bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Isabelle de Charrière et la littérature européenne
Authors: Trousson Raymond
Published: June 2016

Raymond Trousson : Isabelle de Charrière and European literature.

Madame de Charrière, who was exceptionally cultivated (she could read Latin, Italian, English and German), gave evidence in her correspondence and works of a cosmopolitan culture. But as her education was classical and French, towards the end of her life, she had little sympathy for developments in aesthetics, and her oracles were still Batteux and La Harpe.
Le sublime et les limites du sensible. Perception scientifique et subjectivité esthétique chez Addison et Kant
Authors: Dumouchel Daniel
Published: June 2016

Daniel Dumouchel : The sublime and the limits of sensibility. Scientific perception in addison and Kant.

We here emphasize certain aspects of the 18th-century relationship between scientific and philosophical discourse on aesthetics, by concentrating on the question of the sublime. This article insists on two crucial theoretical approaches to the sublime in nature, that of Joseph Addison in his essays on 'The Pleasures of the Imagination' (1712) and that of Immanuel Kant in his Theory of the Heavens (1755) and Critique of Judgement (1790).
Diderot et la physiologie de la sensibilité
Authors: Duchesneau François
Published: June 2016

François Duchesneau : Diderot and the physiology of sensibility.

Diderot drew his monistic theory of humans from contemporary physiology. My analysis looks at the original synthesis of scientific views concerning sensibility to be found in the Éléments de physiologie. Sensibility, an elementary form of vital spontaneity, generates sense perception and its various modes in the form of derived organic effects. While Diderot drew his inspiration from Bordeu and the Montpellier physicians, he differed significantly from Haller and Whytt on this point. He envisioned sensibility as an irreducible property of organic structures, which transforms itself as organisms grow more complex. Vital functions, inclusive of higher animal functions, result from the integrated organisation of sensitive parts, each of which forms a kind of elementary animal. An analogical concept of sensibility is thus available for investigating human phenomena in a non-mechanistic biological perspective and for supporting a decentralised theory of humans.
Penser la science en termes de différences sexuelles. Une expérience sur un oiseau dans une pompe à air de Joseph Wright of Derby
Authors: Wagner Peter
Published: June 2016

Peter Wagner : Gendering science. Joseph Wright of Derby's An Experiment on a bird in the air pump.

Instead of inquiring into the scientific beckground of this famous painting (which has often been used to demonstrate the consequences of the Industrial Revolution), this article focuses on the strategic reappropriations of representations of women. Derby's Air Pump proves to be a work of art that is only superficially concerned with science. At the heart of the picture we find such issues as the secularisation of miracles, the attribution of traditional gender roles in the context of the new sciences and male-female reactions and ways of seeing. What makes the painting remarkable is the mixture of several 'frames' of representation : religion, magic and the gothic, the sentimental, and physics. These all work together in the manufacture of credibility and a new idea of femininity that allotted women a passive, marginal role in the public sphere.
Les Observations sur l'éloquence de l'abbé de Saint-Pierre
Authors: Kerslake L.C.
Published: June 2016

Abbé de Saint-Pierre : Observations sur l'éloquence. Presented by Lawrence Kerslake.

Many of the abbé de Saint-Pierre's writings remain little-known or even unpublished. The Observations sur l'éloquence constitute his chief discussion of literature. A preliminary draft appeared in the Mercure in 1726, but the work subsequently underwent two major revisions, both states represented in Ms. R.248 of the Bibliothèque publique et universitaire in Neuchâtel. A further copy (BNF. N.a.fr. 11232), with a few additional changes, is published here. The ideas in the text show the author to be a 'Modern' in his position on beauty and literary effect, and reflect his life-long concern for the improvement of his fellow-citizens.
«Saint-Charles du triomphe de la parfaite harmonie». Une loge d'adoption oubliée (1777-1804)
Authors: Jardé Magali
Published: June 2016

Magali Jardé : A forgotten female lodge, 'Saint-Charles du Triomphe de la Parfaite Harmonie' (1777-1804).

Saint-Charles du Triomphe de la Parfaite Harmonie, a female lodge founded in 1777, is one of the lodges that history has forgotten, as it is forgotten by the archives. Nevertheless, in the space of a few years it received on average twice as many female members as the famous La Candeur lodge. Although they were affiliated to a male workshop, these female Freemasons — a majority of whom, unusually, were commoners — did not meekly submit to this administrative subordination, but shared Masonic activities with their brothers. This study does not disprove the dépendance of female lodges on the male lodges to which they were attached, but it questions the nature of that dependence. In the case of the Saint-Charles lodge, it was not a one-way dependence, but was a two-way relationship, thus showing that female Freemasons had a role and influence in the 18th Century which history has too often denied them.
L'ignorance d'Usbek. Considérations sur les Lettres persanes
Authors: Iotti Gianni
Published: June 2016

Gianni Iotti : Usbek's ignorance. Considerations on the Lettres persanes.

