Sylviane
Published: June 2016

Sylviane Albertan-Coppola : Portuguese journeys in Prévost's Histoire générale des voyages.

Prévost's collection of travel accounts, like the Encyclopédie, aims, by means of synthetic pictures, to provide and popularize universal knowledge. The conception of history behind the work is similar to that of Montesquieu or Voltaire, for human development is not presented as the result of providence or chance, but as a simple chain of cause and effect. This can be seen in the way he treats Portuguese travellers. The importance assigned to their travels, which varies between 1746 and 1759, derives from the editor's task. Prévost, at first given simply the job of translating, soon took on the transitional task of correcting, and finally undertook the work of an editor, following the synthetic method which he preferred. Thus we can see that the very definition of a Portuguese voyage changed according to the sources and the plan of each part.
Jacques le fataliste et le renouveau du roman carnavalesque
Authors: Cronk Nicholas
Published: June 2016

Jacques le fataliste and the renewal of the carnivalesque novel.

Bakhtin suggests that until the second half of the 17th Century, the carnivalesque in literature was a reflection of man's direct experience of carnival ; therefore, as carnival itself waned, the literary carnivalesque became an increasingly literary (intertextual) phenomenon. Thus Voltaire's Candide exemplifies certain thematic aspects of the carnivalesque, but stops well short of linguistic subversion. Dulaurens's Le Compère Mathieu is, in contrast, a more fully carnivalesque text, embodying the carnivalesque at the level of theme, of genre and of language. Diderot's Jacques le fataliste goes further still, and may be said to represent a "renewal" of the carnivalesque novel. It derives its inspiration not only indirectly from other carnivalesque literature, but also (and notwithstanding Bakhtin's view that 18th-century authors had lost immediate contact with carnival) directly from Diderot's experience of popular culture.
Le rire et la parodie. Freud ou Bergson ?
Authors: de Rougemont Martine
Published: June 2016

Parodic laughter : between Freud and Bergson.

Theatrical parody, a genre which defined its forms in the 18th Century, occupies a place in the theatrical landscape. Its almost instantaneous composition, sometimes in complicity with the object of attack, means that it is as much advertisement (albeit buffoon-like) as criticism. It familiarizes audiences with the noble genres, brings out the criteria of well-crafted theatre and teaches the spectator to be inside/outside. The parodies by Parisau, La Veuve de Cancale, Richard, Le Roi Lu, are here studied as examples of this procedure, through themes, language and direct or indirect ways of addressing the public. Is parodie laughter made of exclusion and condemnation or of almost affectionate familiarity which undermines the authority of great literature ? Parisau seems closer to Freud than to Bergson.
Le rire des anti-philosophes
Authors: Cave Christophe
Published: June 2016

Anti-philosophical laughter.

How was the question of laughter posed by the "anti-philosophes" ? By representing the laughter of their adversaries - seen as a homogeneous group - as a sign of social rupture, destruction of relationships, the expression of an opposition between good and bad laughter based on the axiological distinction between cheerfulness and wit (or mockery or disturbing outbursts). This laughter is also presented as a sign of the hubris of Reason, forbidden by theology, but which the philosophes tried to exempt from this condemnation. The philosophes' enemies used the theatre and notions of "type" and "character", to create a new topical vulgate of social and ideological images. Moreau, Sabatier de Castres, Fréron or Palissot attribute to these images, sometimes explicitly, the imagined function of social catharsis and political regulation.
La maladie, le rire, le risible
Authors: Imbroscio Carmelina
Published: June 2016

Illness, laughter and risibility.

This article attempts to place the 18th Century's rehabilitation of the healthy function of laughter in the Hippocratic medical tradition. Laughter therapy, like other "moral" therapies by music, balls, voyages or the open air, is applied to illnesses of the nerves (vapours, spleen, hypochondria etc). The laughter advised by doctors, which was derived from an intuition of the disease, was opposed to another type of laughter, based on the negation of the illness itself and provoked in the theatre by the presence on stage of more or less imaginary sufferers who themselves constitute the risible subject of the play. Medicine and comic theatre, enlightenment and society, thus take opposing positions concerning this subject (illness) and its instrument (laughter) and come to very different conclusions : on the one hand, an openness towards the complex relationship between the physical and the moral and on the other, the continuation of fears and prejudices.
Des dessins inédits du Marquis de Sade
Authors: Stroev Alexandre
Published: June 2016

Unpublished designs by the marquis de Sade.

