L’Etat, c’est l’autre: Passion, Politics, and Alterity in Senault and Racine

In seventeenth-century France, the relationship between the passions and politics receives its fullest didactic treatment in the theoretical works of Jean-Francois Senault (1599-1672) and forms the crux of the theatrical works of Jean Racine (1639-1699). The two writers analyze the transformative power of the passions and their effect, more often devastating, on political leaders. In this essay, I shall show how they share a remarkably similar understanding of the role of the passions--particularly love--in the realm of politics, and how Senault's De l'Usage des passions (1641) and Le Monarque, ou Le Devoir du Souverain (1661) lend themselves as matter in two poignant tragedies by Racine, Andromaque (1667) and Berenice (1670). Senault The son of Pierre Senault and a protege of Berulle, Senault was elected general of the Oratory in 1662 and was renowned for his preaching. In De l'Usage des passions, Senault criticizes the Stoic philosophers who sought a life removed from the passions. The Oratorian presents his work as a guide to help people regulate their passions, because the passions, for him, can only be eliminated from man at death. Senault's treatise attempts to show how one can marshal his passions into the service of virtue. To convert the passions into virtues serves as the didactic purpose of the book. The disorder of the passions causes only the downfall of humankind, while their moderation elevates it. Through the examples of Adam and Jesus Christ, Senault explains how the passions inhere in all humans. Adam represents a negative model of those who manage poorly their passions, while Christ stands as the perfect example of those who moderate theirs well. Although Senault writes initially of Adam: "il me semble que par proportion l'on peut dire qu'il avoit des passions, puisque son ame etoit engagee dans la matiere, mais qu'elles etoient dociles, parce que la Justice originelle en reprimoit les mouvements" (68), (1) he also suggests, after St. Augustine, that eventually the unruliness of the passions overwhelmed the first man: "il [St. Augustine] ne veut pas tant exclure de l'ame d'Adam les passions, que leur desordre, jugeant bien qu'il ne pouvoit pas s'accorder avec la justice originelle" (69). Speaking of Christ's passions, Senault states: "Or comme les Passions sont les foiblesses les plus naturelles de l'homme, il [Christ] n'a pas voulu s'en exempter" (70). Different from Adam and all mankind, Christ, however, had a will that enabled him to keep them forever in check: Mais il faut aussi bien prendre garde qu'en establissant l'amour du Fils de Dieu, nous ne fassions point d'outrages a sa grandeur, et qu'en luy donnant des Passions, nous le garentissions de leurs desordres, car il n'est pas permis de croire qu'elles fussent dereglees comme les nostres, ny qu'elles eussent besoin de toutes ces vertus qui nous sont necessaires pour les domter. Il en estoit le Maistre absolu, et elles dependoient de sa volonte en leur naissance, en leur progrez, en leur duree. (71) This kind of control also signified that Jesus was the Son of God. Furthermore, for Senault, the gift of grace, performs a crucial role in aiding man's reason to guide his passions. Christ preserved for man the grace that Adam lost (82). After Augustine, Senault holds that man's nature is corrupt because of the fall of Adam. To submit the passions to the yoke of reason requires the succor of grace. (2) Without this assistance coming from outside of man, the latter would be nothing but a slave to his passions: "C'est pourquoy le Philosophe Chretien est oblige d'implorer l'ayde du Ciel pour vaincre ces rebelles, et avouant que sa Raison est affoiblie, il faut qu'il cherche du secours hor de luy-meme" (79-80). The second part of De l'Usage des passions offers an analysis of particular passions. Senault observes that the passions come from either concupiscence or charity and that they can be either evil or good. …