The 'complete ignorance of relationship' which, according to Montesquieu, characterizes the characters in the Lettres persanes leads Usbek, in particular, to his well-known philosophical analysis of Western institutions. But, thanks to the form of the novel, this hero cannot be reduced to being simply the mouthpiece for critical reason. He displays another from of ignorance which comes from his Eastern origins and characterizes him as a fatal representative of despotic aberrations. Thus in this work the dynamics of knowledge are opposed to the inertia of ignorance, which must be linked to Montesquieu's obsession with the idea of universal 'entropy'.
État des recherches. Présentation
Authors: Andries Lise
Published: June 2016

Present state of research. Presentation.

The aim of this special issue is to show that the question of laughter takes on a particular guise in the 18th Century. Although laughter is connected in several ways to the tradition of the grotesque and fairground theatre, it also appears in more refined and elegant ways when it is part of social ritual and becomes synonimous with wit. It is true that this type of laughter is closer to smiling but, just like its more vulgar fairground companion, it is condemned by the Church and by certain philosophers who would like to moralize it. Thus laughter is at the heart of the 18th-century philosophical debate. It is also linked to the development of aesthetic forms in literature and art, as well as to social butterflies and ironic banter, and in its way it represents the essence of Old Régime aristocratic sensibility. Hence the Revolutionaries reproached it for its frivolity, preferring the seriousness of virtue.
Le rire bleu. Comique et transgression dans la littérature de colportage
Authors: Roche Daniel
Published: June 2016

Blue Laughter. Comedy and transgression in chapbooks.

Chapbook literature constitutes an interesting domain for the study of laughter, the comic, and the transgression which they introduced into 18th-century society. It reveals an alien universe which helps to dissipate apparent familiarity, a disconnected and heterogeneous corpus of texts which had an impact far beyond the frontiers of the popular ; this impact can only be understood by looking at the different uses of these works, which were more everyday and collective than those destined for individual reading. We can see this through their textual presentation, prefaces and announcements. Finally, it enables us to analyse the varied formal characteristics -parody, pastiche, clichés, critical discourse, wordplay -which reveal the impact, capacity and frontiers of transgression.
Le rire dans la théorie de la comédie de l'Aufklärung (1725-1770)
Authors: Grimberg Michel
Published: June 2016

Laughter in the comic theory of the Aufklärung (1725-1770).

This article looks at the different conceptions of laughter in the Aufklärung' s theory of comedy. Gottsched instrumentalised an exclusive laughter aimed at forcing the individual to comply with the standards of behaviour that the other members of the group obeyed ; thus laughter has the role of control and (reeducation. For Möser, by relaxing the spectators, laughter creates subjects who are more able to fulfill their daily tasks in the service of the state and the interests of society. Far from having a diabolical origin, as the churches claimed, laughter was, according to Lessing, a human characteristic ; it reinforces social ties, shows how to overcome vanity and faults by helping others to rebuild themselves, not by means of humiliation or punishment but by a pedagogy of openness and relativity. These conceptions, which reflect each theorist's vision of humans, also reveal the type of human relationships they desired.
La cacophonie des rires dans La Pucelle de Voltaire
Authors: Bertrand Dominique
Published: June 2016

The cacophony of laughter in Voltaire's La Pucelle.

The gallant mockery in La Pucelle, so different from the burlesque parody hated by Voltaire for socio-aesthetic reasons, provides a good field for observing the different facets of Voltaire's laughter. This study, based on the internal representations of laughter (metapoetical as much as fictional) reveals contradictory postulates which border on cacophony. The outbursts that are staged in the work are mainly indicated as clearly pejorative, which reinforces the confusion as to the meaning of laughter. Some indirect light can be thrown on the question by the reflections in the article "Rire" in his Questions sur l'Encyclopédie, in which the lost fullness of harmonious laughter, associated with childhood, is contrasted with debased social manifestations, confusing laughter and barracking. La Pucelle, whose writing alternates between these two comic poles, is part of the quest for lost euphoria, which is crystallised in the effect of feminine smiles, linked to a hedonistic celebration of the pleasures of mind and body.
Diderot, ou le rire du mystificateur
Authors: Chartier Pierre
Published: June 2016

The hoaxer's laughter.

Following persiflage (to denote scoffing banter, a word which appeared ca 1730), the almost synonimous mystification or hoaxing (ca 1760), caused a particular enlightened amusement. A friend is the victim of a more or less friendly hoax by a small group of intimates, for having stood out unwittingly from the group, which punishes him by means of this insider joke. In the early 19th Century, mystification changed meaning to apply to a direct manipulation of the public itself. Diderot made this social practice a literary manner, with La Religieuse, a hallucinatory self-mystifiction, then L'Histoire des portraits, a diary of a dubiously humoristic joke on a dancer at the opera, and finally Les Deux Amis de Bourbonne, a hoax on the gullible Naigeon. This last moving tale was so well done that the outside reader can no longer understand or appreciate the original private joke, as the "historical" story, theorized in the Afterword, creates a true illusion and effaces the irony. Diderot, aware of the powers of "realism", preferred to cultivate the liberating (because critical) laughter of philosophical persiflage.
Le rire chez Fragonard
Authors: Jollet Étienne
Published: June 2016

Fragonard and comic pleasure.

