bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Table ronde : Montesquieu et la culture politique d'aujourd'hui
Authors: Benrekassa Georges
Published: June 2016

Montesquieu and political culture today (Round Table).

This is a synopsis of a round table in which some of the authors in this issue and other Montesquieu specialists participated. They were concerned to analyse how Montesquieu's thought has withstood the test of history and in particular the Revolution (the idea of a constitution, individual rights, and the influence of events in America and other European countries). In addition they discussed the difficulty of reading Montesquieu today, beyond rigid constitutional interpretations and cultural differences, precisely because of his thought processes, and they emphasized his importance in the awareness of the autonomy (but not independence) of politics.
Le livre embastillé
Authors: Rogers Rebecca
Published: June 2016

Rebecca Rogers : Books in the Bastille.

This article describes the characteristics and circulation of forbidden books in Paris in the final decade of the Old Regime. Drawing on the archives of the Bastille, of the library corporation and of Anisson Duperron, the author brings to light the transformations which occur in the administrative repression of censored books in this period. Suspensions become less frequent as do jail sentences for their production and circulation. The second part of the article deals with the books actually imprisoned in the Bastille. The type of book, author and number of suspensions are all examined in an effort to understand the literature which served to undermine the Old Regime.
L'Affaire Milscent (1794)
Authors: Bénot Yves
Published: June 2016

Yves Benot : The Milscent affair (1794).

This article studies the circumstances in which the Creole revolutionary Milscent was condemned to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal for alleged perjury. This investigation came up against certain problems due to the strange disappearance of documents. It did however turn up three hitherto unknown numbers of Milscent's paper Le Créole Patriote, which was denounced by the colonial landowners. They throw light on the fateful trial itself. In appendix we provide a preliminary inventory of the three incomplete collections of Le Créole Patriote to be found in Paris.
La galerie du marquis de Sade au Château de La Coste
Authors: Champarnaud François
Published: June 2016

François Champarnaud : The Marquis de Sade's art gallery' in the château de La Coste.

The Marquis de Sade's paintings hanging in the château de La Coste in Provence are known from two inventories, in 1769 and 1778. This article first tries to indicate the genres preferred by the owner and his family and then tries to place them in the house. This short study shows that they can be divided into three categories : the «grand genre » (copies of Raphael, Le Sueur, etc.), engravings from the beginning of the century (in the style of Boucher, Nattier or Lancret) and paintings related to the Sade family (in particularly his father's diplomatic career). This study is a first step towards a more complete evaluation of the influence of painting in Sade's literary work.
L'activité d'une loge de Bordeaux entre 1780 et 1782
Authors: Coutura Johel
Published: June 2016

Johel Coutura : The activities of a Bordeaux masonic lodge (1780-82).

The acquisition by the Grand Orient de France library of the registers of one of the numerous Bordeaux lodges, L'Étoile Flamboyante aux Trois Lys, gives us a rare chance to study the everyday workings of a lodge, despite covering only three years. This small lodge of about twenty members, mainly traders, suffered from their frequent absences and serious financial difficulties. The registers give information about the running of the lodge, the organisation of banquets, the rites used, the officers and ceremonial. Unfortunately the details of the accounts are not known, nor is the work in the meetings, which would have shown how far they were influenced by new ideas. We do however find quite a large number of visitors, including several foreigners.
Présentation
Authors: Moureau François
Published: June 2016

François Moure au : Introduction.

Voyages of exploration are slightly out of place in the civilisation of the French Enlightenment, in which travelling (on the Grand Tour or scientific journey) was seen as a way of finding oneself and verifying what was known. The voyage of exploration, on the contrary, is a search for the unknown, the epistemological revolution first undertaken by the great discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries. The present collection of essays concerns different categories of such journeys by professionals or experts, ranging from the diplomat or wanderer, the official or scientist, to the freebooter or adventurer. But these apparently utilitarian journeys which prefigure the imperialism of the following century, produce odd side-effects involving the scientific or sociological imagination, with the "imaginary savage" and the recurring myth of encyclopaedic knowledge. As the Enlightened expert advances towards the horizon of total knowledge, it recedes and the newly-explored earth acquires new mysteries.
Louis Monneron agent de la France à Ceylan
Authors: Abeydeera Ananda
Published: June 2016

Ananda Abeydeera : Monneron, a French agent in Ceylon (1781-5).

Ceylon, with ports in both east and west, accessible in all weather, and near to India, was considered as the main base for Suffren's campaign to reconquer India in 1781. For this purpose, the Mascarene authorities placed Jean-Louis Monneron in Ceylon as agent for the French nation. As can be seen from his instructions, the authorities appreciated his financial ability and his knowledge of Indian trade. He was to ensure logistical support enabling the fleets of Suffren and Orres to continue their campaign at sea as long as necessary without having to go back to Isle de France. His critical analysis of the situation in Ceylon and his recommendations for improving it are the result of his work and his observations. They indicate the role of a French diplomat in the Indian Ocean during the pre-Revolutionary decade.
Cosmogonie politique de la Perse
Authors: Danechvar Néguine
Published: June 2016

Néguine Danechvar : The political cosmogony of Persia.

