THE VALUE OF DISPOSSESSION: RETHINKING DISCOURSES OF SELFHOOD IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHARLY J. COLEMAN
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
The Self ◽  
General Will ◽  
Christian Mysticism ◽  
Saint Martin ◽  
Love Of God ◽  
The French Revolution

In Enlightenment-era France, theologians, philosophers, and politicians contested the nature and prerogatives of human personhood with particular vehemence. Yet historians have tended to reduce these struggles to a narrative of ascendant individualism. This essay seeks to recover non-individualist formulations of the self in eighteenth-century France, and, in doing so, to offer a more nuanced account of subjectivity during the period. Out of debates over Christian mysticism, radical philosophy, and republican politics emerged two distinct and conflicting modes of formulating the self 's relationship to its ideas and actions. On one side, mainstream philosophes joined Descartes, Locke, and orthodox Catholic theologians in elaborating the individual's capacity to accumulate existential goods in terms of a discourse of self-ownership. Opposition to this view, in contrast, challenged such claims by employing a discourse of dispossession, which stressed the human person's resignation to, and ultimate identification with, a totalizing force outside the self. The essay traces a specific genealogy of this discourse in the writings of Fénelon, Rousseau, and the Illuminist theologian Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, in the context of intellectual polemics ranging from the role of self-love in Christian devotion to the virtues of self-sacrifice in a republican polity. If the Fénelonian doctrine of spiritual abandon called on believers to surrender their particular desires in the love of God, Rousseau likewise demanded that citizens place their property and their persons under the direction of the general will. Saint-Martin, for his part, applied Rousseau's politics of alienation to his vision of a theocratic republic in the wake of the French Revolution, thereby posing the mystic ideal of dispossession as a means of transforming the self and its world along communal, rather than individualist, lines.

Conservative Political Thought in Britain in Response to the French Revolution

1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 601-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Philip Schofield
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
True Nature ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
The French Revolution

In attempting to explain the stability of eighteenth-century Britain, and in particular the maintenance of political, social and economic supremacy by the landed aristocracy, scholars have begun to pay attention to the role of ideology and opinion. They see this not merely as providing an explanation of the way things were, but justifying and reinforcing them. The dominant ideological interpretation of society had emerged from the political and constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century, and in particular from the Glorious Revolution of 1688, an interpretation which might be denominated ‘Whig’, and which faced its most serious challenge at the very end of the eighteenth century from the French revolution. Despite the more tangible threat of French arms, the ruling classes in Britain did not underestimate the danger to social order from the arguments advanced by adherents of the rights-of-man doctrine propagated by the revolutionaries. If, in reply to these views, the status quo could be shown not only to be necessary and inevitable, but also right and good, that is to say correspondent with the true nature of man, then the morality of the existing practices and institutions of civil society would be proven. The problem at its most fundamental level was ethical, and it was a problem which conservatives attempted to solve in a variety of ways.

William ‘Bill’ Doyle and the Origins of the French Revolution

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Blanning
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Marxist Interpretation ◽  
Breaking Work ◽  
The French Revolution

This chapter discusses Bill Doyle's contribution to the study of the origins of the French Revolution. It shows how his early work delivered a powerful critique of the dominant Marxist interpretation, already under attack from revisionists led by Alfred Cobban. It examines the three editions of his book Origins of the French Revolution, with both continuities and changes identified. Particular importance is assigned to Doyle's ground-breaking work on the part played by venality in eroding the old regime monarchy. A second topic of major importance to which Doyle's researches have contributed a great deal is the role of the Parlements. This is placed in the context of Doyle's critique of the notion of an ‘aristocratic reaction’ in late-eighteenth century France. The chapter concludes with a discussion of his most recent work on aristocracy.

Taste

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Weir ◽  
Jane Desmarais
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Roman History ◽  
The French Revolution

This article examines the confluence of cuisine and the culture of decadence by first describing the difficulty of identifying any type of food as inherently “decadent” in physiological terms. After acknowledging that the meaning of “decadence” depends on moral, social, and aesthetic contexts, the article focuses on the dissemination of aristocratic tastes in food following the French Revolution, when chefs who had formerly cooked for nobility opened their own restaurants; on the development of the idea of the gourmand subsequent to the publication of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s Physiologie du Goût (The Physiology of Taste, 1825); on Charles Baudelaire’s decadent response to Brillat-Savarin in Les Paradis Artificiels (Artificial Paradises, 1860); on the role of Roman history in the development of popular conceptions of decadent cuisine; and on J.-K. Huysmans’s surprisingly limited interest in “decadent dining” in À rebours (Against Nature, 1884), despite his use of elaborate food metaphors to describe the literature of decadence.

Introduction: “One of the Most Interesting Pairs of Breeches Recorded in Modern History”

Sans-Culottes ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Sonenscher
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Professional Life ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Sequence Of Events ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
The French Revolution

This chapter discusses the phrase, sans culottes, and its key role within the larger context of the French Revolution. The phrase has a bearing on the sequence of events that led from the fall of the Bastille to the beginning of the Terror. This is because the name sans-culottes was actually a neologism with a rather curious history. Although it can be taken initially to refer to someone simply wearing ordinary trousers, rather than the breeches usually worn in eighteenth-century public or professional life, the words themselves also had a more figurative sense. In this latter usage, the condition of not having breeches, or being sans culottes, had to do with the arrangements and values of eighteenth-century French salons. In this setting, the condition of not having breeches, or being sans culottes, was associated with a late seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century salon society joke.