The comic in paintings is generally studied through only two genres, namely caricature and the representation of comic scenes based on a theatrical model ; in both cases the purpose is to denounce moral deviance. Fragonard however proposes a conception of the comic which is based instead on the search for pleasure by both the figures and the spectator ; he adopts three methods which correspond approximately to three successsive periods of his creative output. During his Italian period, laughter is above all caused by exposing the innocence of beings, and complicity is more important than condemnation. In the 1760s, his comic is based on a question of the very principles of the art of painting, following a reflexive approach. In the 1770s, Fragonard emphasizes the delicate balance between innocent happiness and tragic burlesque, which is more and more evident.
Un philosophe au purgatoire des Lumières : Démocrite
Authors: Richardot Anne
Published: June 2016

Democritus, a philosopher in Enlightenment purgatory.

The legend of Democritus was profoundly re-evaluated in the 18th Century, for Enlightenment thinkers, who aimed at socialising and humanising laughter, rejected the model of the mocking philosopher, thus breaking with a long tradition. This type of laughter was now seen more as a sign of cruelty and proof of intellectual imposture and was variously condemned : Fénélon, Vauvenargues, Diderot or Lavater did so indignantly, while dramatists (Marivaux or Regnard) exploited it to make it ridiculous and deserving comic sanction. Illustrations also show us the evolution of this character, as engravings, hesitating between depreciative caricature and a mirthless rehabilitation, totally remodelled the image of the famous laughing Greek philosopher. This persistent refusal of Democritus' s philosophical teaching is probably one of the great paradoxes of this light-hearted and mocking century.
Le rire des esprits forts. Sur les Réflexions sur les grands hommes qui sont morts en plaisantant d'André-François Deslandes
Authors: Salaün Franck
Published: June 2016

The laughter of free-thinkers. The rehabilitation of laughter in Réflexions sur les grands hommes qui sont morts en plaisantant.

Can one laugh at anything, even death ? In this work originally published in 1712, André-François Deslandes, unlike Christian moralists, does not hesistate to compare laughter to wisdom and to praise free-thinkers. In this article, we insist on the author's method of standing Bruyère, La Rochefoucauld and Pascal on their heads. For Deslandes there is a type of philosophy which can reconcile life and death without resorting to religion. The capacity to laugh at death or to joke with it is part of a lifestyle. His work answers La Bruyère' s question as to whether free-thinkers know that they are called "esprits-forts" (strong minds) ironically, by saying that they practice a demanding and light-hearted type of wisdom. While rehabilitating laughter, Deslandes denounces the ulterior motives behind the moralising campaigns which impose mystifying seriousness.
La caricature anglaise face à la France en Révolution (1789-1802)
Authors: Dupuy Pascal
Published: June 2016

British counter-revolutionary caricature, 1789-1802.

British caricature developed throughout the 18th Century, establishing a symbolic repertory and a comic vocabulary which were immediately associated in reaction to the French Revolution. In order to understand the techniques of humour aimed at producing laughter as well as fear, we can use the principles studied by Francis Grosse in the essay on comic painting published in 1788 as an annexe to his Traité sur les principes de la caricature. According to him, the technique of laughter is based on compartmentalized engravings and aroused by scatological references, by oppositions, symbolic inversions or anachronisms in clothing. The fertile imagination of the caricaturists used all these techniques to discredit in a gale of laughter both the French revolutionary movement and its British supporters.
Diderot, de la Correspondance aux Salons. Énonciation épistolaire et critique d'art
Authors: Cammagre Geneviève
Published: June 2016

Diderot, from his Correspondence to the Salons. Letter-writing and art criticism.

This article attempts a re-evaluation of the interest of the letter form in Diderot's first Salons (1759, 1761, 1763, 1765). Diderot's first two art reviews were sent to Grimm, the director of the Correspondance littéraire, in private letters, and this letter form, with its inherent friendly intimacy, was maintained by Grimm on their publication and afterwards deliberately cultivated by Diderot. Grimm, the friend and alter ego, was a screen and a link between the author and the European nobility who were the intended readers of the Salons. Thanks to the protection provided by a friendly exchange of letters, Diderot developed an art of writing and feeling in the service of aesthetic values, which his eminent readership was in a position to promote. The power of letter-writing also encouraged the emergence of a conception of aesthetics centred on subjective experience. In addition, the liberation of the feelings aroused by the painting or sculpture was allowed a more complete expression in these fictional letters than in the true private correspondence.
Promenades d'Anglais sur la place Louis XV ou les aperçus critiques d'un mode d'embellissement «à la française»
Authors: Chastel-Rousseau Charlotte
Published: June 2016

British visitors to the place Louis XV or critical appraisals of French town planning.