18th-century Persia was shaken by invasions, insurrections and internal unrest which, linked to hedonism, the widespread use of opium and alcohol, and the decline of martial instincts, pushed her towards total collapse. The long period of peace and inactivity which preceded the reign of Shah Abbas the Great, and the bloody and tyrannical rule of his successors, entirely destroyed the courage of the fearful and poverty-struck Persians. The main factors contributing to Persia's decline were the inadequate education of her princes — rendered incapable of taking on governmental or military responsabilises — , their weakness and feeble submission to the authority of eunuchs and mollahs, and the eliminations of any princes, ministers or individuals whose wisdom could have saved the country.
La Description de l'Égypte
Authors: Ouasti Boussif
Published: June 2016

Boussif Ouasti : The 'Description of Egypt'.

The Description de l'Égypte is a monumental work resulting from Bonaparte's Egyptian campaign, which was published twice, once by Napoleon (1809 onwards) and once by Louis XVIII (1821 onwards) ; it was the work of scientists, writers, naturalists, artists, engineers etc. This article describes the content of the volumes, emphasizes its encyclopaedic spirit in the tradition of the Enlightenment, and judges its literary importance. Although this historical and geographical investigation on an unprecedented scale has been seen as an attempt by the West to appropriate the East, it is nevertheless an achievement whose scientific and literary importance has hitherto been insufficiently explored.
Mungo Park en Afrique, ou l'explorateur exploré
Authors: Brahimi Denise
Published: June 2016

Denise Brahimi : Mungo Park in Africa of the explorer explored.

Mongo Park, a twenty-four year old Scotsman, was sent by the African Association to explore part of West African, from the Gambia to the Niger. He set off in 1795 for a journey of two and a half years and in 1799 published his account, which contains precise information on the places he passed through. He was sustained by concern for his mission and by the idea of providence, despite the dangers — which led to his death during his second journey, in 1805. His impartial judgements and his method of analysing the behaviour he saw are typical of the Enlightenment. What is new is his acceptance of the fact that the people visited had the same desire for knowledge in return, and his willingness to reciprocate.
Les fleurs d'Akiaki : un épisode du voyage de Bougainville
Authors: Le Goff Jean-Pascal
Published: June 2016

Jean Pascal Le Goff : the flowers of akiaki : an episode in Bougainville's

voyage.

Before arriving in Tahiti, Bougainville and his companions discovered an apparently deserted island. They imagined a South Sea paradise, but were disappointed and astonished at the arrival of the Polynesian inhabitants ; this undermined their conception of their own origins. Instead of desiring this Eden they now brutally rejected it when they perceived its unacceptably primitive nature. But their interrogation concerning the Tahitian's nature and their troubling similarity, led them to invent another imaginary paradise, which succeeded in recreating the distance between them.
L'invention d'une chimère : Fragments du dernier voyage de La Pérouse (1797)
Authors: Gury Jacques
Published: June 2016

Jacques Gury : Fragments du dernier voyage de la Peyrouse : Discovery

or mirage.

Fragments from Lapérouse's Last Voyage, published anonymously in Brittany in 1797, and purporting to be an account of the discovery of an island paradise in the Pacific, was a clever pastiche by Jacques Cambry (1749-1807). But it is not just another South Sea island tale, with echoes of Bougainville and Cook as well as of Virgil and Fénelon. Cambry refused Diderot's vision of native innocence in a Cytherean golden Age, and eulogised an Arcadian society inspired by the ideals of Rousseau. In the Fragments republished here, Otahiti was rescued from primeval brutality, as well as from Western corruption, and became a haven from the nightmare of the French Revolution.
L'abbé Renaudot en Italie (1700-1701)
Authors: Burger Pierre-François
Published: June 2016

Pierre-François Burger : Abbé Renaudot in Italy (1700-1701).

Eusèbe Renaudot (1648-1720), who was a journalist, orientalist and secret agent, attended the conclave which elected Pope Clement XI. Then he stayed on in Rome until September 1701 to conduct business and intrigue with the Roman court, taking part in almost all the current affairs. His discussions with the Pope were probably not successful, despite his belief that attention meant approval. His relations with Cardinal Janson deteriorated and he had to leave Rome in September 1701. In Paris he transmitted a Papal message to the Theo¬ logy Faculty, which apparently welcomed it favourably while severely criticising the legitimacy of this unofficial messenger whose mission was not clearly defined.
La Hollande vue par les voyageurs français (1750-1795)
Authors: Van Strien-Chardonneau Madeleine
Published: June 2016

Madeleine Van Strien-Chardonneau : Holland seen by French travellers (1750-1795).

18th-century French visitors to the United Provinces were struck by the intense urbanisation, particularly in the province of Holland. All the descriptions of towns include information on the walls, gates, overall view when seen from a height, and number of inhabitants. As characteristics of Dutch towns, the travellers noted the many canals with shady banks, the streets full of sledges, the convenient pavements and the simple, brightly-painted houses. The numerous attractive towns were seen to be evidence of the wealth of the country as a whole, which was borne out by the surprisingly clean and pretty villages. Dutch towns were to some extent idealized, and perceived in terms of long-standing clichés ; but the travellers' remarks also reflect contemporary views on town planning, for Dutch towns provided examples of planning and a quality of life rarely found in French cities.
Un anti-esclavagiste kleptomane ? En marge de l'affaire Milscent
Authors: Bénot Yves
Published: June 2016

Yves Bénot : An anti-slavery cleptomaniac ?

