A classical Republican in eighteenth-century France
Subtitle: the political thought of Mably
By: Johnson Kent Wright.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Stanford, CA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 261
Subjects: Mably, abbé de, 1709-1785; Political science -- France -- History -- 18th century
Description: This is an intellectual biography of Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709-85), who emerges as a central figure in the history of republican thought in the era of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.

This book has two related aims. The first is to fill an important gap in historical scholarship. Although Mably, whose career as a historian and political theorist stretched from 1740 to the eve of the French Revolution, clearly played a major role in the intellectual history of his era, there has been no study of his life and thought in English for nearly seventy years. At the same time, the book seeks to advance a novel interpretation of Mably's thought.

This study sets forth a different reading of Mably's thought, one that shows him to be a classical republican, in the sense this term has acquired in recent years for students of early modern political thought.

Mably was the author of the most comprehensive and influential body of republican thought produced in eighteenth-century France - a claim with implications that go beyond the merely biographical. These are explored in a final chapter, which draws some conclusions about the character of classical republicanism in France and about the French contribution to the republican tradition in Europe.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [243]-253) and index.