The recently-inaugurated place Louis XV (now place de la Concorde), designed by Jacques-Ange Gabriel, at the heart of the promenade from the Tuileries to the Champs-Elysées, rarely failed to impress the numerous British travellers to Paris between 1763 and 1815. More than sixty authors from diverse social backgrounds, keen to mix in high society or take exercise, or drawn by the symbolic aura of this historic space, lingered here and wrote their impressions in their travel accounts. While most of them hardly paid attention to the central equestrian statue of Louis XV, Bouchardon's masterpiece, finished by Pigalle and destroyed in 1792, they were all struck by the open vista provided by this huge oval crossroads which they were reluctant to call a "square". The British travellers, observing the spectacular perspective and views of the town, the way it was integrated into its natural environment and turned its back on the closed public square, realised that the place Louis XV was part of a new conception of the town.
La traite négrière atlantique
Authors: Deveau Jean-Pierre
Published: June 2016

From the 15th to the middle of the 19th Centuries, the slave trade supplied the European colonies with a cost-free and totally servile labour force. The history of this trade, for long ignored, is starting to emerge. The mechanisms of the system were part of those of early capitalism in a global economy in which Africa and America became peripheries which were crucial for the amassing of a large part of Europe's wealth. While this aspect is starting to be well known, the African share in the slave trade has been relatively little studied. Rather than presenting the current state of knowledge, we have preferred a table of the different questions to be asked. The same goes for the great debate on the different abolitions, which poses the problem of the respective role of the slaves as actors in their own liberation (in particular the Maroons) and the influence of abolitionist movements, partly inspired by the Enlightenment.
La bataille pour l'Atlantique de Louis XIV à Louis XVI
Authors: Villiers Patrick
Published: June 2016

The reception of Berkeley's work constitutes an important aspect of Enlightenment intellectual history, as the Philosophes sought to distance themsel¬ ves from his immaterialism, which was often misinterpreted and misunderstood. Voltaire seems to be the only exception ; on the one hand because he had read Berkeley's original text and boasted of being the only one in France capable of mastering not only the English language but also mind and culture (hence his ferocious criticism of Desfontaines and Caraccioli on the subject of Berkeley) ; and on the other, because he understood the philosophical importance of immate¬ rialism. He thus goes far beyond the facile criticism of Rousseau or Diderot. Nevertheless, Voltaire agreed with them, and the essence of his criticism of Berkeley is the same. The aim of this article is to provide a reading of the relationship between Berkeley and Voltaire which takes account of the role played by immaterialism in Voltaire's work and its ambivalence.
Les lumières contre la guerre de course (1763-1795)
Authors: Bélissa Marc
Published: June 2016

Privateering was one of the Old Regime's methods of warfare that was most criticised by Enlightenment thinkers. For most Philosophes, it symbolised the persistence of barbarism in a century that defended human rights even in combat. Criticism intensified during the War of American Independence, helping to change the laws on privateers, and putting the abolition of privateering on the agenda. The Revolution prolonged Enlightenment debates. Although the Constituent Assembly did not fundamentally change matters from 1789 to 1791, the declaration of war in April 1792, and especially the changing relations with Britain, altered the situation. In May 1792, a debate between defenders and enemies of privateering in the Legislative Assembly cast the problem in terms of the rules of warfare that a 'regenerated' France should observe. Finally, the declaration of war against Britain in February 1793 made privateering a new issue in the Convention's political debates.
Les économistes français et l'image de l'Amérique. L'essor du commerce transatlantique et l'effondrement du «gouvernement féodal»
Authors: Cheney Paul B.
Published: June 2016

The young Michel Wébert from Saverne arrived in Paris in 1785 to work in a bookshop. His business developed during the Revolution and his bookshop under the wooden galleries of the Palais-Royal became the meeting place for the capital's monarchists and defenders of the King. His shop, specialised in daring prints and counter-revolutionary pamphlets, was raided by the police in October 1790. He worked for Actes des Apôtres, the paper published by Gattey, in which several engravings are advertised as being sold cà Paris, chez Michel Wébert3 ; nothing however indicated that he was an engraver rather than a simple seller of prints. His shop was raided for the last time during the winter of 1794, after he had fled, and a list of his customers was seized ; through it we can see the diversity and the extent of his trade (in particular his contacts with the colonies). After his trial, in which no external complicity was proved, he was guillotined in Paris on 20th May 1794.
La révolution transatlantique des émigrés. Des réseaux aux institutions
Authors: Potofsky Allan
Published: June 2016

Both Rousseau and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre present us with the paradox of a philosophy impregnated with literary and scientific culture which claims to turn its back on learning and to praise ignorance. This apparent contradiction disappears if we understand the Utopian aspect of their thought and argue that it is not knowledge as such that is rejected but the perverse use made of it in the ordinary world. Émile' s education directs knowledge towards a progressive pleasure untainted by the lust for power, while for Bernardin, one must be careful not to let learning smother love of beings and the exercise of sensibility ; thus it is not primordial and is only valuable as an instrument in the service of human relations. Both authors invite us, in their own way, to redefine the aim of teaching, the role and value of knowledge in education, together with the risks and contradictions involved. It is significant that the fundamental question concer¬ ning the purpose of learning is posed at the heart of the Enlightenment.
L'internationale abolitionniste et l'esquisse d'une civilisation atlantique
Authors: Bénot Yves
Published: June 2016