Two unpublished letters, one from Milscent and the other from the mulatto La Bussonnière, throw light on the Convention's sitting of 4th June 1793, in which a petition for the abolition of slavery was presented for the first time. Following its failure, meetings were held at the Paris Commune to prepare a new attempt more carefully. Unfortunately, at the same time La Bussonnière, who headed the 4th June delegation, was arrested for robbery. Accounts by his acquaintances, including Milscent and Julien Raimond, leave no doubt as to the truth of the accusation, although we may wonder whether he was a thief or simply a cleptomaniac. In any case, this unfortunate incident meant that the planned anti-slavery petition was abandoned.
L'homme sauvage dans la pensée de Saint-Martin
Authors: Bartfeld Fernande
Published: June 2016

Fernande Bartfeld : Savages in Saint-Martin s Thought.

Like his contemporaries, the theosophist Saint-Martin was interested in travel accounts and followed closely the debates to which the discovery of savages gave rise. But Saint-Martin's interest in savages was not very far-reaching, for they did not constitute for him an ideal or an important center of interest, but only a way to measure how far man was from the Truth. His approach produced a model which is different from the 'publicists' opposition between savage and civilised man. In Saint-Martin's scheme of things, civilised man is on the same side as the savage, opposed to the ideal of primitive, uncorrupted man.
Le mouvement scientifique et la problématique des droits de l'homme
Authors: Baridon Michel
Published: June 2016

Michel Baridon : The scientific movement and human rights.

This article analyses the relationship between political theory and scientific research. It shows that on the eve of the Revolution several lines of research gave credence to the idea that any given society was a homogeneous whole composed of similar elements. The findings of economics confirmed those of psychology, sociology and linguistics, and the social mathematics of Price and Condorcet enabled these data to be analysed. All informed and honest intellectuals knew that this result meant that social structures had to be rebuilt. Of the three existing political theories — divine right absolutism, an English-style mixed constitution and the social contract — only the last one reconciled research data and the construction of a modern State.
Pour une théorie de la description au 18e siècle
Authors: Reynaud Denis
Published: June 2016

Denis Reynaud : For a theory of description in the isth century.

Natural history in the 18th Century made description the supreme form of discourse, but it also profoundly rethought its functions and modes. It tried in particular to define what was specific about verbal description as compared to the power of pictural representation. The same preoccupation led to a divorce in the field of description between the 'history' of an object and its true 'description'. In their writings, scientists like Perrault, Réaumur, Buffon, Daubenton, Bonnet or Adanson were perpetually confronted with the problem of the order, limits and objects of description, and their answers to these literary questions concern literature as much as they do science.
Le Panopticon érotique de Ledoux
Authors: Bueno Maria José
Published: June 2016

Maria-José Bueno : Ledoux's Erotic Panopticon. This article proposes a new reading of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux's treatise, L'Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l'art, des mœurs et de la législation (1804). A leitmotiv runs through the crazy tangle of contradictory ideas in this book, namely the concept of pleasure which is seen in two different lights : pleasure as the aim of life, and pleasure opposing vice and perversion. Another fundamental concept for Ledoux is an obsession with surveillance and transparent space, which is akin to Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon. A study of the way he presents these contradictory ideas raises the question — which this article tries to answer — as to which is the most important for Ledoux, the repressive, moralising panopticon, or the pleasure panopticon.
Notes sur deux manuscrits clandestins
Authors: Fairbairn A.-W. , Schwarzbach Bertram Eugene
Published: June 2016

A. W. Fairbairn and B. E. Schwarzbach : Notes on two clandestine texts.

1. A recent article by F. Charles-Daubert showed that the common French version of the Traité des trois imposteurs dévelops theses characteristic of the Paduan school, and in particular that it borrows/adapts 5 passages from Jules-César Vanini (1616). It is argued here (a) that those 5 passages, plus a sixth, were quoted from Vanini in a refutation by J. M. Schramm, dated 1709, and (b) that, since they all occur in the third chapter of the T.T.I. , they reinforce a previous suggestion that this chapter, at least, was reworked if not rewritten between 1709 and the earliest attestations after 1715.

2. The additions which transform the Examen de la religion from its classic, 11-chapter form into its 15-chapter form are characterized in part by their borrowings from Fontenelle's Histoire des oracles, a source absent in the 11-chapter version.
Jean Potocki méritait mieux
Authors: Beauvois Daniel
Published: June 2016

Daniel Beauvois : Jean potocki deserved better.