Private Crime, Public Madness

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Étienne Balibar
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Penal Code ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Recent Version ◽  
The French Revolution

This chapter attempts to clarify the questions raised by the relations between madness and justice, with reference to the heritage of the French Revolution. It also assesses the distinction between crime and madness and their respective treatments in public and private spheres. Indeed, what prompts current discussions on the function of the psychiatrist in the courtroom or on the role of judgments of civil capacity in the treatment of mental illness, is yet again the perspective offered by the reframing of the Penal Code (including the famous Article 64, which makes “insanity”—or, in the more recent version, “psychic or neuro-psychic disturbance”—into the principal operator of the nullification of a crime or a delict, either in its juridical reality or in its penal consequences).

Square pianos and piano-organs

Erard ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 19-23
Author(s):  
Robert Adelson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cast Iron ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
String Tension ◽  
Wing Shape ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
French Court ◽  
High Degree ◽  
The French Revolution

Today the word ‘piano’ connotes a large instrument with a powerful sonority, capable of doing battle with an entire orchestra in a romantic concerto. There are various features of the modern piano responsible for this image, including a case with a long wing shape reinforced by a cast iron frame, and the high degree of string tension that this frame makes possible. None of these features were present on pianos in eighteenth-century France, where the most common model was the rectangular-shaped piano carré (square piano), whose sound was scarcely more powerful than that of a harp. Before the French Revolution, the Erard firm produced square pianos and hybrid piano-organs. During this period, the Erards strengthened their ties with the French court, which resulted in several exceptional instruments made for Marie-Antoinette.

The Archaeology of the French Revolution

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarita Diaz-Andreu
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Professional Discipline ◽  
The People ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The French Revolution

The nineteenth century saw the emergence of both nationalism and archaeology as a professional discipline. The aim of this chapter is to show how this apparent coincidence was not accidental. This discussion will take us into uncharted territory. Despite the growing literature on archaeology and nationalism (Atkinson et al. 1996; Díaz-Andreu & Champion 1996a; Kohl & Fawcett 1995; Meskell 1998), the relationship between the two during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has yet to be explored. The analysis of how the past was appropriated during this era of the revolutions, which marked the dawn of nationalism, is not helped by the specialized literature available on nationalism, as little attention has been paid to these early years. Most authors dealing with nationalism focus their research on the mid to late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the ideas that emerged during the era of the revolutions bore fruit and the balance between civic and ethnic nationalism (i.e. between a nationalism based on individual rights and the sovereignty of the people within the nation and another built on the common history and culture of the members of the nation) definitively shifted towards the latter. The reluctance to scrutinize the first years of nationalism by experts in the field may be a result of unease in dealing with a phenomenon which some simply label as patriotism. The term nationalism was not often used at the time. The political scientist Tom Nairn (1975: 6) traced it back to the late 1790s in France (it was employed by Abbé Baruel in 1798). However, its use seems to have been far from common, to the extent that other scholars believed it appeared in 1812. In other European countries, such as England, ‘nationalism’ was first employed in 1836 (Huizinga 1972: 14). Despite this disregard for the term itself until several decades later, specialists in the Weld of nationalism consider the most common date of origin as the end of the eighteenth century with the French Revolution as the key event in its definition.

The Literature on War: Part II

1942 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-346
Author(s):  
William O. Shanahan
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
The Other ◽  
Present Survey ◽  
Military Literature ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The French Revolution

“It is a great advantage to princes to have perused (military) histories in their youth, for in them they read at length of such assemblies and of the great frauds and deceptions and perjuries which some of the ancients have, practised on one another, and how they have taken and killed those who put their trust in such security. It is not to be said that all have used them, but the example of one is sufficient to make several wise and to cause them to wish to protect themselves.” For present-day democracies this advice of Philippe de Commynes, the fifteenth century French historian, has a pointed meaning. Only when the liberties of free peoples are threatened can their interest in war and armies be aroused. Tyrants and autocrats, on the other hand, never neglect the study of the role of war in statecraft. If we are to remain free the lessons of war must be studied continually. With this principle in mind the present survey of military literature is intended to suggest some of the important books that have been written since the French Revolution.

Exile, Imprisonment, or Death

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Swann
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
Royal Family ◽  
Civil Strife ◽  
Royal Authority ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
Cultural Origins ◽  
The French Revolution

Between the assassination of Henri IV in 1610 and the French Revolution of 1789, thousands of French nobles, including members of the royal family, courtiers, bishops, generals, and judges suffered internal exile, imprisonment, or even death for having displeased their sovereign. For most that punishment was independent of the legal system and was the result of a simple royal command or a written order, known as a lettre de cachet. Yet rather than protest, the victims were willing to obey, spending months, even years in disgrace without any knowledge of when, or even if, their ordeal would end. Their punishment was for many a terrible personal blow, striking at the heart of their own identity and relationship to the king, and it threatened the future of their families, friends, and political allies. This book is the first in-depth study of political disgrace, which was intrinsic to the exercise of royal power, drawing on the mystique of monarchy and the ideologies of divine right, patriarchy, and justice that underpinned royal authority. It explores the rise and consolidation of a new model of disgrace amongst the nobility for which obedience to the king gradually replaced the rebellious attitudes fostered during the years of religious and civil strife. Yet for all the power of royal disgrace, it was always open to challenge and in the course of the eighteenth century it would come under a sustained attack that tells us much about the political and cultural origins of the French Revolution.

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