The organisations which were founded in the last quarter of the 18th Century in Philadelphia, London and Paris to campaign against the slave system in the American colonies were in close contact with each other. Their first aim was the abolition of the slave trade, but also the ending of slavery itself, at least in the United States. In fact, well before they took an institutional form, links had been forged between individual abolitionists — whose number grew throughout the century — in the great slaving nations. However, this sort of International5 developed very unequally in the three nations, because of significant differences in their political contexts. This 'Abolitionist International3 did not of itself obtain concrete results, but the ties thus created lasted, and in the long run they played a role in the later abolitions of the 19th Century.
Un Atlantique des lumières ? D'après l'Histoire générale des voyages de l'abbé Prévost
Authors: Albertan-Coppola Sylviane
Published: June 2016

The young Michel Wébert from Saverne arrived in Paris in 1785 to work in a bookshop. His business developed during the Revolution and his bookshop under the wooden galleries of the Palais-Royal became the meeting place for the capital's monarchists and defenders of the King. His shop, specialised in daring prints and counter-revolutionary pamphlets, was raided by the police in October 1790. He worked for Actes des Apôtres, the paper published by Gattey, in which several engravings are advertised as being sold cà Paris, chez Michel Wébert3 ; nothing however indicated that he was an engraver rather than a simple seller of prints. His shop was raided for the last time during the winter of 1794, after he had fled, and a list of his customers was seized ; through it we can see the diversity and the extent of his trade (in particular his contacts with the colonies). After his trial, in which no external complicity was proved, he was guillotined in Paris on 20th May 1794.
Six lettres inédites de madame Geoffrin à Martin Folkes
Authors: Badinter Élisabeth
Published: June 2016

These letters, addressed to the President of the Royal Society between December 1742 and November 1743, throw new light on the personality of the famous hostess of the Rue Saint-Honoré. She confides frankly in her English friend and thus shows herself to be a better judge of character and more cultivated and philosophical than had hitherto been thought. In addition, we see that her salon was already very fashionable during the lifetime of Mme de Tencin, and was frequented by many prestigious intellectuals — such as Montesquieu and his son Secondât, Maupertuis, Dortous de Mairan, the abbé Saint-Pierre amongst others — with whom her relationship was friendly and even affectionate.
Sur la lettre de Diderot à Wilkes du 2 avril 1768
Authors: Goggi Gianluigi
Published: June 2016

Diderot's letter to John Wilkes of 2nd April 1768 was published in the Assézat-Tourneux edition from a French translation of the English 'translation3 published in Wilkes's Correspondence in 1805. In D.H.S. n° 6, F. Moureau presented a French text of the letter, found in the 18th May 1768 issue of the Courrier du Bas-Rhin published in Cleves ; but the mystery remained as to how a letter sent to London arrived in Cleves. In fact Diderot's letter was published in French with an English translation in the May 1768 issue of the pro-Wilkes propaganda organ, the Political Register, published by Wilkes's friend John Almon. One can easily suppose that Wilkes, wishing to exploit the propaganda value of a letter from the philosophe, gave a copy, or the original letter, to his friend for publication. In the absence of a manuscript, we can thus take the French text in the Political Register as the original version of Diderot's letter.
Le commerce de la librairie Wébert à Paris sous la Révolution
Authors: Duprat Annie
Published: June 2016

The young Michel Wébert from Saverne arrived in Paris in 1785 to work in a bookshop. His business developed during the Revolution and his bookshop under the wooden galleries of the Palais-Royal became the meeting place for the capital's monarchists and defenders of the King. His shop, specialised in daring prints and counter-revolutionary pamphlets, was raided by the police in October 1790. He worked for Actes des Apôtres, the paper published by Gattey, in which several engravings are advertised as being sold cà Paris, chez Michel Wébert3 ; nothing however indicated that he was an engraver rather than a simple seller of prints. His shop was raided for the last time during the winter of 1794, after he had fled, and a list of his customers was seized ; through it we can see the diversity and the extent of his trade (in particular his contacts with the colonies). After his trial, in which no external complicity was proved, he was guillotined in Paris on 20th May 1794.
La figure de Berkeley dans la pensée de Voltaire
Authors: Charles Sébastien
Published: June 2016

The reception of Berkeley's work constitutes an important aspect of Enlightenment intellectual history, as the Philosophes sought to distance themselves from his immaterialism, which was often misinterpreted and misunderstood. Voltaire seems to be the only exception ; on the one hand because he had read Berkeley's original text and boasted of being the only one in France capable of mastering not only the English language but also mind and culture (hence his ferocious criticism of Desfontaines and Caraccioli on the subject of Berkeley) ; and on the other, because he understood the philosophical importance of immaterialism. He thus goes far beyond the facile criticism of Rousseau or Diderot. Nevertheless, Voltaire agreed with them, and the essence of his criticism of Berkeley is the same. The aim of this article is to provide a reading of the relationship between Berkeley and Voltaire which takes account of the role played by immaterialism in Voltaire's work and its ambivalence.
L'opposition à l'absolutisme politique et à la société marchande. Droit et vertu dans la pensée de Mably
Authors: Charara Youmna
Published: June 2016