J. Potocki's famous novel, Le Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse, was written in French, its copies were 'lost' and its complete 66 chapters or 'days' were only known in an 1847 Polish translation, retranslated into several languages. Several incomplete copies were known to be scattered in Polish and European archives ; references are given in the 1972 Potocki Conference Acts (Cahiers de Varsovie, n° 3), in M. E. Zoltowska's thesis (Yale 1973), in Kukulski's Polish editions (1956, 1965) and their German translations (1981, 1984). M. E. Zoltowska has been preparing a complete edition for the last 15 years, thanks to new discoveries (17 mss), and had a contract with Gallimard for the 'Pléiade'. The publisher Corti has got in first by publishing in 1989 a so-called 'complete' version in which 14 chapters (about 100 p.) have been retranslated from the German — which is nowhere indicated. Thus the reader is deprived of the authentic version of the chapters that only M. E. Soltowska has found. [D. Beauvois's article is followed by Corti's reply.]
La physiologie mécaniste de Hoffmann
Authors: Duchesneau François
Published: June 2016

François Duchesneau : Hoffman's mechanistic philosophy.

Friedrich Hoffmann (1660-1742) illustrates the dilemmas of late iatromecha-nism, for he can only fulfill his ambition of providing an explanatory system for the mechanisms of life by using models which are non-standard according to geometrical mechanics. The history of sciences has tended to present Hoffman's mechanism as the antithesis of Stahl's animism. Our aim is rather to bring out the original subtle theories in his Medicina rationalis systematica (1718-1741). Hoffmann takes as his basis an open group of dynamic models in order to account for the structuro-functional integration of the organism, and in so doing he anticipates different forms of organicism which appear in the middle of the 18th Century.
La théorie de la sécrétion chez Bordeu, modèle de la physiologie et de la pathologie vitalistes
Authors: Rey Roselyne
Published: June 2016

Roselyne Rey : Bordeu's theory of secretion, a model of vitalist physiology and pathology.

Bordeu dealt a serious blow to iatromechanism when he demonstrated, by means of anatomical and pathological observations, that secretion was not the result of mechanical compressing action or of filtration of the humours, but a product of the gland's own activity. He insisted on the specific sensitivity of each gland for each secretion, and his examination of the three phases of secretory activity led him to propose a general model for interpreting the organism on the lines of his vitalist conceptions and to emphasize the identity of physiological and pathological phenomena.
La réception en Italie et en Europe du Saggio di Osservazioni microscopiche de Spallanzani (1765)
Authors: Castellani Carlo
Published: June 2016

Carlo Castellani : The Italian and European reception of Spallanzani's

saggio di osservazioni microscopiche (1765).

The available documentary evidence appears to show that Lazzaro Spallanza-ni's Saggio di Osservazioni Microscopiche, published in 1765, received in the main a rather lukewarm reception from the scientific community. It is probable that this attitude on the part of the educated public and the specialised press to a work which modern critics consider to be revolutionary in its own way, is linked to the fact that Spallanzani's subject (the biology of infusoria) and the microscopic techniques on which his research was based, were still largely alien to the scientific mentality of his time.
Entre Ancien Régime et Révolution : les chirurgiens vus par eux-mêmes (1790-1791)
Authors: Goubert Jean-Pierre
Published: June 2016

Jean-Pierre Goubert : Between the old regime and the Revolution, how

surgeons saw themselves.

At the end of 1790 the French sanitary committee launched an investigation into the practice of surgery, the hundred or so replies to which are the source of this article. An analysis of these replies shows how master surgeons, a relatively heterogeneous profession, saw the question of their autonomy at a crucial time which was favourable to far-reaching reforms. A small minority of them called for reforms but the great majority simply rejected a number of long-standing obvious "abuses" and wished to improve the standard of training and enhance the profession's status. These replies provided the sanitary committee with material for debate, and arguments for the champions of "change".
Une lettre oubliée de Voltaire sur le Messie. Entre Pollier de Bottens et l'Encyclopédie.
Authors: Desné Roland , Mandich Anna
Published: June 2016

Voltaire : Between Polier de Bottens and the Encyclopédie, A forgotten letter on the Messiah, presented by Roland Desné & Anna Man-dich.

A copy of a letter by Voltaire, dated 21 October 1758, concerning the Jews' belief in the Messiah, has come to light in the Parma historical archives. The holograph version, in Leningrad, was published by Wade and Torrey in the Romanic Review in 1940, but ignored in Bestermann's edition of the Correspon¬ dence. The Parma version is reproduced here, together with the Leningrad variants. It is shown to be a commentary, in the form of a letter with a fictitious addressee, on the 14th Remark on Pascal and, contrary to the opinion of Wade and Torrey, to be based on Polier de Bottens's Encyclopédie article Messie. The reasons for the letter's preservation in Parma are discussed, as is its place in Voltaire's works.
Politique, littérature et mystification. Echec à Rulhière. Un récit inédit de Diderot rapporté par D. Golitsyn
Authors: Dulac Georges
Published: June 2016

Politics, literature and mystification : countering Rulhière, an unpu¬ blished story by Diderot recounted by D. Golitsyn. Presented by Georges Dulac, with the collaboration of Vladimir Somov.