Three designs by Sade, preserved in Russian archives, concern a labyrinth and a grand place of debauchery. The plans, accompanied by legends, are very similar to contemporary Utopian architectural projects, in particular those of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. They show a theatre of action and the main stages of sexual torture suffered by hundreds of victims. The journey through the rooms of the pleasure house, from the entrance to the cemetary, can be interpreted as a text in which each cell generates writing. These designs can be seen as an after-text and a pre-text : the conclusion of the 120 journées de Sodome and the plan for a new novel, the Journées de Florbelle.
Un projet avorté d'intégration républicaine. L'institution nationale des colonies (1797-1802)
Authors: Gainot Bernard
Published: June 2016

A failed plan for republican integration : the National Institution for the Colonies (1797-1802).

The former Collège de la Marche in Paris was the site of an original republican experiment during the First Republic, aimed at providing a common education for the sons of the new (essentially black and mulatto) West Indian ruling class that emerged during the revolution and for the heirs to the great white planter families. There were also to be some sons of colonial civil servants and of Oriental dignitaries. The experiment was directed by abbé Coisnon, a friend of Grégoire's and a contact of Toussaint-Louverture's in 1802. It was encouraged by the Minister for the Navy, Truguet, in 1797, under the auspices of the representatives of the colony of Saint-Domingo at the Directoire legislature. This experiment shows, even more clearly than other institutions, the official colonial policy of the Directoire, which was republican integration. Its sudden closure under the Consulat, together with the reestablishment of West Indian slavery, shows how important was the change in May 1802, marking a break with Enlightenment principles of emancipation.
L'œil et le tourbillon : épistémologie et poétique du pathos dans «La promenade Vernet»
Authors: Belleguic Thierry
Published: June 2016

The eye and the vortex. Epistemology and the poetics of pathos in Diderot's "Promenade Vernet".

On the fringes of an Enlightenment doxology which tended to forget the complex and irreducible singularity of events, Diderot presented the spectacle of a turbulent world in which the metaphysics of substance was replaced by a physics of relationship. Although this reflection is essentially epistemological, it nevertheless also appears in such diverse fields as the essay, the novel or art criticism. Our reading of the "Promenade Vernet" in the 1767 Salon leads to an analysis of the discursive techniques used to produce a stage-play in which a discourse on nature is entwined with a discourse on art in an exemplary peregrination.
Le philosophe et la morue. Histoire philosophique et politique de la pêche et du commerce de la morue de la Terre-Neuve
Authors: Gury Jacques
Published: June 2016

Cod fishing off of Newfoundland played a vital role in the economies of France and Britain, the rival nations of the 18th Century. Thousands of men and whole communities depended on fishing and exporting salt and dried cod from the Newfoundland fisheries to Southern Europe, the Near East and the West Indies. In the age of Enlightenment, Encyclopédistes and Philosophes contrasted cod fishing — a lonely venture in northern climates, simultaneously virtuous and profitable — to the corrupt enterprises of settlers in the tropics ; the real treasures of the New World were the bounties of the sea. As L'Histoire des deux Indes claimed, a ship loaded with dried cod was as full of gold as a Spanish galleon.
Géopolitique de la mer des Antilles, de la fin de 17e siècle à la guerre d'indépendance américaine
Authors: Elisabeth Léo
Published: June 2016

The Caribbean Sea / mer des Antilles : can we discover the origins of this name and its date ? Does it carry an inherent focus of identification or an autonomous connotation of power that could transcend the region's political and geographical fragmentation ? Its continuing dependence, despite changes in its strategic role and economic importance, leads us to reflect on the contradictions, incompatibility and above all the role that the people of the Caribbean have played in the formulation and expression of ideas.
L'Espagne et les espaces atlantiques
Authors: Zylberberg Michel
Published: June 2016

The growth of transatlantic trade between Spain and the Americas was severely hit during the 17th Century. After 1700, the Bourbon monarchy attempted to remedy this situation by creating several trading companies and, above all, by putting an end to the monopoly of the port of Cadiz in 1778. This led to a considerable growth of transatlantic trade which benefited several Mediterranean and Atlantic ports. But the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars led to a collapse of the commercial ties between Spain and its colonial American empire, which was about to escape its control completely.