The consistently moral vocabulary in Mably's political work should not mask the development of his thought, for his 'moral insistence draws successively on two distinct intellectual traditions ; his early works look to natural law theories, as their legal ethic enables him to oppose legal rules to the unjust practices of absolutism and to show up the immorality of State reason, which is so scandalous that it can justify, in his eyes, the civil war of the people against a despot. Although the natural law heritage never completely vanished from Mably's work, it was superseded in the 1760s by the classical republican tradition. He now exalted a civic morality which enabled him to undertake a radical criticism not only of tyranny but above all of the unequal and corrupting market society ; virtue, totally opposed to modern market values, teaches love of one's country and warlike heroism. Mably's final works exhibit a hardening of his republican theses ; the political law, which is the expression of the popular will and possesses overwhelming authority, is said to resolve the problem of the divorce between morality and politics.
Claude Crébillon amateur d'estampes
Authors: Cornand Suzanne
Published: June 2016

The discovery that two of Claude Crébillon' s collections of prints were sold in 1757 and 1777 shows him in a new light, although it leaves a certain number of questions unanswered. The content of the catalogues, the choice of certain experts and the nature of the buyers all show that he was a writer who was passionately interested in the visual arts. From an analysis of the engravings we can see that his taste was that of his time, in the hierarchy of schools and the choice of artists and of some engravings, but he also appears as well-informed and interested, collecting for his own pleasure, with a preference for miniature engravings and etchings. His love for engravings is doubtless linked to that for books, as he owned many illustrated books. However, it is still not known how he acquired thousands of prints and the role played by his friendship with artists or dealers such as Basan, Cochin, Boucher or Watelet. Crébillon may well have been the most snobbish and refined writer of the Enlightenment.
Le thème du crible dans l'estampe. Les avatars d'une composition satirique récurrente
Authors: Wachenheim Pierre
Published: June 2016

Certain images seem to contain intrinsic elements of subversion which mean that they are naturally frequently adapted to many different seditious situations. This is the case of the giant Sieve sifting individuals, held in the air by a hand coming from the clouds, which seems a particularly telling example. The Sieve, first found in 16th and 17th Century Dutch political prints, was frequently found in France in the 18th Century in complex circumstance. It is used during the century to illustrate the religious controversies linked to Jansenism and to the campaign against the Jesuits, and revolutionary events. A comparative study of these different Sieves shows concretely the way this seditious image was built up, particularly through processes of acculturation, adaptation and mutability.
Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre et l'histoire naturelle
Authors: Drouin Jean-Marc
Published: June 2016

Rousseau and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre were both interested in botany, but it had a different meaning for each of them. They both believed that we learn from Nature itself and not from collections, but Rousseau gave advice on how to make a plant collection, while refusing to allow the introduction of exotic plants into gardens ; Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, however, wanted to introduce foreign plants but disparaged collections which ignored the plant's environment. When he was the head of the Botanical Garden he wanted to set up a zoo which would re-establish the old link between animals and man that had been destroyed by naturalists who were merely hunters. They also disagreed on classification ; Rousseau saw Linnaeus' s methodological rules as a means to allow each botanist to take advantage of the work of others and refused any utilitarian interest, while Bernardin de Saint-Pierre rejected learned classification and gave a different meaning to the study of the plant world.
L'idée de nature comme fondement d'un programme éducatif
Authors: Thibault Gabriel-Robert
Published: June 2016

Rousseau is not strictly speaking a pedagogue as his method of education, only presented in the fiction of Émile, is based on an ontological and moral reflection. He presents humans as a meeting-point between God and the animals, whose liberty has made them blind. His remedy for the despairing statement with which Émile begins is education. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre is close to Rousseau in his overall presentation of the relationship between humans and nature, but his vision is broader and his theology, which is less pessimistic, leads to more concrete perspectives on education. He believes that it is not so much free will as man's very place in nature which makes him forget his duty towards God, but humans suffer from the absence of signs of God. Hence a detailed analysis of the signs of God in nature, and a reflection on pedagogy and didactics in order to lead children to discover these signs.
Les Lumières françaises au tribunal de l'Index et du Saint-Office
Authors: Macé Laurence
Published: June 2016

This article analyses the importance of Enlightenment themes in the Janse¬ nists' clandestine journal, taking 1750 as a test. The Nouvelles ecclésiastiques only dealt with religion, recounting persecutions or reviewing theological works. On the occasion of the condemnation of Colonia's Bibliothèque janséniste, the paper drew up a list of good books, often from the 17th Century, written by
Lumières maçonniques et christianisme
Authors: Beaurepaire Pierre-Yves
Published: June 2016

Was the Masonic enlightenment antichristian ? The openly Christian credo of the immense majority of 18th-century European Freemasons cuts little ice in the face of prejudices and phantasms. Freemasonry, seen erroneously as a secret society (while it is essentially a society of secrets), is still suspected of having encouraged the dissolution of social, family and religious ties and weakened Christian and monarchical identity. Nevertheless, Freemasons rapidly limited their universal republic, excluding irreducible others like Jews, Blacks and Moslems. Their universal republic soon corresponded to the frontiers of Christian Europe. The development of the high Masonic grades, inspired by Christianity and chivalry, reinforced the Christian character of European Masonry. Thus we can look at the relationships which developed within this Christian cosmos between catholic and protestant Freemasons, in particular during the crisis of crypto-catholicism.
J.-J. Rousseau et J.-G. Le Franc de Pompignan. La «Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard» et «De la religion civile» critiqués par l'Instruction pastorale
Authors: Nakagawa Hisayasu
Published: June 2016