In a dispatch to the Vice-Chancellor A. M. Golitsyn, dated 16th June 1771, Dimitri A. Golitsyn, the plenipotentiary at the Hague, reproduces a letter from Diderot dated 1st June, recounting how he managed to discredit in Paris society Rulhière's account of the "revolution" which brought Catherine to the throne. The "charming account" which he wrote himself, using his conversations with Princess Dashkov, allowed him to defeat the former secretary at the St. Petersburg embassy. After having publicly destroyed this little work, he intends to finish off the task by collaborating on a history of the 1762 events in line with the Empress's views.
Six lettres inédites de Volney à Grégoire
Authors: Deneys Anne , Deneys Henry
Published: June 2016

Four unpublished letters from Volney to Grégoire, presented by Anne and Henry Deneys.

These copies, from Grégoire's papers, show the close personal and epistolary relations, at two different moments, between the author of Les Ruines and the abbé Grégoire, organiser of the constitutional church, when they were both members of the Institut. The first three letters, written by Volney during his stay in America, from October 1795 to June 1798, show his financial request to the Directory, some of the geographical observations later put in his Tableau du climat et du sol des États-Unis (1803), and his criticisms of French diplomats. They confirm facts already known from his letters to la Revellière-Lépeaux. The last three letters, from Sarcelles in 1805-7, give details of Volney's life as a gentleman farmer and show the courage with which he faced old age and illness.
L'organisation des hauts grades du Grand Orient de France. Le Grand chapitre général de France (1783-1787)
Authors: Baumier Matthieu
Published: June 2016

Matthieu Baumier : The organisation of the high grades of the French Grand Orient : the grand chapitre general de France (déc. 1783-july 1787.)

The Grand Chapitre Général de France, long considered as an unimportant Scottish Masonic obedience, has been ignored in the historiography of French Freemasonry. It was however the most important group of French Masonic chapters shortly before the Revolution. It was an emanation of the Grand Orient and its creation, functioning and role placed it at the centre of the Grand Orient's policy for the unification of French Freemasonry. It became the motor of the Grand Orient's takeover of the High Grades in a unified system, and once the latter had returned to the control of the Grand Orient only weak marginal or paramasonic groups were left beyond -the Grand Orient's influence.
D'Holbach et le «whig canon»
Authors: Lurbe Pierre
Published: June 2016

Pierre Lurbe : D'Holbach and the "Whig canon".

D'Holbach's work shows the influence of late 17th and early 18th century neo-Harringtonian thinkers (in particular Trenchard, Gordon and Toland), known thanks to John Wilkes. His work seems to have a similar theme, namely that liberty and wealth depend on landowners, by definition independent and virtuous. But d'Holbach does not adopt the same point of view as the English thinkers, for a closer analysis reveals several important changes of meaning. The landowner is described by d'Holbach more as a producer in the Physiocratic sense than as a neo-Harringtonian aristocrat ; the former's virtue, essentially sociable, is opposed to the latter's, which preserves something fundamentally martial ; for d'Holbach the search for happiness replaces the defence of independence ; and he seems to favour a form of enlightened despotism rather than his predecessors' Polybian model of the balance of powers.
La Révolution : mort et régénération, ou la France «phénix» ?
Authors: Favre Robert
Published: June 2016

Robert Favre : The Revolution ; Phœnix-like death and regeneration of

France ?

The frequent use of the word "regeneration" in 1789 and the revolutionary years can, and doubtless should, make us think of the many texts by various 18th-century authors concerning the necessary end of empires, as of all worldly things, and the decadence or old age of the French Kingdom. Thus viewed, the Revolution is an attempt to triumph over death, an effort to revive a 13 century-old empire. This is expressed most clearly by André Chénier in a verse of his ode on the Tennis-court oath, in which he compares the French people to the phoenix which he says is twice-born.
Rousseau selon Sade, ou Jean-Jacques travesti
Authors: Roger Philippe
Published: June 2016

Philippe Roger : Rousseau according to Sade, or Jean-Jacques travestied.

In Aline et Valcour, Sade paints a flattering but unfaithful portrait of Rousseau, but elsewhere he is ignored or criticized. Rousseau was present in the libraries of La Coste and la Vignerme (unpublished inventories) and was mentioned by Sade's entourage, including his father (unpublished letters). In prison Sade asked for the Confessions and Pygmalion, but Rousseau's philosophy, when mentioned, is always deformed or denigrated. Even Sade's Idée sur le mode de la sanction des lois, during the Revolution, uses Rousseau (anonymously) to defend a "moderate" motion and although La Nouvelle Héloïse is admired, it is also perverted in La philosophie dans le boudoir. Sade opposed Rousseau because of his deism and his Jacobin followers. The bizarre apology in Aline and Valcour was probably originally intended for Voltaire, replaced, probably at the end of 1793, by Jean-Jacques.
Art et utilité : les écoles de dessin de Grenoble et de Poitiers
Authors: Benhamou Reed
Published: June 2016

Reed Benhamou : Art and utility. The design schools of Grenoble and Poitiers.