In his Instruction pastorale de Mgr l'Evêque du Puy sur la prétendue philosophie des incrédules modernes (1763), Jean-Georges Lefranc de Pompignan refuted Jean-Jacques Rousseau's positions on the essential Catholic doctrine of Revelation on one hand, and on toleration and patriotism on the other. Lefranc' s criticism brings out Rousseau's position half-way between the Philosophes and the Catholics in both the past, present and future of Catholicism, as he tried to combine the Philosophe' s toleration with Christian charity, and to reconcile reason and Scripture. Thus he represents a third way between the Philosophes and the faithful, which was not an easy position in the historical context of the Century. Rousseau was perfectly aware that Lefranc de Pompignan was the only one who understood this intermediate position, without however sharing it.
L'Année littéraire entre christianisme et Lumières (1754-1763)
Authors: Balcou Jean
Published: June 2016

The period between 1754 and 1763 provides a good example of L'Année littéraire' s position in the philosophical battle. Fréron tried as best he could to avoid fanaticism, whether from the Catholics or from the Philosophes, which entitled him to denounce it firmly. This position led him to propose a midway solution, between tradition which needed to be renewed and philosophy, which needed to be moderated. He too was part of the Enlightenment, by playing on reasonable reason and practical philosophy ; but he preferred to remain within the bounds of social and patriotic questions. We look at two examples : his attitude towards toleration and that concerning the rules of conduct of monks and the upper clergy. Fréron, who was more interested in literature than religion at a time when everything was seen to concern religion, was a sensible Christian who hated extremes.
Samuel Formey , pasteur huguenot entre Lumières françaises et Aufklärung
Authors: Häseler Jens
Published: June 2016

for a sort of rationalistic eclecticism in order to free oneself from prejudice and gain new knowledge and popularise it. His work on epistemology and moral philosophy, his encyclopaedia projects and his numerous journals earned him a reputation among enlightened intellectuals, particularly in Protestant countries. His major preoccupation was the application of rationalistic principles to morals and their use in education, particularly Christian, thus reconciling his vocations as pastor and philosopher. Formey's criticism of the French philosophes must be understood in the context of his championing of the Protestant Aufklàrung, of which he was one of the leading French representatives.
L.-A. Caraccioli et son œuvre : la mesure d'une avancée de la pensée chrétienne vers les Lumières
Authors: Jacques Martine
Published: June 2016

This article, presentating Caraccioli' s life, looks at the influences on him in order to understand how a certain type of Christian thinking could move towards Enlightenment. Caraccioli can be seen as typical inasmuch as he was an honest, sometimes elegant and surprising thinker, sensitive to contemporary developments. His early education led him to oppose most enlightened principles ; but he changed under the influence of 17th-century Christian social thought, the model of the primitive Church, Jansenist political analysis and a reading of Malebranche. Finally, we see how his position changed radically in the early 1780s, following figures like Rousseau or the Physiocrats, who reinjected religious feeling into enlightened discourse. His priorities changed, and the presentation of theological principles was replaced by a more reforming pragmatism ; however, this finally led to a series of difficulties which the Revolution often revealed and which remain at the heart of questions concerning the link between religion and Western modernity.
La duchesse Louise Dorothée de Saxe-Gotha entre christianisme et Lumières
Authors: Cotoni Marie-Hélène
Published: June 2016

Les mille et une fadaises seem to announce a satirical and libertine parody of Antoine Galland's 1001 Nights. But Cazotte's work instead, by a subtle interplay of paradoxes and reversals, poses the question of the influence of the public on literary creation. It attacks the classic fantastic tale, by simplifying its structure and removing all trace of orientalism, by a burlesque use of elements of the Gallic fairy-tale and a critique of the libertine tale. But above all, by reversing its model's narrative situation, it transfers the criticism from the story's subject to its public. While Galland aimed at keeping readers awake and stimula¬ ting their imagination, Cazotte implies that the French fantastic tale wanted to send them to sleep. Nevertheless his is a lively tale portraying in a pragmatic way the decadence of public taste, as Father Bougeant had done in his novel Le voyage merveilleux du Prince Fan-Férédin, with which it bears a close intertextual and aesthetic relationship.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau et Jean-Baptiste René Robinet devant le Saint-Office
Authors: Borchi Nicolas , Pedroni Éric
Published: June 2016

The archives of the Congregation of the Faith in Rome contain documents concerning the condemnation of Rousseau's Emile (1762) and Robinet's De la Nature (1761). Here we present a French translation of the Holy Office reports, written in Italian and Latin, on Emile, and the two censorship judgements concer¬ ning De la Nature. These documents, which associate Rousseau and Robinet in a single condemnation, throw light on the reasons for the Catholic Church's hostility towards the French Enlightenment.
Dom Augustin Calmet : homme des Lumières malgré lui ?
Authors: Schwarzbach Bertram Eugene
Published: June 2016

Although the Benedictine Augustin Calmet was a respected exegete and ecclesiastical historian, whose Biblical Commentaire littéral was read by Philo¬ sophes, he has been included in the 'counter-Enlightenment5. This article explores the modern side of his Biblical exegesis, throwing new light on the breadth of 18th-century orthodoxy. Calmet reduced miracles to natural phenomena where possible and criticised the sexual peccadilloes, cruelty and injustice of patriarchs, prophets and kings and their inducement to sin in order to realise divine objectives. Calmet shared many of the enlightened values of such Biblical critics as Voltaire and Mme du Châtelet, but differed from them in his commitment to Counter-Reformation orthodoxy. He was willing to subdue scientific integrity in order to harmonise the Bible with orthodoxy and use it to support Catholic apologetics, while for the Philosophes, loyalty to the Catholic tradition was either irrelevant or a secondary value to be reconciled with science and ethics if possible. Calmet was half enlightened and half orthodox, and the two tendencies sometimes cohabi¬ ted uneasily.
Voltaire et Zinzendorf à Genève : une rencontre manquée entre Lumières et piétisme ?
Authors: Gembicki Dieter
Published: June 2016

Both Voltaire and Zinzendorf settled in Geneva in early November 1759. Although they represented opposed ideological camps, they shared a common heritage as disciples of Bayle. Hence they both developed an acute feeling for means of communication and for the other ; the Pietist Zinzendorf was an assi¬ duous reader of Voltaire, while Voltaire was perpetually mindful of the cherrnutes\ It is therefore legitimate to wonder about the reasons why they did not meet. One can imagine the count's unwillingness to meet the campaigning Philosophe who, for his part, did not even know that the other was there. This article brings out the different obstacles, but also an important detail, namely an earlier thwarted attempt to visit the lord of Ferney.
Cazotte lecteur du R.P. Bougeant : Les Mille et une fantaisies. Un conte réfléchi et réflexif
Authors: Orsini Dominique
Published: June 2016

Les mille et une fadaises seem to announce a satirical and libertine parody of Antoine Galland's 1001 Nights. But Cazotte's work instead, by a subtle interplay of paradoxes and reversals, poses the question of the influence of the public on literary creation. It attacks the classic fantastic tale, by simplifying its structure and removing all trace of orientalism, by a burlesque use of elements of the Gallic fairy-tale and a critique of the libertine tale. But above all, by reversing its model's narrative situation, it transfers the criticism from the story's subject to its public. While Galland aimed at keeping readers awake and stimula¬ ting their imagination, Cazotte implies that the French fantastic tale wanted to send them to sleep. Nevertheless his is a lively tale portraying in a pragmatic way the decadence of public taste, as Father Bougeant had done in his novel Le voyage merveilleux du Prince Fan-Férédin, with which it bears a close intertextual and aesthetic relationship.
Compléments sur Laclos
Authors: Poisson Georges
Published: June 2016

The author, who published in 1985 a ground-breaking biography of the author of Les liaisons dangereuses called Choderlos de Laclos or l'obstination, has since continued the study of Laclos and here publishes the results of his research. He corrects certain hypotheses, solves some puzzles and publishes for the first time new unknown documents. The article does not however hide the remaining zones of darkness in his biography nor does it resolve the problem of literary creation which made this conscientious officer the vir unius libri.
Épicure et le système des atomes dans l'Histoire critique de la philosophie d'A. F. Deslandes
Authors: Deneys Henry
Published: June 2016

The main merit of Deslandes' account of Epicureanism, faithful to Roman and Greek texts and indebted to Gassendi' s rehabilitation of Epicurus, is to remove biographical innuendo and abusive ideological usage from the study of his conceptions. This article shows however that Deslandes, libertine and free¬ thinker, does not present a militant Epicureanism in this banned work. While praising the ethic of moderate pleasure and above all Epicurus' s religious practice, he rejects the physics of the clinamen (contrary to natural laws) and the gnoseology of simulacri (contrary to optics). This article attempts to show, by an analysis of the text, that the history of the censorship of clandestine works and conjectures concerning their authors' hidden' philosophy should not make one forget their conceptual content.
D'un épicurisme «discret». Pour une lecture lucrécienne des Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes de Fontenelle
Authors: Martin Christophe
Published: June 2016

The reference to Cartesian mechanism is obvious from the first 'evening' of the Entretiens. But its Epicurean imprint is hardly less important. This article suggests that Descartes' arrival on the philosophical stage of the Entretiens is perhaps a reference to Epicurus' s entry into De natura rerum ; we thus attempt to show the work's discreet Epicurean elements, that are more or less clandestine and scattered throughout the texts without being collected into a united argumenta¬ tive synthesis. What Epicureanism seems to have offered Fontenelle in the Entre¬ tiens is both a critical model to reflect without anxiety on a world deserted by the gods -not hostile to humans but radically alien -and the idea of a nature in perpetual mutation and open to all possibilities.