Between 1726 and 1786, about forty free design schools were set up in various French provincial towns. They were paid for by amateurs and middle-class businessmen and their teaching concerned essentially useful arts. A detailed study of the schools of Grenoble (1762) and Poitiers (1771) shows on the one hand that they represented a serious attempt to improve the situation and the competence of artisans, and on the other, that they put into practice Enlightenment ideals.
Deux manuscrits inconnus de Diderot : Madame de la Carlière et Sur les Femmes
Authors: Stenger Gerhardt
Published: June 2016

Gerhardt Stenger : Two unknown manuscripts of Diderot : madame de la Carlière and Sur les femmes.

The Vienna National Library possesses two Diderot manuscripts that have hitherto escaped the notice of editors of his works. They are intermediate versions of Madame de la Carlière and Sur les femmes which are worthy of the attention of specialists, as not only do the manuscripts inform us about the elaboration or the different stages of their composition, but in addition their close connection gives us a clearer understanding of the relationship between Diderot's writings for Grimm's Correspondance littéraire and his true literary productions.
Newton, Diderot et la vulgate de l'atomisme
Authors: Casini Paolo
Published: June 2016

Newton, Diderot and the vulgate of atomism.

Recently published papers have provided more evidence of Isaac Newton's indebtedness to the ancient atomists, but it was already visible in the Principia and the Opticks. Attraction and the active powers of matter were part of corpuscular philosophy. Putting to one side the religious element added to it by English thinkers, it can be said that Newton's quotations from Epicurus and Lucretius come from the same sources as Diderot's ; the latter's anti-Newtonian bias was directed at the design argument, not at the theory of matter. Both men basically shared the vulgate of the atomistic hypothesis.
Quatre témoignages inédits sur le «Testament» de Meslier
Authors: Artigas-Menant Geneviève
Published: June 2016

Four unknown references to Meslier's Testament.

This article gives the complete text of three unpublished anonymous commentaries on "the curé d'Etrépigny's work", now at the Vire municipal library. One of them, the only one with a date, was written on 1st July 1737, less than two years after Voltaire's letter to Thieriot of 30th November 1735, the first known reference to Meslier's work. An analysis of these three documents shows that they all refer to the complete version of the Mémoire. They were all conserved by Thomas Pichon-Tyrrell (Vire 1700-Jersey 1781), together with a 1757 letter in which his friend, the English writer John Cleland, mentions the search for Meslier's manuscript. This interesting collection thus provides new elements concerning the circulation and reception of Meslier's work.
Les paradoxes du matérialisme de Robinet
Authors: Rey Roselyne
Published: June 2016

The paradoxes of Robinets materialism.

Robinet's De la Nature was often interpreted, on its publication in 1761, as a materialistic and Spinozist text, which was difficult to reconcile with the author's frequent insistence on a divine transcendence irreducible to nature. The anonymous Petit extrait d'un gros livre (1762) on which Robinet may have collaborated, while claiming to refute "materialistic errors" gives a concise summary of Robinet's theses which reinforce his arguments. This article analyses two important aspects of Robinet's thought, concerning the passage from sensation to thought and that from inert to living matter. We discuss the thesis of the specific moral fibre, similar to any other sensitive fibre, which unites the physiological and the moral, and the paradoxical thesis of universal vitality, key to the whole system, based on the notion of indestructible preexisting germs, which shows Robinet turning to the Leibnizian principle of continuity rather than to Spinozism.
Esthétique et matérialisme à la fin du siècle
Authors: Niderst Alain
Published: June 2016

Late 18th-century aesthetics and materialism.

When one examines the attempts by late 18th-century materialists to construct a philosophy of the beautiful, it is obvious that they followed two different approaches. Some (Holbach, Diderot or Falconet) tried to base the beautiful on the order of Nature and thus to make it universal, and even absolute. Others (La Mettrie, Helvétius) based it on the approbation felt by fundamentally different people. Thus we have on the one hand an aesthetic universalism leading to neo-classicism, and on the other a subjectivism which can justify rococo diversity. In fact it is easy to consider these two conceptions as simple revivals of the great aesthetic systems of the beginning of the century : on the one hand that of père André, which Diderot secularized, and on the other that of Fontenelle, which Helvétius nuanced and somewhat softened.
Valorisation du travail et destinée de la propriété individuelle dans le matérialisme des Lumières
Authors: Negri Antimo
Published: June 2016

The rehabilitation of work and the destiny of individual property in Enlightenment materialism.

This article examines critically the notion of individual property which in d'Holbach's work can be seen to precede the formulation of property as a natural and inalienable right in 1789. Like Locke, Holbach emphasizes work, whose fruit is property, seen as essentially landed property, but whose role breaks with the organisation of property in feudal society. But Holbach is not completely opposed to a communistic style imagination or Utopia like Morelly or, even more, Meslier. Holbach's "natural" landowner appears as part of a science of human nature, similar to Hobbes's, which like Mably's undermines the very principle of equality of ownership. But this is part of a "bourgeois" vision of society, which frees man, particularly in a new society marked by the constitution of the concentration of ownership of the means of production, from all anti-bourgeois and non-liberal Utopias.
L'idée de l'homme entre progrès scientifique et pensée philosophique
Authors: Tripp G. Matthias
Published: June 2016

The idea of man between scientific progress and philosophical thought.

During the Enlightenment, the philosophical debate on man took most of its ideas from English thought (Newton and Locke) and was finally influenced by the physiologists (Cabanis, Saint-Simon). All anthropological debate, whose universalism is obvious, insists above all on the relationship between the ideas of the universe, nature, man, his reasons and his freedom, as much as his happiness. But these ideas finally give way to bodily functions such as instinct, needs, immediate experiences as criteria for man's improvement.
«Nouvelles remarques critiques sur le Nouveau Testament». Un manuscrit clandestin présenté
Authors: Hunwick Andrew
Published: June 2016

Nouvelles remarques critiques sur le Nouveau Testament : An unpu blished clandestine manuscript, presented and edited by Andrew Hunwick.

This fundamentally Deistic text only exists in a single manuscript. Despite its title it does not continue Richard Simon's New Testament criticism. The anonymous author has simply plagiarized many of the Oratorian's remarks and quotations in order to support his own position. He attacks, with the anti-Christian vehemence typical of so-called clandestine literature, the "systematic" ecclesiastics who over the centuries have not only, he says, suppressed their opponents' works and excluded "apocryphal" texts, but have even forged some of the Holy Scriptures.
La lecture publique des journaux
Authors: Benhamou Paul
Published: June 2016

Public reading of periodicals during the 18th century.

During the Old Regime, no public library offered periodicals to its readers. Moreover, the cost of a subscription to a journal was quite high, between 15 and 30 livres, and consequently the number of subscribers was limited. But, as we know, subscribers to a journal represented only a tiny portion of its actual readership. For 18th-century readers were able to read many periodicals without buying them, thanks to the development of several instruments of public reading, namely the rental of periodicals by booksellers, group subscriptions, the cabinet de lecture and the reading society. These various instruments allowed more readers to gain accès to more periodicals for a modest fee.
Idées sur la sculpture dans l'Encyclopédie
Authors: Calatrava Juan A.
Published: June 2016

Ideas on sculpture in the Encyclopédie.

Although sculpture is the art that is most neglected in the Encyclopédie, certain articles (in particular those by Jaucourt that adopt the views of Falconet) reveal an aesthetic approach that is shared by most of the Encyclopedists, namely the predominance of technique, the search for a synthesis between reason and creative imagination, and the idea of "social" genius linked to that of progress. We can also see a historical culture that emphasizes classical art and French classicism, as well as the difficulties which prevented the achievement of the programme laid out by Diderot and D'Alembert. Two ideas surface here and there which were to become fundamental for neoclassicism a few years later : the moral aim of sculpture and art, and the principle of unity and clarity.
Quinze années d'études rousseauistes (II)
Authors: Trousson Raymond
Published: June 2016

Fifteen years of Rousseau Studies (II).

A survey of Rousseau studies during the fifteen years since 1977. This article discusses in turn the different fields of research : editions, biography, general studies, Rousseau's religious and educational thought, novels, autobiographical writings, writings on art and studies of his influence and reputation. It also analyses the main lines of study and new directions of research, and it indicates the most overcrowded sectors, together with those in which research still needs to be carried out.
La République démocratique européenne, rêve des révolutionnaires allemands
Authors: Gilli Marita
Published: June 2016

Marita Gllli : A Democratic European Republic, the Dream of German

Revolutionaries.

With the French Revolution, patriotism took on a new meaning for the German revolutionaries, as membership of a nation was no longer considered to be the result of a common origin but a conscious act of rallying to a shared ideal. The European dimension of the Revolution rapidly appeared and the conception of a European republic was based on cosmopolitanism linked to republican and progressive forces. The new republican, democratic Europe should be opposed to the Europe of the Old Régime and would guarantee peace. Even if this dream was never realized, we can nevertheless say that after the Revolution it was no longer possible to see history otherwise than in European terms.
L'Europe du théâtre
Authors: de Rougemont Martine
Published: June 2016

Martine de Rougemont : Theatrical Europe.

The Europe of actors in the 18th century was undoubtedly mainly French ; a curious example is the "reader" Antoine Le Texier. But one should not overlook the fact that the other theatrical professions were trans-European (e.g. Nicolini an Anglo-Italian mime in Holland and England, and some Swiss). Like people, forms and ideas circulated, such as the tragic style, whose basic rules were common to all countries, and centres of new ideas appeared : Paris, London and then in Germany. In the same way the debate on the actor's art and his inspiration was based on Italian, French, English and German works before it centred for a while on Diderot's Paradox. Or again, the tragic bourgeois story of George Barnwell spread throughout Europe. National theatres were born from the confrontation with European theatrical culture.
Traduction et édition à l'époque des Lumières
Authors: Freedman Jeffrey
Published: June 2016

Jeffrey Freedman : Translation and publishing during the enlightenment.

This article examines the process of translation from the perspective of an 18th-century Swiss publishing firm, the Société typographique de Neuchâtel (1769-80). Located on the border between the French-and German-speaking worlds, it acted as a cultural intermediary, translating German literature into French and selling it all over Europe. Drawing on the papers of the STN, this article shows how it mediated the transmission of literature across the boundaries of language and culture. The STN took all manners of liberty in its translations, and its goal was to adapt German literature for a French-speaking public. This is illustrated by following the transformations of one German work — a novel by Friedrich Nicolai entitled Leben und Meinungen des Herrn Magisters Sebaldus Nothanker — as it passed through the hands of the STN. Indifferent to the author's rights and prerogatives, the STN appropriated the novel, both literally and figuratively. Its translation was a kind of rewriting.
Charles-Joseph de Ligne, écrivain dilettante et prince européen
Authors: Mortier Roland
Published: June 2016

Roland Mortier : Ch. J. de Ligne, a dilettante writer and European prince.

Interest in the prince de Ligne has for too long been concentrated on his life and attractive character, but his voluminous and erratic work repays interest. It is first of all that of an amateur who was passionately interested in theatre, gardens and military theory, who noted for his own pleasure aphorisms and reflections, and wrote many very witty letters. He was Belgian born, Austrian by dynastic allegiance and of French language and culture, and he was part of central and Eastern European high society ; he thought about ethnic minorities and wrote his memoirs of the war against the Turks. Beneath the blasé aristocratic exterior we find a writer concerned with style and a well-turned phrase. The selected anthology of his writings published by Mme de Staël brought him late literary fame on the eve of the Congress of Vienna.
Diderot en 1775 vu par Grimm : Deux lettres inédites à la princesse Golitsyna et au comte Roumiantsev
Authors: Stroev Alexandre , Dulac Georges
Published: June 2016

Alexandre Stroev and Georges Dulac : Diderot as seen by Grimm in 1775.

The unpublished correspondence between Friedrich-Melchior Grimm, Princess Amalia Golitsyna and Count Serge Roumiantsev, conserved in the Russian Archives, deals with the life of Denis Diderot in 1775. It throws light on several obscure points in the philosophe's biography, especially his activities on behalf of his son-in-law Vandeul and his dispute with Prince D. A. Golitsyn ; it also helps us to understand the development of his relationship with Grimm.
Les gazetiers de Hollande et les puissances politiques : une difficile collaboration
Authors: Retat Pierre
Published: June 2016

Pierre Rétat : Dutch gazetteers and political powers, a difficult collaboration.

The authors and owners of French-language Dutch gazettes had complex relations with the French government as they were both in conflict and needed to collaborate. They were the object of permanent presure and threats but they also knew from experience that the royal power did not really want to exercise the final sanction, which consisted in closing the frontiers. This situation of contentious compromise is analysed in the light of the political correspondence between the French embassy at the Hague and the ministry, and the gazetteers' letters contained in it, between 1755 and 1758.
Condorcet et Montesquieu : conflit idéologique entre deux théoriciens rationalistes
Authors: Niklaus Robert
Published: June 2016

Robert Niklaus : Condorcet and Montesquieu.

Condorcet, who had read Montesquieu carefully, criticised him for not having rejected the past completely in order to provide a purely rational basis for universal laws. He himself rejected the two-house British parliamentary system but kept the separation of powers. He called for universal suffrage with proportional representation and social mathematics which ensured the triumph of pure reason. He was suspicious of great popular movements and tried to protect minorities from dictatorship by insisting on the role of provincial and even district assemblies, by emphasizing the importance of consensus for ensuring the proper functioning of government, and above all by drawing up a declaration of the rights of man. Like Montesquieu he saw the need for good education in the interests both of society and the individual. The opposition of these two theorists helps us to see the difficulties confronting any régime calling itself democratic.
Sur la chronologie des premières œuvres de Diderot
Authors: Stenger Gerhardt
Published: June 2016

Gerhardt Stenger : The dating of Diderot's early works.

The generally accepted dating of Diderot's early works, which places the writing of De la suffisance de la religion naturelle and La Promenade du sceptique after that of the Pensées philosophiques, is unsatisfactory when one studies closely their author's intellectual formation. There is no serious argument against dating these two texts before the publication of the Pensées philosophiques , and there are at least three arguments in favour of this hypothesis : the development of Diderot's religious thought, which progresses from the defence of natural religion to sceptical atheism ; the gradual abandoning of a morality inspired by Shaftesbury, for "moral determinism" as expounded in the letter to Landois ; the replacement of classical philosophical discourse reflecting a fundamentally ordered world by a new style representing in its destructured structures the permanent creation of the Universe.
Le feuilleton dans la presse française (1790-début du 19e siècle) : du supplément indépendant au rez-de-chaussée sous le filet
Authors: Oscarsson Ingemar
Published: June 2016

Ingemar Oscarsson : The "feuilleton" in the French press.

During the 1790s several French periodicals began to publish supplements or "feuilletons" containing matter for which there was no place in the main part of the paper, partly due to the increase in information during the Revolution. They were mainly devoted to theatre programmes, literary news, announcements etc. Later these independent supplements became a ground floor "under the line" in the paper iself. According to tradition, the oldest example dates from 1800 in the Journal des Débats. In this study we analyse these developments more closely than has previously been done. We show, using several examples, that the development of the "feuilleton" was part of a wider movement in which a large number of papers tried experiments concerning typographical presentation. We also discover that it was not in the Débats but in the Propagateur and the Journal du commerce that the supplement first appeared in its well-known form under the line.